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Wednesday 27th March 2019 – I’M ON THE VERGE …

… of writing out another large cheque. Not quite as massive as the one that I wrote out the other day (and which, much to my surprise actually cleared the Bank) but a significant sum nevertheless.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall some of the things that I’ve accomplished since I’ve been ill. I have a little bucket list of things that I want to do before I go off to stoke the fires of eternity.

One of those things is pretty high up on my list and having been in fearless negotiations with a group of people, I’ve found that it is going to be a possibility. A rather convoluted and complicated possibility, but its complications are countered by the fact that I can fit in several other things off my list too while I’m doing it.

We could be on to something here!

Last night was a much better night. I managed to have something like a decent sleep, even though I was off on a little voyage.

I was in North-East France last night waiting for a new secretary. She was coming over from the UK and when she arrived she was explaining to me about how at a certain moment she was picking up French mobile phone signals as she was approaching Dover. I explained to her the phenomenon of transverse radio waves and how at St Margaret’s Bay the cliffs shield the town from English radio waves but the French ones bounce back off the cliffs so they can be picked up. So we set off to where we were going and ended up in a scrapyard. In a fenced-off compound was a huge red car with a beige vinyl roof, the type of which I had never seen in my life. It was a two-door model too. Surrounding it were bits of a red/orange mark III Cortina that had been used for racing and subsequently cut up. I was intrigued by this car so I went for a closer look. It had been knocked about quite a bit but there was someone round the front prising out the cylinders from a transverse 4-cylinder engine block with a length of scaffolding pipe. I expressed my surprise that it was only a 4-cylinder car, to which he replied that it was powered by a tandem-engine, two 4-cylinder engines run together and one block had already gone. I was surprised that it had gone to scrap so he replied that Mercedes (why they would be involved in it) wanted rid of it. So I asked why, and he pointed to the side of the car, with a huge t-bone dent in it.

And much to my surprise I was up quite early too. And managed to make a decent start on the day.

Most of the day was spent starting the searchable text database for the photos for August 2018. There are tons to go at for that month, and I’m about halfway through them.

As well as that, I’ve attacked another half-dozen or so of the dictaphone notes. That has hardly made a dent in it but one has to keep on going.

There were a couple of phone calls too – from canada too, as it happens. It’s all go here.

And finally I’ve done some more of the photos for September 2018 and the High Arctic. Another 100 or so of those out of the way, and I really am going to go through and re-edit them properly when I find the time.

There were the usual two walks today.

This afternoon my route was to take me around the walls but as usual I didn’t get very far. Out at the back of the building there are some workmen there.

It looks as if they are doing something to the fascia of the building. That looks like zinc guttering there.

Carrying on around the walls I stopped to inspect the house rebuildings that we have seen in the rue du Nord.

Here on the corner, in a building that they are turning into flats and apartments, they seem to be advancing quickly.

Throwing out all of the rubbish from the upstairs rooms by the looks of things. They have some very interesting kit there.

By contrast, the housebuilding at the other end of the rue du Nord seems to be progressing … errr … rather less quickly.

Overhearing the builder on his mobile phone, I have the feeling that he is only working on the property when he doesn’t have any other paid work.

So this is one site that will probably drag on and on.

In the Place Cambernon however, work is progressing much more rapidly.

It looks as if they have been ripping out all of the woodwork ready to cart it off. And that’s a shame, because I’m a big fan of woodwork, especially old period wood like floorboarding and the like.

It will be a shame if they modernise it into something that rubs out all of its historical features.

Here’s something that I haven’t noticed particularly before.

The medieval town here dates from probably the mid-15th Century and while there are very few if any houses from that period, there are still quite a few interesting ones such as this one, with some very interesting carvings in the stonework.

The letters IHS have a religious symbolism, in that they are the first three letters of “Jesus” in the Eastern Orthodox (Greek) language.

It did however become fashionable for the Jesuits to usurp the signal and insist that it stands for Iesus Humilis Societas – the “Humble Society of Jesus” or Iesus Hominem Salvator – “Jesus, Saviour of Men”.

While I was out there I went to have a look to see what was happening in the port.

Nothing of any commercial nature going on right now except for the usual trawlers, but Charles-Marie is over there – the blue-and white yacht over there against the far wall.

And the yacht that is double-parked on the outside of the two might well be Spirit of Conrad

For tea I had a burger in a bap with baked potatoes and veg, followed by the last of the rice pudding.

This evening I went again and spent some time watching all of the fishing boats come in.

There was a whole line of them extending out almost to the Channel Islands tonight so I had a little fun experimenting with different light and aperture settings to see what I could pull out.

But it wasn’t actually all that much of a success unfortunately.

It was much more interesting with the trawlers as they lined up to look for a berth at the fish-processing plant.

I had quite a good deal of fun out there for 20 minutes or so playing around with different settings to see what I could produce.

You cans ee the results further down below.

But now I’ll have an early night tonight because it’s shopping tomorrow – and then I’m going to make an apple crumble.

And I managed to go all day without crashing out too.

night trawlers granville manche normandy france

trawlers port de granville harbour manche normandy france

Tuesday 26th March 2019 – I WAS WONDERING …

… why I was planning on having pasta for a change with my stuffed pepper. And so while I was preparing the pepper I decided on rice instead.

It wasn’t until I sat down to the pudding that I realised why. Rice as a main course followed by rice pudding was not really a good idea.

Last night, I was in bed by 22:00. And it was a rather restless night too, with me waking up on several occasions. I’d been on a few travels as well, some of which were quite interesting.

There was a whole pile of us and we’d been walking or something like that and we’d ended up in a really big shop. Eventually I found myself at the front of the queue and I ordered a pound of minced beef (and I’ve no idea why I would order that). The conversation then moved around to a discussion of Belgian trains. Someone shouted something at me and I couldn’t hear them properly and understand what they were saying, but it came out that they wanted to know the price of a train fare from somewhere. I replied that I could remember a certain station where we used to get on at one time – a station right out in the sticks and it cost us €18:00 to go to there. The most that I had ever paid to go anywhere on Belgian Railways was €22:00. This conversation then ended up as a length discussion about Belgian trains
Everyone has the right in post-Brexit Britain to be on the right-hand side of the road in queues and this is just one occasion where people were suddenly being confronted with all of everything that they had bought or collected and it needed to be sorted out and cars needed to be moved over to the other side of the road to be parked. It was all extremely complicated, and all for nothing. I remembered being in the south of Germany and falling over the back of a settee on the border and ending up in Austria on the other side of the settee – the seat bit (and what that voyage was all about, I have no idea at all).
A little later I was in the High Arctic again with Natalie and I was trying to get on board the ship, but I was totally unprepared. I had a couple of lockers and a bed inside a wooden hut. I was trying to pack my rucksack with things that I needed to take on board ship. With natalie being there I couldn’t get at the secret box of supplies because I didn’t want her to see it. Everyone was hurrying about and I was getting p155ed off and Natalie went off, so I started to stuff more things into my rucksack. She then came back and told me that someone had said not to forget about the ghetto blaster so I had to hunt that down and stuff that into the rucksack too. It was all quite chaotic and I was panicking. Everyone was assembling ready to go on board the ship and I was nowhere near being ready.
Finally I was out again somewhere sitting on a table talking to someone who had been on board The Good Ship Ve … errr … Ocean Endeavour (but he hadn’t of course). He was an Inuit (although he wasn’t). We were talkig about the High Arctic and he was telling me that Nunavut had now become chair of the Arctic Council and how pleased he was about it all. We were talking about all kinds of things so I asked him if he was planning to go back on the Adventure Canada runs this year. he said that he wasn’t, so I then tried to get in touch with the Company to try to get myself on board the ship this year, but he didn’t seem to pick up on what I was saying, and I was really disappointed at that. I was trying to make him interested in what I was doing but he was more interested in telling me that they now had street lights out there in Nunavut so it was much safer to move around at night – you could see if there were any polar bears around. We ended up wandering off and I was talking about all of this to him but it wasn’t him at all but two other people. I said something about the fact that the people in there – indicating the building from where I had just come – weren’t al that interested, so that had them scratching their heads wondering what I was talking about. I came across a phone box by the Square in Crewe in the ice so I was trying to ring them but it was the wrong time of day, no-one was answering their phones. In the meantime I was planning to do some kind of radio programme on one of these internet radio stations where I could have a couple of people talking in Inuktitut while I played rock music.

Just for a change I left the bed quite early this morning and I was all set for a good day’s work.

I started off with a shower and a general clean-up. And a haircut too. It didn’t need it, but I want to keep it under much better control than I have been doing.

Following that, there were the dictaphone notes and I’m back now into mid-August. But there are plenty for the period from early Spring to then, including a whole voyage around central Europe, so this is going to be a rather long job. 358 files to be transcribed in fact, so it’s not the work of five minutes.

The next thing to do was to bring the blog up-to-date – at least, in recent times. I did all of the photos back until when I set out to Leuven.

All of that took me up to lunchtime.

This afternoon I started on the searchable photo database for September 2018 when I was in the High Arctic. Another hundred or so photos were indexed, but this took far longer than I intended because not only has it involved some research, I also had another closer look at some of them.

Basically, the editing that I did on board ship isn’t very satisfactory and now that I have a much better computer and a better graphics program, I can do far better than I did on board the Good Ship Ve … errr … Ocean Endeavour and I’m planning to go back and do them all again.

Furthermore, with the better screen and higher resolution, I’ve been picking out bits of the photographs with interesting items that I missed. So I’ve been cropping those out and blowing them up – which I can do these days despite modern anti-terrorism legislation.

So there are a few more photos to merge back into the run of things now, and by the time that I finish there will probably be a few more too.

My walk around the headland this afternoon was a reasonably solitary one.

But not as solitary as it might have been because we were being observed from above.

It’s that kind pf the year when all of the hang-gliders come out. And there they are soaring up over the old barracks building. On eof these days I might have one dropping in for tea.

But there have been changes in the chantier navale.

The big yacht, that might have been Spirit of Conrad has gone, as have a few of the other ones too, including Charles-Marie.

They’ve obviously finished what they were doing to them, but not to worry – it’ll be full again soon, I imagine.

But one of our old favourites has come back.

The ancient Bedford CF caravanette that appears here every now and again on a regular basis is back in its little hidey-hole.

One of these days I’ll go down there for a chat to the owner.

And I’ve solved the question about the strange annex to the house down there in the rue du Port. It seems that the plans include installation of a lift. So the space above will be for the machinery.

Tea was as I mentioned. And it was extremely delicious. And there’s enough stuffing left over for another one too.

The wind had risen for the evening walk. I was pretty much alone there too and I didn’t hang around all that long either.

So I’ve had my cocoa for supper and now I’m off to bed. I had an enormous wave of fatigue later in the afternoon and ended up curled up asleep on the chair for 20 minutes.

I really need to have a decent sleep one of these days, and I do hope that it’ll be soon.

Monday 25th March 2019 – WHAT A HORRIBLE …

… day it’s been today.

Although I was out of bed round about 06:45, by 09:50 I was back in bed again. And I’d already fallen asleep twice on the chair in the meantime.

So in bed I was and in bed I stayed until about 11:30. That was a horrible start to the day.

What was even worse about all of this was that I had had an early night last night, and a decent sleep until the alarm went off, even though I did wake up twice during the night.

But there was enough time for me to go on a nocturnal ramble during the night. I’d been sent to prison and it was something like Alcatraz – a big grim grey stone horrible, stinking place. There were all kinds of horrible people and things in there, but what stood out were 4 elderly Confederate soldiers still in their uniforms – Confederate blue-grey but with a big Union Jack on the front as if they were British volunteers who had been caught by the North. Although they were imprisoned there, they were trying to negotiate some kind of good deal to have their conditions eased. But the Commandant was something of a swine who might well take advantage of their willingness to negotiate by doing good things, while he remained intransigent. I was ushered in to this meeting and I could see myself there. There was someone else there who said that he was a brewer, and the Commandant’s eyes lit up at this news. I was thinking along the lines of “those who work get paid” so I told the Commandant that it might be possible for the inmates to have an easier life if they could all do things like this for the good of the community (ie him) and he seemed to be quite open to the idea. He started to offer a little bit of a concession, although I knew deep down that there was no reason to become excited by this as he was probably being hypocritical. He would probably end up by taking advantage of everyone anyway, but there was no harm in trying to ease our conditions anyway.

I awoke at about 03:50, but it wasn’t long before I was back to sleep again. And I stepped right back into almost the same place that I had left earlier.

Back to the plot of our prison encounter. We were all having lunch and only the starter arrived. No main course, and we were all sitting there waiting. In the end, I was fed up so I stood up and leaving the table and mindless of any reprisals, I walked all the way up Edleston Road to near the top where I thought the food came from. It turned out that the food didn’t come from there but from next door – an old chapel that had been a car sales pitch. But that was closed down and the windows were all whitewashed over with rude messages written into the whitewash by a finger. There was no-one around at all and it looked as if the whole place had closed down and we weren’t going to receive our food.

After the medication and breakfast I made another start on catching up on some of the dictaphone notes, but I wasn’t at it for long. As I said, I went back to bed.

Once I’d awoken and was out of bed and back in the land of the living, I carried on and did a few more dictaphone notes. That took me almost up until lunchtime.

This afternoon I attacked the previous blog entries and added the photos back until last Wednesday.

On my walk this afternoon there were a few people around enjoying the nice weather.

However, I seemed to have interrupted some kind of photo session going on on on the public car park. There were a couple of girls there, a photographer and an assistant.

Why, I don’t really know, although there was some kind of fireman’s helmet involved in the proceedings.

Back here, fighting off another wave of sleep, I worked on editing the database for the photos of the High Arctic. That involved some research too and it’s amazing what you come across once you start to look.

Carrying on around the headland, I passed by the chantier navale.

There seems to have been a big change-around there right now. La Granvillaise seems to have left there, and so does Charles-Marie.

The large boat is still there, but we now have another yacht that might be the Spirit of Conrad together with a couple of other assorted smaller boats.

I’ll have to go for a wander around down there one of these days.

Back home to carry on work, but at 18:00 I came to a dead stop. I peeled the kilo of carrots that I had bought the other day and then par-boiled them. Rinsed, drained and par-boiled again, they were rinsed again and then left to drain right through for an hour while I had tea.

More shepherd’s pie out of the freezer, with plenty of frozen veg and gravy followed by rice pudding, which didn’t quite work as it boiled over in the microwave when my attention was elsewhere.

There was still some light in the sky when I went out for my evening walk around the walls.

Mind you, it was quite early. I’m eating my evening meal earlier these days, in an attempt to aid the digestion before I go to sleep.

I spent quite some time out there on the walls enjoying the sunset and photographing a trawler coming into the harbour.

Its lights stood out nicely as the boat was silhouetted against the sunset with the Ile de Chausey there in the background.

But now, I’m off to bed even though it’s early. Today was a dreadful day so I’m hoping for something better tomorrow. I’m sick of all of this.

sunset trawler ile de chausey granville manche normandy france

trawler entering port de granville harbour manche normandy france

Thursday 21st March 2019 – AS REGULAR READERS …

… of this rubbish will recall, today has been a difficult day.

It always is the day after I return from hospital, but today was rather different from the others.

Margaret Thatcher (and how we miss her, with this shower in charge) once said “anyone could do a good day’s work when they felt like it, but the key to success is to be able to do a good day’s work when you don’t feel like it”.

And that’s what happened today. I didn’t feel very much like it at all, but I did do a very good day’s work all things considering.

Admittedly, when the alarm went off at 06:00 (and 06:10 and 06:20) I didn’t take much notice. I turned over and went back to sleep. And that’s no surprise either. Despite being tired it took me ages to go to sleep last night and I thought that I would never drop off. But I did, and was awoken by the alarms. No chance of leaving the bed at that time though. I turned over and went back to sleep and that was how I stayed until 07:22

Last night I was in London with some other guy and we were looking for a place to stay on a long-term basis. There were student flats available and we were sent to see one near the Thames on the north bank somewhere Fulham way, in a modern block of flats. It was the tiniest room that you have ever seen, with two beds in it and there was already one person in it, so we didn’t know if this person was to leave or whether we would end up with three sharing this tiny room. I was fitted with some kind of arm bracelet, for a reason that I didn’t know at the time. There was a large ginger cat roaming around the area so I picked it up and stroked it, and took it outside with me, to the horror of everyone else who explained to me that the arm bracelet meant that I wasn’t allowed to hold a cat outside the building. Someone mentioned that my Aunt Mary lived in London so why don’t I telephone her. So I did. She told me that she now had a bike so I asked her why she didn’t cycle down the Embankment to meet me. So off she set and we – by now Cecile was with me – went down to meet her. She came out of the subway in the wrong direction as if she had been riding east, and then we lost sight of her. But there she was, a few levels down at street level so we waved and she came up. By now she had transformed into Marianne, and she came over to give me a great big hug and said how much she had missed me. But strangely she had another guy with her too.

07:50 was when I left the bed. So it was rather a late breakfast this morning.

Never mind though. Off into town.

I didn’t gte very far though. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that there are some very low gates into the old medieval walled town and the streets are very narrow, so large vehicles are not permitted in there.

Everything has to be off-loaded and trans-shipped, including ready-mixed concrete.

We saw Normandy Trader in port yesterday afternoon, loading up with a cargo.

She’s now gone from the port, but there’s plenty of cargo left on the quayside. This means that we might well be expecting a visit from Thora.

On the other hand, it could be that Normandy Trader was actually unloading, and we are waiting for the cargo to be taken away.

First stop was at the Railway Station. My old fogey’s railcard is on the verge of expiring so I need a new one. And it’s a good job that I went early because the lady in front of me looked as if she wanted to be there for the Duration.

So armed with my new railcard, I headed off (on foot, not on the train) to LIDL.

We’ve talked in the past about recycling and waste here in Granville, and I was lucky enough to see one of the waste lorries emptying one of the town’s waste containers in the avenue des Matignon.

I hope that they will be emptying the paper bin near me so that I can dispose of some more of the European Paper Mountain.

Although I didn’t buy anything special in LIDL, I did treat myself to a bag of brazil nuts. Two people – one of whom is a doctor and the other one is a patient – have told me now that brazil nuts contain plenty of vital vitamins and minerals, one of which is selenium, a deficiency of which is said by some to be one of the possible causes of chronic fatigue syndrome.

Back here, I did a little (only a little) tidying up and then did the filing of all of the mail that had built up while I was away. And there was a lot of it too.

There were four letters that needed my attention and so after lunch I set down to work. One of the letters was unnecessary because over lunch I had received a mail to say that the issue was resolved, but I managed the other three without any problem.

And then, I … errr … crashed out on the chair for 20 minutes.

On recovering, I headed off back into town and the Post office and dispatched the three letters. That’s another task out of the way. We’ll have to see what comes of those.

on the way back, I took a little sight-seeing diversion to push my daily fitness target up to 100%.

Round by the harbour now we have a lorry just pulling in. So is he going to be delivering more supplies for the next freighter, or is he going to be taking away the supplies that are already here?

Watch this space.

At the moment we are experiencing one of the lowest tides of the year, and for a town that already has the highest tidal range in Europe, a low tide is pretty exceptional.

With all of the fruits de mer around here, the peche à pied or fishing on foot by scavenging in the rock pools and the sand for oysters and mussels is very popular.

The situation basically (it’s much more complicated than this in fact, but this will give you a basic idea) is that the accessible fishing rights between the high tide and the low tide are leased out to people and companies and are thus private.

But the fishing rights for the beach beyond the low tide limits aren’t leased out because they aren’t usually accessible. They are public access fishing areas.

So when we have exceptionally low tides, about a dozen or so times a year, everyone floods out to the public access areas to try their luck.

They are still quite busy at the Chantier Navale.

It seems that Armor has cleared off, but Charles_Marie and la Granvillaise are still here.

We have a new boat too. I’m not sure if she’s one of the ferries for the Ile de Chausey, or whether in fact she’s something else.

I Shall have to go out and check at some point.

Back here I attacked the mountain of photos that have built up while I was away – fighting hard the temptation to go and lie down for half an hour. But I survived up until teatime. Pasta and a burger, followed by chocolate cake and soya dessert.

This evening it was dark when I went out for a walk, and spent much of the time out there watching a trawler coming out of the English Channel towards the harbour.

I took a pile of photos of it at different speeds, apertures and ISO settings and you can compare them all by looking at them here and also below.

But I’ve done 118% of my daily activity today, which is good news. I’ve been at or over 100% for almost every day since last Thursday. It’s hardly a surprise that I’m feeling the pressure just now.

So on that note, I’m going to bed. And it’s not even 21:45 yet. I’ve had a hard day.

night trawler baie de mont st michel granville manche normandy france

night trawler tying up port de granville harbour manche normandy france

Wednesday 13th March 2019 – TODAY I HAVE WRITTEN …

… the largest cheque that I have ever written in my life – and ever likely too as well.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall my endless battles with the Royal Bank of Scotland – the worst bank in the world – and over the last couple of weeks I’ve finally had enough.

And with the impending disaster that is Brexit looming around the corner, I’ve liquidated all of my savings in the UK, consolidated it all into one account, and apart from a realistic working capital, I’ve shipped the rest elsewhere.

The next exciting moment will be when the Royal Bank of Scotland receives the cheque from the payee – what will they do then? This will be bound to be exciting. I don’t expect it to be straightforward at all and we might be in for a load of fun.

But I’m just appalled at the lengths to which I have to go in order to knock some sense into those people.

Having gone to bed at something like early last night, I was awake again at 04:35. and I was up and about at a reasonable time after the alarms had gone off.

we had the usual morning procedures of medicine and breakfast, and then I attacked the tidying-up.

All of the papers have no been filed, and because the bank statements folder was overflowing, I’ve rearranged all of that and filed elsewhere the statements for the later years.

And then I had to attack the bank.

I tried the on-line banking service and much to my surprise (and probably yours too) it went with only a minor hitch that was soon resolved. So I ended up wiht all of my dosh exactly where I wanted it.

And then I had to do another pile of on-line paperwork. That ended up with my having to write a letter. That meant nipping out to Caliburn to pick up the cheque book and to see the spectacle of the postwoman’s bike blown over in the gale and all of her letters disappearing off down the street.

All of this took me up to lunchtime, and the intention was that after lunch I would take the letter down to town. But I ended up … errr … curled up on my chair for 20 minutes.

That meant that I had missed to post collection, but I braved the tempest and went down to the Post Office nevertheless. Once it’s gone, it’s gone.

Down at the quayside though, I noticed a pile of goods lined up where Thora and Normandy Trader normally tie up.

This will probably mean that one or other of them will be coming into the harbour pretty soon to pick them up and take them over to Jersey.

Back here, I attacked the photo database for September in the High Arctic and did another 100 or so photos, with a break to have a shower and a clean-up.

Tea was next, and I made my shepherd’s pie. Tofu, onions, garlic, herbs and flageolet beans with a mashed potato topping. Plenty of it too, and there are five portions left that have gone into the freezer

out again later for my evening walk, despite the wind.

And here’s something that I haven’t noticed before.

At the side of the lighthouse is some kind of pylon, and tonight it’s showing two red lights. I’ve no idea why that might be, so I’ll have to ask someone next time I see anyone official loitering around in the vicinity.

Round the corner and out of the wind for a while, I could see the tidal harbour.

There were several trawlers in there unloading their catch. Three of them had finished and it looks as if they are lined up waiting for the gates to the inner harbour to open so that they can go in.

The pedestrian lights are showing green, and the sailing light is red, so the gates are clearly closed right now.

Further on round the corner I noticed that the Boulevard vaufleury is closed to traffic.

It seems that the wall on the corner of the next street down – the rue Mengnonette – is about to fall down and they don’t want anyone to be in the vicinity.

On that note, I came back here and did a little more tidying up.

But now, I’m off to bed. I’m hitting the road tomorrow so I need a decent sleep.

Tuesday 12th March 2019 – WHO’S BEEN A …

… busy boy then today?

But first, let me say that over the whole of the day I’ve put my feet outside the door for just about 10 metres today. There’s a howling gale going on outside with torrential rain to boot, and I’ve no intention whatever of suffering outt here unless I absolutely have to;

But back to events in here.

The alarms went off at usual and much to my surprise, I was up and about at 06:45.

Plenty of time to go on a little wander during the night too. I was wandering around somewhere that could easily have been Altrincham. There was some kind of walled yard with a creaky wooden gate, so I glanced in and I saw what I thought was an old twin-cylinder Honda motorbike. So I went in. It was in fact a small single-cylinder Honda with a large chain sprocket. I spoke to the owner and joked that I thought that it might have been an old CB450 “black bomber”. There were several old mtorbikes in this yard, so we had quite a chat about them, so he took me inside to the shed where there was a 200c Triumph single, a BSA250cc single and a couple of other old British motorbikes. And I was wondering which one of these I could fit into the back of Caliburn

The medication and breakfast were thus quite early, and then I settled down to work.

The first job was to attack the photos. I did an hour or so, and then carried on after tea. So that’s another couple of hundred dome for the month of September.

But in between, I attacked the European Paper Mountain and all of that is now done. The shredder didn’t make it right to the end though. It gave up with about a dozen papers to go and not even dismantling it to clean it seems to have worked. In the end I had to tear up the rest of the papers by hand.

Next step was to go through all of the loose papers that I had brought with me. I’ve sorted right the way through those, added a lot to the next load of shredding, sorted and filed those for 2016,17,18 and 19, and put the earlier years ready for filing in a spare binder in due course.

Finally, I went through all of the unopened post that had accumulated down on the farm when I wasn’t there. That’s all opened, sorted, some of it binned and the rest of it filed away.

And then we had a giant clean-up of the floor with a brush to sweep up all of the paper bits.

As well as all of that, I also had to make a telephone call to the Isle of man to sort something out, and that involve writing a couple of e-mails. All in all, about an hour was spent on that.

And I’ve rearranged things in the kitchen too, to make more space and to be better-organised. I shan’t know myself at this rate.

This all took me up to tea time, when I made myself a vegan burger with potatoes and veg, followed by chocolate cake and coconut-flavoured chocolate cake. And as I expected, it was delicious.

If that isn’t enough, after tea I fried some onios and garlic, added the remaining packet of tofu and herbs, fried it for a while and then bunged it all in the slow cooker. Even as we speak, it’s simmering away.

That’s for the shepherd’s pie that I will make tomorrow.

So even though it’s not yet 22:00, I’m going to go to bed. I’ve had a very busy day as you can see and I’m exhausted.

A good sleep will do me good, I reckon.

Sunday 10th March 2019 – HAPPY BIRTHDAY …

… to me again!

This afternoon I was invited out for a birthday treat by Liz and Terry, so I went hot-foot out to Roncey.

We had a really good chat about this and that, Terry showed me the bathroom that he’s been building (and it really is nice too) and then we had the pièce de resistance – which is not, as you might be forgiven for thinking, a French virgin.

Liz had cooked a giant cornish pasty full of a vegetable stuffing based on chick peas, lentils, onions, garlic and mustard. Together with roast vegetables, green mange-tout peas and a tomato sauce, it was absolutely delicious and I’ll have to try this at home.

Pudding was a kind-of raspberry mousse on a speculoos base, and that was just as nice.

And then Liz gave me a birthday present, and you’ll have to wait until tomorrow to see what it is.

Last night, as you will know, I went to bed fairly early. But there’s no point in going to bed early if you end up wide awake at 04:11, is there?

The water heater switched off at 06:25 as usual (off-peak electricity ends at 06:30) – I heard that – but I must have gone to sleep at some point afterwards because I remember waking up at 08:25.

08:45 was when I hauled myself out of bed.

We had the usual morning routine, and then I spent most of the morning making a start on classifying the photos of September 2018.

Only 1730 of them from when I was in the High Arctic and I reckon that I’ve done about 90 of them. It’s not just a case of classifying them but I need to work out where I was at the time and to make brief notes of some of them where necessary.

As you can see this is going to be a very long job. Especially as I’m stuck because I can’t remember the name of the derelict US Air Force base where we inspected the military installations and saw the Greenland ice cap.

Even half an hour’s searching on the internet couldn’t come up with the name because it’s formerly a restricted site so it would never have been published back in the old days.

After lunch I carried on for a while and then headed off to Roncey.

And on the way, I ground to a halt because something caught my eye. It’s a case of “get thee behind me, Satan” because there’s a nice field with a long tree-lined drive that leads to a stately home, and this field has been divided into building plots that are up for sale.

A nice little two-bedroomed bungalow on one of these would be beautiful, but really given my state of health and my life expectancy, it would be a total folly.

I shall have to put that idea out of my head. And pretty quickly too!

Thursday 7th March 2019 – WE’RE IN THE …

… grip of another major storm here.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that the weather station by the lighthouse here recorded one of the strongest blasts of wind ever registered in France.

And while it’s not anything like that windy (it’s quite easy to move about) there must be a really strong wind blowing somewhere out to sea

Standing on the old medieval walls overlooking the Plat Gousset, it was a really impressive sight watching the waves go smashing over the sea wall and crashing down on the promenade over there.

The power and force that there must be in the sea could power the whole of the world many times over if it were properly harnessed, that’s for sure.

Just for a change I managed to sleep right the way through until the alarms went off. Although I wasn’t in too much of a hurry to leave the bed.

I’d been on a travel too during the night. Something to do with some kind of outrageous posting made to a group of which I am a member in a French Social network. It unravelled itself into a scenario where I hd various packets of flour and so on and some olives and I was having to put them into different jars, and becoming confused to such an extent that I ended up with the olives in the flour and wondering how I could separate them.

After the medication and breakfast I had a good shower, a clean-up and a change of clothes, and then headed off to town.

I didn’t actually get too far though.

Right outside the door the recycling lorry had just finished emptying one of the containers.

I loitered for a while to see if if was going to empty another container, but in the end I had to clear off.

On the city walls in the rue des Juifs, I had a look down into the harbour.

I thought that I detected some lights down there last night but I wasn’t sure, but sure enough, it looks as if Thora came in on the evening tide yesterday.

It was pretty quiet down there though today. They didn’t seem to be doing much working.

Through the town and up the rue Couraye, I headed for the station to pick up my tickets for Leuven next week.

ON the square outside the station though there’s another small fairground. I remembered this from last year as soon as I saw it.

A shame though that I hadn’t remembered it on Tuesday evening when I was around the town at night taking photographs.

At LIDL I spent €16:00, about half of which was spent on batteries. They are having another sale of AA and AAA batteries and I’m running low on them. Most of the ones here date from about 12 years ago when I had the old Pentax K100D and they are not performing as they should.

Seeing as I put coriander in my apple pie the other day, I looked around and found some cinnamon (and also some ground nutmeg) and so I’ve added them to the shopping basket ready for the next round of cooking. I fancy an apple crumble next.

On the way home, I went down the rue Sainte Genevieve.

There’s another house-building project going on down there and I’ve been keeping my eye on that over the last few months.

They aren’t far off finishing it now. A coat of rendering will make it look so much better.

Back here, I unpacked the shopping and put it away. Not very often that I feel like doing that straight away.

There were a few things that needed doing today. Firstly, to change the hit counter over on the web pages that I did yesterday. I’d put the wrong one on there.

And then there was the question of working back over the blog entries for the last few days and adding some of the photos.

In between all of this, there was lunch to arrange. And as I had forgotten to defrost the hummus in the freezer I ended up eating more cheese from the supplies. I’ll have to buy some more in Leuven.

Outside this afternoon, the wind had increased in velocity from this morning.

Not unpleasantly so, but there was an impressive sea building up with loads of whitecaps.

“Building up quite nicely for this evening” I mused. And I was right too, as you have seen.

Anyway, I carried on with my walk around the headland, and paused for a moment to see what was going on down in the chantier navale

Armor is still there, with her hull still in aluminium but the deck superstructure looks as if it’s been painted white now.

And La Granvillaise is stil there too, with a couple of the volunteers working on her. That’s going to be a big job, preparing her for the coming tourist season.

Further on round the headland, and over there down in the port Thora is still at her station alongside the quay.

She seems to have been loaded with some stuff since I saw her earlier this morning so I’ll be expecting her to move out at high tide later on this evening when the harbour gates open.

Back here I had a couple of mugs of hot chocolate to warm me up and then did a whole pile of shredding.

One huge load has gone out to the container and there’s a half-a-load now waiting, but the shredder seems not to be coping with the volume of work that I’m expecting it to do.

I’ve had to dismantle … “disPERSONtle” – ed …it a couple of times to clean out a paper jam.

But by about 17:00 I’d have enough and I was in bed asleep for a good 90 minutes, which was a complete surprise following the amount of sleep that i’d had.

Tea was a slice of the leek and tofu pie from a few weeks ago. And it really was delicious, with potatoes, vegetables and gravy. Followed by apple pie and the coconut-flavoured soya dessert stuff.

This evening, I was alone again on my walk around the walls. No-one else seems to be keen to go for a post-prandial somnambulation.

I stayed of a good 15 minutes watching the storm break on the Plat Gousset and took a pile of photos.

And then I came back and edited all of them.

On the way back though, I had a look over into the harbour.

There was a trawler up by the fish processing plant, busily unloading its catch.

And Thora was still in port too. It looks as if she’s going to be in here for a while then. There must be something going on.

So now, I’m off to bed, always assuming that I can go to sleep after my little repose earlier.

Tomorrow, now that I’m up-to-date, I can start back into my programme of revision of October’s blog entries and see where that takes me.

lifeboat memorial storm baie de mont st michel granville manche normandy france

night storm waves pointe du roc granville manche normandy france

Saturday 2nd March 2019 – IT’S “CARNAVAL”!!!

And I was actually out there for part of the time joining in the festivities, even though I didn’t feel all that much like it.

It all started to go wrong even while I was still in bed.

It wasn’t as early as I would have liked – more like midnight in fact. And when the alarm went off at 06:00 (and 06:10, and 06:20) I didn’t actually haul myself out straight away.

Plenty of time though to go on a voyage, and It was certainly a weird one last night. Something like a sketch from “The Men From The Ministry” where someone (and it might even have been me but I doubt it) was trying to shave, but here seemed to be no soap so I’ve no idea what was being used and the blade was so blunt that it was merely smearing it around on the face. It wasn’t until much later that the realisation dawned that, sitting there half-shaven and in a mess, it might have been better to have simply used a new razor with a decent blade. And this ended up somehow with two people, the poor shaver and his sidekick, sitting in a car in the driveway of a country house doing everything wrong, and I’ve no idea why.

07:00 when I finally crawled out of bed and attacked the medication. And later on, we had breakfast of course.

There was an hour or so while I had a bash at the photo database, and then there was work to do.

I’d forgotten that I’d filled up a 32GB memory card on the Nikon 1 while I was away in Canada in September. I hadn’t saved the files and the card that’s in there now id filling up.

When I say “saved” the files, everything is saved onto the laptop and then on an external hard drive. But before I reformat the memory cards, I copy the images onto DVDs as an extra back-up.

These hadn’t been backed up as yet onto DVD so I spent a couple of hours copying them all onto a pile of DVDs, labelling and saving them. And then, of course, formatting the memory card.

I’m running out of space too in the hard-storage bit so I had to shuffle all of the disks around to make enough space in a storage container.

I had a quick lunch, and the went outside to head into town.

On foot of course because we are hemmed in right now. Just look at all of these caravanettes parked up on the public car park just outside our apartment building.

You can’t move for the blasted things and the blasted grockles that drive the blasted things.

And they are everywhere. Every last square inch of space has a caravanette parked on it.

Even our old friend the ancient CF Bedford isn’t safe. A couple of caravanettes have crammed themselves in around it.

And if you look across the port, you’ll see a few dozens more scattered around all over the place.

Anyway, I struggled up the road nevertheless to see what was going on

Including the unedifying spectacle of watching some unkempt middle-aged man struggling to keep control of three large dogs that were jumping up and down on a girl of about 7, and getting all upset when I told him that he ought to keep his blasted dogs under flaming control.

We almost had an “incident” there.

So I took up my place half-way up the rue Couraye and whatched the children’s parade come down.

It seemed to be strangely quiet this year – not even half the floats and parades that I remember from last year.

Tomorrow and Tuesday are the big days of the carnaval of course but even so …

After the parade, I went for a walk down town into the place Charles de Gaulle to see what was happening there.

Not all that much either compared to last year. I seem to recall that it was heaving in there back then.

But at least it gave me an opportunity to study some of the costumes of the paraders, and I was suitably impressed with some of them.

So while you admire a few more photos of the people and paraders, I climbed back up the hill for home.

And for some strange reason it was a long, weary climb back up here.

I could tell that I was not feeling myself right now yet again, and that’s no good.

Back here, I spent most of the time fending off waves of fatigue until near tea-time.

Two taco rolls with the last of the stuffing, with pasta and vegetables. Followed by one of these soya almond desserts.

The plan was then to go out and inspect the night-time carnaval activities, but a couple of things delayed me.

Firstly, I wasn’t feeling as well as I ought to have been. A kind of general fatigue and tiredness I suppose – the after-effects of my illness.

Secondly, I suddenly went freezing cold.The temperature in here is reasonably warm, but it was just how I was feeling I reckon.

Thirdly, a football match appeared on the internet. Barry Town v Cambrian and Clydach from Tonypandy, in the Welsh Cup.

I didn’t have the strength to plug in the laptop to the big TV in the living room.

Instead, I curled up on the chair and watched it on the big computer.

For a while anyway. I was just getting colder and colder so I ended up in bed under the covers watching it from there.

And then Rosemary rang me up, so I was chatting to her down the bed while watching the football.

Who says men can’t multitask?

We were chatting for almost all of the second half of the game and then my bad throat gave out so I had to hang up.

As for the football, Barry Town were clearly the better side (which is no surprise seeing as they are one division up) and they soon went into the lead.

But then they missed half a dozen easy tap-ins. One after the other was miskicked or sailed over the bar from three feet out.

And I remember thinking that they’ll pay for these misses.

Which they did, because all of a sudden they found themselves 2-1 down – two goals out of nothing had caught them cold.

But class will out and in the end they scored two goals later in the game to make the score look better than it ought to have done at one time.

Fitness and perseverence told in the end, for Cambrian and Clydach were puffing and blowing at the end.

So having missed the fair, I’m off to bed. Fatigue, headache and all.

I’m definitely not so good right now, but a good lie-in tonight and tomorrow might make me feel better.

At least I hope so. It’s the big parade tomorrow.

And if you want to see the rest of the photos of the carnaval for today, you need to go to THIS LINK

Friday 1st March 2019 – DYDD GWYL DDEWI HAPUS …

… to everyone.

And haven’t I had a big surprise today.

Remember when I went into the Mairie the other day to have a discussion with the Maire and ended up with the secretary?

Well, the secretary phoned me back today. Apparently the Maire has taken on board my remarks, made a few enquiries and come back to me.

I wasn’t expecting that, that’s for sure.

It’s not advanced things very much, as I didn’t expect that it would, but having someone like the Maire on your side is a comfort in these difficult times.

And difficult times they are.

Being completely wound up last night as I was, I was still up working at 02:00, totally unable to sleep. More like 02:30 when I went to bed,. And as for sleep, well, there wasn’t very much of that. I was tossing and turning all night.

There was enough time to go off on a travel. I was in Greece in some kind of primitive café helping with moral support (although what support I could ever give anyone would be considered as being moral) some girl who was trying to run it despite all of the opposition and difficulties that her family – the nominal owners – were putting in her path. The strange thing was that when the alarms went off, I totally ignored them and stayed in bed. And although I was by now awake, the journey carried on. And carried on for miles too from exactly the same place where I awoke. Not something that happens every day.

By 09:25 I was ready to awaken, and straight into controversy yet again where a couple of self-important auto-sycophants were bragging about how they had “briefed” a politician and “won a famous victory for UK citizens in Europe” by getting him to look at at. Completely oblivious of the fact that the EU had thrown out this idea weeks ago.

And so this totally shameless display of self-serving egocentricity caused me to explode yet again. And even deeper into the abyss.

I went for a very late breakfast after that. and then came back to start on the blog and the text database.

But not for long, because the Mairie interrupted me.

And then, almost immediately, another phone call from someone else who is on my list of things to do.

This started me off on a wave of work. From somewhere, I summoned up a piece of energy so went on a tidy-up in the bedroom.

Bank statements are fairly tidy now and I found a couple of other papers. And so I then sat down, made a few more phone calls, sent out some e-mails and wrote a letter too.

It may sound not much, but it certainly made an impression on the stuff in here.

My lunch was a light one, and that made me feel a little better.

I did manage to do some work on the photos and the database. Not a lot, but I’m back as far as 18th October 2018. It’s going a little quicker than I was expecting.

Later on in the afternoon I went for my afternoon walk.

I went around the headland at the Pointe du Roc through the crowds and hordes of tourists up there

And there was a beautiful view across the harbour right over to the coast on the far side by the Cale de Hacqueville.

There were quite a few people at the Chantier Navale, loitering around that big wooden boat that I mentioned last time, so I went over for a chat.

The boat that is on there is in fact La Granvillaise – a yacht that we have seen on many occasions around the harbour.

She’s been taken out of the water for a complete refit and overhaul by the volunteers, and she’s going to be there for a while.

While I was down there at the Chantier Navale, I went over to have a look at Armor – the ship from the diving place down the Brittany coast.

They’ve stripped off most of the old paint, and are currently giving it a good go over in white primer, ready presumably for its top coat.

They have put a lot of work into it. It will look good when it’s finished.

My route into town took me past the place Charles de Gaulle.

Here I could admire the stage that they had erected the other day. Events will be getting under way tonight, although I won’t be down there.

Instead, I went to the Post Office and sent off the letter that I had written. It won’t go until Monday afternoon but it needs to be on its way.

Back up the hill, I stopped to watch one of the ferries from the Ile de Chausey coming into port.

And there was a weird commotion going on behind me.

Some woman pulled up in her car, shouted to a passer-by “watch my vehicle” and ran off down the road shouting “Chantal” or something.

Everyone was standing around there shaking their heads.

Back here, I had a pleasant surprise. A friend of mine in the UK has sent me a little present for my birthday to help me along my way. That was just so very thoughtful of him and I’m overwhelmed.

Tea was a small stuffed pepper with a little rice followed by a pot of soya dessert and a banana.

And then football. The Welsh Cup, Caernarfon Town v Connah’s Quay Nomads.

Connah’s Quay were strangely subdued, michael Wilde was at walking pace and Callum Saunders was somewhere else in his mind, I think.

But Caernarfon seem to have gone off the boil too – a shadow of the impressive hard-working side of earlier in the season.

The Nomads won 2-1, but it was a very long game.

So it’s bedtime now.

I’m feeling a little better, and maybe a decent sleep might cheer me up again.

It’s Carnaval tomorrow.

And I seem to have lost one of the camera gloves that my friend Liz bought me for my birthday of 2008. I’m dismayed.

coastline granville manche normandy france

chateau de la crete granville manche normandy france

harbour light st pair sur mer granville manche normandy france

chantier navale port de granville harbour manche normandy franc

Sunday 10th February 2019 – AS YOU MIGHT …

… have expected, going to bed really early meant that I was awake early too. At 04:35 as it happened, and that’s ridiculous really for a Sunday.

I was still awake at 06:00 too because I remember noticing the time. But I must have gone back off to sleep again because I finally awoke at 07:45.

Mind you, at some time or other I had managed to go off on a nocturnal ramble. I was at a school last night, not any of my old ones but a boarding school. there were a couple of boys who were the domineering type whom no-one particularly liked. They were on the verge of committing an enormous indiscretion by misunderstanding something important, and so I scooted off to the dormitory to awaken a couple of boys who I thought would love to see this. So they came downstairs just in time to see these other boys come in, but they seemed to take ages to reach the whole point of this matter and I could see that interest amongst the spectators was slowly starting to drop off.

07:45 I awoke, but it was more like 08:30 that I arose. Still not good enough for a Sunday and I’m pretty dismayed by it all. I seem to be going to pot these days.

After breakfast, I started to attack the blog and the photos.

As for the photos, it’s been tough work today as I’ve reached all of the 100-odd photos that I took in Koln. And I need to research the internet to find out where I was when I took them, and that’s not easy.

But as for the blog, I had a good-ish day with that and I’ve reached as far back as 9th January.

Another thing that I did was to scan a pile of documents and print out copies. These are important documents like birth certificates, marriage certificates and the like. Whenever I receive an official document like that, I always scan it and keep a copy as a graphic image. If necessary, I can always print out a copy and I’ve done that on several occasions, like when I lost my driving licence and lost my passport.

Seeing as it was Sunday, I also spent some time doing nothing at all except vegetating. As I have said before … “and on many occasions too” – ed … everyone should have a day where they can do nothing at all and not feel guilty about it.

That hummus has matured nicely and it almost took my head off. It’s no wonder that I don’t have many friends if I can churn out stuff like that.

I went out for my afternoon walk. The rainstorm of the morning had stopped and the sun had appeared, although the wind was quite wicked.

It was blowing the waves all along the beach and there were some impressive whitecaps out there.

Just the kind of day to be out there on a small boat, I reckon.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that they are building a new house on the rue du Nord overlooking the walls and the sea.

Every now and again I like to see where they have reached with the work. They seem to have put a spurt on just now because they have actually started to do the roofing.

The heeavy beams and the like are in position. I don’t suppose that it will be long before they start the tiling.

There were quite a few people out there on the beach today at the Plat Gousset enjoying the sunshine, despite the wind.

And I don’t remember seeing this building before, and I was wandering what it might be. It’s made of concrete, and there seems to be some kind of encased concrete pipework leading from it.

I shall have to go down there one day for a closer look.

Round the corner and in the Baie de Mont St Michel the storm really was raging.

Although the tide was miles out, we have the concrete pylon with the navigating light for the entrance to the harbour, and that was receiving quite a considerable battering.

As an aside, when the tide is right in, the water level is above the top red band. We have the highest tides in Europe here.

Tea was a pizza of course. And while that was cooking, I peeled some of the mound of carrots that I had bought yesterday, sliced and par-boiled them and now they are in the freezer.

I hate shop-frozen carrots. For some reason they seem to taste all rubbery.

This evening was another nice evening. Really windy but the sky was perfectly clear.

There was only a small crescent moon but it was really bright. And the street lights of Cancale stood out really clearly over there. That’s 18 miles away of course, as I have said before … “and on many occasions too” – ed.

We also have the street lights of St Malo reflected off the clouds over there.

One thing about the night was that it was really clear. And the moon wasn’t too bright as to be overwhelming.

And so I reckoned that I would have a try at photographing some of the stars and see how they came out.

It’s not particularly good, but it’s hand-held in the wind on a long exposure. It’s surprising that it’s even managed to do anything at all.

So back here now, I’m going to go to bed. It’s not as early as I would like but it can’t be helped.

Quite surprisingly, I’ve not crashed out today. And it certainly comes to some kind of pretty pass that I feel that I ought to mention it.

beach plat gousset granville manche normandy france

storm port de granville harbour manche normandy france

moonlight baie de mont st michel granville manche normandy france

night jullouville baie de mont st michel granville manche normandy france

night roundabout rue du cap lihou granville manche normandy france

Friday 8th February 2019 – I HAD A MESSAGE …

… today on the telephone. “Your parcel will be delivered on 11th February”.

Now I don’t have a delivery planned or an order outstanding so I didn’t have a clue what it might be. I suspected that it might be some kind of scam.

But then I had another idea.

I had a look at the British Government’s Public Service website. And sure enough – there on my private page is a little note “Passport Application status – ‘issued'”.

That was quick – a lot less than the 6-week time limit that is advertised. That can only be good news. So after Monday, I can push on with a project that has been sitting on the back burner for several weeks.

In view of my recent difficulties I decided last night to go to bed somewhat earlier than of late and even not set an alarm for the morning to give me an opportunity to sort myself out. And so waking up at 06:35 wasn’t really quite what I had in mind.

That’s not the best of it either. I was awake at least three times during the night – once as early as 01:20. So you can see that I’m becoming rather fed up of this.

Three different travels during the night too. The first one involved some woman who had been charged to make a meal – possibly a pie – for some kind of meeting. But as time passed on, it became clearer and clearer to everyone that she was an alcoholic and as time passed on she became less and less coherent until she ended up sitting there in an alcoholic stupor.
The second part of the night’s activities involve me being in Macon, where I spent a summer once back in my youth. I was travelling somewhere which involved passing by the big airport at Lyon and so it involved taking the TGV but although we were certainly on the rails (which will come as a mjor surprise to regular readers of this rubbish) we were actually on board a coach.
Thirdly, I don’t remember very much about this but it involved some woman and there was some passing reference to her connection with Shirley Temple – people were comparing her with that actress for some reason, although presumably not with Graham Green’s review.

After breakfast I pushed on with the photo text database. What with one thing or another that took me right up until midday. And I’m now well back into December’s photos. It’ll keep me out of mischief for quite some time.

There was an interruption at Midday though. Rosemary rang me up for a chat and we were on the phone putting the world to rights for a good hour and a half. Not that our ideas will ever be accepted by anyone – they are far too serious and sensible.

After lunch, I cracked on with updating some of the blog entries. I’m now back as far as 23rd January and there will be more done over the weekend if I’m not interrupted by other events.

Talking of interruptions, I went out for my afternoon walk.

You can see what the weather was like simply by comparing this photo here with the photo taken from the same spot yesterday.

There was a howling gale, a spattering of rain and it was freezing cold. Not the right kind of day to be out at all but I have to keep on keeping on, as Bob Dylan famously said.

One thing that occurred to me was that while I’ve been on my travels I haven’t taken a photograph of the lighthouse down the road just recently.

You can also see one of the bunkers of the Atlantic Wall to the right of the lighthouse, and in the foreground is one of the emplacements for the large naval guns that were positioned here.

You might also be able to see a cannon of some description immediately to the right of the lighthouse. there are several all dotted about, all of them damaged

A little further around the Pointe du Roc there was a good vies of the tidal harbour.

The tide was right out and all of the boats were aground on the mud bank.

St Pair-sur-Mer is in the background shrouded in the mist, and on the right is the ship repairer’s.

As for the objects in the foreground, I’m not sure what they might be. I reckon that they are lobster traps whereas others think that they might be dredging buckets.

Back here I carried on with my work – until about 17:30 when, overwhelmed with fatigue, I crawled into bed for an hour or so.

And then I was off on my travels. I was doing something and Rosemary was there. I had a cat, a black one but one that had the same shape as my grey one, and Rosemary was trying to pick it up. I ended up on a rafter going across the ceiling and the cat could only climb so far after me, so she took a flying leap – and missed, falling to the floor. But she found something else – a piece of wood – to climb up and come to join me on my rafter.

There were a couple of sorry-looking potatoes left over in the kitchen so for tea I made a potato and lentil curry. Totally delicious it was too.

Outside later this evening, the wind wasn’t all that strong but the sea was probably the best that I have ever seen.

The waves were totally astonishing – roaring up over the sea wall at the Plat Gousset and soaking just about everyone and everything down there.

It seemed like hours, but it was only about five minutes that I was standing there watching them. It was quite hypnotic.

On the way back, I bumped into someone who actually said “bonsoir”, and also Minette who had a little stroke.

But now I’m going to go to bed. have a nice early night. Shopping tomorrow and I need to be on form. Not that I feel much like it.

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Wednesday 6th February 2019 – I’M WET

And that comes as no surprise to anyone who knows me.

When I went out for my afternoon walk, it was teeming down with rain. You can see in this photo just how wet it was today.

Really dreadful and in the end I gave it up as a bad job and curtailed my little perambulation

It didn’t stop me going around to the wall overlooking the harbour to see what was going on.

And down there this afternoon is Normandy Trader who has come in from Jersey for her usual freight run.

There wasn’t anyone around down there and there was no loading going on, but she looks pretty well loaded up to me.

And as we know, Neptune was in here yesterday and departed with a big load of gravel.

But it looks as if she’ll be back pretty soon because they are still bringing in the loads of gravel. And piling them up by the conveyor too rather than putting them in the gravel bins.

So it’s all systems go down there today despite the weather.

That’s not all either. Because this evening while I was out on my perambulations I stepped in a puddle – not quite up to my middle like Doctor Foster, but pretty well near enough.

But at least it didn’t stop me from my wanderings. Down at the harbour a trawler had just come in and all of the crew together with a few landlubbers were busy tidying it up.

Maybe it’s already been unloaded round by the fish processing plant.

Last night I had another decent night’s sleep. So much so that I had a really good nocturnal ramble. I was out in a coach last night, and not for work either but for my own purposes. And of course I had a flat tyre. I had to change it myself, which is no mean feat, and then I needed a replacement tyre. Someone told me of a place out on the Middlewich Road (I was in Sandbach at the time) but a tyre would cost me the best part of £1,000. That wasn’t the news that I was expecting to hear, but it was part of the price of using the coach like this.
And later I was with a group of people waiting to go home after a holiday. We were in a big draughty shed with a couple of benches around the edge. As the coach pulled in, people started to climb aboard but I, and someone else, decided that we would wait until the end. At this moment I started to wonder if I had everythig with me, and looking around, I saw something underneath one of the benches where I was sitting. So I crawled underneath the bench, getting myself all filthy in the process, to find that what I had seen was actually an old beer bottle. So covered in dust and dirt, I went back to the coach to wait to board.

Despite the alarm call I was in no hurry to leave my bed. More like 07:00 in fact. And after breakfast I made a start on adding the photos to some of the previous blog entries.

I’ve done as far back as Saturday, and I’ll be slowly uploading them back again as time goes on.

Another task was to keep on with my searchable text index. I’ve almost finished January and then I’ll just roll on backwards until it’s finished, whenever that might be.

After lunch I carried on, with a little interruption for my walk in the wet.

And I’ve also tried something else that’s new. I’ve been moaning and complaining about the time it takes me to buy a ticket for Leuven when I arrive in Brussels and how I nearly miss my train, so I researched online and found that I can make a booking and download the tickets (thanks to the printer). And it saves me €0:20 too.

Spend! Spend! Spend!

This afternoon though I couldn’t keep going. I’ve managed sort-of for the last couple of days but today I didn’t. I’d had a couple of dodgy moments and in the end I gave up and went to bed for an hour. I even managed to sleep for some of that time too.

There was some filling left over from last night’s tea so I diced and cooked a couple of potatoes to add to it and made a very quick ad-hoc curry. And it was delicious

I mentioned my little walk later on and then back here I have things to do. Another name from a very dim and distant past has come to the surface following my little exercise of the other day.

This is all getting very interesting.

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night fishing boat unloading port de granville harbour granville manche normandy france

Tuesday 5th February 2019 – THE FIRST THING …

… that I did this morning, after it was light of course, was to go to the sea wall out here and look down into the harbour.

And sure enough, there was Neptune. Tied up to the quayside and judging by the noise coming from down there, they were busy loading it up.

It didn’t take them long either because she sailed out of the harbour on the afternoon tide. She’s now well on her way to Whitstable with 2000 tonnes of gravel.

Just for a change I had a decent night’s sleep. In bed before 23:30 and asleep practically right the way through. And I wasn’t in all that much of a rush to leave my bed.

After breakfast I had a shower and a clean-up, and then went down to have a look at the harbour.

As well as Neptune down there, the fishing boats were coming in on the tide.

There was quite a lot of activity at the fish dock as the unloading was taking place. It’s quite a busy place, what with one thing and another, and that’s why I’m here.

Back here, I remembered something that I had forgotten from the weekend.

I’d cooked a vegan leek-and-tofu pie on Sunday, as regular readers of this rubbish might recall. But I’d left it in the oven.

So out it came, and it looked even better than it did the other day. I’ve cut it into quarters and now it’s in the freezer ready for another day or four.

This morning’s task was to bring up-to-date the photos. And by the time that lunchtime came round, they were all done and finished. Thousands of them, and that’s going to take some organising.

After lunch, I made a start on the organising. If I don’t start, I won’t ever finish and that’s for sure.

What I’m doing for now is preparing an indexed text file, sticking the photos in month by month with the *alt* tags displayed for indexing purposes.

It’s even more important because I’ve had yet another request for a photo. That’s three or four already this year and while I won’t ever become rich, the photos won’t go anywhere if I don’t put them on line.

Outisde this afternoon, the tide was quite a way out.

There were several people out there today, including a couple of people hunting for shellfish in the rock pools, which made me think that the tide was going out.

Had the tide been out for a while, the seabirds would have had the shellfish. The roads and pavements are littered with fragments of shells where the seabirds have dropped them from a great height to break them open.

Going around the headland, the fishing boats were there, presumably waiting for the tide to come in.

One of them, the big blue and white one, was clearly fed up of waiting. it did a U-turn and started to roll out the net again. It might as well earn some money while it’s waiting. I stood and watched it for quite some time.

But you see the marker light just there. At high tide, the water is up almost to the top of the column.

Back here, I had a coffee and cake and a play on the guitar, and then attacked the photo collection again. I had a little 5 minutes … errr … relax as well.

For tea tonight, I made a stuffed pepper and spicy rice and it was delicious. It set me up nicely for my little lonely walk around the walls.

But here’s a thing.

I’ve been doing a little bit of research on something or other, and I’ve actually found someone who used to live next door (or thereabouts) to me when I was a toddler.

You’ve no idea just how small the world is these days.

Tonight, I’ll have another early night. There’s plenty of things that I need to do tomorrow.

But I’ve set a few things in motion that might bring me some surprising results. But once you take the lid of Pandora’s Box you can’t put it back on.

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Monday 4th February 2019 – HAVING GONE …

… to bed reasonably early last night, I slept right through until the alarm went off this morning, with just a little interruption here and there. Nothing serious.

And on the subject of “nothing serious”, I was off on my travels last night too. And it concerned my old black cat Tuppence. She had an accident to one of her front paws and pulled her claws right out. All rather gruesome.

I didn’t loiter long in bed, and so we had an early-ish start today.

But not for long.

Round about 09:15 I was overwhelmed with fatigue. Not a desperate tiredness but I just couldn’t concentrate. And so I went to bed for an hour. No point in fighting the fatigue because I wouldn’t get anything done anyway.

I did close my eyes for about 10 minutes or so, but that was about it. And by 10:20 I was back up and fighting fit. Well, sort-of anyway.

This morning I was attacking the photos again. I’d taken quite a pile yesterday and they all needed editing and generally sorting-out. And it took me longer than I expected. No idea why.

There was an interruption too. Rosemary rang me up for a chat and we were on the phone for over an hour putting the world to rights. It meant a rather late lunch but never mind. There’s nothing wrong whatever in spending time chatting to friends.

After lunch, the next project was to resurrect the database that I started to make a couple of years ago. But a good search around the computer and I can’t find it anywhere. It mustn’t have survived the transfer over.

And so I started off another one. But for some reason or other I couldn’t make it work as I wanted. I seem to remember having exactly the same issue with the previous one and it took me ages to solve it. And I can’t remember how I did it now. This is going to take me much longer than I thought.

The wind had dropped by the time that I went for my walk. Just blowing at gale-force.

There were a couple of little trawlers out there heading for port, and it was quite amusing fun watching them smashing their way through the waves on their way home.

Many people really don’t appreciate the efforts and the dangers that fishermen go through;

But no sign of Neptune in the harbour though. She’s still offshore somewhere and her latest ETA is 00:00. I won’t be there to see her put in to port at that time of night.

But in the meantime, they are still bringing loads of gravel down from the quarry and dropping it off on the quayside ready for Neptune to take away

Tea was sausages in cheese sauce. Just as delicious as it always is. And followed by the rest of the rice pudding.

There was no-one else about for the evening walk. I was completely on my own. Mind you, the wind had dropped still more and it was now just “strong”.

The Casino at the Place Marechal Foch presented a very interesting photography subject this evening, down there all bathed in blue light. I don’t recall having seen it looking like this before.

So I’ll try to have another early night and a decent sleep tonight. I have things to do tomorrow.

But at least my birth certificate turned up today. It’s destroyed one of my pet theories about my origins, but presented me with several other mysteries.

We shall have to see.

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EPIC HALL

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

Tag Archives: photo

Wednesday 27th March 2019 – I’M ON THE VERGE …

Tuesday 26th March 2019 – I WAS WONDERING …

Monday 25th March 2019 – WHAT A HORRIBLE …

Thursday 21st March 2019 – AS REGULAR READERS …

Wednesday 13th March 2019 – TODAY I HAVE WRITTEN …

Tuesday 12th March 2019 – WHO’S BEEN A …

Sunday 10th March 2019 – HAPPY BIRTHDAY …

Thursday 7th March 2019 – WE’RE IN THE …

Saturday 2nd March 2019 – IT’S “CARNAVAL”!!!

Friday 1st March 2019 – DYDD GWYL DDEWI HAPUS …

Sunday 10th February 2019 – AS YOU MIGHT …

Friday 8th February 2019 – I HAD A MESSAGE …

Wednesday 6th February 2019 – I’M WET

Tuesday 5th February 2019 – THE FIRST THING …

Monday 4th February 2019 – HAVING GONE …

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