Tag Archives: lie in

Sunday 9th May 2021 – IT REALLY SEEMS …

… as if the warm weather has arrived this weekend, and it brought out the people in their hordes.

You can see a fleet of kayaks at the bottom of the photo and the flotillas of yachts out there by the Ile de Chausey. That was just a small part of what was going on this afternoon.

What has happened is that, as you can see, there’s a really heavy, grey overcast sky with 10/10ths cloud and a reasonable amount of wind, but it wasn’t cold at all. In fact, it was rather warm, and that was what made me think that perhaps, at long last, we might be moving into summer after the coldest and windiest winter that I’ve ever had in Normandy.

And although, as I said, there wasn’t as much wind today as there has been in the past, we are still having these heavy rolling seas sending the waves smashing into the sea wall.

But anyway, we’ll leave that for the moment. After my ridiculous lie-in yesterday, today’s lie-in was a much more reasonable and realistic 10:30. and after the medication, first thing that I did was to give the sourdough dough its second kneading and shaped it to put into its mould.

The second task was to make a load of normal dough made with regular yeast, 500 grammes-worth of flour with a pile of sunflower seeds and a vitamin C and magnesium tablet, mixed it all up and left it on one side to rise for a couple of hours.

After I’d had my porridge and toast for brunch, I started to knead the dough that I’d taken out earlier from the freezer, and put that on one side. I came back in here to start to listen to the dictaphone but I didn’t get very far before it was time for me to go out for my afternoon walk.

And as usual, the first thing to do was to go down to the wall at the end of the car park and look over the top down onto the beach below.

A little earlier I already mentioned the fact that the weather seems to be slowly improving. And that accounts for the fact that despite the high tide and the reduced amount of beach available, there were quite a few people wandering around down there making the most of the first really warm May Day.

And while I was watching, one of my neighbours turned up and parked her car, almost squidging me in the process. We had a little chat and then I pushed off on my travels along the footpath.

We’ve already seen a photo of the fleet of kayaks just offshore in the Baie de Granville.

Here they all are, having paddled all the way around from the Navigational and Sailing School round on the other side of the headland, so hats off to them. It can’t have been an easy trip in this sea.

It must have been really cold in there too because the water can’t have warmed up yet, but I hope that they haven’t lit any fires in their canoes. Because, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, you can’t have your kayak and heat it.

By now the hordes of people milling around, many without masks despite the Prefectorial Order for masks to be worn until the end of the month, were making life uncomfortable on the path.

And if you think that things were quite busy today out in the Baie de Granville on the north side of the headland, then it wasn’t any less hectic on the southern side of the headland in the Baie de Mont St Michel.

There were more kayakers out there, out of shot closer to the shore, but there were also plenty of yachts sailing around, accompanied by a cabin cruiser or two and the odd pleasure boat or so. I’d seen them at a distance as I was walking along the footpath so I crossed the car park down to the end of the headland for a closer look.

And talking of a closer look, you can see if you look closely down at the bottom left of the photo the nappe of silt that’s coming out of the harbour. We’ve seen a few good ones of those just recently, but usually going into the harbour as soon as the harbour gate is open.

Another thing that I had seen while I was walking across the car park was the waves breaking on the sea wall of the outer harbour. So having watched the boats for a while out there in the bay, I walked down the path towards the harbour for a closer look.

There wasn’t a great deal of wind this afternoon but as I have said before … “and on many occasions too” – ed … there can be a storm anywhere out there between the American mainland and here and it will roll in to the sea wall down there because there is no land mass or anything else in between to stop them.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that we have seen much more powerful waves than this on occasion but this isn’t too bad at all considering how calm it is here for the moment.

Having taken a photo or two from my usual viewpoint I carried on walking down the path but stopped again because my eye had caught something going on down there that I hadn’t seen before.

There were some kids walking along the harbour wall and suddenly they started to climb down the ladder that leads down to the beach below. And I’ve no idea why they would choose to go down there. We’ve seen that ladder used by kids before but usually when they were climbing up them after having jumped into the sea at high tide from the sea wall.

With them not doing very much, with the ladder I carried on. There was no change of occupancy in the chantier navale today – just the little fishing boat in there now.

While I was walking around the top of the cliffs I was overflown yet again by another aeroplane that had probably taken off from the airport at Donville les Bains.

Once more, it’s an aeroplane that doesn’t carry a registration number within the series of numbers to which I have access so I can’t tell you too much about it. It’s not recorded at the airport at Donville les Bains as having filed a flight plan either.

So with nothing else going on I headed for home and my hot coffee, and then I had plenty of work to do because I was having a cook-in this afternoon. I’ve already mentioned the bread but there were other things that I had to do too.

On of the things that I was going to make as an extra for dessert for the coming week is some chocolate brownie cake. The idea is that I’ll have a try at making some chocolate sauce to go with it.

I made a nice vegan brownie mix and spread it out in a large tray and then stuck it in the oven. While it was baking, I kneaded the pizza dough again, rolled it out and put it in the pizza tray to rise again.

Before I’d started on the brownie mix I’d kneaded the bread dough that I had made earlier, shaped it and put it into the mould. And when the brownie mix was cooked (which took a lot longer than I expected) the normal bread and the sourdough loaf went into the oven.

While that lot was cooking I assembled the pizza and when the bread was cooked the pizza went into the oven to cook.

Here are the finished products, all looking beautiful except the brownie mix. It was difficult to take out of the tray and when I cut it in half, spread the halves with jam and stuck them together in a sandwich, the top layer crumbled into about 6 pieces.

That was a disappointment but it’s happened every time I’ve made one. I wish I knew how to avoid it, but it won’t make a great deal of difference because it’s all going to be eaten anyway. It will taste delicious too, and I ought to know because there were plenty of bits left clinging to the baking dish and I had to sample them before I did the washing up.

The pizza was delicious too, and as for the bread and the sourdough fruit bread, I’ll tell you all about them tomorrow.

Eventually I caught up with the dictaphone note of my voyage during the night. I’ve already forgotten a load of this dream but there was a huge group of us and we were all kinds of ages. One of the girls was aged 8. It ended up with all of us being at some kind of museum and I ended up in a room with this girl, with her looking at all of the desks and seeing where they had come from because it was an office museum with some from Barclays Bank in Middlewich and one or two other places. I noticed that the floors had all been brought from various places too and had names inscribed on it “so-and-so from Crewe”, all of this. I looked around and couldn’t see this girl so I shouted her. She was in the adjacent storeroom washing her hands or something. I went in to see her and the floor was just the same there so I asked her about the floor in the other room – had she seen it? She said “yes” but we went back in the other room.

There were a few girls who were hanging around together and they used to come over to me for a chat and I knew them all quite well. One of them was going up to University. She’d bought herself a car, or her parents had bought her a car. They’d paid $3200 for it and she was really pleased with it. Then some issue came up with her best friend and we never really knew what they were. I’d heard a few rumours about this and that but I’d decided not to say anything because I didn’t want to be accused of stirring the pot any. One day this girl came up to me. We had a lengthy discussion with a couple of other people about bank accounts, how when you have money you have to be very careful how you spend it. Some people go mad when they have credit cards and buy loads of stuff that they don’t really need. She mentioned the name of the older sister of this friend who had this huge credit card debt and doesn’t know how to cope with it. As the conversation developed she started to talk about her best friend who had been up to 1 or 2 little tricks and “do you know what?” she said. “She’s written off my car and she’s had the nerve to offer her own car to my former boyfriend for $800 so she can get some money”. She was going on and on about this so I let her carry on and I had a little laugh because her mother was all prim and proper and “how is mother going to cope now with 2 daughters, 1 of whom is deep in debt and the other who has all these problems about this car?”. One thing led to another and I ended up round at this girl’s house. She was talking to her mother and turned to her mother to say “you’ll never guess who this is” and mentioned my name but it wasn’t my name – whatever name she used and she introduced me. She asked “what are you doing around here with my daughter?”. The daughter put her arm around me and said “actually mum, I don’t want to annoy you or anything but we are actually going out with each other”. Her mother had a little laugh and a smile about it and I don’t think … I dunno

Later still I was at work and I had the car and did the jobs that came up first in the morning then nipped out to see my niece’s daughter who was in Brussels. I spent a lot of time talking to her to such a point that I was worried about being late and they’d notice my absence at work so I went back. This went on for a period of a couple of weeks while she was here and it started to get later and later. One one occasion I was lying on a bed talking to a couple of girls and I actually started to fall asleep. I thought “this isn’t any good at all” so I had to get dressed. For some unknown reason I had my t-shirt off. It took me a while to work out which way round my t-shirt would go and I had to find my socks. I was talking to her about the insurance on Strider, how it has to be paid although I hadn’t driven it for so long and I still had to pay for it. I eventually got into my car and drove off, and had to go and fetch fuel. I stopped at the Jet petrol station. I had a machine in the back of my car that was from another garage where the petrol was so much cheaper. I could swap them over and have the fuel cheap. I was busy taking this out of the boot and programming it and one of my former colleagues turned up. he mumbled something about they needed something back at the office and he had to repeat it 3 or 4 times before I could get the message. It was some long planks that were being used to weigh down a pile of bricks. I said “ohh they want half a dozen of these back at the office”. he replied “God, yes, that would be a good idea” so I didn’t really have much of a clue about what we were talking about.

Somewhere in all of this, this mountain pass that figures quite frequently came up in that I was walking somewhere with someone and we had to go a reasonably long way. I pointed to the mountain and said “it’s the other side of that mountain”. She said “God it looks miles away”. I replied “no it’s not at all”. I explained to her the route that we would take and told her about the mountain pass and it’s fairly difficult but it’s OK if you keep your head and so on. But that’s appearing quite regularly in my voyages, this mountain pass, and I wonder why.

There was much more to all of this too but as you are probably eating your meal I’ll spare you the gory details.

So right now I’m off to bed ready for tomorrow. And a big “hello” to Geoff, someone from one of my other lives who has found his way here just recently. It’s good to catch up with old friends.

Saturday 8th May 2021 – REGULAR READERS …

… of this rubbish will recall some rather spectacular lie-ins just recently when there has been no alarm call in the morning and with not going to bed until about 02:30 this morning one could be forgiven for believing that we would have another one today.

However I think that a new record has been set today because I seem to have taken it to some rather extreme lengths. I don’t know what else you would call 13:55 for an awakening. All I can say is that I must have been really tired. It’s a good job that it was a Bank Holiday.

There’s no alarm tomorrow either because it’s a Sunday. I hate to think of what time it will be when I awaken.

Of course, with it being such a late start I’ve done absolutely nothing today. By the time that I’d had my medication and let it work, it was time for my afternoon walk.

As usual I wandered off to the end of the car park to look over the wall down onto the beach but instead today I was distracted by events out at sea.

Just offshore cruising along quite comfortably and slowly was Joly France. The holiday season must be well under way by now and with it being a Bank Holiday there are crowds of people about. The ferry company is thus making the most of it all by taking some of them for a lap around the bay to see the sights, whatever sights there might be.

We can tell from this angle that it’s the newer one of the two Joly France boats. The give-away is the shape of the window. On this one the windows are rectangular and deep whereas on the other one the windows are more square.

Having observed the activity out at sea, I turned my attention to the beach down below.

There are crowds of people down there this afternoon as you can see, even if, with the tide, there isn’t too much beach to be on. And I’m not surprised today because it was quite possibly the warmest day of the year so far. There was something of a wind as well but for a change it was a warm wind, rather like the Föhn Wind that you experience sometimes in the northern rain shadow of the Alps.

There’s something else that you can see in this photo that’s interesting, and that’s at the bottom-right of the photo. It’s a stone outlet pipe that drains the water from the car park and cascades it down onto the beach below. It’s pushed so far out so that the water from the drain will fall down clear of the stonework and wash the mortar out of the joints.

There was something moving that caught my eye out there in the English Channel between the Ile de Chausey and the mainland.

It was quite a long way out so there was plenty of time for me to walk to the little butte at the back of the lighthouse where there’s the best view of the Channel. Dodging the crowds on the path, because everyone in Normandy seemed to be out there today, I wandered off along to there to take a photo.

Bach here I could blow up the photograph, despite modern anti-terrorist legislation, and I could see that it’s the other Joly France boat on its way back from the Ile de Chausey. They have been quite busy today what with this and that.

Although the wind wasn’t all that strong today there was still quite a heavy rolling sea. I could see the waves breaking with some force onto the sea wall so I was keen to make my way round there to see what was going on.

First though I went across the car park down to the end of the headland to see what there was going on out there. And apart from the crowds of people around here and the people down on the lower path there wasn’t very much happening at all.

There was no-one fishing with rod and line off the rocks and there weren’t any fishing boats exploiting the resources of the bay today either so I wandered off along the path on the top of the cliff towards the harbour to see what was happening there.

Halfway along the path there’s a good viewpoint where you can see the waves breaking on the harbour walls.

The force of the sea isn’t as powerful as we have seen sometimes but nevertheless it was impressive watching these large, heavy waves come rolling in from the Atlantic. As I have said before … “and on many occasions too” – ed … there is nothing between that sea wall and the North American coast several thousands of kilometres away so any storm out there will be picked up by the waves and brought to this very point.

But it was also quite interesting to see that the people on top of the harbour wall were taking absolutely no notice whatever of the waves breaking on the sea wall behind them

They were obviously much more interested in what was going on in the harbour so I wandered off down the path to the viewpoint over the harbour to see for myself.

The first thing that I noticed was that the diving boat was there. So there’s something going on right now. Then there are the couple of people on the lower quay underneath the fish processing plant doing something with what looks like a jetski.

At the back of the jetski is a pile of disturbed water and a load of bubbles, just as if a diver has gone down over there and that had caught my interest. I waited there for a few minutes hoping that if someone had gone down over there, they would come back up. But no luck with that so I don’t know.

While I was waiting for the diver (if indeed there was one) to come back to the surface I had a look at the chantier navale to see what was happening in there right now.

And we’ve had a change of occupancy once more in there today. At long last, after all this time up on the blocks in there, Aztec Lady has now gone back into the water. Her repairs, whatever they were, have now finished. There’s just the little fishing boat in there right now but I imagine that that will change over the next few days.

The diver didn’t resurface so that made me wonder whether I was right about that, but after a couple of minutes waiting I went on home for a mug of coffee ready for tonight’s football which was about to start.

With TNS having won earlier this afternoon, it was vital that Connahs Quay Nomads won this evening in order to maintain their lead at the top of the table. I was delighted that Andy Morrison had picked an attacking formation because at times the Nomads have been quite impressive going forward.

Caernarfon aren’t all that strong on skill but there is a really good team spirit there that keeps them in a mid-table place but unfortunately they were no match for the Nomads. They went a goal down quite early on and although they held out after that they didn’t ever really threaten the Nomads goal.

The situation changed dramatically after about an hour. Jamie Insall was through the defence with the ball with only Lewis Brass in the Cofis goal to beat. Brass came off his line to try to win the ball but missed by about half an inch and brought down Insall.

It was clear to me that Brass was going for the ball and it was 25 yards out, well-wide of the goal but nevertheless the referee brought out the red card. And all that I can say is that if that was a red card offence then many other referees are being far too lenient.

With Caernarfon down to 10 men and with a substitute keeper in goal, Andy Morrison’s answer was to take off a defender and bring on another attacking player and the Nomads simply overwhelmed the Cofis and scored 3 more goals.

They were easily the better side but 4-0 was rather flattering. But the championship now goes all the way down to the wire. It’s all on the final match of the season.

Eventually I managed to catch up with the dictaphone notes, of which there were more than enough, from today. I don’t know if I’ve dictated this but I was out on a hike with my rucksack, a nice, rural rolling countryside. I came into a village and there was another girl or woman there with a rucksack obviously hiking. She was pouring over a map looking for somewhere. One of the locals was trying to help her so I asked if she needed any help. She told me that she was looking for a certain place where she hoped to find a place to stay for the night. Where I was headed was a Youth Hostel so I told her about that and invited her to come with me to this place but she decided not to and carry on and try to find the place where she was going to be staying. This was another one of these dreams where there was this mountain pass that we’ve been on on several occasions either skiing or walking, the very tall narrow pass, very steep. I was thinking that it’s quite a climb up there and down the other side and if the Youth Hostel there doesn’t have any room I’m going to have to come all the way back and I didn’t really fancy that at this time of the afternoon. But it was this pass again that was quite interesting.

I was with a woman and we had a big pile of kids. We were in Caliburn going somewhere and we picked up this big fat woman, gave her a lift. Suddenly she turned round to be extremely nasty and started to overwhelm everything, giving orders, this kind of thing. My response to that would have been to hit the woman with a trolley jack handle and all of us clear off but the woman with me said “why don’t we wait until we’ve crossed the border and then we can do that and dump her”. The we’d set off to go and fetch food or something. Coming back we found that this woman was 100 yards or so away from the woman, me and the van so I got in the vans and shouted for the kids to run behind the van as they were only youngsters and can run really fast and the big fat woman couldn’t run at all. I went about half a mile down the road and pulled up there waiting for the kids to come along and join us.

Somewhere during the night I was in an aeroplane, 2 of us in a Spitfire 2-seater. We had a radar set and we were supposed to be looking for mines. We were chasing 1 particular contact which turned out to be in the flat hills of South America. We landed our plane and went to look where the radar had indicated and it turned out to be a puddle with a few fish in it. The person I was with expressed surprise that the radar was so accurate that it had managed to pick out fish in a puddle and not mines in an ocean. I noticed that this puddle was at the side of a lump of concrete and as I explored it trying to work out what it was the person with me said that it was probably some kind of hard-standing for the farmer to park his tractor when he was here. I was looking at how it dominated a mountain pass and thought that if you had a tank on this concrete its gun would be firing straight up the road so anyone coming over the mountain pass, this tank could pick them off one by one. The rise of the hill on the other side would prevent anyone coming up the pass from firing back until they came over the top of the pass when of course they would be in full view of this tank. The guy with me didn’t think very much of my suggestion but I was convinced that that was what it was. This was what the radar had picked up, not the fish in the puddle at the side.
What linked these two dreams together – it was the aeroplane dream first – was for some reason we had a wheel off the aeroplane and some guy came over to have a look at us. He said “ohh a Spitfire” and talking, had somehow climbed into the cockpit 2nd seat while I was changing the wheel. We must have had a puncture or something. He started to play around with a few things. I asked “what are you doing?”. He replied “I’m undoing the handbrake” and the aeroplane which had now transformed itself into Caliburn or a van or something started to roll back ever so slowly, but slow enough that I could still get the wheel onto the studs and start to turn the wheel nuts on. As it rolled back I knew that it wasn’t going to go far because there was a tree behind us. Sure enough the van rolled into this tree and there it came to a stop so I could finish putting on the wheel nuts on it. It was somewhere round here where this guy turned into this big fat woman and we turned into this van with these kids and I had this woman with me

So having done all of this I’m off to make the first mix of my sourdough fruit bread and then I’m off to bed. I’ve not been up and about for long and I’ve not done anything at all. But there are occasionally days like this. We’ll have to see what tomorrow brings.

Sunday 2nd May 2021 – 08:45 …

… is far too early to leave my bed on a Sunday when I’m supposed to be having a lie-in. Especially when I didn’t go to bed until 03:30 (that’ll teach me to crash out so comprehensively during the day).

11:35 is much more like it and I felt so much better for it too.

After the medication I made a pile of bread dough. 500 grammes worth of wholemeal flour with a couple of big handfuls of sunflower seeds for a loaf for next week and then 200 grammes of bleached flour because I’m going to have a jam roly-poly for pudding next week.

That took me up to a rather late lunch or breakfast or whatever you might call it and then I carried on with having a look through this free census. At that point Rosemary called me so we had another one of our mega-chats.

Interestingly, she’s been trying to trace her family tree but had run aground. With all of the files open I had a go to see what I could find and managed to trace her family back on both sides to the end of the 18th Century without a great deal of difficulty. It makes my family look exotic.

When she hung up I came in here and gave the bread a second kneading, then kneaded the roly poly dough, rolled it out, spread it with jam, rolled it up, cut it into 2 and put it on a baking tray to rise again.

Finally, I kneaded the pizza dough that I had taken from the freezer, rolled it out and put it on the pizza tray, folded the overhanging edges back in, and left that to rise too.

That took me up to my rather late afternoon walk

As usual I wandered over to the wall on the end of the car park to have a look down to see what was going on down there.

There was plenty of beach to be going on with today but there weren’t all that many folk down there on it this afternoon. And that was a surprise because it was quite a summery day today, nice and warm, and the wind had dropped a little more. I’d have expected a few more people out there this afternoon.

But there were plenty of people on the footpath on top of the cliffs. It was rather like the M6 on a Friday afternoon. And so I pushed on regardless through the crowds at whatever risk to my health and regardless of whether they were wearing a mask.

While I was walking along the path I was overflown by another light aeroplane on its way to the airport at Donville les Bains.

Its serial number painted on the underside of the wings is 49ABE and that’s a number that is out-of-series for any main registration list so I can’t tell you anything at all about it. It’s not even shown as landing at the airport either so that’s that as far as I can see.

Plenty of cars on the car park today as you might expect, with people having come from just about everywhere for a walk around our cliffs this afternoon. I avoided them as best as I could and went down to the end of the headland to look out to sea but there wasn’t anything in the way of fishing boats working there this afternoon.

There was however something exciting going on in the bay though that doesn’t involve any fishing boat.

That looks like Charles Marie out there going for a sail around the bay. Or, more likely, a diesel around the bay as her sails are still furled. It’s a nice little day for a run around outside.

But one boat that we are unlikely to see again around here is Lys Noir. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that she was in the chantier navale for quite a while for an overhaul, and having gone back into the sea, she’s now been sold and in the future will be plying her trade out of another port.

It’s my turn to go and ply my trade out of another port, to wit my kitchen where I forgot to make my coffee as I had other things to do.

I switched on the oven and bunged the bread and the roly poly in there to bake, having brushed the roly poly with milk and dusted it with sugar first.

While it was was baking I assembled my pizza, having been obliged to use mushrooms out of a tin seeing as I didn’t buy any yesterday. And when the Bread and roly poly were baked, I put the pizza in to cook.

And here are the finished products. The pizza was delicious given its shortcomings, and I’ll tell you about the bread and the roly poly tomorrow night. I had no room for pudding this evening.

So now having written up my notes I’m going to bed. With my late start and my time out to chat to Rosemary I didn’t do half of what I was wanting to do today but it can’t be helped. So if you want to read about where I went during the night you’ll have to wait until tomorrow for that. I’ve not had time to transcribe them yet.

Tomorrow I’m radioing and I have a couple of live concerts to manufacture tomorrow. Those are starting to fall behind so I have to catch up. I’m not sure what I’m going to do for those but I’ll probably think of something.

Sunday 25th April 2021 – THERE’S BEEN SOME …

… excitement out at sea this afternoon, as I noticed when I went out for my afternoon walk today.

There I was, gazing out to sea while I was leaning on the wall at the end of the car park and I could see something rather rapid heading my way from somewhere out by the Channel Islands. At first I couldn’t make out what it was. It clearly wasn’t a fishing boat travelling at that speed and so I reckoned that it might have been some kind of speedboat.

But as as came closer and closer, I could see that it was in fact a zodiac. And that was something that bewildered me because I couldn’t see where it had come from. It’s hardly likely to have come all the way over from the Channel islands.

It performed a few manoeuvres around and about and then it departed in the direction from which it had come, towing behind a small inflatable boat.

That was something rather strange because I couldn’t see where the boat had come from. I didn’t notice it being towed behind the zodiac as it came across the sea. So what was all that about then?

There was another surprise for me this morning. I sat bolt upright at about 08:10 wondering why the alarm hadn’t gone off at 06:00 like it was supposed to, and being rather depressed that I’d missed a couple of hours of the day. It took me all of half an hour to suddenly realised that it’s Sunday and there isn’t an alarm today.

It’s a good job that I hadn’t left my bed. 10:15 is a much more realistic time to leave my bed on a Sunday.

First task today after the medication was to listen to the dictaphone. Tons of stuff on there from yesterday which I’ve now put on line, and then details of last night’s little outings.

We started off doing something about ballet. There was a girl who was a ballerina and I had boughtsome point shoes for her. It was her birthday as well and I’d spent ages working on a card for her and one or two other names on there of people who had wished her a happy birthday but most of the work in there was mine. There was some kind of gangland boss who had something of an interest in her too but only a mere passing but she dashed off to see him with this card. He interrogated her about “who’d done this” and “who’d done that” and “who’d done something else”? From her her of course it was always me. I had the impression that any moment now my number would be up at this rate.

A little later I was doing something in a junk shop. I’d gone into a junk shop and it really was a junk shop with all kinds of stuff piled everywhere. It was impossible to know where to even begin to look for anything. I’d been talking to someone a bit earlier who said that he was going to be looking for a part-time job. There was even a tie swinging over a rail with a hand-written notice on it “looking for work” and his phone number on it. These guys were in here trying to do something and they had to go out. As they went out, the radio suddenly came on with 1 of these really atmospheric stations from miles away playing music. I thought “I’d better leave this. I don’t want to become involved in this” so I went out as well and closed the door behind me. But then I was thinking on “what an absolutely vile apartment this would be. How would I possibly manage to have lived in a place like this when I was a kid, a young adult”? Which was what I had done, I lived in some dreadful places. I look back now and think “I would never ever have done that”. While I was thinking about this I was back in Winsford in my house there and they were building an extension to the housing estate, or there were some plans to, and I was waiting eagerly for the site to be unveiled so that I could go along and reserve a new plot and get myself a better house. I thought “God, how my standards have changed”!

Sometime later I was with Marianne in the USA and we were with a group of people. It was to do with speaking another language and I can’t remember if it was to do with French or Spanish. Most of the people who were there were people who had been on there before – there were only 2 of us who hadn’t. I asked “are we going to be visiting Mexico on this trip”? She replied “the situation in Mexico is extremely difficult. We’ll be only going there if so-and-so (this other new guy) wants to go”. I said “how come I haven’t been asked? I’m a new guy as well. I’ve not been to Mexico and i’d really like to go”. I noticed that where Marianne was standing were these 2 enormous tortoises that were loitering around and they were about to walk over her feet.

Next thing was to check on my sourdough fruit bread. It hadn’t risen very much at all yet again, but I gave it a second
kneading, shaped it and put it in its mould for its second proofing. And for the rst of the morning I didn’t do very much at all.

After my lunchtime porridge and finding that I had run out of pizza dough, I had a major washing-up and cleaning session in the kitchen and made another batch of dough.

later on I went out for my afternoon walk.

First thing that I did of course was to go to the end of the car park and look down over the wall onto the beach.

There were a few people down there this afternoon, not as many as there might have been yesterday and that’s no surprise because the weather has changed dramatically today. The heatwave that we had yesterday has gone and the temperature has dropped.

Not only that, the really strong wind has come back again and I was having to hang onto my cap. It’s probably strong enough to have blown everyone back indoors and that will account for the lack of people.

But isn’t it a surprise that the weather has changed for the worse now that I’ve come back home?

And then we were back at the zodiac again.

While it was doing its stuff out there in the English Channel I’d taken a few photos of it, and went to enlarge them when I returned home. And this one particularly caught my eye. It looks as if the little inflatable boat has risen up out of the sea, and there’s a frogman in attendance.

It would seem to have all of the hallmarks of some kind of maritime rescue exercise, but I might be able to find out more by looking at the local press tomorrow morning.

So leaving that for another time I walked off along the path at the top of the cliffs while the zodiac and its entourage disappeared back out to sea.

On the other side of the headland there was yet more activity going on out at sea, this time in the Baie de Mont St Michel.

Someone was having a nice afternoon out in a little yacht, cruising up and down of the Plage d’Hacqueville between Granville and St Pair sur Mer. And you do have to admit that this was the right kind of the weather for it.

There are quite a few people out over there on the beach too. More than there are across here. It’s probably something to do with the fact that the bay over there is probably more in the shelter of the wind than it is over here.

And I have some planning to do about yachting next time I’m out and about, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall.

Over here at the end of the headland there are quite a few signs of life. More than there have been on the footpath on top of the cliffs from where I’ve just come, because I can’t have encountered more than half a dozen people on my walk so far.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that fishing is quite a popular pastime carried on by the local inhabitants. Whether it’s from a fishing boat, on the beach at the very low tide, or from the rocks with rod and line. And it’s that latter that’s being practised today, although, once more, I have yet to see anyone actually catch anything.

And the couple sitting on the bench down at the end of the headland by the watchman’s cabin – I wonder how long they will be sitting there and whether they will have more luck than me in watching someone pull a fish out of the sea.

The chantier navale is one of the most important sights that we visit during our post-prandial perambulations around the headland, and I was keen to see what was going on down there.

However, despite my absence over the past three or four days, there have been no changes in the occupants down there. Anakena and Aztec Lady are still in there, but that’s about it. No-one new has come along to join them while I was away.

But look at the crowds of people and vehicles around Aztec Lady this afternoon. Even though it’s a Sunday and therefore a Day of Rest, they are still hard at it down there like there is no tomorrow.

There are a few people working on Anakena too, although not quite at the same rhythm.

and there have been a lot of goings-on in the outer tidal harbour over the last few days while I was away.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that over the past few weeks they have been doing some preparatory work on installing new mooring chains there and just before we came away, we saw them starting to fit them in place.

But now, we have some small boats actually tied up to them, and so that would seem to indicate that the work is finally finished. But they don’t seem to have done too much for the amount of time and money that they have spent.

You can just about make out the little white buoys that bob up to the surface when the tide is in. They mark the position of the chains and give the boatman some kind of indication where to fish around with his boathook when he needs to tie up to them.

Back here I had a coffee and then gave the pizza dough its second kneading.

Then I prepared a large apple crumble. I do have to say that thats my favourite dessert and it should be even better today because I give the crumble mix a really good mixing, and added some fresh ginger to the apple to give it a certain little extra.

When the sourdough and the crumble went into the oven I divided the pizza dough into 3, put two portions in the freezer and the third one I rolled out and put into the pizza tray. And when it had been in there for 45 minutes I assembled it.

When the sourdough and the crumble were cooked the pizza went into the oven. And here are all of the finished products – the sourdough fruit bread which has for once risen impressively, the apple crumble and the pizza.

The pizza was delicious which is always good news, and I’ll tell you about the sourdough and the crumble tomorrow night because I wasn’t hungry after my pizza.

In something of a desultory fashion during a few pauses I’ve been editing photos again from August 2019. Not very many, but nevertheless I’m now on my way from Fort Reno down to Fort Fetterman. Normal service is slowly being resumed and I’ll get back up to speed tomorrow, I hope

But that’s tomorrow. Right now I’m off to bed as I reckon that I’ve done enough for today. I’ll start off with radioing of course and I’ll see where I get to after that.

Tuesday 6th April 2021 – JUST IN CASE …

… you are wondering what the weather was like this afternoon when I was out for my afternoon walk, this photograph will tell you everything that you will need to know.

You can see the white caps on the waves as this trawler batters its way out to sea. Th wind from the north-east was probably about as strong as it has been for the last few weeks and despite, or maybe even because of the bright blue sky with barely a cloud visible, it was absolutely freezing out there. I was dressed in my winter clothing and I was absolutely perishing out there.

But let us turn to this morning, such as there was of it because having broken the habits of a lifetime and spent a Bank Holiday working, and with no Welsh lesson this morning, I had a lie-in instead.

And it was necessary too because it wasn’t until about 04:30 this morning that I felt myself dropping off to sleep.

Juqt for a change I’m not going to tell you what time I awoke because it’s rather embarrassing. But there was plenty of time to go off on a nocturnal ramble. So first thing after the medication was to transcribe the dictaphone notes from yesterday and today.

Yesterday’s are now on line for those of you who missed them but as for this morning I was at work in a new office somewhere. We were talking about the training and so on that we were getting. Someone was talking about how in a previous job she had to answer the phone and it had taken her 6 months to learn how the switchboard operated. I explained about my job where i worked once and just put at the switchboard and told how to work it out. They all looked astonished and asked why. I explained that in that job you just basically did everything and they wouldn’t wait a minute on saving a penny to make sure that the fewest number of people did the most amount of work there. The work drifted on, talking, and I was watching a video of some people assembling some things. They were using soldering, electric TIG welding and a few other bits and pieces to do these jobs. I was soldering mine and I wasn’t much good at it. I thought that I’d have a go at TIG welding one of these days when I had a moment. This conversation was going on and this guy looked up and saw me soldering. He said “God! Soldering! Did you do that?” I replied “soldering? That’s nothing! Just wait until I bring a plasma cutter in here!”

After that I went for lunch – porridge and toast which was very nice, followed by hot chocolate again. And then I attacked the radio programme from yesterday. Now that’s corrected and all runs together pretty well. In fact it’s even better than it was before.

The rest of the day, such as it was, was spent dealing with the photos of August 2019. I’ve dealt with the photos that I should have done yesterday and half of today’s batch. I’ll hopefully do the other half tomorrow along with tomorrow’s batch.

Right now, I’ve been to the site of the Waggon Box Fight in Story, Wyoming, and I’m now pulling up at the gates of Fort Phil Kearny, the scene of a disaster that befell the US Army that was second only to the humiliation of Little Big Horn.

There was a break for my afternoon walk of course, and I actually made it outside on time too.

First thing to do was to look over the wall at the end of the car park down onto the beach below and to see what there was going on.

Actually, today there wasn’t all that much beach to look down upon. The tide was quite well in just now. Nevertheless there were a few people down there sitting on the rocks. But pretty soon there will be one person less down there because someone was making for the steps that lead back up to the Rue du Nord. He’s clearly had enough of the weather this afternoon.

And it won’t be long before the other people join him in climbing up to the street because the tide will be there in a very short space of time and they will need to make good their escape.

Despite the bitter, wild wind this afternoon the views out to sea were terrific.

Away in the distance we could see the island of Jersey quite clearly. And it’s been a good few weeks since we’ve seen that. It wasn’t so clear that we could see the buildings of St Helier, something that we can do every now and again. We’ll need a better day than this in order to do that.

Once more, there were very few people around this afternoon on the path so I made my way quite freely along the top of the cliffs without anyone else getting in my way – quite a novelty for just recently.

As I was going about my business along the path on top of the cliffs, around the corner of the headland another trawler came a-chugging.

From my viewpoint I could see that it was one of he trawlers whom we know very well, and on enlarging the photo when I returned home later I discovered that it’s our old friend Le Coelacanthe

In fact there were several trawlers heading out to sea today, not just the two that we have seen so far. It seems that the Easter break is now over and with the ink now dry on the agreement to prolong access to the Channel Islands fisheries for the local boats, they are all heading out that way to take advantage of the situation.

Round on the other side of the headland we were in the shadow of the wind so it was reasonably warn there. This gave one or two people the opportunity to sit down on a bench and admire the view.

Not that there was very much of a view to admire right now because all of the trawlers that had set out from port had passed the headland and were now well out at sea, hidden from view by the headland. There wasn’t anything else going on in the bay and while the Brittany coast and Cancale might look really nice, it’s not exactly riveting over there.

To such an extent that I pushed off along the headland path towards the viewpoint over the port.

At the viewpoint I had a good look down to the chantier navale to see what was going on down there this afternoon.

And we have a change in occupancy down there today.Hermes I, which I suspected was being prepared to go back into the water is still there up on her blocks along with Anakena, Lys Noir and Aztec Lady but they have now been joined by Notre Dame de Cap Lihou, the local lifeboat.

While I was watching her they were revving up her engine and two guys down there were observing the smoke that was coming out of her exhaust. Another couple of men were spraying her hull with a pressure washer while a couple more were examining a part of her superstructure.

So what’s the matter with her then?

There was even more activity going on over at the ferry port.

Chausiais is over there right up at the end of the quay but there are none of the Joly France boats were there. However the red crane is partially extended so it must be doing something interesting.

Just for a change just recently I wasn’t overflown by any aeroplanes this afternoon. I was able to come home quite tranquilly for my hot coffee and to carry on my work editing the photographs.

That took me up to guitar time where I had an enjoyable time working out the chords to Led Zeppelin’s “The Battle of Evermore”. Of course I don’t have Sandy Denny here to help me, but this would be just the kind of thing that Castor would be able to do were she here.

Tea was a stuffed pepper with rice followed by a slice of my jam roly-poly and soya coconut dessert. And I’ll tell you something, and that is that the roly-poly is cooked to perfection and it tasted absolutely delicious. That was a good idea for dessert, that was.

Now that my notes are written, I’m off to bed. The alarm is set for the morning and I’m due to restart work properly so I need to have a really good sleep and be on top form.

That’s not going to be easy because if I can crash out like I did today after all of this sleep and a late start to the day, I can certainly do that with a 06:00 start, can’t I?

Monday 5th April 2021 – IT’S A BANK HOLIDAY …

… today so I celebrated by spending the morning in bed.

That’s right – an entire morning. Well, almost, because while I didn’t manage midday, it wasn’t until about 11:00 that my feet saw the light of day. And I deserved it too after all of my recent exertions.

It goes without saying that it was “somewhat later than usual” when I started on the radio programme. And as I write these notes it’s still not finished. It actually was at one point but when I listened to it afterwards I found a mistake in the editing and I will have to put that right before it’s ready for broadcast.

There were the usual interruptions of course. At lunchtime I had porridge, hot cross buns (the last of this present batch) and a mug of nice piping hot chocolate, followed by a couple of clementines.

And then I had my afternoon walk around the headland.

And having seen the hordes and multitudes of people thronging the car park outside here yesterday, I was taken completely by surprise by the fact that there wasn’t a single person (and not a married person either) wandering around there this afternoon.

In fact, the whole place looked like a ghost town this afternoon. On the path around the headland today I could have counted on one hand the number of people whom I saw on the path this afternoon.

So much so that as soon as I can find a spare moment I’m going to be checking the new quarantine regulations to find out what they are. I don’t want to leave it until I see a policemen to find out that I’m in breach of any new temporary law.

There were some people out and about though, especially down here on the beach at the bottom of the Place d’Armes.

The tide might be well in right now but a little kid doesn’t need a great deal of beach in order to have a great deal of fun, but it does make me wonder if they are aware of how quickly the tide comes in here, because they risk being cut off from the steps at the Rue du Nord and won’t be able to escape from the water.

Bit I needed to escape from the car park here so I headed off along the path on the top of the cliffs. We had a wicked wind and it was really cold although when I was in a wind shadow it was actually quite warm. But we’re not likely to see very much of that as long as this wind keeps up.

With absolutely nothing at all going on out at sea today and nothing to see at the end of the headland I pushed off along the path on top of the cliffs on the other side of the headland.

At the viewpoint overlooking the port, I could see down into the chantier navale to see what was going on down there.

There wasn’t any change in occupant today – still the same four boats, but I was more interested in what was going on with Anakena, Lys Noir and Hermes I. There’s a van down there and a few workmen doing a few things despite it being a Bank Holiday, but what is different today is that all of the masking tape and paper has now been removed from Hermes I.

She’s looking quite beautiful and resplendent in her new coat of paint, all bright and shiny. Ordinarily I would say that it won’t be long before she’s going back into the water, but I’ve not had very much luck in predicting the arrival and departure of boats from the chantier navale, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall.

Further down along the footpath I could see over into the outer harbour by the Fish Processing Plant.

Whilst most of the fishing boats are still tied up in the inner harbour, there’s a refrigerated lorry parked up by the loading bay at the Fish Processing Plant. They must be expecting a few fishing boats to be arriving soon with a pile of shellfish to take away. I don’t think that there will be an awful lot of shellfish on board the small boat that is tied up at the quayside just there.

But with no other boat down there just now and not having seen any while I was looking out to sea earlier, I think that the driver of the lorry is going to be in for a long wait.

While I was out there looking over the harbour I was once more overflown by a rather large aeroplane and I wondered what she was doing up there.

She’s actually an Airbus A330-302 owned by Delta Airlines, registration number N826NW and she took off from Paris Charles de Gaulle about 37 or so minutes ago. She’s Delta Airlines flight DL85 and she’s on her way across the Atlantic to Atlanta in Georgia.

She flew over my head at a height of 36,000 feet and a ground speed of 423 knots on a heading 270°.

At least it proves that despite all of the Covid regulations there are still plenty of long-distance flights going across the Atlantic. They aren’t ever going to prevent this virus from spreading, are they?

Having gone for weeks without seeing a single old or interesting vehicle we’ve now had two in three days.

As I was in the Boulevard Vaufleury on my way back to the apartment I was passed by a rather elderly Triumph TR3A passing in the other direction. And you can tell that it’s a TR3A and not a TR3 in that it has the full-width radiator grill and several other small modifications

The TR3As were built from 1957 to 1962 and were the cars to which I aspired when I was a young teenager, being a much more realistic choice than a Jaguar XK140.

That was really the last interruption of my walk and I was able to make it back home without any further ado.

Due to my late awakening this morning, I missed my hour on the guitar and also my evening meal which was a shame, but it can’t be helped I’ve done all that I intend to do and what I haven’t done I’ll do tomorrow, including the dictaphone, for there’s a pile of stuff on there.

And now that I’ve attended to that, I can finally post the details of where I went during the night. We had an occasion where Mick Matthews was driving a lorry. He wasn’t very happy so he told me a few things about this company and made it pretty clear that he wanted someone to take the matter further. He had to drive this lorry and they wanted a couple of repairs doing on it and he didn’t want to do them at all. They were cajoling him and pushing him into getting this lorry fixed so he told me about it and I told a few people about it. As a result another lorry was raided. I was somehow attached to this investigation. We came across a whole pile of faults with this vehicle, the operation of it. Basically an illegal compartment had been manufactured to go inside one of the trailers for contraband to be smuggled. The police had a big file on this. They had the owner and the manager, the company that had made the panel and a few other people and were preparing a case to bring to Court. I asked them about Mick Matthews. They said that once the matter had been dealt with the others, he would be unfortunately brought into Court but they would make it pretty clear to the Judge that there had been as much co-operation as possible from him. I ended up in an office with a couple of other police inspectors. I was holding a file which I offered to one of the others and asked “is this anything to do with you”? He just snarled and took it off me anyway so I just wandered back to the entrance door of the office where I’d come in.

Later on, one of the serving wenches in THE GOOD SHIP VE … errr … OCEAN ENDEAVOUR was talking to me. I was sitting at a table waiting for all my friends to come down. One or two other people came down and sat at my table which was a bit disappointing. It was a hell of a mess and I had my elbows in all of the grease spilt on the table. The waitress cleared the table and looked at me and sighed when she saw my elbows and I tried to clean them as best as I could. Then everyone else came down so I nipped over to another table and we all sat there. There was a rumpus coming up from the far side and it was the fat woman Vera who was making a scene again. She had done this at every single meal so far. She was always going to create a scene. We were having our meal and one of the girls said that she had to fetch a bottle of water so I said that i’d go with her as it was going dark. We dashed off outside and she was showing me the torch that she had received as a gift, a little thing that clipped onto the keyring with a button-cell battery and I said “I have mine as well and they are great”. We walked down to pick up her bottle of water and they weren’t as good as the bottles that we had on the first trip because they were coconut water and they were so much better. She said that she needed something from her room, and could I go and fetch it for her? It was on the top floor so I set off up this spiral staircase. There were all kinds of overhanging bits and you had to be careful with your head. She was following me and asked me if I was OK. I said “yes, but I’d be better if you could hold these 2 things for me”. I gave her the 2 things that I was holding and carried on up. When I reached the top to go into her room you had to do some scramble through this really tiny aperture. It was a really difficult thing to do. I thought “I’m not going to get through this aperture”. I had a look and there was an opening a little bigger above my head. That meant climbing up this wooden framework that didn’t look particularly safe to me. I thought “how do people on the top floor manage to do this”? She said “don’t worry. I can go there because I need to get my accounts as well”. I said “I’m here now so I might as well work this out and have a go getting up through there”. She asked “you have a passport, don’t you”? I replied “yes”. She said “yes, a passport”. It was the way that she was saying it that was so strange that I couldn’t understand the implications of what she was trying to say about this passport.

Friday 2nd April 2021 – IT’S BANK HOLIDAY …

… today. Good Friday – the day that follows Maundy Thursday, which presumably follows Sheffield Wednesday. And so I had a lie-in and didn’t surface until about 10:30.

Mind you, I didn’t go to bed until 02:30 this morning. And that wasn’t a wasted time either because I spent the couple of hours when I couldn’t sleep working on today’s batch of photograph and probably did about 20 of them too before I went to bed.

Plenty of time for me to go off on one of my travels. Abd hello, Rhys. It’s been a while since you’ve been on a nocturnal voyage with me. I was on a holiday with a group of people and part of this holiday involved a train trip across the USA. There was the opportunity to step out from this train ride for 24 hours and catch the train the following day so I made arrangements to meet Rhys. The train pulled into the station and I climbed out. A couple of other people climbed out as well and went their separate ways. I was waiting because I couldn’t see Rhys’s car. In the meantime I had my rucksack and everything so I took a photograph of the train. Then I noticed Rhys sitting in the bar with a pint of beer in front of him. We said “hello” and he got up to go. I said “no, we don’t have to go – get your drink, drink your beer”. he replied that it wasn’t his beer but the beer of a friend of his. He’d bought it though. Anyway so we came out and started to get my stuff. I had the idea that I would follow him in Caliburn because for some reason Caliburn was there. Then I thought that I didn’t have the insurance on Caliburn so it probably wasn’t a very good idea. We got my stuff and threw it into Rhys’s car. He asked “are you staying the night with us?”. I replied “I don’t have any plans at all” which was quite true. The train was a steamer and had a huge load of freight, oil tankers, that kind of thing on the front of it before you reached the passenger accommodation which was at the rear of the train.

After I’d had my medication I came in here and transcribed the dictaphone notes and then finished off today’s photographs. There was a break for breakfast of course.

With it being Easter I’d dragged out a pack of frozen Hot Cross Buns from the freezer. They’ll keep me going for the Easter period. After all, Easter isn’t Easter without Hot Cross Buns. A big thank you to Liz and Terry for bringing them to me from the UK at Christmas.

When I’d finished the photos I had to go back again and amend some of them. For some reason that I have yet to understand, I never synchronised the times on the two cameras that I was using.

With being in the car now, I’m using the NIKON 1 J5 much more than I did before while I was in the Arctic and there’s a one-hour difference between the time on that camera and on the big NIKON D500.

What’s happening is that I’m editing a batch of photos on one camera and suddenly discovering that I’ve missed a batch off the other, so I have to go back and do some renumbering in order to keep everything in sequence.

But anyway, now they are in proper order to date, I’m now heading down a dirt-track road near the border between Montana and Wyoming looking for the site of the Battle (if you can call it that) of Powder River in 1876.

After that I started again on the arrears of my Central European trip last year. By the time that I knocked off there are just another 12 photos for which I need to write the text, and then it’s all done and I can turn my attention to the trip on Spirit of Conrad down the Brittany coast.

There was a break of course while I went off on my afternoon walk around the headland.

This particular guy down there on the beach is very well camouflaged and it’s difficult to pick him out amongst the rocks down there.

But I don’t blame him at all for being wrapped up like that because while the sun was bright and there were very few clouds, we were back with the wicked wind again and the temperature must have dropped 15 degrees since yesterday. There weren’t any people out there sunning themselves on the beach and I wasn’t surprised at all about that.

It might be a Bank Holiday in the UK but it isn’t in France so the schools are still in and there weren’t all that many people wandering around. I had the path on top of the cliffs pretty much to myself this afternoon as I wandered along.

But while there weren’t so many people walking around on the ground, there was a lot of activity going on in the air.

As I was walking along the path I heard a very familiar noise in the air and, sure enough, a minute or two later an autogyro flew past overhead. I was expecting it to be our old friend the yellow one but in fact it’s one that I’ve never seen before – a bright red one. A different one, unless it’s the yellow one that’s been repainted.

She’s probably on her way to the airport at the back of Donville les Bains, although I’ve no idea where it is that she will have come from. She never seems to file a flight plan and flies so low that she’s underneath the radar.

Across the lawn I went, via a different route today that took me across the ruins of a bunker that housed 15 German soldiers during World War II.

What caught my eye was the wire meshing in the roof that reinforced the concrete that they had poured for the roof. It’s a good heavy duty stuff probably about 10mm in diameter and would withstand most things when set in concrete.

The construction of the Atlantic Wall was supposed to be Hitler’s great secret but what he didn’t realise was that he was betrayed by this even right at the very beginning. The company that had the contract for supplying the concrete was a Belgian company that was run by a guy who was actually a Secret Agent for the Russians, so he told the Russians and they told the British.

Of course the British never let on that they knew, because to admit that the Communists had helped them would have been a terrible thing to do, and it wasn’t until the British wartime papers were released in 1994 that the world knew about it.

As if the autogyro wasn’t enough, while I was there standing on the roof of the bunker an aeroplane flew past overhead.

This one is F-HGSM, Robin Dr400-160. She is owned by the Aero Club Des Grèves de Mont St Michel and took off from Rennes Airport at 11:49 this morning. She disappeared off the flight radar when she was half-way along the route to Granville so I imagine that she’s been doing a little bit of low-flying exercises as well.

Having photographed the plane I walked down to the end of the headland to see what was going on out in the bay. But the answer to that was “nothing at all” so I headed off along the path on top of the cliffs down towards the viewpoint overlooking the port.

Here was something extremely interesting.

There was a lorry parked down there with a pile of chains in the back. And there was this pallet-lifter nearby, and another small pile of chains on the ground at the back of the lorry. It looks as if the new mooring chains for the harbour have arrived at last and the pallet-lifter is taking them out of the back of the lorry.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that yesterday we saw at least one of the diggers being taken away by a lorry. Today, it seems that both of them have gone now. I wonder if they will be back after the Easter Holiday.

The diggers might have gone from the harbour but most of the fishing boats are still here, tied up at the pontoons.

Now idea why they weren’t out working today. There was plenty of wind but the seas weren’t all that rugh so I would have expected them to have been out working.

The two Channel Island ferries, Victor Hugo and Granville are still in there tied up. They won’t be going anywhere for a good while yet, and not at all if the Channel Islanders refuse to put their hands in their pockets and contribute towards the subsidy to keep the ferries running.

And one of the Joly France boats is over there too. There must be nothing going on at the Ile de Chausey either.

Back here there was football on the internet. A really important match in the Welsh Premier League between Penybont and Haverfordwest County. This is the last weekend in the first half of the season. The League splits into 2 after this weekend – the top 6 compete for the four European places and the bottom 6 compete to avoid the two relegation places.

These two clubs were 6th and 7th in the league and whoever won would go into the top half and whoever lost would be in the bottom 6. From the kick-off it was quite clear that Penybont would win this – barring accidents of course. They were fitter, keener, much more organised and played the ball around between themselves with much more skill and confidence.

And I was right too. The final score of 2-0 to Penybont was exactly what I would have expected from the play. The only surprise was that Penybont were as low in the table as 6th because they looked much better than that today.

While I was eating my tea – more of those soya nuggets – I was at a party. My friend Esi was having a Zoom party and I’d been invited. It was nice to see her, even if it was via the computer, because we haven’t met since Christmas.

And while I was washing up, I dropped and broke a storage jar. I’m not having much luck with that.

So now I’m off to bed. Shopping tomorrow at Noz and Leclerc so I need to be on form. I won’t be having another lie in until Sunday and Monday. Can I survive until then?

Sunday 28th March 2021 – WHILE YOU ADMIRE …

… the photos of the crowds of people out and about in thr glorious sunshine this afternoon, I can tell you about my rather quiet day today.

It started off as we mean to go on with me not rising from my stinking pit until 11:05 according to my fitbit, only to find out that it was in fact 12:05 because the clocks had altered this morning.

After breakfast I had a listen to the dictaphone to see where I’d been during the night, because despite the fact that I’d taken that pill before I went to bed, I’d been out and about during the night and there were some notes about it on the dictaphone that needed to be transcribed.

I’d been to buy a motor bike at Webster’s at Crewe. They told me to come back on Friday and they would have a Honda 50 for me. I went back on Friday evening and as I walked into the shop the guy was selling it to someone else. I was really annoyed by that and I made my annoyance known. He said “don’t you worry. We have something ideal for you”. He took me into the back and there was this ancient Suzuki 250 painted red. I thought “this is a scrambler type of configuration, not very comfortable and I didn’t fancy that. There was another 50cc scooter but it was the type that was renowned for being uncomfortable and I didn’t want that either”. He said “we have a Ford Transit like your old one. It needs some work doing to it, the wheel bearings and a few things”. I took it home and noticed that a few of the exhaust parts were in the back of it. I did the rear wheel bearings and went to assemble the exhaust but found that it was bits of a VW exhaust and didn’t fit at all. That’s why half of it was in the back. I was pretty annoyed and ended up taking it back to the garage. I was going to tell them what I thought of them. There was much more to this dream than this but I can’t remember.

Later on a plane took off from somewhere and the radio was stuttering. It didn’t gain height and all of a sudden it crashed right in front of the sentry box where I was on duty. I summoned help and ran over to this ‘plane to see what had happened. I don’t remember any more of this except that I ended up in a load of trouble. For some reason my superior officer was very unhappy with me and bawled me out for something but I can’t remember what it was. I did notice that in the report that I’d submitted, the second sentence started with 2 capital letters instead of the usual 1. But I can’t remember very much of this at all.

First task today, despite it being Sunday and a Day of Rest, was to synchronise the big computer with the one that I took with me to Leuven. I’d done some work on various files while I was away so they needed to be copied back and to over-write the ones on the big computer.

Of course, if I were to have my files stored on a cloud, there wouldn’t be any need to do that. But I don’t want my files stored anywhere where I couldn’t access them regularly or, more importantly, where other people can access them.

Having done that I made a start on the baking activity.

First task was to make one of my sourdough bread things. I’m not very good with the sourdough as regular readers of this rubbish will recall and it doesn’t rise as much as it should. But adding to it a banana, some ground brazil nuts and a pile of dried and desiccated fruit, it makes a kind of soggy moist fruit cake, a slice of which makes a really delicious and nutritious breakfast with my hot chocolate.

Having set that off I turned my attention to the normal bread. A pile of wholemeal flour, water, salt, yeast, sugar and water and as well as that, several handfuls of sunflower seeds. The yeast and sugar added to the warm water and left to fester, and once it has begun to ferment I could add it to the flour and salt, and mix it all in.

While I was doing that I was talking to Liz on the internet and feeding the sourdough and the ginger while I was at it.

When it was all sitting there festering I went out side for my afternoon walk.

There were crowds and crowds of people wandering around outside this afternoon, including these people here who are playing petanque.

And this is what annoys me intensely because as you can see, not one of these people is wearing a face mask. Never having seen these people before, it’s my betting that they are tourists and if they have come from a Covid-infested area they could be spreading the virus around amongst everyone around here, despite everything that we are trying to do around here to keep the area virus-free.

It beats me, what these people do not understand about the virus and how it spreads after all of this time that we have been suffering. It’s people like this that are responsible to the raging epidemic that is going on at the moment and they should be brought to account.

Crowds of people surging around everywhere this afternoon, as you can see over there in this photo.

That is the footpath underneath the walls, along which I used to run in the evenings when we were allowed out at night. But I wouldn’t show myself up by running along there in broad daylight with all of those people around. I have my pride.

But returning to our moutons as they say around here, you can see where the medieval walls are fenced off from the public because of their crumbling state. I have seen in the Council’s budget a reference to the repair of part of the walls and I hope that this part is to be included. It’s been fenced off since before I came to Granville.

Here’s something that’s extremely exciting and which had happened while I was away in Leuven.

As usual, my route took me along the footpath on top of the headland and down to the lawn near the lighthouse and semaphore post, and on the lawn I stumbled across this.

It seems that a mysterious hole has appeared in the lawn. It’s about 20 cms in diameter and goes down to quite a depth. It seems unlikely to be any kind of natural formation so it’s possible that we are going to be seeing some kind of human activity around here in early course.

That’s something for me to keep at the back of my mind for the future.

While I was observing the hole in the ground, I was overflown by another light aeroplane. It was even quite busy in the air today.

This aeroplane is a Robin DR-400, serial number 1931, registration number F-GIKI and it’s owned by the Granville Aero Club. It’s one of their machines that is used for teaching flying and also teaching navigation, and hasn’t that given me an idea?

As for where it’s going, I can’t say because it hasn’t filed a flight plan and by the time that I returned to my apartment it must have landed because it wasn’t shown on the flight radar.

From there I walked across the car park and down to the headland where I saw the yacht with the wind turbine at the stern whose photo you saw earlier. And then I wandered off along the path on top of the headland overlooking the port.

It goes without saying that I was interested in what was going on down in the chantier navale.

From the viewpoint there I could see down into the yard and I noticed that there was no change in occupancy there. We have Spirit of Conrad, Hermes I, Lys Noir, Freddy Land and Aztec Lady but that’s about it. No-one left and no-one else came while I was away in Leuven.

There’s no-one down there working on them so they can’t be in a dreadful rush to leave here and go back into the water. Not that they could go back into the water right now because as you can see, the tide is right out just now.

And there’s nothing going on at the ferry port either. On the way down to the station I’d noticed that there was an excursion to the Ile de Chausey advertised for today so probably both of the Joly France boats are out there with their passengers.

There seems to be plenty of activity down at the loading bay in the inner harbour. Chausiais is moored up there underneath the loading crane.

The boat behind it is interesting too. It’s shrink-wrapped so it’s possibly a new boat, and it’s looking as if it’s waiting there for a lift to other parts. We’ll have to see who comes along to pick her up.

From the harbour I went on home and partook of what was left of my orange ginger beer – no coffee today because it’s quite warm outside. And it was delicious too. Despite its volatile nature and explosive capability, I’ll make some more – but this time I’ll try some stronger bottles rather than the IKEA ones that couldn’t last the pace.

Back here I carried on with my cooking.

First thing to do was to prepare an apple crumble. Because I have only a small oven I made it in two smaller dishes that I could stack one on top of the other.

While I was doing that I’d switched on the oven and when the crumble was ready I bunged that and the bread in there.

Next was to roll out the pizza pastry that I’d taken out of the freezer first thing. And having greased the pizza tray I put the pizza base in and folded the overhanging edges back into the tray. Then I left to fester for an hour.

Later on I assembled the pizza and when the bread and crumble were cooked I took them out and put the pizza in.

During the various pauses I’ve been working on the photos from July 2019. Another pile has bitten the dust and there are just 38 left for that month. I’m now approaching Wounded Knee in South Dakota.

Here are the finished products. Don’t they look delicious?

The pizza tasted really delicious and it would have been even better had I remembered to turn up the oven again after I’d removed the bread. I’ve no idea what the crumble is like because being full after my pizza, I didn’t have a dessert.

Now that I’ve written my notes I’m off to bed. There’s a radio programme that needs doing tomorrow and that’s the first thing to be done. But there’s also the sourdough to be baked so that it’s ready for my mid-morning break and so I’ll have to put that into the oven as soon as I wake up.

Here’s hoping that I have a good cramp-free sleep.

Sunday 21st March 2021 – I WAS RIGHT …

… about this fishing boats breeding or multiplying or whatever.

We started off with one moored at the Fish Processing Plant and abandoned to go aground as the tide went out and yesterday we ended up with four of them. That was when I mused that they must be multiplying and it looks as if I’m right because today there’s a fourth one down there that is going to be marooned by the tide in half an hour’s time.

The Fish Processing Plant seems to be all closed up so that fourth one hasn’t come along to unload and in any case it’s leaving it rather late to move.

So what’s all going on there then?

No prizes for guessing what’s going on here, is there?

There probably isn’t anyone who, having seen the beautiful weather that we had yesterday, would believe that it would continue for the rest of the weekend so nobody should be in the last surprised by the fact that the weather has closed in again today. It’s gone cold and the fog and mist are closing in.

So much so that I’m glad that I missed almost half of today. I might have been awake at 08:30 but no danger whatever of me leaving my stinking pit at that time on a Sunday. 11:15 is a much more realistic time for me to show a leg.

After the medication I attacked the dictaphone. I always like to listen to where I’ve been during the night and, more importantly, who has come with me. Even though I’ve been starved of good, pleasant, charming and erudite company just recently, what goes on on my travels during the night is usually much more exciting than anything that happens during the day when I’m awake, sad as it is to say it.

But not last night. I would really like to have some financial stability and I had some money invested in a company called Global Marketing. I’d had a whole pile of information from them that I was busy going through when suddenly the Chancellor of the Exchequer, not Sunak but someone else turned up on my door. He was telling me of all his bullish plans for this and that and I said quite frankly “I don’t believe very much of this at all”. he sat down, plugged in a tape recorder and played a speech back. I said “that’s you speaking, isn’t it?”. He replied “yes it is”. I replied that I’d be much more convinced if it was the EU or someone like that speaking to me. He noticed the paperwork and he went through it. “Is this what you’re doing in your retirement? organising items for these?” I asked “don’t you know who these people are?”. He replied “no. I’ve never seen them until I saw these papers” so I was about to tell him who they were when I awoke.

After I’d gathered my wits (which takes an awful lot longer than it ought to bearing the reduced amount of wits that I possess these days – but then I suppose that they have more empty space in which to roam around) I attacked the photos from July 2019.

By the time that I knocked off I’d arrived in East Forks, Minnesota, USA where I spent a couple of very ill days. However, I had had a little drive around Winnipeg and been to see MY GRANDMOTHER’S HOUSE – or, at least, the house where she lived during her very short marriage.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that my great grandparents emigrated to Canada in 1906 and my grandmother, who was a music hall singer, married a musician from Winnipeg in July 1918. Their marriage lasted barely 4 months as he died in the influenza epidemic in November 1918.

When my great grandfather died in 1923 (we went to SEE HIS GRAVE 20 YEARS AGO) my great grandmother returned to the UK bringing the unmarried children (including my grandmother) back with her.

The married children remained behind and that’s how come I have family in Montréal and Ottawa (and probably elsewhere too).

Anyway, you haven’t come here to hear all of that nonsense. It’s time that I was clearing off outside to see what was happening.

And the answer to all of that was that down on the beach there was nothing happening at all. Just one or two people walking around there.

And as I said earlier, I can’t say that I blame them either. You can see by how dark it is down there, just how depressing the weather was this afternoon.

Dark, depressing and gloomy. But that’s enough about me – the weather was just as bad. The mist is closing in yet again and it wasn’t very nice at all so I shrugged my shoulders and set off at a pace around the headland while the going was good and before the weather became any worse.

As you can see, I wasn’t alone out there this afternoon. There were quite a few people walking around on the footpath this afternoon braving the weather.

And they needed to be brave too. Just now I mentioned that I needed to push on before the weather deteriorated even more and if you look to the right of this image you can see a rainstorm approaching rather rapidly and I didn’t want to be caught out there in all of that.

So I pushed along the path, across the lawn at the end by the lighthouse and then across the car park to the end of the headland. There was nothing whatever happening out to sea as far as I could see (and I couldn’t see very far at that) so I wandered off along the path on top of the cliff.

Yesterday we were having something of an aerial day seeing as the weather was something of a plane-spotter’s delight. But no such luck today. The thick clouds that we were having put a stop to that.

But we did have one of these microlight powered hang-glider things floating around over my head as I walked along the path so I took a photo of it as it went by overhead, but that was my lot. I wanted to be home before the rain arrived.

No change in occupancy in the chantier navale and we saw earlier the fishing boats at the Fish Processing Plant so with nothing else going on, I headed back home again for my coffee. There were plenty of things to do.

One of the things that needed doing was the baking for today.

There isn’t much bread left right now so I needed to make a loaf. But not a big one because I’m off on my travels on Wednesday and there’s no room in the freezer. So just a small one would have to do. Consequently, immediately after lunch I’d made up 250 grammes of flour into a dough – using the wrong flour as you might expect.

At the same time, I’d taken a lump of pizza dough out of the freezer and that had been thawing out during the afternoon.

When I returned from my walk I have the dough its second kneading and shaping and left it to proof again this time in its mould. Then I kneaded the pizza dough, rolled it out and put it on the pizza tray and left everything to proof.

While I was doing all of that I carried on with the Central Europe stuff. There’s now another day finished and IS NOW ON LINE. Just 3 more days to do now, but one of those days is the one where I ran aground in the first place all those weeks ago so that isn’t going to be easy.

By now the dough was all ready so I bunged the loaf in the oven and assembled the pizza. When the bread was done I put the pizza in the oven to cook.

Here are the finished products. The loaf is small but it looks and feels quite good. As for my pizza, it was delicious yet again.

No pudding this week as I’m not here to eat it. I’ll be taking stuff out of the freezer for the next couple of days. There are plenty of frozen pies and so on in there that need finishing. It’ll make more room in there for other stuff.

While I was writing up my notes I was listening to music as usual. There are certain tracks that I can only listen to when I’m in the right mood to hear them and that, unfortunately, isn’t right now, for a whole variety of reasons with which I won’t bore you.

So of course, it goes without saying that Al Stewart’s MODERN TIMES came round on the playlist, didn’t it? Hard to think that I was working out the chords for this earlier in the week and I could play it then. But not today.

That’s because the track that came up on the playlist immediately before it was GRASSHOPPER by Man. What was I doing the night of 1st/2nd September 2019 that I can’t even now, 18 months later, bring myself to write about and which I probably never will.

One thing about it though and that was that I was never the same afterwards. Mind you, I was never the same beforehand so it doesn’t make very much difference anyway.

Anyway, on that note (well, we are talking about music) I’m off to bed. I need my beauty sleep of course, but I need much more than this. I have a radio programme to do and I’ve nothing prepared for it. And it’s a programme of fairly new stuff and thse ones are always the most difficult to write.

It won’t be an 11:15 finish tomorrow, that’s for sure.

Sunday 14th March 2021 – WHAT A HORRIBLE …

… day I have had today.

This morning I didn’t leave my bed until 11:45 and I even spent a couple of hours asleep this afternoon so it was something of a wasted day.

But on reflection (which I was able to do some time later) I realised that it wasn’t such a wasted day at all.

After I’d finished yesterday’s notes I went and made the sourdough dough for the fruit loaf that I was planning to make today. But by the time that I’d finished I somehow seemed to have lost any tiredness that I might have done.

Not being able to go off to sleep I switched the computer back on. There was someone whom I knew in Florida who was on line so we started to chat and by the time that I was finally ready to go to bed it was … errr … 05:45.

And during the time that I’d been chatting I’d been dealing with the Greenland photos. Another pile of those disappeared and right now we are inspecting a seabird colony at the foot of the Sermitsiaq Glacier that leads from the Maniitsoq Ice Cap into the Evighedsfjorden or Kangerlussuatsiaq Fjord as it’s known today.

After the medication this morning I gave the sourdough its second kneading and put it into its mould and then prepared two lots of yeast-powered dough, one for the loaf of bread that I need for this week and the second batch for the next supply of pizzas.

While that was proofing I made myself some porridge and toast for breakfast, or rather, lunch actually, given the time.

Back in here I made another start on tidying up the back-up drive and despite falling asleep half-way through, I’m now up to 1.11TB of free space and had I remained awake I might even have managed to clear out some more but that was something of a forlorn hope.

It wasn’t until about 16:00 that I awoke and it took me until about 16:30 to recover my composure. I kneaded the dough for the loaf a second time, shaped it and put it into the mould to proof a second time. And then I went out for a walk.

Being rather later going out than normal, the tide was well out by now – farther out than I was expecting it to be.

Considering that it was a Sunday, I was surprised to see that there were so few people out there making the most of it. While there was a fair bit of wind today, it was much less than yesterday’s wind and it wasn’t really all that unpleasant.

If the weather the other day had been such to have permitted a couple of people to go for a swim in the sea, as regular readers of this rubbish might recall, I would have expected them to have at least braved the weather that we were having today in order to have a picnic or two on the beach.

Anyway, having taken the photo of the beach I walked off along the path on top of the cliffs all the way down to the lighthouse at the end of the Pointe du Roc.

There were quite a few people out there on the lawn having a walk around in the nice weather, many of them with dogs. As an aside, taking animals for a walk is an acceptable way of being out in the streets after curfew here in France and according to stories that I have heard, the local animal shelters are now running out of dogs for adoption. So at least some things are benefiting from the curfew.

Across the lawn and the car park, I went down to the end of the headland but there was nothing going on out in the bay so I followed the path down on the other side of the cliff.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that after we had seen the two Joly France boats and Chausiais moored at the ferry terminal the other day, yesterday we saw one of the Joly France boats and Chausiais moored in the inner harbour.

We mused about the whereabouts of the other Joly France boats that was conspicuous by its absence.

But muse no longer, dear reader, because she’s now come back and is moored up in the loading bay in the inner harbour. Obviously we aren’t expecting the arrival of one of the Jersey Freighters right now.

Back at the apartment I had my coffee and carried on with sorting out the files on the computer. Right now I’m tidying up the directories on the big computer because some time in the near future I’ll be swapping a few hard drives around and I want to have everything sorted out for when I do.

In view of the kind of chaos that I’ve been in for so long in the past that’s taken me so long to sort out just now, I don’t want to repeat it.

Later on I knocked off and checked the dough over.

The two loaves in their moulds were ready – the sourdough had even risen a little, so I switched on the oven and when it was warm, I put them in to bake.

Meantime I kneaded the pizza dough, divided it into three, oiled two and put them into the freezer, and the third one I rolled out and put in the pizza tray.

When the pizza base had proofed I prepared the pizza and when the bread was cooked I took that out and put the pizza in.

hen that was cooked I had my tea and it was probably one of the tastiest that I have ever had. Definitely a success, this one. No pudding though because I’m not hungry. But there is plenty of apple pie in the fridge for pudding for the next few days.

Now that I’ve written up my notes I’m going to bed, regardless of how early it is. I need a good sleep because I have a radio programme to write up tomorrow and I want to be on form. I can’t afford too many days like I’ve had today.

But at least it wasn’t as total a disaster as I was thinking that it might have been had I not buckled down and did some photos while I was still awake earlier this morning.

Sunday 21st February 2021 – THAT GINGER BEER …

… that i made the other day isn’t ‘arf fiery stuff! I tried half a glass of i this evening while I was making my pizza and it almost blew off my head. It tastes just like shop-bought stuff and I’ll be making more of this when I return from Leuven, that’s for sure.

Definitely a success, that it!

What else was a success today? We can start by talking about the 8GB Acer laptop that I bought about 3 years ago and which the hard-drive failed 2 days after the guarantee expired. I’d had a look at this a while back and found that the hard drive is relatively accessible.

Consequently this afternoon, I fitted the second of the Solid State Drives into that. And not only is it working fine except for the touchpad (so I’m using an external mouse for now) I’m actually using that machine to type out my notes for today.

In fact, it was such a straightforward operation that I have made an executive decision. And an executive decision is, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, one where if it goes wrong, the person who made the decision is executed.

The third little Acer laptop, the one that accompanied me on my travels everywhere for five years until it died on me in North Dakota in 2019, is basically a functioning unit. Everything works fine on it except the hard drive. Unfortunately, it’s like most modern laptops, assembled upside-down with the motherboard on the bottom so you can’t access the hard drive (or the memory) from underneath.

So when I’ve finished my radio work, I’m going to take off the bottom and have a go at taking out the motherboard. If it’ll come out, I’m going to take the Solid State Drive that I installed in the second little Acer laptop and if I can, fit it into the third one. And if the memory that I upgraded is compatible too, I’ll fit that in as well.

If I make a dog’s breakfast out of it, I can salvage the keyboard at least and fit it into the second.

Last night I had one of the best sleeps that I’ve had for ages. I awoke at round about 08:00 having been flat out for almost 9 hours. But that’s not good enough for me. I turned over and went back to sleep. 11:05 when I finally surfaced and that’s good enough for me.

After the medication, I had a listen of the dictaphone.

I was living with Laurence and Roxanne and working at the Auchan supermarket in Lille last night. Roxanne and Laurence were goign somewhere and one of the neighbours asked if he could use the car to go into work and back. He said that he would pay so much per week for it. She asked if that was a good deal and I replied that it was. The first day came and he took it – it was a Sinclair C5. Later he phoned up and said that he had a problem so I walked into town to see it. He said that 1 or 2 of the lights were out, a side light and a brake light. I asked him what he was going to do. he said that there was someone coming to fix it. He had this thing about wanting it to be fixed so he could use it. I couldn’t understand the problem because I’ve driven cars for months without half the lights working, that kind of thing. In the end I had a look. I had a bulb with me and I tried it but that didn’t work. he had this Sinclair C5 on one side and basically wasn’t going to move until it was fixed. I walked back home and got two small 5-watt bulbs. As I started to go back I suddenly realised that one of them was a stoplight and needed a bigger bulb. I asked Laurence to get one but she started to look in all the wrong places for it. I thought that i’d better go and find it. Somewhere along the line while I was there I was talking to a girl. She came from France apparently, the Dordogne, but she was a refugee in Belgium and I have no idea where this fitted into the story.

Later on we were all in a coach. I was driving and we were talking about travel abroad, the cars on the road and how the cars on the road multiplied due to the effect of the war and European travel and so on. We were actually waiting to go to Waterloo Station with a coach load of passengers. Boris Johnson (what on earth is HE doing here?) was on the coach holding everything up so I shouted at him “Johnson, can we go yet?”. I suddenly realised that I didn’t know the way but I thought that I would do what I would usually do which was to follow the road signs into the centre of London and then follow the ones out again that I needed.

Even later on I was back working in General Accident in Manchester, and it’s been a long, long time since I’ve thought about them, isn’t it. Nerina was working in Manchester too so we used to walk to work and walk home afterwards. It didn’t take us all that long. It certainly didn’t seem like 30 miles. One particular day, I don’t know what happened but I ended up walking well ahead of her, a lot quicker than she was. I got to the office and Dave Herring was larking around a bit, I’m not quite sure why. And then his was telling disgusting jokes with Brian Horton about this and that, and probably the other too and I wasn’t really all that amused. Our office was actually a portacabin in the middle of the street and thinking on, there was no toilet or anything. I arrived early-ish and there was a whole day ahead of me and I had to think about what I was going to do if I wanted to go to the toilet, which was going to be more-than-likely during the course of the day.

And there was much more to it than this but you’re probably eating a meal right now so I’ll spare you the gory details.

The rest of the day I’ve spent dealing with the rebuilding of the laptop. It’s working fine and all of the programs that I need for travelling are now installed.

As for the data, that’s on its way. The back-up disk that I keep was in such a mess that I’ve been through, sorted out the most important files, copied it all ono a portable hard-drive and it’s currently undergoing a duplicate file deleting process.

That’s why there are no photos of my afternoon walk as yet. The USB 3.0 port on the front of the big desktop machine, whch I would ordinarily use for uploading the photos from the camera, has a portable hard drive plugged into it. How long does it take to delete 79,907 files at about 130 per minute?

But I did manage to go out and stretch my legs as usual, along with about half a million other people.

Tea was, as usual on a Sunday, a vegan pizza. One of the best that I’ve ever made, and you’ll get to see a photo of that too in due course.

So now, back to the grind and see what other damage I can do while I’m at it. I have a feeling that this is going to be a long, long night.

Friday 5th February 2021 – I’M NOT GOING …

… to tell you about what time I awoke this morning.

Just let me say that I would have been dismayed if I had awoken at this time on a Sunday, never mind a day when I’m supposed to be working.

What was even worse was that I’d made every effort to have an early start, even down to going to bed as early as 22:30. But it just didn’t seem to work. However, it did mean that there was plenty of time to go walkabout during the night. And that I most certainly did.

I was having to go to Court for something or other and a friendly accountant said that he had come to help me so we arranged to meet at 17:30 in a local pub. Some solicitor said that he would help me first as well. I was talking to the solicitor and we arranged that he would come round and photograph all of my cars to prove that I was just driving around in old bangers “as long as you don’t photograph the fact that not a single one is taxed” because things really were tough and all these vehicles that I had weren’t taxed. Nerina and I were doing some cleaning or tidying up and I had sat down for a breather and in walked this accountant. I’d completely forgotten about him. He’d brought a pile of forms from the Musicians Union – apparently to be a musician you needed a licence and it cost £55,000. Of course there was no chance whatever of me paying that. He started to ask me questions all about the group – what songs did we play? Where did we practise? How often did we perform? He gave me a huge list of songs “do you play any of these?”. I made some facetious remark “these must be the only members of the Musicians Union then, the groups in this list”. All the time Nerina was wandering around – we were in the Rockwood in Alton Street by the way at the time and I’m sure that she was totally bewildered as to who this guy was and what I was doing and why I wasn’t helping with the tidying up or anything. This conversation continued more on the lines of filling in these Musicians Union forms than any help that he was going to give me for the issues that I was having.

Later on I’d gone to meet TOTGA – she was working for another taxi company in Crewe but in the old Up The Junction building. I went into her office but she was actually downstairs and I could hear all of the talk that was going on through the radio monitor. They were talking about all the financial affairs of the company going wrong. Basically they had committed to buy a new fleet of taxis right at the time of the Miners Strike when there wasn’t much money circulating around and people in Aberystwyth who had undertaken to buy the previous taxis let them down. I ended up talking to a guy who had been a driver for me, a young guy. He’d written a book and was going through the book with me telling me all the issues that this taxi company was having. The boss of the company came up. he came up with Derek Guyler who had been some kind of office manager. Guyler was arguing for a pay rise for the drivers and a taxi to take the kids to school. The guy running it was extremely angry and laying into Guyler verbally about all kinds of stuff so I thought that this was the moment to leave before he turned on me. I went downstairs but lost my way and ended up in the basement. I had to climb out through a window onto the track. There were 2 boys who were very keen to find out what I’d been doing so I explained and they wandered off in their direction and I wandered off in mine.

Later still we were all off to Blackpool or some seaside resort – it wasn’t Blackpool. I was with an old couple and we rented a room and another small room for me. She cooked a meal which was disgusting but I ate some but not all of it. They went off to buy some tickets for a performance but I stayed behind to try to clean up everywhere because it was really dirty. I was doing fine and I had my 3 cats there. A little girl came in to give me a hand. We were laughing and joking and I had a close look at her – she was a lot older than she ought to be, a bit like a Jimmy Clitheroe kind of character. We were laughing and joking while I was cleaning this up. Then my partner turned up – I can’t remember if it was Cécile or Nerina. A while before this I’d been talking to a guy who was a bit of a singer – we’d been in a club somewhere preparing things for a concert and he was telling me about his stage performances. I thought “yes, well I’ve heard all this before”. When this couple came back they brought piles of people with them, all an extended family. My partner was there. We all had to go outside because this guy was going to give a concert. We all had to wait and we waited for hours. In the end they brought up some vehicles so that we could sit in these vehicles, American-type minibus things. He came out eventually and announced that he didn’t have a licence for the concert to take place on this particular stage so he was only allowed 2 minutes. In this 2 minutes he just told us about his future concerts and his career. I thought “yes, well, I’ve heard all of this before” and I wasn’t particularly impressed.

So welcome back to TOTGA who has been conspicuous by her absence for the last few weeks or so.

As you can imagine, with this really late start and all of this to type out, there wasn’t any time to do anything else before lunch. But there was still something to do – a friend of mine who is the “panicky” type has just learnt that her boyfriend has come down with Covid. She’s panicking about this so it’s been necessary to do something about it.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that I had another good friend who went down with Covid along with her husband and son, although her daughter who shares the same facilities didn’t, and the infected ones all made a good recovery. I spent some time putting the two of them in touch with each other so that the one can reassure the other.

After lunch (more of my leek and potato soup with home-made bread) I caught up with a pile of correspondence. I’ve had a pile of e-mails hanging round here that needed answering and it was the plan to deal with them today and I really can’t postpone them any longer. And a couple were extremely lengthy too.

As well as that, two other issues reared their heads.

Firstly, Canada has closed its borders to cruise ships of over 100 passengers until Spring 2022. I’d been offered a place on an expedition for this Summer but I hadn’t said anything much about it because I thought it most unlikely that it will travel this year. And now, of course, I’m proved right – although it really was an odds-on certainty, this. I imagine that the cancelled people from 2020 and now 2021 will be offered first dibs at the voyage for 2022 so I wrote to the organisers to stake my claim for 2023, along with the necessary information. I’ll get to Axel Heiberg Island yet!

Secondly, I’ve sold another one of my photos. I used to sell a lot of them at one time and even had one on the front cover of an issue of “Now Toronto” 20 or so years ago but I’m being pushed further and further down the rankings by the more established agencies. The last one that I sold was of THE MEMORIAL TO GEORGE CARTWRIGHT 6 or so months ago which is used as a still IN A FILM.

This photo that has been bought today is of AN OLD COMMUNITY ON THE “FORGOTTEN COAST” OF QUEBEC.

In case anyone thinks that I’m blowing my own trumpet unnecessarily, I’m under no illusions. It’s not the quality of the images that is the selling point – it’s the fact that I’ve been to places where few other people have been and that my photos are easy to find.

And when they are found, they have my contact details on them. I’m very particular about that.

That all took me up to my afternoon walk

It was a really beautiful afternoon – it really was, and you can see from this photo of the rock just offshore here that there were a number of people enjoying it.

Not humans because, surprisingly there were very few taking advantage of the warm, sunny Spring-like day that we had today. I was dressed up for midwinter yet I could quite comfortably have gone round in my shirt sleeves had I so desired.

There was very little wind too and at long last the paths had dried out sufficiently so that in most places you could walk around without too much discomfort and mud.

Just now I did say that there were no humans out and about in the lovely weather. That’s not particularly accurate because there was someone out there offshore in his cabin cruiser having a little swan around.

He swanned off and so did I, because there wasn’t anything of any importance or note happening anywhere else.

However I did bump into the guy who organises the radio and we had quite a chat about this and that and a couple of little projects, one of which was particularly appealing to me because it involves one of my favourite musicians.

Back here I managed to drink my coffee without falling asleep, and I attacked the photos from Greenland in July 2019. I really must push on with those as much as I can.

Guitar practice was interesting because I found a better way to play the bass line to Creedence Clearwater Revival’s “Down on the Corner” and with the acoustic guitar I worked out the chords to Tom Petty’s “Too Good To Be True” that I am keen to add to my little repertoire.

Tea was veggie balls with pasta and veg followed by apple pie and now having written my notes, I’m going to go to bed. “Must do better” is the phrase that comes to mind, although I wish I knew how. It’s all very well having some kind of problem and knowing that you have some kind of problem but when you don’t know what it is, it’s rather difficult to deal with it.

Wednesday 3rd February 2021 – I REALLY AM …

… eating quite well these days. I really am.

This afternoon I have had one of the nicest lunches that I have ever had.

For a start, I fried two rather large onions in a very large saucepan. To that, I added several cloves of garlic and an assortment of herbs. When they were browning nicely I added the four leeks that I had bought and which I had peeled and sliced, and stirred them in, along with a variety of herbs and ground black pepper.

Four small potatoes followed them into the pan, washed and cubed. They were stirred into the mix too.

Once everything was all mixed in, I added a couple of stock cubes, just enough water to cover the contents, and then a box of soya cooking cream. When it was all in the pot, I stirred it well in and left it to simmer for 45 minutes.

Once it was all well-cooked, it was all whizzed up and I ended with probably the finest vegan cream of leek and potato soup that I have ever eaten. I was really pleased with this.

And that wasn’t all of it either, not by a long way. I have made this morning the most perfect loaf that I have ever made after all of these attempts and with my leek and potato soup it was absolutely delicious.

It goes without saying that I was pleased about all of this because my day didn’t start off like that.

Never mind the first alarm, or the third alarm for that matter, it was 08:30 when I finally found the strength to leave the bed and that filled me full of dismay because it made me run so late for everything that I had to do during the day.

First task was to give the sourdough dough a second kneading, and then I shaped it and put it in the smaller of the two silicone moulds and left it for its second proofing.

Second task was to make a 500-gramme wholemeal loaf using traditional years. And I do have to say that for some unknown reason for which I really have no answer, the dough turned out to be absolutely perfect – exactly as it ought to have been – nice and rubbery and elastic and smooth.

It was then left for an hour or so to proof in a mixing bowl and I came in here to make a start on transcribing the dictaphone notes that have been building up over the last few days.

After a break for my hot chocolate and cake for breakfast I gave the dough its second kneading, shaped it and put it into the larger silicone mould and while it was proofing again, carried on with the dictaphone notes.

When the bread went into the oven I made my soup so that it was all ready for eating. It was a rather later lunch than usual but it was well-worth waiting for because everything was exactly as it would have been – especially as I finally seem to have managed to have made a loaf that came out exactly as it should have done after all these attempts.

Once lunch was over, I attacked the form for my registration with the Securité Sociale. Filling in the form was reasonably straightforward but finding the accompanying documents took rather more time than it ought to have done. And when the scanner function on the printer didn’t work and I had to photocopy some of them instead, that took longer still.

By the time that I’d completed everything I was ready for my afternoon walk.

It was quite cloudy outside and windy too and things hadn’t dried up that much. But I pushed on around my little circuit.

There was nothing whatever happening out there this afternoon. The only thing of any interest whatever was the fact that Chausiais and Joly France were moored up in the mud over by the ferry terminal and don’t look anything like moving within the foreseeable future.

And the only reason that I took the photos, I suppose, was for the sake of having taken a photo while I was out.

Back here, just as I sat down with my coffee, the telephone rang. Ingrid phoned me and we had another one of these very long chats that took me right up to guitar-playing time.

Tea was pie and veg with gravy followed by apple pie. Like I said right at the very beginning, I am really eating rather well these days. I have never in my life had such good food as I’ve been having since I’ve been living here.

The net result of all of this is that the blog entries for SUNDAY, MONDAY and TUESDAY have been amended to include the dictaphone notes, if you have the patience to read them because during those three nights I travelled miles, as well as taking a couple of old and welcome regulars with me.

Last night though I was with one of the Welsh rock bands and the story gradually evolved as we were trying to work our way between several concerts last night – I hadn’t actually got up on stage but I’d been jamming away in the background while they were there and one of the Man offshoots picked me up and we went off to perform a few gigs. There was a photo that they had passed around of Strawberry Moose playing the drums at some resort in North West England. They’d made some kind of remarks about the Vikings who had come along to conquer that country and were busy beating it up with rock and roll songs because Strawberry Moose still had on his helmet from our voyage with Adventure Canada on board The Good Ship Ve … errr … Ocean Endeavour. One of the couples had a daughter who was about 4. She was a very precocious kid and was actually playing and singing on one of the numbers on stage. Surprisingly she wasn’t doing a bad job at all and everyone seemed to be enjoying it. When we got off the stage at the end she stayed on the stage to do something and her mother had to go and fetch her back. Everyone was making a joke about her being 4 and doing all of this, and I thought that that was most unfair because what she was doing was nothing to laugh at at all. It was quite serious stuff and quite good and enjoyable. I thought that she was getting the rough end of this.

A little later on our coach pulled in to Audlem although it was nothing like Audlem. As we climbed up the hill which doesn’t exist of course we had to stop to let some people out. I asked about the toilets and they replied that they were in the Market Hall. They showed me where it was and I ran off. It was miles, absolutely miles, and on the way back running past this guy I came to a set of stairs and there was an archway over the top every 4th or 5th stair or something. rather than running through the archway I ended up on top of it running from one top of an arch to another down these stairs. I eventually reached the bottom and went outside, and the coach was there. One of the guys who had a toilet cistern said “it’s ok, there’s no hurry. This toilet cistern is no use to me – I’ve just found out that it’s made in Spain, not the UK. We’re just making 1 or 2 phone calls about how to deal with a certain thing” and the coach doesn’t seem much like moving at the moment so I just loitered around outside. This was a hot sweaty dream again.

Later still, we were coming into Shavington via Dodd’s Bank, Nerina and me. I asked if it was OK if we go to a pub – I mentioned the name of a pub – it was one in Crewe somewhere to go and see Jon Dean because he had my bank credit card and one or two other things that I needed for my journey. I could see as she answered back that she wasn’t very happy. As we got into Shavington there was someone (I couldn’t decipher who) who could see the 2 of us together and he smiled a bit because he probably heard that our relationship was just a little rocky but we were still together I suppose which cheered him up.

Somewhat later Jackie and Alison were round at my house revising. I’d been out the previous day to go to Manchester to fetch some car parts and had to go again today because some were missing. I went round to the wholesaler’s first to check and he said it wasn’t there and i’d have to go myself to Manchester to fetch it. I think that I’ve dictated (which I apparently haven’t, so I wonder what it is that I’ve missed out) a lot of this about going with Percy Penguin and having to go and pick her up from her home where she was living. There were loads of other people living in this home as well which which was overrun with cats. I had to find her – she was busy doing something and I couldn’t work my way back downstairs again. A woman told me where to go and I had to climb down a load of pipework which was very awkward as there were no stairs. She was at the bottom and was pleased to see me so I had to get ready to go. I wanted to go to the toilet but a cat kept on getting in the way. And then I realised that I wasn’t going to the toilet in the right place so I found that. Percy Penguin took so long messing around that it was now about 11:30 znd we’d never get to Manchester before the place closed for lunch. I wanted to be back for lunch as I was going to take Jackie and Alison somewhere. We got in the car ready to go and she was talking about driving lessons and how she’d taken a few but Covid had closed it down and when they reopened they had forgotten all about her. I wanted to put “Traffic” on the car radio but for some unknown reason their live album wasn’t on my playlist and I had to select some tracks which was pretty awkward while I was trying to drive. It turned out that they were tracks from some kind of play or something. There was an advert of some kind or other and the music of “Traffic” was used as the background so while I had that on there was some other music coming from somewhere and I couldn’t hear it properly. That was starting to annoy me and all in all I was becoming quite annoyed about everything that was going on.

And so the obvious question is “where am I going to be travelling tonight”.

Sunday 31st January 2021 – WITH IT BEING …

… Sunday, I had a nice lie-in this morning. All the way up to 11:10 as well.

And despite the late rising from my stinking pit I’m thoroughly exhausted and I’m going to bed in a moment. There’s tons of stuff on the dictaphone too but I didn’t have the energy to transcribe it until a couple of days later, so having now done that I may as well add it in here and now in its rightful place.

The night started with another rambling dream where I was having all kinds of photography issues. I can’t remember much about it at all but I was in Canada travelling with someone and we had been up a kind of mountain, driven up the side of it and taken a load of photos from up at the top and then carried on on our voyage. Somewhere during that I’d taken an exam for the Open University’s Environmental Degree and had to write out an essay or thesis. I wrote out pages and pages of stuff basically off the top of my head which I’m sure was good enough and sent it off but it wasn’t until later that I realised that I hadn’t done a word count. I hoped that I had done enough and not too much and then again with having written it off the top of my head I wasn’t sure how much of it would be identified as plagiarism with me simply having remembered text word-for-word from someone else’s postings. So we ended up in a great big city in Canada somewhere. I was walking around taking photos but again I was having these issues with the camera not taking these photos properly. At one point it was late afternoon near rush hour and the moon had just come up over the end of the town. It was a beautiful setting and I thought that it would be rzally nice in 10 minutes time so I went to get on a bus and work my way around there. I went and stood in a bus queue but then I thought “I don’t know which bus to get on that will take me in the right direction” so I decided that I won’t go on a bus – I’ll walk back. As I walked back I came across a bar and above it was a notice saying that Aerosmith were going to perform here. I went to take a photo of this notice with the bar in it but I couldn’t get the right view or the right perspective and then I had the sun in the lens and the camera wouldn’t work. I tried about 4 or 5 different times. I walked away because it wouldn’t work, very disappointed. Then I took a photo of some woman playing golf. That worked fine except that it was on multiple shot which I didn’t realise until I deleted the one that I had just taken and found another 9. Then I walked back to this place again and found a good perspective and took a good photo with all of the people bowing down to this sign. Then I found that the viewfinder on the camera was broken and all looked very cracked and I hadn’t got it in the photo part of the notice that I wanted so I had to try to take it again. But then the camera malfunctioned again. In the meantime the guy with me was telling me about a guy who was planning a photography trip to the Middle East and asked if I was interested so I had this guy talk to me. He said that they were planning to go some time in November but where we would be going would be up to the people who travelled.

Later on I’d bumped into Nerina again somewhere. I was sorting through a whole pile of Christmas cards. She was looking at them and at the envelopes as I was spreading them out somewhere. She said that i’d forgotten to play with those 6 there an I could see that she was keen to know who they were from. After she had made a few more comments about them I threw them over to her and said “you open them and look for yourself” and carried on with what I was doing. In the meantime there was a little girl there. She was putting all kinds of packs of playing cards into order in a display window. Nerina asked her “what will you be doing for cards when (I think she said) George Bernard Shaw dies? Will you be printing more different cards?” This girl looked totally bewildered so I had to explain to her that the drawings on the back of the cards were by whoever it was whom Nerina had mentioned. This girl still didn’t understand and I thought that it was rather mean of Nerina for teasing the girl like this. I had to go into an office to see someone. I had to climb these flights of stairs, went into this office and noticed that there were skylights in there so for that reason I assumed that we were on the top floor of this building. I had this interview and I can’t remember what it was about, and walked off back downstairs and outside. I carried on walking and came to the town centre. It was the same town as earlier on in the evening but all laid out differently and I couldn’t really remember where I was for a while. There was this brand-new square in this medieval town that didn’t look too awful and trying to find a perspective to take some photos was difficult. In the end I had to have the camera above my head and look at the viewfinder from a distance to get the right photos. Even then they weren’t coming out as I was wanting. There was a huge tower in the centre of this square. I thought “how am I going to get all this into one single shot?”. That was going to be the challenge. I can’t remember any more.

After the medication I sat and vegetated for quite a while, not doing anything at all. It was even a struggle to stand up and make myself a hot chocolate and a bowl of porridge at lunchtime. Whatever it was, it ended up being much later than my usual lunchtime too.

No walk this afternoon. Admittedly I was really tired, but in fact it’s teeming down with rain and not the weather to go out for a walk.

Some time later I attended to the important and urgent cookery issues. I have some bread left over from Leuven so there’s no need to bake a loaf quite yet. But I’ve run out of kefir so I needed to make myself a batch of that.

There are plenty of oranges around here and kiwis too so I made an orange-and-kiwi batch and we’ll see how that comes out.

The jam roly-poly is almost exhausted so I needed to make a pudding too. With some pastry rolls in the fridge left over from Christmas I made myself an apple pie with the apples left over from before I went away.

And with the left-over pastry I made a small jam turnover – and I remembered to put the desiccated coconut in it this week, having forgotten last time.

And here we are – here are some that I made earlier, as the old story goes. It looks absolutely delicious and I can’t wait to try it all

After the kefir and the dessert it was pizza time. Sunday is always pizza time, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall.

There was no pizza dough left over so I had to make some more. Enough for three bases. Once the dough had proofed for a couple of hours it was divided into three and two of them were rolled in oil and put in the freezer. The third was rolled out and put in the pizza tray.

When that had proofed again, I assembled the pizza and cooked it for eating. That was delicious too. No pudding again as it was extremely filling.

So, tired as I am, I’m off for an early night. A very early night too. I can’t concentrate right now so it’s pointless trying. Here’s hoping I feel better tomorrow.

Wednesday 27th January 2021 – MEANWHILE AT CASTLE ANTHRAX …

… my blood count is down yet again. To 9.6 this time – not a dramatic drop so I’m still holding my own (although I’m glad that I’m not holding anyone else’s too).

They aren’t able to help me with the Corona Virus vaccination though – but there again that was something of a forlorn hope. They still haven’t finished injecting all of the staff, and the in-patients are next in the queue. I shall have to continue to persevere with whatever I can find in France.

As well as that, I’ve changed my date of visit to Thursday with effect from the next time. With it being on a Wednesday, I can’t travel up on the Tuesday because that’s my Welsh class. So I have to come up on the train on Monday, missing my radio work and lugging all of my Welsh paperwork with me too.

With the appointment on Wednesday, I can do my radio stuff on Monday and have my Welsh class on Tuesday morning, all in the comfort and privacy of my own home, travel up on the Wednesday and go home on the Saturday, saving the cost of a day’s accommodation and benefiting from a cheap weekend fare on the train on the way home.

That makes much more sense to me.

This morning I was in no rush to leave the bed. 09:30 was good enough for me today.

And having had my medication and then my breakfast (more toast on the hob element) I had a shower and then washed my clothes.

Later on I headed out to the hospital in the rain, rather intrepidly in view of the issues about my virus test for which I hadn’t had the results.

My route, as usual, took me through the city centre and out down the Brusselsestraat past the old Sint Pieter’s Hospital.

The demolition there doesn’t look all that different from when I was here 4 weeks ago. They hardly seem to have advanced at all. At this rate it’s going to take them for ever to bring the building to the ground.

But it is a shame to see it like this. Built for the French community in Flanders, it was barely completed when the French community moved out to Louvain-le-Neuve and never had anything like the occupancy that was intended.

An important casualty of the Guerre Linguistic that has raged in the country between the Walloons and the Flemish for well over 100 years.

From the old hospital I continued on down the Brusselsestraat towards the Sint Jakobs Kerk – Saint Jacob’s Church and stuck my head inside the door.

For 6 months I lived in a room in a building just across the road and I never ever had the opportunity to go in to see it. A couple of times I saw people going to the door and on one occasion I was quick enough to join them, but the door would never open. It had been abandoned for years as it was falling down.

But over this last year or so they’ve started to renovate it and as I went past, I noticed that someone had left the door open. That was an opportunity not to be missed but I couldn’t go too far in, for fear of being observed by the workmen.

The roadworks in the Monseigneur van Waeyenberghlaan are still far deom being completed.

My route led me down there so that I could see the carnage. They have been working on relaying the drains for about 18 months at least, as far as I remember, and while they seem to have filled in all of the holes now, they are still nowhere near putting down the final road surface.

This is inconveniencing everyone in the neighbourhood. Higher up the street is the building that they renovated. And parked there as best as they can is a furniture remover and a furniture lift. And they can’t position themselves close enough to the building to pass the furniture upwards.

And if you think that the Monseigneur van Waeyenberghlaan is in a mess, you should see the other direction, looking towards town.

This is the Sint Hubertusstraat and that’s even more messed up and muddy. It does make me wonder whether they are being paid by the hour or by the contract because there seems to be no incentive to hurry.

But turning my back on this end of town, I headed up the Monseigneur van Waeyenberghlaan, past the furniture guys struggling with their equipment.

Along the Monseigneur van Waeyenberghlaan there are several small side streets, like this on to the right, which I think is the Ploengang.

They seem to be realigning the road junction here and that’s going to be interesting to see how that turns out, because straight ion down the hill is a service bus route when the road is in good condition. That road is going to make it difficult for the buses to negotiate.

Luckily I had my Covid test serial number with me, because the hospital receptionist presumably checked the national database and my number isn’t on it, which seems to indicate that I’m not a person of interest (at least, from that point of view) and I could have my treatment.

It was a rather indiscreet male nurse who saw me today to connect me up to my treatment. he told me, as I suspected, that there are a few of us undergoing this research as guinea pigs and we’ve all been here for a while. It seems that I applied to the University for treatment just at the right time when they were looking for guinea pigs, although he didn’t say that directly.

While I was at the hospital having the treatment, I attacked the pile of outstanding notes on the dictaphone.

There was an opera being broadcast or filmed or something and being overdubbed in English. We were doing the overdubbing and as it started under way we were still some way ahead but we hadn’t finished. At one point my brother brought me a huge mug of tea while I did some editing on the computer but he dropped the tea or the tea fell and it absolutely soaked that corner of the room in tea. He just stood there looking at this so I had to scuttle off and fetch a flannel and stuff like that to mop up the tea and clean that corner which was in a terrible state. He was still there looking at me and looking stupid so I asked him where was the recording of this certain aria. He didn’t know so I started to prepare to sing it myself in English to do the over-dubbing but I could see that he was in no mood to play the piano and I couldn’t play the piano but I could see that I was going to have to end up playing the piano and singing at the same time because I seemed to be the only person who was doing anything at that point.

Later on, I was on a bike, an old single-speed upright kind of thing. I would cycle everywhere on that but one day I decided that enough was enough and I decided that I would get myself a modern bike with derailleur gears and I could get about 10 times quicker than that. I ended up in Nantwich, out the other side in Henhull Lane (actually Welshman’s Lane) by the old Cottage Hospital there. As I turned into the yard there first of all came a boy whom I knew at school (what was he doing there, seeing as he is someone about whom I haven’t given a moment’s thought for over 50 years?) and another boy from school out jogging and he ran past. I had a good chat to the first boy about a few things and then I foolishly went in and told the guys in this bike shop that was looking for another bike. They only had a choice of about 4 or 5 and there was only 1 that was really my size. I apologised and said that there wasn’t really what I wanted here. He started on a rant about costs and so on. he showed me all of the wholesale prices and everything like that, how he wasn’t making much money on bikes and how he wasn’t here normally because he was off working elsewhere That wasn’t what I wanted to hear from a shopkeeper.

James Bond was on the loose later on driving down an Italian motorway on a motorbike and sidecar and there was someone on a motorbike pursuing him or at least keeping behind him, observing him. We were watching this from another car further behind. They were stuck in traffic working their way through this traffic queue. All of a sudden Bond seizes the opportunity, swerved his motorcycle around and brought it crashing down on the head of this guy who was following him. This guy picked himself up and ran off. Bond ran after him and we could hear sounds of fighting. Bond came back to our car and said “I killed the wrong man there. That was one of Blofeld’s men”. Not the enemy that he was expecting. We thought that if Blofeld’s men are now angry with us and if someone else is still behind us, the real villains, we’re pretty much blocked in here in this street in the mountains. There’s no way out from here. This road just leads to a town in the mountains. We can’t turn round and if we go on, we are going to be stuck. We really have no choice but to go on so off we set. Our car by this time was a dark blue Hillman Hunter.

Finally last night, I was with Liz Ayers. We had a car and caravan. We pulled into Hankelow Hall, or what I thought was Hankelow Hall in the dream. Who should be there but Marianne and a workman. They were going through the house looking at things. There was a huge fire burning with all kinds of stuff going on, stuff all over the place, loaves of bread, all that kind of thing. I was wondering what on earth was going on here. When I went in the builder came over to me and told me about a pile of work that needed doing on the house. he would give me a bill for it, all this kind of thing. In the end I said “no”. I told him to clear off. Marianne had ordered him and made the arrangements so he can clear off. I thought that when Marianne comes back I’ll have something to say about this. I started to tidy up a few things, put things away in rubbish bags. There were a couple of loaves on there, quite green. They had been there for a while. There was a pile of election leaflets from Guy Verhofstadt the MEP, tons of stuff like that. I was trying to sort it out. Liz came over with someone for there were crowds of people there too. She said that they were going to have a sleep on the beach. I said “what? Through the night? We have a caravan on the back of the car”. She said “no, we’ll watch a film about a Maternity Hospital attached to a University and the students took it over to run it”. She described the film and I said “oh I’ve seen that”. Anyway she went off. I kept on having to go back and to between rooms in this place. The quickest way was to go through the fire although the fire was roaring hot and there was tons of ash so the final time I decided that I won’t go that way, I’ll walk round which I did but there were all of these people hanging around there not doing very much at all. It made me wonder what was going on.

The treatment didn’t take long. The longest part was waiting for the doctor afterwards to come to see me. It was quite late when I was let out.

Back into town and back down the Brusselsestraat when I was interrupted by this office place here that I hadn’t noticed before.

It seems that while many countries are actively closing their Post Offices, Belgium is reopening them. This seems to be a parcels pick-up point – Belgium is having a lot of issues with handling the volume of mail order parcels at the moment with all of this internet shopping with the Covid issues.

Stopping off at Delhaize for more bread, I nipped home to dump my stuff and then went back out to meet Alison in the town.

We had a walk around and a chat and then she came back for a quick coffee.

Later on I had tea and now having written my notes, I’m off to bed. A leisurely day tomorrow and then on friday I’m off on my marathon journey back home.

EPIC HALL

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