Tag Archives: thora

Wednesday 27th February 2019 – DESPITE MY …

… early night I took ages to go off to sleep. And when I did, being wide-awake at 04:45 was not what I actually had in mind.

I did manage to go off again to sleep at some point but much to my, yours, and everyone else’s surprise, I was up and about before the final alarm went off.

There had been time to go off on a voyage too. I’d been out driving in one of my own vans – that might even have been Bill Badger, my old A60 half-ton van. There was something about extracting digital images off kerbstones so I had a little electrical kit that could do that and I was driving up and down the streets doing it. At one point, there on the street corner was a girl called Carolyn (it’s amazing who appears in my travels) whom I knew probably about 35 years ago and who I encountered quite by chance under strange circumstances 10 years later. She was much younger than she was when I knew her, and dressed in a fashion that would have been inappropriate for the house, never mind standing on a street corner. I was having difficulty extracting these images, to which she replied that the electricity was usually turned off at midnight. I explained that it wasn’t midnight as yet and carried on, but with no result. In the end I decided to move on, but I told Carolyn that I’ll drop by later to see if she was still there.
A little later I was in my room – or, rather, not my room in Davenport Avenue. I was wrestling with a couple of different computers (as usual these days) trying to make sure that all of my confidential files and open web pages were just on one computer being run off just one web browser so that I could close down all of my searches and research in a hurry if some unauthorised person came too close.

We had the usual morning procedure of course, followed by a some what later breakfast – a bowl of porridge and some orange juice.

Interrupted by the sound of crowds assembling on the car park of the Foyer des Jeunes Travailleurs. No idea what’s happening there.

And while we’re on the subject of breakfast, that reminds me – apart from a coffee at the football on Saturday night I haven’t had a coffee now since the Tuesday morning that I was in Leuven.

Once I’d done what needed doing, I settled down to work. And haven’t I been a busy boy today?

I’ve amended all of the blog entries all the way back from 13th December 2018 to the 1st November 2018.

Not only that, I’m a long way down the text database for November 2018 too.

When I have finished that, whenever it might be, I’ll be starting on October. So you can see – I’ve hardly been idle.

For lunch, it was yet another beautiful day so I went to sit on my wall.

I was going to say “with my butties” but I forgot to defrost some bread from the freezer.

So in the end I took the little bread left over from the weekend and a packet of crisps that needed eating, and watched the fishing boats unloading at the quayside.

That wasn’t all of the action down there either.

Down there at the bottom end of the commercial harbour is our old friend Thora. She must have come in on the morning tide from Jersey.

Loads of merchandise all around the crane, presumably awaiting loading. But I couldn’t see any of the crew around there at all. Presumably they have all gone off for lunch too.

Over the past week or so I’ve been telling you all that it’s soon to be Carnaval, and I’m going to be locked in up here for the weekend.

But I shan’t be alone.

The public car park outside our premises is being transformed into a mobile home park full of caravanettes as all of the grockels turn up to come and pollute the atmosphere again.

But why should I complain? It’s activities like this out-of-season that keeps the town ticking over for the rest of the year.

And that’s why I’m here.

There was the usual mid-afternoon walk too.

The day really was beautiful and the sea was gorgeous and a nice deep blue colour.

It was one of those days here when it really was a pleasure to be out and about – me in just a sweater (and trousers too of course) in late February.

My little walk took me around the headland of the Pointe du Roc.

At the bungalow round by the lighthouse and the coastguard station, there was a lorry there. This brings back many happy memories of my time in the Auvergne.

No mains drainage there of course, nor here, apparently. The tanker is here busily pumping out the contents of the septic tank.

Presumably to treat its 75mm gun with Dettol.

The air was very calm and still, but there must have been a long rolling sea coming in right across the Atlantic with some terrific force.

You can tell that by the power of the waves as they break on the angle of the sea wall down there.

It’s quite surprising really, comparing the wind speed with the force of the water.

While I was watching the waves, we had another one of our residents returning to the fold.

There must have been a ferry trip out to the Ile de Chausey today, because she turned up back here on the end of her round-trip while I was out there.

I was feeling rather envious, because this would have been a marvellous day to have gone out for a sale, and I suppose that with Carnaval, the tourist season is starting up.

And I missed out the chantier navale today too, didn’t I?

It’s quite busy in there today. We have the yacht in there of course, and Armor halfway through its respray down there.

The modern little fishing boat is interesting too, by my attention is drawn to the big wooden boat of some description in the centre of the photo.

I wonder what that is and what they are doing to it. I shall have to go for an investigation.

We saw yesterday the workers repairing the flashing around the roof windows of the Foyer des Jeunes Travailleurs

It looks as if they might now be finished. They were busy loading up a lorry with all of the left-over building stuff.

Presumably the container and the machine will be leaping aboard too and disappearing off into the sunset some time soon.

I’ll probably find out tomorrow.

When I returned, I got on the ‘phone again.

I tried another tack with the bank, going in through the soft-underbelly. Not for nothing do I have friends. And about 15 minutes later, they discovered a way that might help me out and which will really upset the Worst Bank In The World.

Back to work with the text database, and then a stop for tea.

While I was finding my crisps, I found a pack of tortilla wraps, so I made myself a pile of stuffing with kidney beans and had a couple with some pasta.

I was stuffed too. No pudding or anything, so I’m doing my best to cut down my appetite. It will probably help if I keep on drinking as much liquid as I am right now.

But then I’ll have my water retention issues.

On my evening walk around the walls, I almost flattened a pedestrian skulking in a dark corner with an obviously secret cigarette.

But apart from that, not a soul. No matter how nice and pleasant it was out there.

Well, not quite alone. Minette was sitting on a car bonnet taking the air and enjoying herself. So I gave her a good stroke and came home.

I’m off for an early night now. Although it’s Thursday, I’m going to be doing a good shopping round.

No sense in going out on Saturday. The town will be heaving with tourists, the streets will be blocked and I probably won’t be able to get out at all.

Do it first before it’s too late.

fishing boat coming in to unload port de granville harbour manche normandy france

yacht speedboat granville manche normandy france

Wednesday 20th February 2019 – AFTER YESTERDAY’S …

… difficulties, today was different. I felt much worse.

To my own surprise I managed to haul myself out of bed at some kind of smart-ish time. And I completed my packing by simply stuffing everything into my rucksack (something that will cause me a great deal of anguish and anxiety in the future) and then heading out to the station. I was definitely feeling the strain of everything that had happened.

With having bought my ticket on line, I didn’t have to wait for my ticket and could take my place on the platform. With 15 minutes to wait, I was feeling the strain of standing up by the time that the train pulled in and I wasn’t looking forward to the rest of the trip.

So tired and ill and totally fed-up, I boarded my rather blurred and shaky (because I couldn’t stop my hand shaking) train to Quievrain (the old border crossing to France) and curled up as best as I could as far as Brussels Gare du Midi

45 minutes to wait at Brussels, but I didn’t want to go for a wander around or even go for something to eat. I couldn’t stomach any food even though I hadn’t had enything to eat since yesterday lunchtime.

Luckily I found a seat, even though it was in the cold, draughty waiting area. And there I waited until my train was called.

It was another one of the Reseau 38000 PBA sets that we had today and it was 10 minutes late departing, due to the arrival of the connection from Amsterdam that couples up behind it.

And there was a freezing fog all over the landscape that meant that even with the little leeway in the journey timing, we were unable to make up any of the lost time.

But a 10-minute delay isn’t of any great importance in the normal run of things, but as we have said, things just now aren’t normal.

What made matters worse was that just as I descended onto the platform at the Metro, the train that was waiting there pulled out before I could board. And the one that I eventually clambered aboard was held up for a couple of minutes by a power failure.

Nothing was going to plan.

Just for a change, I used the travelators to move around in Montparnasse. The Gare Montparnasse was moved 30 or 40 years or so ago (I can’t remember exactly when) when the Tour Montparnasse was built.

But they didn’t realign the metro or rebuild the metro stations so you have a very long – almost 1km – walk down in the bowels before you reach the station, and once on the station, the longest walk within any terminal of any railway station anywhere in the world that I have ever visited before you reach your platform.

It’s good for clocking up the fitness miles, but not good enough if you are in a rush or your train is late. Nevertheless, I managed to arrive at my train with 15 minutes to go. It’s a good job that it wasn’t like last time where even running flat out – or as flat out as I can go these days – I only just managed to leap aboard.

First thing that I did on settling down in my comfy seat was to go to sleep. And that was all that I did – occasionally drifting into some kind of semi-consciousness here and there.

By the time I got to Phoe … errr … Granville I was totally wasted.

But there was time to photograph the train – another GEC Alstom Regiolis of course – but with one of the Bombardier X76500 class of automotrices alongside it.

This has oulled in just two minutes earlier from Caen on the new curve off the Caen-Rennes line.

These trains were built specifically to replace a whole generation of earlier multiple-units and to provide a higher capacity on the lines.

We’ve travelled on these before from Riom to Lyon and they are very comfortable

No problem about being exhausted though. There was a bus in just 15 minutes time and so in yet another change to the habits of a lifetime, I waited for it and had a ride back home.

Past the quay where Thora was tied up, but I didn’t take much notice.

It was cold in here so the heating and the hot water were switched back on straight away. I just dumped my stuff in the living room and that, dear reader, was that. I went to bed.

Tuesday 12th February 2019 – THE GOOD NEWS …

… today (because there has been some) is that my new passport arrived.

There was a telephone call this morning asking me if I would be here this afternoon because the courier intended to pass by.

And so having confirmed it, I received a second phone call at about 15:35 to ask me which was the door to my block of apartments. Instead, I went downstairs and a charming lady handed me a big yellow envelope.

So now, being all legal again, that’s one less thing to think about. That is – until I lose this one.

For some reason or other, I was still awake and working at 01:30 last night. That’s usually a recipe for disaster but then again there’s no point in going to bed when I’m not tired and when I can carry on working.

Despite that, I managed to wake up when the alarm went off and I was out of bed comparatively early.

A comparatively early breakfast and then I settled down to work. And by the time that I had finished, I’d finished the blog back as far as 1st January 2019. And it’s not as easy as it might be either because until I fathomed out the depths of this new blog upgrade, the blog was itself inserting all kinds of redundant and surplus *.html code that bears little or no resemblance to the coding that I use.

It all has to be stripped out and while I have a computer program that does that, it strips out everything, including the coding that I want leaving in. And so I have to start again.

As far as the text database goes, I’m now back almost to the beginning of December. That was, by the way, a heavy month for photos so it’s going to take longer than it otherwise might.

I went out and about for my walk this afternoon as usual.

And was treated to the delightful sight of a group of British people blocking off the rue St Jean while they unloaded a trailer of furniture – because they were too lazy to carry the furniture 50 metres from the car park around the corner.

It’s this kind of thing that I hate, because it gives all of us a very bad name when they treat the locals with contempt like this.

However, leaving aside a really good rant for the moment, the weather this afternoon was beautiful.

It was sunny and warm (for the time of year) and the sky was quite clear. There was a beautiful view of the coastline all the way along from Donville les Bains down to Bréhal-Plage.

On the right of the image is of course that old hotel where I saw that miserable apartment that was to let.

And hardly surprisingly, I wasn’t the only one out there enjoying the beautiful weather;

As I mentioned yesterday, it’s school holiday so there were crowds out there strolling along the Plat Gousset and walking along the beach.

No-one actually in the water, though. And I can’t blame them. It wasn’t that warm out there.

And not only that, there was some activity in the port too. Our old friend Thora was in the harbour this afternoon tied up at her berth by the dockyard crane.

I could see that she was loaded up with a dozen or so of these enormous gravel bags, but whether or not there was gravel in them I couldn’t really say.

But whatever there is in there, it’ll all be off to Jersey in early course.

having been up on the top of the walls at the back of the Eglise Notre Dame de Cap Lihou to take a photo of Thora, there was a really good view of my apartment building.

It’s the building on the right there, part of an old military barracks with the parade ground in the middle.

Part of the old parade ground is closed off and is our private parking. You can see Caliburn in his little parking space just there.

The building in the background is now the College Malraux – the local secondary school. Their playground is the old military sports ground at the back of the College.

Back here, I had the usual strum on the guitar followed by a coffee. No Christmas Cake because I finished that off on Sunday. And then I started work again;

But not for long though. I was soon tucked up in bed under the covers fast asleep. And there I stayed for about 90 minutes. I wasn’t asleep for all of that time but it’s difficult for me to tear myself out of bed.

There was some of that potato and lentil curry left over from the other day. So I added half a leek and some sweetcorn to it to lengthen it.

And followed by tinned fruit salad and that soya cream stuff (almond this week, not coconut) it was thoroughly delicious.

Later on after tea I went out for my evening walk. Around the headland tonight, looking at the trawlers coming in with their catch.

And I tried a little experiment. The photos that I’m taking of various things at night are sometimes coming out poorly because I’m struggling to set the exposure correctly to stop pinpoints of light being too bright and distorting the image.

So tonight what I did was to set the exposure to where I would ordinarily have set it, and then reduced the ISO by one stop and increased the exposure by a couple of stops.

And it’s coming out much clearer – but there’s still room to go.

There was a large collection of lights just outside the entrance to the harbour. It looked as if it might have been a gravel boat such as Neptune standing off and hove to, waiting for the tidal gates to open.

But with the photo being much better and clearer than usual now, I could see that it was actually a couple of trawlers having stopped to have a little chat before they came in and tied up to unload.

But the harbour was really quite busy tonight.

There must have been eight or nine fishing boats in the outer harbour either tied up unloading or waiting for an empty berth. And half a dozen more here or hereabouts on their way in.

As I have said before … “and you’ll say again” – ed … I would have loved to have been here in the heyday of the port when it would have been packed with Newfie trawlers.

So now I’m going to try to have an early night. I probably won’t sleep, what with having crashed out this afternoon, but I ought to make an effort.

I can’t keep on going like this.

people on beach granville manche normandy france

beach plat gousset granville manche normandy france

thora port de granville harbour manche normandy france

rue st jean granville manche normandy france

night trawler ile de chausey granville manche normandy france

trawlers port de granville harbour manche normandy france

Friday 1st February 2019 – WHAT A WAY …

… to start the day.

The alarms certainly went off this morning, but what did I care? I turned over and went back to sleep.

07:40 when I awoke and that in itself was nothing like what time I finally left my bed. All I can say is that I must have needed it;

And so that was the morning messed up. A late start, an even later breakfast and that was that.

It’s been a quiet day today though. I’ve been working on a 3D animation project for most of it. Three or so years ago I made a couple of animations but despite their being made on a 3D program they were really only two-dimensional and besides, I’ve forgotten most of what I did back then.

And so I set to work with a will.

The problem is though that you become so absorbed in a project that you don’t realise just how quickly the time goes. It ended up being a late lunch and an even later tea, and I don’t feel as if I have accomplished anything.

In the heat of the action I forgot to make any hummus today and so it was cheese again for lunch. There’s some old stuff that needs eating.

This afternoon there was a high wind and rain outside. The sea was pretty rough.

And I was lucky enough to catch Thora setting out from the harbour heading back to Jersey. No idea what she was carrying though. I couldn’t see clearly.

I hadn’t noticed her come in though. She must have sneaked in on the high tide during the night.

Having watched her sail … “diesel” – ed … off into the sunset, I went round to the other side of the headland too watching her disappear into the sea-mist.

The weather wasn’t really so good out there and the photography was not up to much. But it brought out an eerie view of the Ile de Chausey in the background, hidden in the mist

Tea was a burger in a bap with vegetables and potatoes, followed by the rest of yesterday’s rice pudding. Just as delicious as yesterday’s.

The rain had stopped when I went out for my walk. And there was no-one around at all. Minette was there but being stand-offish again. She wandered off when I tried to stroke her.

Today, with a late start, I just wandered off for a brief 10 minutes. I suppose that that’s an improvement.

But I’m looking forward to a decent sleep tonight and I might even have a good day tomorrow. After all it is a shopping day.

waves pointe du roc granville manche normandy france

fishing boat baie de mont st michel granville manche normandy france

thora marite port de granville harbour manche normandy france

thora port de granville harbour manche normandy france

thora baie de mont st michel granville manche normandy france

thora ile de chausey granville manche normandy france

Wednesday 23rd January 2019 – WHAT A HORRIBLE …

… day I had today.

It finished by being all right on the night, but it not without a great deal of effort.

For a start, I had what they might call a nuit blanche. Despite a reasonably early night, I don’t remember going off to sleep at all.

I suppose that I must have at one point though, because I was off on my travels for a short while. And here’s a blast from the past. I was back playing in a rock group again and we had a booking lined up somewhere in West London. There was a girl from school whom I quite fancied (which I actually did all those years ago, funnily enough) and she was at University down there. She had suggested at one time that I should drop in and look her up. I’d suspected that this was just a little bit of flannel but nevertheless it was worth following up so as I was in the company of her brother (who coincidentally has sent me an e-mail just yesterday) I’d check up. His reply was that “she’s very popular with her fellow-students down there, you know”, which of course told me everything that I needed to know. Even I could read between those kind of lines.

I was definitely awake at 05:20 and when the alarm went at 06:00 I leapt out of bed (well, sort-of) immediately.

With most things already being packed, I just drank the rest of the contents of the drinks bottles and rinsed them out, gave the room a quick once-over, and was then out of the door well before 06:30.

There was snow and ice all over the place and it was a difficult walk up town.

But I was on the station in time for the earlier train to Brussels. It was being pulled by one of the Siemens Serie 18 electric locomotives.

The SNCB owns 120 of these and, beleive it or not, despite their looks they are only about 8 years old. They get plenty of use.

My train from Leuven brought me early into Brussels.

This gave me a good opportunity to go for a look around outside the station at the heavy snow was falling. It looked quite impressive this morning, illuminated with the flash on the camera.

And then off to the supermarket, which was now open, for my raisin buns for breakfast.

The TGV was on time this morning.

It’s our old friend 4302, one of the PBKA (Paris-Brussels-Kôln-Amsterdam) series 43000 units of which there are 19 – built in the mid-90s when the service was launched

I was looking forward to having a good sleep to catch up with what I had missed during the night but it wasn’t to be.

Instead, because of all of the snow (it really was heavy) the train had to slow down because otherwise it might overrun signals. And so we crept along at a slow but steady 180kph instead of a flat-out 300kph.

We were warned that we would be at least 40 minutes late arriving in Paris. That meant that I had to go off and hunt down the train manager to have her sign my ticket. I have a feeling that I’m going to be horribly late in Paris and if I miss my connection, the next train is 3 hours later.

I don’t fancy spending three hours sitting on a freezing cold, draughty platform and I certainly don’t want to have to pay for the privilege if there’s a way of avoiding it.

First off the train and along the platform – a long time since I moved so fast. And just as I arrived on the Metro platform a train pulled in. So I leapt aboard and it rattled off.

Arriving at Montparnasse, I was first off the train and off on the long walk to my platform right at the far end of the station miles away. I even took all of the travelators and even though they were rolling, I walked along them to speed things up.

And I was lucky I did. It’s about a 2km walk from the metro to my train, and I couldn’t afford to hang around.

I turned up at my platform just as the guard was about to signal the departure. No sooner had I put my feet on board than he blew his whistle and the train pulled out.

I was so stressed out with all of this that it took me a while to regain my composure. Totally out of breath I was.

The snow eased off by the time we reached Surdon and we rattled along quite steadily. Somewhere round about Vire or so I fell asleep because I remember nothing whatever from then on until we arrived in Granville. Dead to the world.

It was another struggle back up to my apartment.

What with all of the effort I stopped to catch my breath half-way up the rue des Juifs and I could admire the harbour.

As well as Marité down there at her mooring too we have Thora tied up at the quayside. I can’t see what her load is today, and there didn’t look as if there was anyone down there

In the previous photo you might have noticed one of the gravel lorries driving onto the quayside.

They have obviously been very busy because there’s quite a pile of gravel accumulating on the quayside now, and that can only mean one thing.

Very soon we might be receiving a visit from Neptune who will come to take it all away back to the UK

It was cold and windy out there, although nothing like as cold as it had been in Belgium. But it was freezing in here and the first thing that I did was to switch on the heating.

There were a few things that I needed to do back here but round about 18:30 I’d had enough. I’d had a very bad night with almost no sleep, I’d been up early, dashed about all over the place and moved like I had never done for years. On top of that, I’d missed most of my siesta.

So that was that. I went to bed. When I awake, I’ll carry on.

Tuesday 15th January 2019 – CHAOS, TURMOIL AND MAYHEM!

Yes, the promises of Liam Fox and his “easiest deal in History” came thoroughly unstuck today as Mrs Mayhem suffered the worst ever defeat of any Government in the whole history of Parliament.

The whole set of wheels has come off and the UK has been plunged into total chaos. The ship is drifting helplessly with no-one at the helm and in a couple of months time it will drop off the edge of the World and into the abyss and who knows what will happen.

I don’t know how many tens of millions of lives will be affected by the failure of the UK Government to ask 65 million people a proper question and receive a proper answer. But it’s the illiterate uneducated Etonites who are responsible for all of this. All they ever learnt at Public School was sodomy, and they must have spent a lot of time at it judging by the way that they have completely buggered up the UK.

With having had an early night I had a little fit of tossing and turning during the night but managed to stay asleep until the alarm went off. And I managed to haul myself out of bed at something that resembled a reasonably early time.

First job though was to make some muesli. I’d run out yesterday and forgot to do some. And fresh muesli really is delicious.

After breakfast I started to download another pile of programs for the new computer.

But not straight away.

The computer decided that it wanted to do an upgrade of the operating system and that took a while. But since then the computer hasn’t dropped the internet connection.

Of course, I’m preparing for the worst, especially as I have tempted fate, but we shall see.

It’s nice though, nevertheless, to be able to connect up all of my external drives, a couple of portable drives, a couple of memory sticks and a memory card reader all at once and swap files around.

By the end of the morning all of the programs that I think that I need are loaded on, including the printer files and the Nikon software, so I could go to lunch in a happy state.

Lunch was butties of course, with some home-made hummus out of the freezer. And delicious it was too.

Talking of memory cards, I realised (too late) that the new computer doesn’t have an SD card slot and that was expected to cramp my style somewhat seeing as the big Nikon takes full-size cards.

But then I remembered – the card in there is a micro-SD card in an adaptor, and I do have a micro-SD card reader. So now, I’ve finally managed to load up all of the photos – almost 400 of them – that have been building up since the other laptop died. And I made a start on editing them too.

I might even be finished before the end of the month. However, I was interrupted by a brief 20 minutes asleep on my chair.

But then I was able to go off and wander around the headland for a walk in the wind.

But just offshore at the Pointe du Roc there’s something weird bobbing up and down.

I’ve not noticed this before so I was wondering what it might be. it could be a ball of some kind that’s been washed off a beach, or a cable buoy that has come adrift from its mooring in the tidal port, or even a fishing float.

Talking of fishing, there was some kind of movement out to sea near the Ile de Chausey.

Coupling up the 70-300mm zoom lens I could see that it’s the yellow and blue trawler from Granville on its way back to the harbour with today’s catch from the English Channel.

Frying tonight, obviously. But I wonder what kind of fish it has in the hold.

And talking of the harbour, we have one of our regular visitors in here this afternoon. Thora has come in from St Helier on one of her regular freight runs.

One of these days I’ll have to go down there and have a look round her. A while back I was given a guided tour of her elder sister Grima, so I’m intrigued to see what Thora is like.

It should be quite interesting, and if this stupid Brexit gets out of hand, I might find myself having to sign on as a ship’s cook so I’ll need to know my way around.

Back here with a coffee and some cake, I looked at the post. And I now have not only my duplicate telephone bills but also … wait for it … my certificate from the Tax Office. Still a few things that I need but we’re well on the way.

The new spare ink for the printer arrived today as well, and it’s just as well because I’ve started to print out the documents that I need. This is going to be a long – and expensive – job.

Another thing that I managed to accomplish was to have a shower and a haircut. My hair was getting a little out of control so a good trim with my sheep-shearer was appropriate.

For tea, I had home-made pie with baked beans and some oven chips that I found in the bottom of the freezer that had been there since last winter.

And followed that by a walk around the walls.

They are progressing with the Fibre-Optic cable work. They’ve now dug a hole on the corner where one of the little alleys joins the rue Notre Dame – presumably to drop an inspection chamber or junction box in there.

And the new little kitten was waiting for me again. he or she had another little stroke.

So now while the politicians are busy hitting the fan, I’m going to bed. I wonder what kind of news tomorrow will bring.

Tuesday 8th January 2019 – IT’S JUST LIKE …

… old times in here right now. I’m up to my knees, and probably even deeper, in papers and documents right now.

As part of my little project I have to find all kinds of paperwork going back 6 years. This last 18 months is pretty straightforward since I’ve been here but prior to that, especially during the period when I was ill my paperwork was all over the place.

However, when I was back down there in August I grabbed as much of it as I could and brought it back. So now, I have to go through about three sacks full of paper to find what I need.

I’m not having a great deal of luck from that point of view (at least, so far and there is still plenty to go at) but it really IS astonishing what you find when aren’t looking for it. After I took early retirement in 2004 I worked for a couple of years for an employment agency and for two American companies while I saved up to buy the roofing for my house in the Auvergne.

I’d practically written off anything to do with that period of employment, but today going through the European Paper Mountain I came across my registration certificate for the Belgian National Pensions Office. I’m not sure if I’m entitled to a pension from Belgium and even if I am, it won’t be anything at all to write home about, but at least I can write and make enquiries. You never know.

This morning I had something of a surprise.

When I awoke it was 06:45. What had happened to the alarm?

And then I remembered. Tuesday last week was New Year’s Day, and the previous Tuesday was Christmas Day. So I had switched off the alarms for Tuesday, hadn’t I?

And being nice and relaxed, I’d been on my travels. In a hotel trying to do a pile of paperwork in my room but not being able to concentrate, I went down to the reception area. There it was even worse, so I went back upstairs and tried again, but with no more luck than before. So in the end I packed my things and went outside to try to work out there, but the lorry driver who was taking me on saw me coming and pulled out of the lorry park, did a lap around the block and pulled up alongside me, blocking the road. And so I had to climb aboard, even though it meant that I wasn’t going to be able to do what I wanted to do before I reached home.

A slightly later breakfast (but not as late as some days just recently) and then a chat to Liz on the internet. She and Terry had an important meeting this morning so I wished them luck.

First thing that I needed to do was to obtain a couple of certificates from the British Government. Luckily, this can be done by internet but it’s time-consuming and took a lot of research – as well as being quite expensive.

When that was finally out of the way, I went down to Caliburn and brought up all of the paperwork. And despite stopping for lunch (more soup from Liz), my two walks and tea (a stuffed pepper) I was hard at it all day.

A good proportion of the paperwork has gone in the bin as “no longer necessary” but I found more vital paperwork that I expected to find – in fact I ended up being disappointed in that with a little more effort I might have had a lot more and I’m wondering where the rest might be.

On my walk this afternoon, there were a few people around for a change. It’s been quiet just recently out there.

Another place that was busy was the Chantier Navale. There are quite a few ships hauled out of the water right now receiving some kind of attention there.

I don’t recall having seen it so busy in the past. It’s clearly a booming business and I would have loved to have seen it in its heyday prior to 1992 when all of the Newfie trawlers were sailing out of here.

But there are still a few ships sailing out of here.

We have the gravel boats like Neptune of course, and the ferries to the Ile de Chausey and Jersey, but we also have the little freighters like Normandy Trader and Thora running the freight shuttles to Jersey.

Here today we have Thora in port. We noticed her last night having presumably come in on the evening tide

But despite the crowds this afternoon, this evening the walk around the walls was totally deserted apart from me.

But there was plenty of interest to see because the wind had risen and it was blowing quite strongly outside. The tide was well in too and so the waves were crashing down on the promenade at the Plat Gousset with quite some considerable force.

There was no-one down there taking advantage of the free shower on offer, which is probably not a surprise to anyone.

And Thora was still in harbour too.

That’s quite a surprise because she doesn’t usually hang about here for as long as this. I hope that she’s not having any difficulties.

And no cats tonight. I came straight home, had a chat to Alison after I came back and that’s my lot. A decent night’s sleep and then I’ll attack the paperwork part II. At least, if I know what I don’t have, I can start from there.

And I didn’t crash out today. How about that?

storm waves night plat gousset granville manche normandy france

Monday 7th January 2019 – NOW THAT’S WHAT …

… I call a bad day

Despite what I might have said yesterday, it wasn’t an early night. I wasn’t tired at all and so it was rather later than I was hoping when I went to bed.

During the night I’d been on my travels – something to do with being on a train but I’ve no idea about any more than that. But when the alarm went off, I just couldn’t bring myself to leave my bed. In fact, it was at 09:15 when I finally emerged, and that was a really bad start for the day.

Much to my surprise, I’d had a reply from an enquiry that I sent out in early October. Not exactly the response for which I was hoping, but it’s a start. And so after breakfast I set to work.

There was an interruption at 10:45 when the postie turned up. Now I have a keyboard that works quite nicely, and also my new 60-litre rucksack.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that I bought a cheap rucksack from NOZ a while ago and I’ve been going back and to to Leuven with that – and it works just fine. But the quality was pretty rubbish and it wasn’t lasting the pace. So I’ve bought one that’s much better quality and I’ll be giving it a go with that.

For lunch I had the rest of the squash and potato soup. And it was even more delicious today than it was yesterday.

Now I would have expected that with having had an unexpected lie-in this morning I would have been fighting-fit and raring to go in the afternoon. But instead I ended up crashing out.

And good and proper too – right away with the fairies until 16;45 too. And by the time that I had my feet on the ground it was far too late to go for my afternoon walk.

I’m starting to worry about things like this. It’s not doing me any good at all.

Tea was the rest of Liz’s vegan chili and it was even better than Saturday night. I’m really being looked after just now.

I did however manage to make it out for my evening walk tonight. Just for a change, there were a couple of people out there tonight with me.

And not only that, our old friend Thora was tied up at her berth underneath the crane. She’s apparently come into harbour on this afternoon’s tide.

And I have to say that with the weather just now, it was another really good night.

So now let’s see what’s going to happen tonight. It might be an early night or it might not. It doesn’t seem to make any difference.

But now that I know what I need to be doing, I can get ready to send off another huge pile of letters. That should keep me out of mischief for a while.

Tuesday 18th December 2018 – TODAY WAS …

… probably the worst that I have felt for a long time. In fact, it is quite a long time since I felt like I did today, although I do have to admit that at one time it was a fairly regular occurrence.

It wasn’t such an early night as I was hoping to have, and it was a struggle to rouse myself from my bed at anything like a reasonable time. I’d been on my travels too, discussing football results with a group of people, one of whom was a former friend of mine from Stoke on Trent. For those of you who are not clued up on these things, TNS – The New Saints of Oswestry Town, perennial winners of the Welsh Premier League, are having a bad time this season by their standards, and are adrift in third position. but last night they had apparently been playing Connah’s Quay Nomads who are out in the lead, and beaten them 7-0. Such an astonishing (but not surprising) result given the inconsistency in the WPL, and there we all were on our nocturnal ramble last night discussing the result.

After breakfast, I drifted around for a while not doing very much because I couldn’t concentrate on anything, apart from stirring around a pile of photographs. For part of the morning I was even flat out on the bed trying to gather my wits. Not quite sleeping, but not far off either.

Lunch wasn’t much better either I could feel myself slipping downhill until round about 15:00 when I went off with the fairies. And there on my chair I sat in a stupor until a loud noise on the computer awoke me. 15:45 it was too.

With something of a struggle I staggered off out into the hurricane and torrential rain. No-one was out there at all which is hardly any surprise given the circumstances.

But Thora was in port again, moored up at a different berth again.

She could well have come in yesterday evening from St Helier because I might have seen her outline at the quayside as I drove past her berth in the night.

There must be some serious kind of work going on somewhere in the old medieval walled town.

There were several pieces of heavy equipment such as this concrete mixer parked up here or hereabouts.

The streets of the old town are very narrow and the two archways through the walls are narrow and low. This prevents this kind of vehicle from going in and they have to park here and trans-ship their load.

We also have a visitor – a piece of heavy equipment – parked up on the forecourt of our building.

It’s some kind of cherry-picker with a large working platform. So it looks as if we are going to be having some kind of roof or guttering repairs to our building within the course of the next day or two.

I’m glad that I live on a lower floor.

Still feeling like death, I remembered that I had some of those high-energy drinks that I had bought last winter when I was ill. And so I liberated one from the Stores and drank it. Surprisingly, I felt a little better after that and I began to perk up.

So much so that a little later I was even working away on my High Arctic web page and it’s been a while since I’ve done that. It’s amazing what a little something like that will do.

For tea tonight, I found a Pepper and Green Bean curry from 14th November 2017. With some rice and vegetables and a leek from the weekend, it was delicious too. It’s amazing the stuff that I’m finding in the freezer.

The wind and rain had died down this evening so it was a reasonably-comfortable walk around the walls.

The sky was pretty clear too for a change and the photography was quite good tonight.

This particular shot of the Plat Gousset and the houses on the top of the cliffs on the rue de la Falaise came out really well. It’s a shame that the tide wasn’t fully in

And now that I’m home, I might try for an early night. I hope that this improvement in my health keeps up tomorrow.

night brehal granville manche normandy france

night donville les baines plat gousset granville manche normandy france

night plat gousset granville manche normandy france

night rue georges clemenceau town hall mairie christmas lights granville manche normandy france

night place marechal foch granville manche normandy france

Wednesday 12th December 2018 – THAT WAS TWO …

… hours of my life that I won’t ever get back, I can tell you.

In fact, the lady whom I saw at the Tax Office couldn’t tell me anything that I didn’t already know. And after she had asked me half a dozen questions, she didn’t alter or amend my tax form in any way, neither did she ask me to do so. And I’ll be getting my “certificate of non-taxation” in due course, whenever that might be.

Despite what I said last night, it was nothing like an early night. An early morning more like – something round about 02:15 in fact, so engrossed was I in what I was doing.

Much to my surprise I managed to crawl out of my nice clean bedding round about 06:15, and I don’t remember much about any voyage except that I was on board a ship at one particular moment.

After breakfast I had a rustle around for a pile of papers and it turns out that I can’t find one particular document. I’ve probably overlooked bringing it with me from the Auvergne, so I had to go to the bank for a statement.

Just outside the building here there was a plant lorry dropping off a pile of equipment.

That looked interesting so I went over to them to find out what was going on.

Apparently there are some major engineering and building works taking place in the old walled town so they were dropping the stuff off here.

Heavy vehicles aren’t allowed within the walls.

And there The bank manager looked me out, and came over to shake my hand. I must be well in credit back there right now.

The Tax Office was pretty painless, as I mentioned, and I had a nice walk back here, calling for a baguette on the way.

When I was heading into town, I noticed that Thora had gone out on the morning tide.

That was the same tide that had presumably brought in Normandy Trader, which was now tied up at the quayside loading up with supplies.

But on the way back, I noticed that Normandy Trader had gone out too. That was a quick turn-round.

No wonder I’m finding it difficult to keep up with what is going on in the harbour these days – who’s coming and who’s going – with turn-rounds as quick as this.

You can’t say that people here in Granville are softened by the mild weather.

Hear, the street cafés in the rue Saint-Saveur encourage their patrons to sit outside in all kinds of weather, even in mid-winter.

But for those few who do feel the cold, blankets are provided to make sure that they stay outside.

First thing that I did on reaching the apartment was to make a coffee, and then I crashed out on the chair for a while, until lunchtime in fact.

This afternoon I attacked the files again. But not for long.

I went out in the sunshine for my walk around the walls. And the temperature has plummeted again. Baby, it’s cold outside.

But not too cold for some.

I don’t know whether these people were on the point of going in or coming out of the water, but I wasn’t going to hang around and wait to see.

I left them to it and cleared off.

On returning to the apartment I restarted work but had to go and lie down for a while on the bed. And I was well-away with the fairies until all of a sudden I had one of the worst attacks of cramp that I have had for quite some considerable time.

Despite whatever I tried (and I tried plenty) I couldn’t get it to ease off for quite a while and it still hurts now.

For tea, I found a potato and chick-pea curry from 30th October … errr … 2017. Tons of old stuff in the freezer that needs cleaning out and I’m aiming at one a week until I can keep something like a 6-month time limit.

The wind was rising again when I went out, and we had another endless stream of fishing boats coming into the harbour.

But we are approaching Christmas and the lights are going full-flow now. Right across the valley, the lamps are burning brightly all the way up the rue Couraye.

Won’t be long before we’re all curled up around the tree, although whosever tree I’ll be curling around, it won’t be my own.

That was all that there was about, except for two cars having a race along the road at the top.

But here around the corner there’s another example of our famous bad parking.

Why park in two places when you can take up three between you? As I have said before … “and you’ll say it again” – ed … I really don’t know what goes through the minds of some people.

But now the temperature has really dropped and it’s going to be cold tonight. We were told that the weather would change this week and it looks as if winter has arrived at last.

bathers changing plat gousset granville manche normandy france

Tuesday 11th December – I HAVE BEEN SUMMONED TO APPEAR …

… at 10:00 in the forenoon – at the local Tax Office.

A few weeks ago I had to apply for a certificate of non-taxation from them, and so I went to pick up some forms to fill in and send off. But I didn’t have a clue for what I was supposed to be asking so I filled in the form as best I could and sent it off with an accompanying letter.

So the long and short of it is that they don’t understand either and trying to explain on the telephone was pretty hopeless. And so I need to head that was tomorrow for a personal chat.

It was another night where I vaguely remembered the alarm going off and not doing too much about it. 07:45 it was when I finally arose.

Plenty of time to go off on a ramble during the night. In an aeroplane with a pile of soldiers and we all had to parachute out – and could you really imagine me doing that? We landed in Paris and tried to assimilate ourselves into the population but that didn’t work and we ended up being chased by the German police. It came to a situation where in the end we had to choose the slowest members of our party to stop and fight a rearguard action to hold up the pursuers, so that the quickest could get right away. Rather a cruel decision, but a necessary one – to sacrifice some so that the rest could get away.

After breakfast I had a shower and, just by way of a change, changed the bedding. I haven’t done that for a few weeks so it’s high time – “high” being the appropriate word.

Most of the day has been spend moving files around again – and disposing of another mound of duplicates. There are tons of stuff that are not needed or duplicated.

I hope that when I finally receive my new computer that I can keep it tidy and in order for a change. I thought that back in those days I was really good at keeping it properly filed, but it’s nothing like how I would like it to be and how the more modern computers are organised. I don’t know what I must have been thinking back in those days.

We had a little relax, and our two walks as well. On the way out this evening, I noticed no fewer than eight (and there may well have been even more) fishing boats in line-astern heading into the bay from the English Channel.

And round the corner and in the port, I noticed that our old friend Thora was tying up at the quayside too.

She must have sneaked in as soon as the harbour gates opened a little earlier.

And she was tied up at a different place on the quayside too, so I don’t know what that was all about.

Tea was a pie with veg as I said. And while I had the oven on, I made another rice pudding. And that was delicious too.

And while I was waiting for tea to cook, I mixed some more muesli for breakfast tomorrow seeing as I’ve run out.

So tomorrow morning I need to be up early to find some papers so an early night is called for.

So sweet dreams.

night thora port de granville harbour manche normandy france

4th December 2018 – FIVE SCREENS OF DEATH …

… and that’s my lot today. The desktop computer seems to have been working so much better today. Especially as all 5 of these screens of death occurred in the last half-hour as I tried to use the Duplicate File Finder program to eliminate the duplicate files.

Because there were thousands of those. You have no idea of how many hidden directories and partitions I have found. Loads of files for which I have been searching for years and many of which I have even forgotten all about.

Most of them have now made it onto the portable hard drive and when the desktop computer has cooled down tomorrow I’ll have another run through it and see what else I have missed.

But there won’t be much time tomorrow though, because I’m going out in the afternoon. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that I had a considerable amount of health issues over Christmas last year and I don’t want to have the same this year. And so I have made an appointment to have a ‘flu injection.

It’s free here (at least, I am reimbursed 100% for it) so as much as I hate the idea of injections, I’m going to have it. And I hope it works.

But back to the computer again.

I had it running again last night and it was doing so well that I let it go. And it was at about 02:30 when I finally decided to switch it off and go to bed.

So even though the alarm went off this morning at the usual time, I took little notice. It was more like 07:45 when I came round far enough to haul myself out of bed. And as a result it was a rather late breakfast.

Once all of the nonsense was out of the way I have spent all day with the big computer extracting the files. I’m doing it while the doing is good because I’m not sure how long it will keep going.

We had lunch of course, indoors these days, and then a little later, it was time for my afternoon walk.

Neptune was still in the harbour but Thora must have crept in on the morning tide because she was on the point of leaving the port at 16:00.

For a while I stood around watching her manoeuvre and I took several photos of her passing out.

By the time I got back home I could see Thora rounding the headland of the Pointe du Roc and heading out to sea past the Ile de Chausey

Opportunity for a good photo was looming so I loitered around for half an hour and took several photos of her disappearing into the sunset.

And given the lighting and weather conditions out there, some of them came out quite well.

On the way back, I bumped into Gribouille. He came for his stroke but could smell Minette on me from last night so he wasn’t too impressed.

The laptop was playing some of the old-time radio shows in the background while I was working.

And you have to admire Leslie Charteris. We had another episode of The Saint with my favourite Simon Templar, Paul Rhys in the title rôle.

And we had the immortal exchange of conversation
” ‘Orace, old chap. Things have been a bit dull for a while. Do you feel like a spot of action?”
“I’ll just load the revolver, sir”
You can’t beat the good old days.

Tea tonight was a vegan burger on a bap with the last of the potatoes. And talking of potatoes, when I went to open the pineapple slices for pudding, I found that I had opened the tin of new potatoes instead. It’s not my day, is it?

But that soya dessert stuff that I had bought – it went down really well with the pineapple slices when I eventually opened the correct tin.

Just me again on my evening walk tonight.

Neptune was still at her quay with her hydraulic hatches wide open.

I’m not sure of where they are up to with loading her but things must be progressing and she’ll probably be on her way tomorrow if they get a move on. I’ve never known her loiter in port for this long.

But there’s something else going on round by the place Maurice Marland just right now.

There has been talk of some kind of repairs to the city walls but tonight I tripped over some kind of crane or machine that was just dumped here without any warning.

And it’s pretty dark down here at night, you know. I could have done myself a mischief.

But the Christmas decorations around the town are advancing.

In the rue Paul Poirier, where I lived when I first came here, they have been out stringing up the fairy lights.

And it all looks quite pretty down there right now with the overhead lights in the foreground and the artificial palm trees in the background.

Round the corner in the rue Notre Dame Minette was sitting on the roof of a van. In order to come down to my level, she sat on her rear end and slid down the windscreen. I haven’t seen anything as funny as that for quite some considerable time.

With no desktop computer right now (it’s cooling down) I’m going to have an early night. After my exertions last night I reckon that I deserve it.

breville sur mer brehal granville manche normandy france

holiday camp donville les bains granville manche normandy france

trawler cancale baie de mont st michel granville manche normandy france

trawlers baie de mont st michel granville manche normandy france

trawler baie de mont st michel granville manche normandy france

neptune thora port de granville harbour manche normandy france

thora port de granville harbour manche normandy france

thora granville manche normandy france

thora ile de chausey granville manche normandy france

north end ile de chausey semaphore lighthouse granville manche normandy france

thora ile de chausey granville manche normandy france

thora fishing boat ile de chausey granville manche normandy france

crane place maurice marland granville manche normandy france

night neptune port de granville harbour manche normandy france

Tuesday 20th November 2018 – I’VE NO IDEA …

… where I visited during the night but wherever it was, I was still there when the alarm went off. Dead to the world, in fact.

It took me a while to haul myself out of bed and organise myself properly. And after breakfast I had a couple of things that needed doing.

A shower followed, and then I dressed for the streets.

As the tide was out, I took my new route, down the steps, across the fish dock and the path over the top of the tidal gates onto the commercial dock.

I remember seeing Thora in the port yesterday and I thought that I had seen her still here last night. And she’s still here this morning, looking as if she’s taking on a load for Jersey.

But there was no-one about to talk to – she was doing a good impression of the Marie Celeste.

My destination was the Post Office, where I posted off my letter to Canada. And while I was there I bought a pack of 10 pre-stamped envelopes for use in France. i’m down to my last one here.

On the way back, I picked up one of my favourite baguettes for lunch.

Over the last week or so I’ve taken piles of photos but I’ve been too busy to deal with them. So having made myself a coffee, I sat down and started to review them, edit them and upload them.

And believe it or not, I did manage to get a shot of one of the dolphins yesterday. I’ll post it tomorrow so you can all see it.

Lunch was in here again. it didn’t rise much above 5°C today so I wasn’t going to sit on the wall.

Just by way of a change I’ve done some tidying up too. There was a huge pile of cables and lead that I had brought with me from the Auvergne so I sorted them out and tidied them up. And SHOCK! HORROR! I threw away a pile of stuff away too.

That’s not like me at all, is it?

Later on, I went for my usual afternoon walk around the Pointe de la Roc.

And there I was greeted by the sight of Thora sailing … “dieseling” – ed … off into the sunset on her way back to Jersey.

Enhancing the colours a little has brought out a really nice effect on this image.

She put on a slight turn to port after that so I took another photo of her.

Back here I cropped her out and blew up the image. I can do that these days, despite modern anti-terrorism legislation.

Considering that this has been cropped out and enlarged at full focal length, it’s not come out too badly given the distances that I was having to cover.

Round the corner and looking out over the Baie de Mont St Michel, I could see that the sailing school had been out this afternoon.

I have half a mind … “yes, quite!” – ed … to go out and learn to sail one of these days, but I’m not quite sure how I can fit it in given my state of health and medical requirements.

A theoretical course on sailing and navigation would be right up my street (or down my river) though.

There wa even more excitement down at the ship repairer’s.

It’s not every day that I’m lucky enough to see them lifting a boat out of the water but I was in luck today. It looks as if they have another job to do on a fishing trawler and they were lifting her out with the hoist.

I’ll have to check tomorrow to see if she has been put up on blocks ready for work.

The highlight of the walk though had to be this delightful nautical danse macabre.

A trawler had unloaded at the fish dock and was heading off into the inner harbour, just as Aztec Lady was on her way out.

They waltzed and weaved around each other as they sorted themselves out into their respective routes.

Back here, I had a little … errr … repose for a while and then there was another job that needed doing. I’ve had a temporary curtain hanging in here ever since I moved in and it’s been on my mind to have it taken up to the correct size.

But that’s not happened so I took it off and pinned it to the right size.

And then I finished off all of my photos and uploaded them to the internet.

Tea tonight was a stuffed pepper and then I went out for my walk. Freezing cold outside, it was, and so that probably explains why there wasn’t a single person (or even a married one) out on the streets tonight.

Beautiful it was though – clear and crisp night with some lovely moonlight.

Now I’m keen to see if I can have another good night. And while I’m dozing off I’ll leave you with a few more photos.

Thora going back to Jersey

Sailing school baie de mont st michel granville

Trawler Port de Granville harbour

Trawler being lifted out of the water and moved across the shipyard on the hoist.

The beach at the Plat Gousset

The Port de Plaisance at Granville harbour

Monday 19th November 2018 – IT WAS RATHER …

… a late night last night.

Another 01:30 finish as I was pushing on with doing things, and this was reflected in the struggle that I had to leave my stinking pit this morning.

During the night I was off on my travels again and although I can remember almost nothing of what I was doing. But there was one thing that struck me, as it has on many other occasions during the night. And that is the impeccable timing that goes on. There I was and I heard, in my voyage, the ping telling me that the telephone was just about to ring, so I reached out my hand and right on cue, the alarm went off. Absolutely perfect timing, and it’s not the first time that I’ve noticed this.

As soon as I awoke I went to look at the thermometer. 3°C right now, and that’s the lowest that it has been so far this autumn. We’re definitely in Autumn.

Breakfast was quite early too and that left me plenty of time to push onwards with work.

And sure enough, by lunchtime I’d finished all SIX of the web pages for the third day of my voyage to the High Arctic. You can go to this page and then work your way forward, if you have a couple of hours to spare, and admire the photographs.

Dozens and dozens of them.

That took me up to lunchtime so I had my butties in the apartment. It’s definitely out of the question now, this idea of sitting on the wall outside.

This afternoon I had a letter to write. Someone whom I met on my travels had written to me and now that I have a functioning printer I can reply. I’ll have to take it down into town tomorrow morning and post it off.

It was really windy out this afternoon but there was a crowd of people gesticulating wildly out on the peak.

There had been a couple of dolphins playing around just offshore and they had been giving a really good performance.

At first, I thought that I had missed it all, but on enlarging one of the photos that I took, I found that I had indeed captured one of them on film.

It’s rather blurred because it was way out in the bay and I had to crop and enlarge it, but it’s a dolphin all the same.

While I had the camera handy, I wandered round to the harbour.

We have Marité in her usual berth, but also, alongside, at the commercial dock is Thora. She must have sailed in from Jersey on the morning tide.

One of these days I’ll go down there and have a closer look at her.

Back here, I found myself away with the fairies for a while, which is hardly surprising after the night that I had. But once I came back round again, I had a good go at the blog entry for Day Four of my Arctic trip.

It’s been rewritten slightly and I’ve added a couple of dozen photos as a taster, just to keep things going until I can do the web page, which I’ll start tomorrow some time. In the meantime, you can see the blog entry here, with all of the photos.

There was an interruption during the early evening though. Someone telephoned me about my digger. He’s interested in buying it. But I don’t think that he’ll be buying it though. He was talking about “a couple of thousand Euros”, which isn’t even in the same library, never mind on the same page.

He mentioned that he would chat with his partner, but if he couldn’t rustle up the cash that I want he would borrow a digger off his friend. So he can do that then. I might be keen to move on a lot of the stuff that I don’t need these days, but we aren’t having a fire sale.

Tea was steamed veg and vegan sausages with cheese sauce. And using three times as much cornflour as I would normally use, I did get the sauce to thicken.

Freezing cold outside again. 4.5°C outside and getting colder by the minute. I wound up the heating when I came back in.

But I’ve hit a problem right now.

About 6 months ago, Firefox went all commercial and hacked off a lot of add-on utility programs. Presumably the utility developers wouldn’t buy a development licence. One of the utilities that went was the *.ftp program that I used.

There is however a lightweight browser – Waterfox – than runs on the Mozilla platform and the *.ftp utility ran on that. It’s been nagging at me to upgrade it for a while, which I haven’t done. But I’ve had to download it onto this laptpp, and the latest version to boot. And it’s running the new Mozilla platform and all of the utilities have gone.

Now I’m having to upload via my webhost’s control panel, and that is just so painful. Fire.ftp was just like a Windows Explorer platform and so simple to use. In fact it’s the only reason why I ever used Waterfox.

So that’s a waste of time then.

And on this note I’ll go to bed.

dolphin baie de mont st michel granville manche normandy france

fishing trawler port de granville harbour manche normandy france

Monday 22nd October 2018 – I’VE BEEN OUT …

… and about with the camera and equipment this evening. And for quite a long time too.

In case you’ve been wondering … “which I’m sure you haven’t” – ed … I have been somewhat inspired by my trip to the High Arctic as well as being totally dismayed by the photos that I was able to produce with what is really substandard equipment.

That’s not really to complain too much about the Nikon 1. As I said at the time, it’s okay for photos under normal conditions but in the kind of conditions in which I was working and with the kind of photos that I was trying to take, it just wasn’t up to the job.

It was simply my mistake in buying it.

So now that I’ve done what I should have done in the first place and bought some decent lenses, I was out tonight having some fun.

And I’ve encountered another slight problem – although it was one that I was suspecting.

I was using the new zoom/telephoto lens with a very long exposure – 10 secs in fact – with the camera mounted on the tripod (which I have rediscovered in the back of Caliburn after all of these years).

But the zoom/telephoto lens is quite heavy, and with the attachment for the tripod being on the camera, it’s all out of balance and has a tendency to topple forward.

And in a high wind like last night, even with the tripod tightened up to the max, the wind was still blowing the lens round.

As a result, with the 10-seconds exposure, the photos have come out quite blurred.

You can see exactly what I mean by comparing one of the photos above with the photo just here.

This photo has come out as well as anyone could possibly expect. It was taken with exactly the same settings for speed and exposure as the previous ones and on the tripod.

The difference is though that it was taken with the new standard lens, not the heavy zoom/telephoto lens.

When a very fast shutter speed is used, there is barely a trace of camera shake using the zoom/telephoto lens on the tripod, as you can see in the photo of the almost-full moon that I took last night.

But there’s no problem that can’t be surmounted.

The answer to this is to find a tripod mount that attaches to the lens at the mid-point of balance to that the equipment won’t sway about so much in the wind.

And I’ve been able to track one down on the internet. It’s expensive, but it needs to be correct.

While we’re on the subject of photos, I spent today working on the photos that I took on Saturday and Sunday and adding them as appropriate. I’ve still not done Friday’s yet but I shall get around to that in due course.

With my late night last night, it was a struggle to leave the bed this morning.

Especially as I had been on my travels during the night. On an island somewhere doing some painting and I don’t mean painting some woodwork but actually doing some kind of artistic stuff and that’s not like me at all is it? I was in some kind of higher group where there was some kind of price of £300,000 mentioned. Even during a nocturnal ramble I’m well-aware of my own shortcomings in the artistic world and I couldn’t understand what I was doing in a group that was far beyond my own capabilities.

After breakfast I had some work to do and that kept me out of mischief for a while, and then I spent a while with the 3D program that I use. I had a sudden idea about that that I needed to develop.

As well as that, I had to make my travel arrangements for the weekend. I’m hitting the road on Sunday afternoon for Leuven and Castle Anthrax and I need to sort out somewhere to stay.

And the return railway trip on Wednesday is shockingly expensive. It’s the day before a Bank Holiday so prices are through the roof. I’m having to travel on the 08:13 TGV, which means that I will need to be at Leuven station for about 07:00 and I’m not looking forward to that one little bit.

All of that took me up to lunchtime (I just don’t know where the time goes these days) and I took my sandwiches in here, seeing as it was windy and overcast outside.

This afternoon I started on the photographs, with the usual interruption to go for my afternoon walk.

And I chose the route around the walls because I wanted to go round the headland tonight.

Plenty of people around out there too. It’s school half-term so people were taking the air.

It might be coming towards the end of October and the start of winter but the weather was still warm enough for people to head out onto the beach.

By the afternoon the weather was showing signs of brightening up.

The sun was peeking through the clouds by now and illuminating parts of the beaches round by Donville-les-Bains and Bréville-sur-Mer and making the afternoon look quite tempting.

Had it not been for the fierce wind it would have been a really beautiful afternoon.

While you admire a section of the previous photo cropped out to show the ruin where I saw a derelict apartment 18 months ago, I can tell you about my little visit.

There’s a photo club here in Granville and they were having an exhibition in one of the public rooms. So I went along to look.

There was nothing on display that particularly excited me and although I wanted to chat to an official, they all seemed to be huddled around in a group chatting about last night’s television programmes.

Not particularly welcoming, unfortunately. So I moved on.

But not too far though.

There have been several changes in the town while I was away in the Frozen North and I’m slowly catching up with them. Like this demolition site in the rue du Nord overlooking the medieval walls and the sea.

I wonder what they are going to build here in its place.

And round by the port I noticed that we aren’t alone today.

Thora has sailed … “dieseled” – ed … into the harbour from Jersey without me noticing.

She must have come in on the morning’s high tide. That was round about 06:30 this morning so that sounds about right to me.

There’s no evidence on the quayside to show what, if anything, she brought over from Jersey.

But she’s already taken on a considerable load of supplies for taking out. And a close inspection of the load from this kind of range seems to indicate that it’s stones or rocks of some description.

So I’ve no idea why they would be wanting to export them to Jersey

While you admire yet another photo of Thora, I went back to my apartment, had a coffee and sat down to continue with what I was doing.

That was the plan anyway. Instead I ended up on the bed flat out until well after 18:00. Not even a coffee can keep me going these days.

Tea was a stuffed pepper with spicy rice and it was delicious as usual. And then off around the headland in the moonlight with camera, lenses and tripod.

Now I’m back, much later than usual, I’m off to bed. I’ll have a go at carrying on tomorrow and we’ll see where I can get up to.

EPIC HALL

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

Tag Archives: thora

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Monday 22nd October 2018 – I’VE BEEN OUT …