Tag Archives: alan fearon

Tuesday 9th December 2025 – AS I HAVE …

… said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed …. It’s pointless rushing through everything in order to finish early, because all that it means is that I wake up correspondingly early the following morning.

You are probably fed up of hearing me say that, given the number of times that I’ve repeated it, but believe me – I’m totally fed up of breaking my neck to be in bed before 22:00, only to wake up the following morning at … errr … 02:35. It’s going beyond a joke.

And indeed I did break my neck trying to finish early. Tea – the other half of the pizza – was all cooked from Sunday and just needed warming in the oven so it didn’t take too long at all to prepare. And with there being no preparation, there wasn’t very much washing-up and tidying to do.

Back in here, struggling desperately (and failing every now and again) to stay awake, I dashed through my notes, which went online at 21:43 and it wasn’t long after that that I crawled under the covers, with the bedroom heater turned up so that I won’t freeze to death like the previous night.

However, the best-laid plans of mice and men and all of that. There I was, wide awake at 02:35. There was no chance of going back to sleep, no matter how I tried, and I couldn’t make myself comfortable. At one point I was seriously thinking of leaving the bed but instead, I just lay there in a kind of semi-conscious daze until the alarm went off.

As is usual these days, it took a good while for me to summon up the energy to head into the bathroom and sort myself out, and then I went into the kitchen to sort out the hot ginger, honey and lemon drink for my medication.

Back in here, I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. I had my old Ford Escort estate and I was in Northwest Scotland, wandering around the surfing paradises there. I had someone else with me. We were looking at everything that was going on and just walking along the beach. The beach was beautiful, but there was some kind of haze although it was cold, well, not cold but not that hot either. The islands offshore were all shimmering and glimmering in the haze. The guy with me pointed to the one nearest to us and said that he didn’t remember that being there. I said that as far as I was concerned, I remembered it from the previous times, but I thought that the one next to it was new. They were all chalky islands, like a chalky peninsula that had been sliced by the tide and the waves. We walked along this crowded beach, and for some reason, I slipped and fell down the beach. I managed to stay on my feet, but he came down to see how I was. I told him that it was one of those inexplicable things, but I was sure that I’d torn a ligament. I had to scramble as best as I could up to the previous level where we were walking. We’d been looking at those islands and they had all been painted white with lilac roofs, and he was looking at the statistics for them. He said something like there were one hundred and seventy-eight houses and one hundred and ninety-three people plus thirty temporary accommodations. I was thinking that it would be nice to have some kind of holiday or break in a small house on a little island like that somewhere.

In the mid-seventies, I often used to wander aimlessly around Scotland, but mainly in BILL BADGER, my old A60 van. And I did once go with a friend.

However, in this dream, I imagine that it’s the houses on the island that are painted white with lilac roofs, not the islands themselves.

Isabelle the Nurse breezed in on the wind and she was impressed with my Christmas tree and my Christmas lights. I’m glad about that, because I’m impressed with them too, almost as impressed as I was with my stainless steel dustbin.

She sorted out my legs as usual and then with a cheery wave, she carried on with her rounds. I made my breakfast and read some more of Thomas Codrington’s ROMAN ROADS IN BRITAIN.

Today, we didn’t go very far, because I was sidetracked down a blind alley. Something to do with an old railway station led me astray and I wandered off – I suppose you might say “down a branch line somewhere”.

After breakfast, I came in here to revise my Welsh and then go for the lesson. It passed quite well again today but I don’t know why. However, it’s all very well learning the stuff for the actual moment, but remembering it ten minutes later is what is causing me most of my problems.

After the lesson, my faithful cleaner came along and caught me by surprise. She’d bought my vegan butter from the supermarket and now she’d come to help me into the shower. And I needed it too – the help as well as the shower.

Although it takes a lot of motivation to force me into the shower, I always feel better afterwards and today was no exception. I wish that I could have a shower more than once per week but that’s not really possible

My cleaner and I had a nice, lengthy chat afterwards as we sorted out the medication, and I even played doctor for a few minutes while I was examining some of the boxes.

After she left, I came back in here and worked on one of my radio programmes. That’s now as complete as it can be, with the extra tracks chosen. All that is needed for it is the text for the extra tracks writing and dictating, which I can do tomorrow.

Tea tonight was a vegan burger with pasta and veg in tomato sauce, followed by the last of the coconut soya dessert with a couple of biscuits. I’ll bake another cake tomorrow, if only I knew what to make. I’ve run out of ideas.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about my appalling memory … "well, one of us has" – ed … I once mentioned it to Nerina, and she took the mickey by saying that I had a teflon brain.
"Teflon brain?" I asked.
"That’s right" she replied. "Nothing sticks to it."

Sunday 19th October 2025 – JUST FOR ONCE …

… I actually managed to have a lie in. And I really needed it too.

It wasn’t as if I’d had a late night last night either. After finishing off everything that I need to finish, and sorting myself out in the bathroom, it was just before 23:00 when I crawled into bed under the covers, and went to sleep quite quickly.

During the night, I awoke just once – at about 04:10. And although I did think for a moment about leaving the bed, I turned over instead and went straight back to sleep.

It was 06:20 when I awoke next. And had this been a weekday, I would have been straight out of bed. However, it’s a Sunday when there’s a lie-in until 07:59 so I curled back up under the quilt. I tried to go back to sleep but without any luck. Nevertheless, I stuck it out until about 07:10, when I finally abandoned the effort and left the bed.

After the bathroom and the medication, I came back in here to find out where I’d been during the night. There was a hospital somewhere where there were a great many sick patients for all kinds of reasons. One of the things that this hospital did was to give abortions. There was one of the doctors who was violently opposed to the idea of abortions, and he and his wife made themselves extremely unpleasant on the subject. They had to be diverted away from the other services. There was an issue with the woman, something to do with packing a baby away. They were in the middle of doing this when suddenly they announced that one of the baby’s left hand had disappeared and there was a feeling that it had its arm wrapped around its neck. They had to stop the procedure and examine it. However, this doctor was quite angry, violently so, against some kind of situation that was taking place between the hospital and his wife of this affair. I had to go along and check on something, and it was not a situation that I liked very much. He and this other woman were sitting there discussing this case, and I was trying to work in this room in the background, but it was not very encouraging. I wasn’t really able to complete what I was supposed to do while he was there. He was running back and to, doing things in connection with this issue, and I couldn’t really have some kind of minute to myself to do what I needed. I had a feeling that I was going to be discovered any minute now, and this was going to lead to an extremely violent confrontation.

As if there’s any chance of me working in a hospital. The story about the baby refers to the daughter of a friend of mine in Florida whose mother had a very uncomfortable birth with her. The doctor referred to seems to resemble someone whom I knew in Crewe fifty years ago. He wasn’t a doctor and he had no opinion on abortion, but the rest of his character and personality fits.

We were then having a little get-together in Gainsborough Road. I’d invited a friend of mine round, and she came because her husband was working on nights and he had gone to bed. We were there having a chat, and the woman from next door was here. As we had a close look at the houses, we saw that next door’s house had a cellar, or seemed to have a cellar – there was a small window underneath the living room window whereas mine didn’t. This was probably accounted for by the slope of the land. We were intrigued by this and had a discussion. In the end, we asked the lady next door “how do you go into the cellar?”. She couldn’t remember, but she said that she had been in there once. She thinks that she remembers that you collapse the side of something and open a window. From outside, she shone a torch in through the cellar window, saying “I wonder what’s happening here now?”.

Whoever the girl was, I have no idea. But there is no cellar at the next-door house in Gainsborough Road and as far as I am aware, there are no cellars anywhere in the vicinity.

Isabelle the Nurse breezed in as usual and breezed out again shortly afterwards. It didn’t take her long to sort me out, and she gave me my instructions – or, should I say “orders” – for the dialysis clinic tomorrow. I have to make sure at all costs that they examine me.

After breakfast, I came back in here and spent the morning catching up on the football highlights, including Stranraer’s monumental morale-boosting win against Edinburgh City. And not just a scrappy win either but a resounding 3-1 win away from home.

After the disgusting drink break at lunchtime, I had work to do. As regular readers of this rubbish will recall, I maintain the shipping beacon for the port. It’s mounted in my apartment with the antenna on the shutters. Its purpose is to detect the shipping identification transmissions from the equipment on board the ships moored here and transmit them to a central control in Denmark.

A few weeks ago, the beacon ceased to function, and closer examination revealed that the beacon was of an obsolete type that should be replaced. They had sent a new one during the week so this afternoon, I assembled and installed it. It now seems to be working fine.

While I was doing that , I was chatting with several friends on line It’s nice to interact with people like that, although of course it’s not as nice as to chat face-to-face.

There was bread to make and a pizza to make too. The bread didn’t rise as high as usual, which is a disappointment, but the pizza was excellent once more. I was really impressed with that.

But now I’m off to bed, early enough, to prepare for my busy week next week.

But seeing as we have been talking about babies … "well, one of us has" – ed … I once saw a guy coming out of the chemist’s with a baby under each arm.
"Where are you going with those?" I asked him.
"Back to the factory" he replied.
"The factory?" I queried.
"Yes" he replied. "I’m the local Durex representative and these are two complaints that I’m taking back with me."

Wednesday 16th April 2025 – I WAS RIGHT …

… about my hot cross buns. They have risen up like the proverbial lift and look absolutely magnificent. It just shows the difference that having an accurate water gauge makes. All these years that I’ve had some very hit-and-miss baking …

Something else that was magnificent last night was the fact that I was in bed by 23:00, for the first time for ages. I really appreciated it too, having blitzed through everything after tea – the notes, the statistics and the back-up et cetera.

As well as that, it didn’t take long to drop off either, and there I stayed, fast asleep, until 06:55. Probably the best night’s sleep that I have had for ages.

When the alarm went off I was awake thinking about leaving the bed early but BILLY COTTON beat me to it. Surprisingly it took me a few minutes to summon up the energy to leave the bed.

In the bathroom I had a cursory wash (after all, it is shower day today) and then went into the kitchen for the medication.

Back in here I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. I had to meet Rosemary and we arranged to meet in London at one of the big railway station termini. She had a rough idea of when she’d be there. I was already in London so I said that I would be there or thereabouts. As the station is so big, I’ll just arrive there and we’ll contact each other by ‘phone or something. When it came time to go I set out on foot on my usual way. I suddenly realised that I was nowhere near where I was supposed to be. Just at that moment I was walking past a house when a taxi pulled up. I asked the driver which was the best way to the railway station. He pointed out the way from which I had just come. Down at that end of the road was a dirt track that led through some kinds of fields or common. I asked “surely you don’t mean that I am to go past there?”. He replied “no, it’s a great big main four-lane road”. I realised then where I’d gone wrong – I’d gone wrong a long way before the junction back down the road. I asked “could you run me there?”. He replied “I can’t. I’m finishing work. I live here”. I tried to persuade him but it didn’t work. Another taxi pulled up so I asked him but the first driver told him not to bother – that I was going to walk. I was rather disappointed by the two of them. I set out to walk back and walked probably the quickest that I have ever walked in my life. Eventually I could see the railway station in the distance. There was a big road junction just before it. There were millions of cars milling around there trying to go through, totally ignoring the traffic lights and the pedestrian crossing but people just surged across. Some girl in a car tried to drive through the crowd and the crowd was quite irate. They made something of a demonstration about it. In the end I extricated myself from this mess but still had ten minutes of walking to go and I thought that I was going to be late yet again.

This all rings a bell with me. I’ve walked down that dirt road and across those fields and common before during one of my previous nocturnal rambles, quite a while ago now. As well as that, I can see the railway station now. I was up on the top of a hill, something like Highgate in London. The railway station was on a slight rise across a valley, with its huge arched train shed clearly visible. However, we are once again overwhelmed in confusion and anxiety in a dream. Someone has commented on my anxiety and confusion dreams in the past and suggests that it might be due to stress. All I can say is that if my life now is stressful, what must my dreams have been like 40 years or so ago when I was running my taxis?

Later on I went back into that dream … "which dream is this?" – ed … I was wandering around Crewe near the Square, talking to a friend of mine while I was typing out some notes for the radio. One of the things that I was typing out was the notes of something about the Blues Brothers. At that moment friend climbed into his car and shot off just like the Blues Brothers did. of course, at that moment, a police car appeared. The police car went to block him off on the Square. I could see it all perfectly from my vantage point but my friend’s vantage point was obscured by the old Marks and Spencers building. When he came round the corner there he found himself face-to-face with the policeman. Of course he had to stop, he couldn’t really do anything. The policeman stepped out of his vehicle and the first thing that he did was to close the bonnet of my friend’s car – it was one of these bonnets that hinges from the front, not from the rear. He would often leave it open as he drove around, held only by the security catch

That reminds me of a time 40 or 50 years ago when we were all out late one night (or early in the morning, more like) in Crewe when there was a heavy snowfall. My friend took his car onto the public car park, that was totally empty, and was spinning round doing doughnuts on the slippery surface. What he had failed to take into account that it was right next to the police station. Two constables came out and gave him a ticket for “using a car park other than for the purpose of parking”.

The nurse was in a better humour today and was rather more cheerful than yesterday. However he didn’t stop for long and I could get on and make breakfast and read more of MY BOOK.

Our trip around the castles of England (and Wales) is turning into a real whistle-stop tour. On some of these sites we aren’t discussing architecture of any type (never mind military architecture) because there are no extant remains, so I’m not convinced of the reason why we’ve even come here.

However, he does make an interesting observation when it comes to Huntingdon Castle. He tells us that "William the Conqueror was at Huntingdon 1068, when he ordered a castle to be built, evidently on the site of the old fortress restored by Edward the Elder in 918. The names in Domesday show how complete had been the removal of the larger English landowners."

We’ve talked rather a lot just recently … "well, one of us has" – ed … about the ethnic cleansing that must have taken place as several waves of invaders overwhelmed the native population during the various invasions back in the early days of history and prehistory. So these “larger English landowners” – what happened to them? I can’t see them being allowed to remain, even as serfs and slaves, in the local area where they might command the respect and loyalty of their previous tenants and possibly incite a rebellion.

Back in here I had things to do that needed my attention, and then I cracked on with the radio programme. All of the notes for programme 260227 are completed and ready for dictation on Saturday night.

There was time for a disgusting drink break and to sort out my faithful cleaner when she arrived. And then I had a wonderful shower and found some nice, clean clothes so that I shall look fine for Emily the Cute Consultant tomorrow.

After my cleaner left, I had my second disgusting drink and then I had things to do.

After breakfast I had put some lentils and split peas into the slow cooker and after an hour and the water had boiled, I rinsed them and then put them back in the slow cooker on the lowest heat with some clean water. So after the afternoon’s disgusting drink break I began to plan my lentil lasagna.

First though, I had hot cross buns to make. And here I almost had a disaster. I didn’t have enough vegan butter.

However, any oil is good, as we have proved with our oil cakes, so why not use coconut oil? I made a really good mix of flour, coconut oil, salt, yeast and mixed spices with warm soya milk and melted coconut oil – the correct amounts of liquid – and left it to fester.

While it was festering, I fried a large onion and some garlic in my wok, tipped the lentils and split peas in after I’d rinsed them again, along with a pack of this soya mince in tomato sauce that I wanted to try. In went some tomato sauce and herbs and so on and I left it to simmer away.

The dough for the hot cross buns had risen nicely so I added some sultanas, raisins and some orange essence, and kneaded it all again.

After it had stood for a while and risen again, I moulded the dough into six balls, flattened them and put them on the biscuit tray. I made some thick flour mix and with my icing piper, piped the crosses on the buns and left them to rise again.

While they were festering, I assembled my lasagna and made a vegan cheese sauce that I poured over the top, and stuck it all into the oven.

When it was cooked I put the hot cross buns in and then had a quarter of my lasagne with some vegetables. And it was delicious. Even better, there are three more slices to go into the freezer for another time. It was the lst of the orange, ginger and coconut cake today too. Tomorrow I’ll start on my chocolate cake.

Rosemary had rung up while I was baking so after I’d finished tea and washed up, we had a little chat. Not very long – only fifty-four minutes.

Consequently I’m running really late but never mind – I’m off to bed right now. Tomorrow is dialysis day and shopping order too.

But while we’re on the subject of buns … "well, one of us is" – ed … one of my friends once told me that he had served in the Army in a regiment where the chief cook was Doctor Spooner’s brother.
"How interesting" I replied
"Very interesting" he said "especially when the Germans launched an attack on the kitchen"
"Why was that?" I asked
"Because Doctor Spooner’s brother personally led the counter-attack" he replied. "He went into action with all buns glazing"

Thursday 15th August 2024 – SO THAT WAS …

… Day Four of my Summer School.

And I’ve no idea what’s happening here but things seem to be going quite well with this course. That’s something that I don’t understand because usually I struggle to get to grips with everything. I don’t know what I’m doing right but I wish that I could do it more often

So while some things seem to be going my way, cà plâne pour moi as Plastic Bertrand once said, I wish that everything else was too.

Like actually being in bed at something like a reasonable hour instead of hours late, as seems to be the case these days. It was another “almost midnight” when I slid underneath the covers last night

Once again I was asleep quite quickly. In fact my little bedtime mantra hardly had time to get underway before I was off with the fairies. And that was that until all of … errr … 04:30.

But no chance of my showing a leg at that time of the morning these days. I curled back up underneath the covers and there I stayed until Billy Cotton ROARED HIS RAUCOUS RACKET at 07:00.

When the World stopped spinning round I made my way into the bathroom for a good scrub up to make myself pretty, but I suspect that it might take more time than I have available to do something like that

Instead, I came back in here to have a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. I’d been hot-rodding around the town, doing doughnuts, things like that and the police had come along and caught me. But there was something important going on and I was waiting for some kind of news about this but all the police were interested in doing was to give me a very long lecture about the perils of careless driving etc. I was perfectly aware of what’s happening and it was all just getting in the way of this ‘phone call that I was expecting. I thought that they’d never ever finish this discussion with me and I’ll miss this ‘phone call if they carry on much longer.

It’s an absolute certainty that if any member of Cheshire Constabulary’s finest were to find me performing stunts with a car, it wouldn’t be a lecture that I’d receive. I remember, back in the olden days, a friend of mine performing a few stunts on a car park in Crewe late at night and actually being summoned under the local council by-laws for “using a car park for purposes other than parking”. Mind you, it was right next to the police station so what did he expect? He should have been more circumspect.

The nurse didn’t have a great deal to say for himself this morning. He was in and out quite quickly, leaving me in peace to have my breakfast and carry on reading my book. I’m quite engrossed in this book and not only that, it’s had me hot on the trail of a couple of other books on the subject of the forts on the Bozeman Trail.

If you followed the link that I posted the other day, you’d had walked with me several miles along the Bozeman Trail to the site of the Fetterman massacre where Lieutenant Fetterman and his soldiers were cut down by Red Cloud’s warriors

That was a brilliant trip, that one in the Summer of 2019 where I visited all of the sites of the major confrontations between the Native Americans and the European settlers and soldiers, including such places as the Powder River, Wounded Knee and Little Big Horn

And, as usual, LITTLE BIG ANTLERS accompanied me.

One of these days I must finish off editing all of these …gulp … 6,000 photos that I took of my trip and post them on line before it’s too late.

There was more homework to do so I tackled that and then went to join my lesson.

As I said earlier, it passed off quite well despite a really flaky internet connection somewhere and I only fell asleep twice. We seem to be making a little progress in this respect although it’s far too early to start crowing quite yet.

When the lesson was over I made myself some hot chocolate and had a slice of chocolate cake, and then came back in here to edit the final batch of radio notes.

That’s all done now and tomorrow morning I’ll finish off everything by joining it all together, choosing the final track and writing the notes for it.

Tea tonight was a burger with pasta and veg – a long time since I’d had something from the European Burger Mountain.

Mind you, it’s not so much of a mountain these days. I’ve whittled it down since it reached the heady heights and overflowed the fridge. That was a long time ago.

So now I have a few things to do and than I’m off to bed.

But talking about performing stunts in cars, I remember hearing of a really hairy drive once where a guy set out to impress his friends and scare his girlfriend.
After screeching around a few corners, with tyres burning and engine overheating he turned to his girlfriend and, indicating the smoking tyres and burning Castrol R oil, said "now smell that!"
"Smell it?" she asked. "I’m sitting in it!"

Wednesday 26th January 2022 – I HAD A …

… lovely tea tonight, I really did.

Steamed vegetables with vegan veggie balls all tossed in a really nice thick vegan cheese sauce. And for a change the vegetables were cooked to perfection and it really was delicious. I loved every mouthful of it.

Breakfast was pretty wonderful too.

Yesterday I forgot to mention that I’d finished the last of the Christmas cake, and what a success that was! Even the icing hardened off after a week or so.

Unfortunately the banana and molasses cake had gone the Way of the West over the last four weeks that it had been standing idle, and so I made another batch of fruit buns first thing this morning after the medication and these have worked really well yet again

It’s just a simple 250-gramme bread recipe but with only 2/3rd water and a very ripe banana mixed in, along with sunflower seeds, dried fruit of all kinds and varieties, desiccated coconut and about 100 grammes of brazil nuts ground into rather a coarse flour.

Of coarse … “he means “of course”” – ed … there will have to be some coarseness involved if I’m doing something, won’t there?

Not much last night though. After the heady and turbulent nights that I’ve had in the recent past with Zero, Castor, TOTGA and a few other of my favourite young ladies coming to join me in my nocturnal rambles for hours and hours on end, last night brought me down to earth with a bump. A guy a know from way back when and I were rewiring a car somewhere using bits of wire but there was a whole wiring harness from another scrap car and I was cutting a whole length of wire out of it (and the times that I’ve done that too in real life!). Someone asked me what I was doing so I explained. They were a bit upset thinking that I’d been doing it in a different way but it seemed pretty reasonable to me. Then I could remember that my father could get hold of wire as well so I told my friend that we were using wire with a blue and grey trace but we could get from my father some yellow and grey trace for it and maybe we should go down there. He asked what time my father was working so I could explained. he said that if I get down there to Church Lawton I could take the car because there’s a misfire that needs sorting out and we can pick up some wire while we’re there. Of course I wondered if he was actually going to be out there and be the one to bring me back. We had a discussion about that but I can’t really remember where we went to after that.

Added to this was that some girl was involved in this but I can’t remember why. There was also something about why were we using this black wire with different-coloured tracing in it when we could have had any-coloured wire from anywhere to do the job and the more wire with higher contrast in it the better.

And what was he doing putting in an appearance in my nocturnal rambles? He was one of these people who had a very volatile character and while we had something of a working relationship back in the 70s and early 80s it fell apart dramatically on 2 occasions, the second time for good.

And if you think that that’s interesting, you ain’t seen nuffink yet. I was taxi-driving last night, going down Market Street and then up the bank in Middlewich Street. There was some excitement when a couple of boys on bikes were blocking my path. I got rid of them. Just then I heard a voice cry “Eric!”. I turned round and it was someone on a moped. The name “Frank” came into my head so I said “hello Frank”. Then I realised that it wasn’t so I said “it’s not Frank, it’s Pete”. He used to be the landlord of a couple of pubs in Crewe but had had some severe mental health issues. I asked him what he was doing now and he replied that he was working as a family counsellor. He was off the drink and had himself properly organised, all this kind of thing. We had quite a chat. I asked where he was living. He said he was living with his aunt, or his mother, or someone else who had a motorbike but they were constantly rowing about things but staying together. Then he said “you’ll remember (a girl’s name) “. I looked and there was a girl there. “Last time you saw her, she was a tiny baby” so I looked and asked “how old are you now?”. “11” she replied but she was quite big for 11 so we had a chat and I had a hug which was very nice and we all started to chat about the old days.

And why did he become involved in my travels too? He was someone who lost his town-centre pub due to a redevelopment project and they transferred him to a different kind of pub on a decaying housing estate and his character didn’t suit the locals at all. The last I heard of him, 40 years ago, he was having some really serious and tragic problems and I haven’t heard a word or even thought about him since.

The reason why there wasn’t as much going on during the night as there has been just recently is probably because I didn’t go to bed until almost 02:00. After crashing out so dramatically yesterday I wasn’t in the least bit tired. But when you have an 07:30 start in the morning, there isn’t much time for voyaging.

There had also been my first nocturnal challenge too – and that was changing the batteries in the ZOOM H1 while I’m asleep and the net result of my experiences is that I’m going to replace my ancient Sony with like-for-like. I can change those batteries in my sleep with no problem.

After the meds I made my fruit buns and then after breakfast I carried on going backwards through the journal to update it to include the missing journeys and photos.

At 12:30 I ground to a halt and went for a shower, followed by lunch. And the pain in my jaw has eased considerably over the last couple of days so I tried some sandwiches instead of soup. And that worked fine today.

Later on I went off and parked Caliburn on the street outside Lidl and walked down for my physiotherapy session. And the exercises that she’s had me doing, I can feel the difference between my left knee and the bad right one. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that I’ve broken both my knees once and the right one a second time in motorcycle accidents in my teenage years.

And then the right one a third time in a skiing accident in the 1970s – and next day drove my old BMC HALF-TON VAN all the way back to Winsford from Inverness and it’s not an automatic.

That van, known as “Bill Badger”, could tell a few stories, and you’ve heard a few of them, Alison.

It’s a good job that I went in Caliburn to the physiotherapist because I had a funny turn in Lidl – a week of inactivity hasn’t been kind to me by the looks of things.

The bill in Lidl was enormous, but seeing as I haven’t been shopping for almost 3 weeks it’s not a surprise. But they did have these tactile glove on offer again and they are great for photography in the winter, if I ever get back to the High Arctic, which these days is looking more and more unlikely until I learn to sail.

On the steps I bumped into my neighbour from up above and we had a chat, then I came in here to put away the frozen food, make a coffee and collapse into a chair. That was hard work.

Now that tea is over and the washing up done, I’m off to bed. Despite my bad night I’ve kept going all day which is good news but I still can’t motivate myself. maybe a good sleep might recharge the batteries, but I dunno.

And in any case, as I have said before … “and on many occasions too” – ed … what goes on during the night is much more exciting than anything that happens to me during the day and I wouldn’t exchange any of that for anything else – except if it were to happen in real life.

But fat chance of that.

Friday 17th September 2021 – AFTER YESTERDAY’S …

… exertions it was no surprise to anyone that I was in bed by 20:45. But the difficulty whenever I do that is that I’m usually awake quite early and so I never seem to take advantage of it.

But if anyone thinks that I’m going to be out of bed at 05:40 and doing things when there’s no alarm set, they are totally mistaken. Even 07:20 was rather early but there’s no point in staying in bed if I can’t go back to sleep

At 09:00 I nipped downstairs to the “Match” supermarket in the basement for my bread for lunch. And some drink too. I’ve already finished off the 1.5 litres of iced tea and 2 litres of banana-flavoured soya drink that I brought on Wednesday night.

Back up in my room I finished off my notes from yesterday and then had a listen to the dictaphone to see where I’d been during the night. I was with a couple of friends and we were discussing, of all things, rape. The girl said something like “rapists should all go on strike and down tools”. I replied that if all rapists downed tools, there wouldn’t be any such thing as rape at all. And despite the gravity of the subject, I was pretty impressed that I could come out with a pun like that while I was asleep.
Later on there was an issue about a socket not working. I immediately reckoned that there was a bad joint somewhere and the first joint that I tested came apart when I pulled it I was with a guy whom I knew so I asked him if he would hold a lamp at the socket while I held the wires togeter to see if this was the bad joing in question but he refused. I had to run off and try to find a light with a plug that would fit in the socket and try it myself.
Even later Rosemary was asking me about the Battle of Rhedae. I knew that it had taken place on the outskirts of Clermont Ferrand (which it didn’t – I was thinking of the Battle of Gergovie) so I went to fetch my Michelin guide to the Puy de Dome and had a good search through but couldn’t find it in there, which was no surprise seeing as Rhedae, which is these days believed by many to the the town of Quillan, is in the Razès in South West France.

While I was busy working I was keeping an eye on what was going on outside down on the station.

At a certain moment a train from Oostende pulled into the station just as a train from Eupen and Welkenraedt pulled in on its way to Oostende.

But of them were powered by the typical Class 18 electric locomotives. The one from Eupen, furthes away from the camera, is being pulled by a locomotive whose number I can’t see, and the one from Oostende, closes to the camera, is being pushed by locomotive number 1819.

What else I could see from my window were aeroplanes flying from right to left just above the horizon.

Way over to the left is the Brussels National Airport at Zaventem. All of these aeroplanes are on the flightpath going into land there and there were quite a few too. At one stage I counted one every three or four minutes.

When I lived in Schaerbeek back in the early 1990s my apartment looked out right across to the airport way out in the distance and the aeroplanes that came in to land were clearly visible at night with their landling lights illuminated. They would come into land right in line head-on to my apartment and the view was fantastic.

Another thing that you could see from my window up here on the 5th floor was the Universitaire Ziekenhuis Leuven, the University Hospital of Leuven.

That’s the building, or buildings, I should maybe say, over there on the skyline on the right-hand side of the photo. And this photo will give you some idea of the size of the hospital. It’s one of the biggest in Europe, if not the World.

The thing that impressed me about this hospital is that while most hospitals give instructions zbout how to arrive there from the town centre, this hospital give directions from the airport.

It’s truly a cosmopolitan hospital and that’s what I want. Many hospitals and medical services are quite chauvinistic about their treatment, but not so the Belgians. They aren’t afraid to mention medical research that is being undergone in other countries.

Another thing that I noticed pulling into the station was a rather elderly Class 21 locomotive.

These first came into service in the mid-80s, with 144 taking to the rails. There are Class 11s, Class 12s, Class 21s and Class 27s, with the latter being the most powerful and the former being the least powerful.

They were built by the Belgian BN/ACEC combine which is now no longer in business. And so since the Class 18s have arrived, these are gradually being withdrawn and dismantled as a source of spares for the big Class 27s.

Something else that came through the staion that I wasn’t quick enough to photograph, much to my regret was one of the new Bombardier-Alstom “M7” double deck multiple units that are currently on proving trials on the Belgian network. That would have been quite a thing.

With a nice quiet day I ought to have done so much more too but unfortunately much of the time was spent curled up on my bed having a little relax. No point in fighting it.

Later in the evening I caught a bus that took me out to Alison Wonderland, as her new home is called. She had some falafel left over from her barbecue so I cooked it while she went to the fritkot down the road for a bag of chips.

We had a nice meal and lengthy chat, and instead of singing for my supper I helped her move some heavy furniture around.

Once I’d recovered my strength Alison drove me home. I was totally exhaused and so with an early start tomorrow, instead of writing up my notes I crawled into bed and that was that.

Sunday 27th June 2021 – I’VE DONE SOMETHING …

… today that I haven’t done for absolutely ages. And that is that I’ve been out for an evening walk. And I’ve even seen the sun go down on the Ile de Chausey for the first time since I don’t know when.

Mind you, there’s a good reason for that. When I went out for my usual afternoon walk today the rain was so heavy that the noise was deafening. According to a storm warning that we received round about lunch-time, the amount of rain that was planned to fall during the afternoon would be the equivalent of three weeks’ worth of rain.

And anyone who has seen the amount of rain that we have had this last three weeks will know that a pasting was on its way.

Something else that I’ve done today that I haven’t done for ages is to awaken to the sound of the alarm on a Sunday at 06:00. And if I ever understand what made me forget myself so much to have set an alarm for this morning , I’ll let you know because it’s certainly something that I didn’t intend to do.

Furthermore it interrupted me right in the middle of an exciting voyage too. I’d gone round to a girl’s house. It was in some kind of back entry I’d been walking down there. there were big houses and some girls were coming out into the back as I walked past so I walked into their yard. They were setting up a tennis game. One of them was serving a few balls that came remarkably close to me and I was very surprised. As this game developed a guy whom I used to know turned up. He started to work on a red Cortina belonging to one of these girls – the girl who had been serving these balls at me. I could see that there was some kind of chemistry between those two. He was going things like draining the oil all over the floor of the garage and he was masking up and painting some bits as well. He was asking me questions about the Capri that I had and what I’d done. I said that I’d swapped over a load of engines. he said “I thought that you were putting the yellow engine into that one”. “No” I replied. “I’ve put the red one in for now and the yellow one is going in somewhere else and when that’s done I’m going to take out this engine and rebuild it”. He was wrestling with this girl and I was getting more and more jealous and that was when the alarm went off and what the alarm was doing going off at 06:00 on a Sunday morning I really don’t know.

It took me quite a while to go back to sleep as well but eventually I dropped off. There was someone like a French friend of mine who was going to come to visit so we were tidying up the house. I was tidying one of the rooms and rearranging the furniture and some old guy who lived there came back from work. Whoever it was in charge told us all to stop and to get on and do some things but I was still looking around for any tons of mess that needed cleaning hidden behind chairs and so on. I had to go off to work – I worked in a cafe or a hotel or something so I set off to walk. There were a couple of these motorbike/moped things going past. I thought that one of them might have been my friend arriving. Anyway I ended up at an ice-skating rink and I wanted to go in. I was going to hire my skates but then I saw that I needed a towel to dry off after the shower and a few other things too. I thought rather than just help myself and leave the money on the counter I’d wait for the woman to finish what she was doing then she could come and serve me properly. She was with one of the managers and they were filling out a diary about cleaning and so on.

It was about 10:45 when I eventually managed to haul myself out of bed and go for my medication – but not before I’d checked the stuff in the slow cooker to see how it was doing.

After the medication I mixed a pile of pizza dough and then left it to rise. I then came back in here and typed out the notes on the dictaphone, the two above from today and the one from yesterday which is now on-line, and then organised some stuff that needed organising.

Lunch was porridge and toast with coffee following which I came in here and did some music stuff. Tomorrow I’ll be preparing a radio programme and the music is already chosen. This afternoon arranged it into pairs and merged the pairs together. Tomorrow I can start by writing the text.

Another thing that I’ve done is to check the specifications of my computer because it needs upgrading and I need to make sure that I buy the correct parts for it.

With the walk being abandoned I kneaded the pizza dough, divided it into 3, put two parts in the freezer and rolled out the third, putting it on the pizza tray.

While that was doing I’d tipped the stuff out of the slow cooker into the wok where the tofu was marinading, mixed it all around, brought it to the boil, added a few spoonsful of porridge oats to thicken and glutify it, and left it to simmer.

Pastry was next. I made a nice mixing of pastry, rolled out enough to make a base in a pie dish and rolled out some more to make a lid and then switched off the filling to let it cool down.

Once it had cooled down sufficiently I stuck it in the pie bottom, added the top and sealed it, and put it in the oven to bake. With the leftover pastry and the leftover filling I made a pasty-type of thing for tea tomorrow night.

While all of that was cooking I assembled my pizza and when the pie was properly baked, I swapped it over for the pizza.

When the pizza was baked too, I could sit down and have my tea. And as for the pizza, it was delicious – one of the best that I’ve ever made too. I just wish that I had remembered to turn up the heat in the oven to “full”, and then it would have been even better.

And why no pudding tonight? That’s because I’m having to bake bread on Tuesday morning and I’ll make a pudding then. Meantime, I’ll live off the apple pie that’s in the fridge.

Finally the rain stopped and I went out for my walk.

Earlier on I mentioned that this afternoon we were in the grip of a torrential rainstorm. This had only eased off a short while ago.

And that looks like it might be the storm over there, heading off down the coast of the Cotentin Peninsula depositing the contents of the heavy raincloud onto Agon-Coutainville and into the sea just offshore.

As you can see, there’s no point in scanning the horizon for any fishing boats or anything like that this evening. Whatever is going on out there, we aren’t able to see anything because of the raincloud.

Now here’s a craft that we have seen on many occasions in the past – always assuming of course that it’s the same boat.

It’s quite possibly the same yellow zodiac that we have seen on previous occasions in the past moving in and out of the harbour and the Baie de Mont St Michel. Today, it’s anchored in the Baie de Granville and is occupied by a man who is bent on fishing in the water just offshore. He has one rod in the water and another one upright in the back of the boat.

As I watched him for a while he didn’t manage to pull anything out of the water and eventually, pulled his rod out of the water, sat down at the controls of his boat and roared off into the sunset. Another unsuccessful fishing expedition out of the many that we have seen so far.

So with him having cleared off now I can concentrate on what I’m supposed to be doing this evening.

No walk around anywhere in Granville would be complete without looking down on the beach at the Rue du Nord to see what is going on down there this evening. Due to the later hour, I didn’t expect to see anyone sunning themselves down there, and the fact that the tide was right in meant that there wouldn’t be too much beach to actually be on.

From this photo you can see how people can descend to the beach here. Over there at the top of the image towards the right is the set of steps that descend from the Rue du Nord. The foot of the set up steps in deep in the water which shows you just how far in the tide actually is right now.

One thing that we have noticed over the last while is the state of the medieval city walls and how the walls at the Place du Marché aux Chevaux have been fenced off to prevent people going too close to it.

What I noticed here today was that there is some kind of wooden structure that has been assembled and fastened to the wall. And I’ve no idea as to its purpose either. It doesn’t look very substantial so it can’t be anything important.

But out of shot is some kind of trailer that looks as if it might be a workman’s cabin. That’s appeared here over the last few days and so who knows? We might even be seeing something actually happening to the city walls in the near future and won’t that be a surprise?

There was something going on round by the diving platform at the Plat Gousset and so, bravely dodging the big puddles on the path underneath the medieval walls, I wandered off that way to see what it might be.

First of all though you can see how high the tide is right now. There’s a concrete pillar out there on which is a kind of diving platform that the kids use for leaping into the water wen the weather is much more clement than it is right now. And today, the diving platform is actually submerged by the tide. Only the guard rail is above the water right now.

And as for what is actually splashing around in the water by the diving platform, it’s a swimmer who seems to be enjoying himself in the water. And sooner him than me in this weather. Mind you, it’s so wet out here that I don’t suppose that it makes much difference whether you are in or out.

And here’s something else that has attracted out attention over the last few days.

Having seen this sign I can tell you that this “Urban Trail” and the white tapes that have sprung up all over the place relate to a couple of races that took place on Friday evening in the town. 700 runners were attracted to the town to take part in 2 races, one of 13 kilometres and the other one of 8 kilometres.

Quite a few people have used the opportunity of the lockdown to start some kind of régime of fitness and many of the runners, particularly in the 8-kilometre race, were debutants at road-racing.

Now that my curiosity was satisfied I pushed on towards the viewpoint overlooking the Plat Gousset.

There might not be a beach to sit on right now but there’s a sea wall. And with the comfortable seat and the calm sea, it’s an ideal place to sit and watch the sunset as these two young girls are doing.

But I’m not sure what the man is doing, apart from chatting to them of course. And he’s carrying a guitar as well so maybe he’s going to give them both a tune. The girl farthest away from the camera doesn’t seem to be to impressed by what is happening.

Nor me either, for that matter, I cleared off across to the Square Maurice Marland to see what was happening there.

First of all, I have to go to see what my seagull chicks are doing on the roofs across in the Rue des Juifs.

And they seem to be coming along quite nicely. They look quite healthy and while they weren’t actually flapping their wings, they were quite active and alert, waiting for mummy to come home with supper.

As for the Square itself, I was hoping that with signs of repair taking place here and there around the town that they might have actually done something to start work on tidying up the place and restoring the kiddies’ rides ready for summer. But there looks to be no chance of that happening right now.

Another opportunity lost.

And when they do eventually get round to restoring the place after all of this time, I hope that they do a far better job than they have done here. Because this is dreadful.

At one time the Rue St Michel used to be a really nice authentic cobbled street here in the centre of the old town but as we know, it’s been dug up a couple of times just recently while they have been replacing various pipes and cables.

But now they seem to have finished, they haven’t bothered to put back the cobbles at all. They have simply resurfaced the street with asphalt and how I hate to see that. It shows a total lack of imagination and lack of skill, particularly when we are talking about a historic place like the medieval walled city up here on the rock.

All of the old-time skills are dying out and I suppose that this is another one where there is no-one left with the skill to do the job correctly.

At the end of the alleyway there’s a view over the inner harbour and at last I can identify the fishing boat that I saw yesterday.

She isn’t in fact a new one and I’m surprised that I didn’t recognise her because she is in her way quite a famous little boats. She’s L’Alize III and she was the boat that was excluded from the fishing grounds around the Channel Islands on 18th May and which led to yet another confrontation between the Channel Islands authorities and the town of Granville.

But this was enough for me. I folded up my tent and cleared off into the shadows back towards my apartment. I’m exhausted and so I’m off to bed. An early start in the morning and I’m radioing, so I need to be fit.

Thursday 25th June 2020 – I CAN’T SEE …

… just what use this particular product would be to anyone.

believe me, I hunted high and low but I have yet to encounter a shop that sells electric vegetables. There certainly weren’t any in LIDL where I saw this appliance.

What I did see in LIDL though was someone pick up almost every melon in the shop (with his bare hands) and hold it close to his face to sniff it to see if it was ripe.

Note to self – don’t buy melons from LIDL. I really don’t see what is so hard to understand about behaviour in the middle of a pandemic.

Something else that I don’t understand is why I found it so hard to leave my bed this morning. Another day where I missed all three alarms and that is more depressing that anything to do with this pandemic, that’s for sure.

After the medication though, I had a listen to the dictaphone.

last night we were all on a yacht (I’m getting carried away with this idea, aren’t I?) and the question of some kind of news came up. We were talking about the weather, storms, all this kind of thing. At fist I couldn’t understand it but later I began to get to grips with the message and started to understand it. The project really wasn’t very bright. They asked me if I would go on the TV and speak to them, say something about it in Welsh but I declined the offer as I really didn’t know enough off the top of my head to be able to hold a conversation in it yet. The British all left and it just left this boat bobbing around and I was on my own for a while. Then more and more people started to come back and it wasn’t the same tranquil little scene that it should have been. I was annoyed about that as well.
And what that was all about I don’t have the faintest idea.
A little later on I was looking around at houses, in Sandbach, a house on the corner of that street that leads into Park Lane, an old terraced house. A friend of mine had been to see it so there was some thing about “this house is Private Property” and for any inspection please telephone “so and so” – Keep Out – all that kind of thing. It was from the Estate Agent who was showing me around. he told me about the house on the corner of Carter Street. I said “yes, a friend of mine had seen it”. he said “it’s good value isn’t it?” I said “it’s good value if you have the money to spend to do it up, I suppose”. He started to he a bit derogatory about my friend, saying “you could soon come up with the money if you wanted to”. I said “he hasn’t had his inheritance yet”. he replied “what kind of guy is it who sits around waiting for an inheritance? he should be out there making his own way”. I pointed out that he was making his own way if he was renting an apartment pro-tem and had his yacht, all this kind of thing. But this conversation just went on in a very deprecating tone towards this guy and I didn’t like that at all.

Later on I had a shower and a general clean-up. And a weigh-in too. And my weight is going back up – in fact i’m almost back up to my old target weight, having stayed below it for two weeks. I must do something about that.

Like go for a walk up the hill to LIDL in the early morning heat.

And here I am – right again. My assumptions from yesterday were correct. When i saw that lorry and the fork-lift truck preparing to unload it, I suspected that one of the Jersey freighters would be in port very shortly.

And here in the harbour this morning, having presumably crept in on the early morning tide, is Normandy Trader bringing in more stuff from the Channel islands and ready to take more stuff back

But something in that photo caught my eye so I went for a closer look.

And there up in the rigging of Marité there’s someone messing about with a mast. Had this been the UK then the Health and Safety inspectorate would have a field day with this.

And the guys with the fishing nets are still having an enormous amount of fun trying to untangle it over there. They still don’t seem to have sorted them selves out.

First stop was at the Railway Station. I’ve ordered and paid for my tickets but I need to collect them from the machine. I need to do that because there have been times when the machine has been out of order and the Booking Office doesn’t open until after the train has departed.

So if I can’t obtain the tickets from the machine then I am well and truly stuck.

Next stop was LIDL. I’ve mentioned some of the excitement there, but what was more exciting was that peaches are on special offer, and they had grapes in at a reasonable price.

As regular readers of this rubbish will recall, I’m a big grape fan and I can demolish a kilo of grapes at one sitting with no problem at all.

There’s plenty of home maintenance going on all over town right now.

But ehre’s some adventurous stuff that’s worthy of a photo. It looks as if the guttering or the fascia board has come adrift from the fron of that building in the Rue de la Fontaine Bedeau.

Seeing as it’s Thursday I went on to la Mie Caline for my dejeunette and a chat with the guys in there, and then headed off for home

On the way up the hill in the Rue des Juifs, something caught my eye.

We’ve had another change of occupant in the chantier navale today. Or maybe I should say “changes” because there are two extra fishing boats in there now that must have been lifted up this morning.

So it’s all go in there then.

By this time I was roasting so when I arrived home I made a smoothie. There was a peach left over from last week, quite ripe, so I put it with some soya milk and ice into the whizzer and whizzed it all round.

That was something that I called extremely tasty, although maybe an extra peach might have given it more flavour.

This afternoon I started on the final week of my music course and that is now finished despite several interruptions. In theory I should be able to play 32-bar sequences in 5 scales using 2-5-1 progressions to change scale but of course the practical application of this course left me behind a long time ago. I can’t play the piano to save my life.

One of the interruptions was to go for my usual afternoon walk amongst the crowds in the glorious sunshine.

Strangely though, there was nothing whatever happening out at sea today, although there was plenty of activity in the chantier navale. We saw that there were four boats in there at lunchtime. This afternoon they seem to have multiplied.

There’s now five of them over there up on blocks for work to be carried out. This is really good news as far as I’m concerned. Nothing wrong with all of this activity at all.

Round on this side of the headland there was some activity in the water.

We had a few men in a boat yet again all equipped with all kinds of tackle looking as if they meant to do some serious harm to the piscatorial population.

Whether or not they will do of course remains to be seen. I’ve yet to see any one of the huge number of rod-and-line fishermen actually pull anything out of the water. Not even an old boot.

While I was out there admiring the fishermen I was interrupted yet again by some more air traffic.

A light aeroplane, presumably from the airfield at Donville-les-Bains overflew me. This time I managed to take a good photo of its registration – 26-AEW – but that tells me nothing because it’s not on the national database.

Apparently there’s some kind of local register for small light aircraft and the 26 in its number relates to the fact that it’s registered in Départemente 26, which is the Drôme, down in South-East France.

My walk carried me on around the path where there’s a good view of the fish processing plant.

And it looks as if someone has forgotten their fishing boat. Stenaca is here tied up to the wharf at the plant but the tide has gone out around it and she’s now grounded out.

We’ll have to wait for the tide to come back in before she can sail off into the evening sunset. But while she’s there they could be giving her hull a really good scrub.

Back round in the Place d’Armes there’s more activity going on with the pipelaying in the Rue Lecarpentier.

We now have the digger here moving big slabs of rock into the back of the pick_up. I wonder if this means that the work is almost finished and they are now tidying up.

But anyway, I came on in to carry on with my music course. I wanted to finish it.

And I did too, although I could have finished it much earlier had we not had the other usual interruption of me crashing out on the chair for a while. It’s the kind of thing that is filling me full of dismay that I can’t keep going for a whole day.

In the time that was left before guitar practice I had another play around with the web pages that I have been editing. That’s a job that i’m looking forward to restarting tomorrow in earnest.

After the guitar it was teatime. I’d forgotten that I’d bought some endives at the weekend so I made myself some steamed veg with some of those frozen vegetable balls, all covered in a cheese sauce.

So filling was it that I didn’t have any pie for afters either.

My run this evening was much, much later than usual. And for a very good reason.

It had slowly begun to cloud over during the evening but round about 20:00 there was the most astonishing clap of thunder that blew the window right open, knocking the fan onto the floor.

That was followed by a torrential downpour of epic proportions with flashes of lightning and claps of thunder that I hadn’t heard for ages. No chance of my going out in any of that.

By about 21:30 the rain had stopped, the wind had died down and the ground was starting to dry out.

That was the signal for me to go out for my evening runs just in case the weather worsened again. And I’m glad that I did because I was treated to a really gorgeous sinking sun tonight

So anyway, off I shot and ran all the way up the hill and down to the clifftop past a rather sodden itinerant who still won’t seek shelter out of the rain.

There were a few people there admiring the sunset but my attention was drawn elsewhere.

From behind me I’d heard the familiar thud if a couple of old diesels and sure enough, Normandy Trader was heading off out to sea past Le Loup – the light at the harbour entrance that marks the sunken rocks.

The way in which she was bathed in the late evening sun was so impressive and that was something that is always worth a photograph.

It surprised me that none of the others there were interested in it.

As she sailed past me, I stood on the headland and watcher her go.

And then I set off for my run down to the viewpoint over the cliffs. apart from the fishing boats in the chantier navale, which hadn’t multiplied yet again during the late afternoon, there wasn’t an awful lot else going on.

having recovered my breath I walked over to the Boulevard Vaufleury and ran off all the way down to the bottom and then through the medieval town and back up to the viewpoint in the rue du Nord.

For some reason or other, it was a much more difficult run that it has been of late, and i was glad when I reached the viewpoint.

My arrival coincided with that of Normandy Trader rounding the headland. She was well on her way out to sea now for an arrival in Jersey in the small hours.

The background of this image, a beautiful pale pinky orange colour and the Ile de Chausey fading away in the distance looked quite impressive too and I was getting all nostalgic about it yet again.

When I arrived, there was no-one down on the beach having a picnic, nor anyone perched on the rocky shelf either.

But during the course of the next fifteen minutes a couple of people ended up down there and the crowd slowly swelled are more and more people came down to watch the sunset.

By the time that I was ready to leave there was quite a crowd down there enjoying the view, and with every good reason too.

The rainstorm that we had had had left plenty of clouds hanging around in the sky and the sun was playing peek-a-boo with everyone here tonight.

The spectacle was pretty amazing so I stayed to watch it for about 15 minutes and then I came on home to write up my notes.

Tomorrow I’m going to make a start on the current projects that have been in abeyance since I started my series of courses. The Welsh course still has three weeks to run but the others are all now finished.

Mind you, I have plenty of ideas of things that I need to do which i shall have to put in motion for when I’m free of all commitments, whenever that might be.

But that’s not for this evening. It’s already quite late and I’m going to have another bad day tomorrow if I don’t get a move on and go to bed soon.

So what I’ll do is to leave you with all of the photos from later this evening with Normandy Trader disappearing into the sunset while I go and catch up with my beauty sleep.

See you all tomorrow.

beautiful sunset ile de chausey english channel granville manche normandy france eric hall

normandy trader beautiful sunset ile de chausey english channel granville manche normandy france eric hall

Saturday 20th April 2020 – TODAY WAS THE FIRST …

… day for quite sone considerable time (and I’m talking weeks here, I’m sure) that we’ve had ay appreciable amount of rain.

You can see the view that they are having from the coastguard station – just a mass of heavy, very wet cloud hugging the surface of the sea and no-one can really see anything at all. All that I can say is that it’s a good job that they are equipped with a radar

As for me, I’m not quite sure what I’m equipped with, but whatever it is, it seems to be preventing me from leaving my bed when the alarms go off.

That’s right, another one missed this morning too. Not by much, it has to be said, about 10 minutes in fact, but a miss is as good as a mile.

After my medication I had a listen to the dictaphone to see where I’d been and to see if anyone had manifested themselves to come with me too.

I started off last night in hospital, in a waiting room. I was on my own at first but then someone else came and a couple more people came. In the end there were about 8 or 9 of us. One of the couples was a young couple and it was the husband who was being involved in the medical procedure. And as he was sorting himself out someone else put his head round the door. I thought that it was a video at first but it was a real person. He started to deliver a eulogy about these two people – this couple. It was really strange, almost like he was sending them off to their deaths rather than to have medical appointments. There were a couple of people who were strange as well. One guy who came and then left after 15 minutes but came back in the middle of this discussion, shaking his car keys about, which I thought was really interesting
Later on, I was in work and went to sit at my desk. I hadn’t sat at my desk for ages. The guy sitting at the desk opposite me, an Asian guy had his feet all across my desk and didn’t move them either when I sat down. We were chatting and Frankie Howerd came up in the conversation and he asked me about him so I told him who he was. We were looking at some new buildings that were being built opposite. One of them certainly wasn’t perpendicular judging by all of the others so we were making some remarks about that. Then the story drifted around to me and an apartment block where I was living, a new-ish one, very low, four storeys something modern in an L shape with a garden in front. People were coming to see me and were talking about my apartment. I had a garage in the basement and Caliburn wouldn’t go in there so I was going to put one of my Cortinas, the red Cortina estate XCL, in. I realised that I needed some help to get it started and the kind of guy who would come along and give me a hand – I had a certain person in mind here and I don’t know why – someone with whom I was no longer on friendly terms and no-one else would really know how to help me the best to get this vehicle moved.

After breakfast, it was a long, weary drag to sort out the music for a couple of “various artists” collections. One album ended up being one short, which was astonishing because there was really some obscure stuff on there and I was expecting much more than that to be missing.

But the second one, after a great deal of work, actually worked out and no-one was more astonished than me. Some of the tracks on it were wrongly attributed too, and that always causes a huge problem.

As an example, one track attributed to Leslie Harvey (much better known as Les Harvey and the brother of Alex Harvey of the Sensational band of that name and who died through being electrocuted live on stage in the middle of a concert) isn’t by him at all.

Well, he might be playing the guitar on it, but the singer is definitely Maggie Bell (she of the “Taggart” theme song). So if Les Harvey really is playing the guitar, that can only be an early “Stone The Crows” track from before Jimmy McCulloch’s time.

And it was all like that. A track attributed to “Eric Clapton and Duane Allman” is actually a “Derek and the Dominoes” track from the “Layla” recording sessions when Duane Allman looked in from next door to see what was going on. And there were many others that were far more obscure than that.

No wonder that it took so long to sort out, and no wonder that I only edited a handful of photos from July 2019 while I was doing it.

Having got to where I wanted to be (albeit rather loosely) I turned my attention to the radio projects, with a break for lunch of course.

And by the time that I had knocked off, I’d chosen all of the music for two of them (except the last tracks of course), edited them, combined them in pairs as I usually do and even started on writing the text.

In another departure from previous practice, I’ve been preparing a searchable text file of tracks that I’ve used, with the project number to which they relate. I found to my horror the other day that I’d used the same track twice within a couple of weeks.

With a memory like mine, I need to do so much more than I’m doing. And talking of memory, I wish too that the memory sticks that I ordered would hurry up and arrive so I can merge a pile of new stuff into the various runs and maybe even start off a new run or two.

This evening on the guitar I took up a challenge.

The Dire Straits song “Telegraph Road” – one of the most emotional songs ever ever recorded and on a par with Bruce Springsteen’s “The River” – came up on the playlist just as I was pulling out the guitar.

And so I sat down and spent some time working out the chords to it. At first I just couldn’t do the chord changes even though I’d managed to work out most of them.

But after a while, the light goes on in the head like it occasionally does, and I changed the key to Gmajor and it all fell into place.

Of course, the lead guitar solo is quite a different thing entirely and I don’t think that I’ll ever manage to work that out, but still …

There was some left-over falafel in the fridge that had been in there longer that was good for it so I finished that off with steamed veg and vegan cheese sauce, followed by apple crumble and soya coconut stuff.

Then off on my run all round the headland. Not that I was feeling like it (I’ve had a little chute in health this afternoon -I recognise the signs now) and I would gladly not have gone out, but that’s not going to help me one little bit if I let myself go, especially with all of this going on.

But the rain was pleasant. The first for ages as I said earlier.

And here’s a thing – have you ever noticed how fresh everywhere looks in the early morning after a rainstorm during the night? Reduced traffic on the roads at night means less pollution and what is there in the bigger particles, the rain can wash it out.

So with little traffic on the roads this last month or so, what will the first rainstorm for several weeks do to the atmosphere? I’m looking forward to seeing what it will look like outside first thing in the morning.

Having recovered my breath I carried on running along the clifftop on the south side of the headland.

Still our four boats in the chantier navale. And still the same four too. I thought that I’d better check.

But one thing that I didn’t see tonight was any fishing boats out working. I suppose that there must have been some out though, because the harbour wasn’t full of idle boats by any means.

The tide was quite a way out though too, so I wouldn’t have expected tos ee an loitering around the harbour entrance either.

While I’d been working this afternoon, I’d heard the piledriver going off so I reckoned that they had been working down in the harbour.

When I paused for breath on my way home, I went for a look to see what they had been up to, and sure enough, there’s a third pontoon support that’s been pounded into the harbour bottom.

This is starting to look serious now, isn’t it? It won’t be long before they are in a position to finish off and I wonder what it will look like.

Granville, the newer of the two Channel Island ferries, is still there. Services are suspended now until 11th May at the earliest and we shall see after that.

The old cold store, from when the port was a thriving “Newfoundlander” deep-sea fishing port, is still there looking quite sad.

Mme la Maire wants to sweep it away and install a casino and leisure facilities there, but that will be the death of the town. The commercial activities in the port keep the town active all the year round.

if they are swept away and leisure activities replace them, then it’ll be like most other seaside towns – crammed to bursting point for two months of the year and dead as a doornail for the remaining 10 and that isn’t why I came here.

So I’m off to bed, and I’ll attack the radio stuff tomorrow, given half a chance.

That is, if my file-digitalising goes according to plan. But that’s too much to expect.

Monday 31st December 2012 – A HAPPY NEW YEAR …

… to all my readers.

A heartfelt plea of course, but not from my heart, but from the heart of whoever it was who was responsible for all of the “artwork” on the walls of the Gentlemen’s Rest Room on Crewe Bus Station back in the 1960s.

I remember all of the artwork so well, being an impressionable young lad back in those days and I owe my magnificent Grade 2 ‘O’Level pass in Biology back in 1970 not to the teachers who helped teach the course, but to whoever it was who was responsible for the drawings in the aforementioned.

My success in the poetry syllabus of the English Literature ‘O’ Level I also put down very much to the efforts of whoever it was who was responsible for the text of the illustrations.

Who can forget the heartfelt cry of
“It’s no good standing on the seat
The crabs in here can jump six feet
And if you think that that is high
Go next door – the b@$t@rd$ fly”?
Move over, Tennyson.

Which reminds me – my poetry teacher, Mr Simpson, once asked me “will you read a short extract from Alfred Tennyson?”
To which I replied “Certainly sir. ‘Fred Tennys'”

But back to the gentlemen’s rest room. I also remember the heartfelt wail of
“Here I sit, broken hearted;
Spent my penny but only f@rted”
and considered that it wasn’t a patch on my own juvenile retort of
“Broken hearted, here I sit
went to f@rt, had a $h|t”

And that also reminds me of another extract from days of yore when Alan Fearon once shouted out “I’m going for a $h|t”
to which I immediately retorted “you leave my brother alone!”

But enough of the misplaced humour for now. After two days of doing nothing at all and a third one coming right up tomorrow, I do sincerely wish you all a very happy 2013, and I wish for all of you in the coming year everything that you wished for everyone else in 2012.

Best wishes to all of you.

-1

EPIC HALL

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

Tag Archives: alan fearon

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