Tag Archives: alarm issues

Friday 27th March 2026 – AND SO, AFTER …

… last night’s theatrics, I managed to survive into today.

Not without problems, though. I am still having these severe coughing fits, my nose is running and I’m freezing, freezing cold. In fact, although for the past few days I’ve just been running the heating at night, it went back on on Thursday for twenty-four hours per day. And yet I’m still perishing.

So after I’d finished the notes for yesterday, I managed to find the time to dictate a few radio notes, making a horrible mess of them, and I reckoned that that was nature’s way of telling me to go to bed.

But not before I’d switched off the alarms and set one for 07:30. A lie-in will do me a little good, I hope.

However, there was just one problem. The alarm that I’d set didn’t have a sound. Consequently, it was the vibration and the buzzing that awoke me, rather later than it might have been. I was dead to the World at that moment.

As usual, it took a while to haul myself out of bed, and as I was already dressed (yes, I’d gone to bed again fully dressed) I sat at the desk and listened to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. And again, it was somewhat disappointing.

I was in dialysis last night. There was some discussion amongst the staff about cases of food poisoning going around. I listened quite carefully because when someone began to mention a couple of the symptoms, I realised that that was actually how I was feeling and how I was suffering. However, the only thing that I have to eat or drink there is the orange juice and coffee so I don’t know where this thing about food poisoning might have come from at dialysis.

That was rather prescient, I suppose, because the idea of food poisoning had gone through my mind at some point during the afternoon on Thursday.

When the alarm went off, there was something going on about weddings. We’d been planning some kind of wedding for something or other and a couple of people had said that this is going to be the kind of wedding that we’ll never forget. But I didn’t manage to go very far down into this dream at all because the alarm went off and awoke me.

What a shame that the alarm awoke me just as this dream was starting up. I would have loved to have known how it would have developed.

The nurse turned up as usual to sort out my legs and feet. He didn’t have much to say today, especially after I’d told him that I’d gone to bed at 20:00. I suppose that he was pondering on how to deal with the situation in his capacity as a nurse, but he simply dealt with my legs and feet and left.

Once he’d gone, I could deal with breakfast — the first meal that I’d had in twenty-four hours — and read some more of ESSAYS ON THE LATIN ORIENT by William A Miller.

We’ve finally finished the sorry tale of Bosnia and Herzegovina, where, like just everywhere else in the Balkans, the citizens handed their country over to the Ottomans on a plate. We’re now turning our attention to Rome, which seems to be where all of the exiled Kings and Princes ended up, living at the mercy of the Pope.

The list of royal personages who found refuge there is impressively long, that’s for sure, and it includes the names of some of the most powerful in the medieval Balkans.

Back in here, I had plenty of things to do now that my week’s work is finished. The most important was to pay my property taxes for my place in Canada, and now that’s done. There was also the food order for Leclerc to review and send off. And as you might expect, there were several items unavailable.

However, they did have a butternut squash, so my roasted butternut squash soup for Easter Saturday looks like it might be on.

Another thing that I’ve been doing is to back up the files. Now that I have an 8 TB disc drive in the new office computer, I’ve been merging all of the files that were on different hard drives, and they are all now on this large one. I’ve merged in the working files too, and the next plan is to format the two external drives, split the contents of the large back-up drive into two and copy them onto the two external drives, half each, as an extra insurance back-up.

My cleaner turned up as usual to do her stuff. I explained that I wasn’t well, so she sensibly left me to it and left at the end of her session.

Not that I had much rest because fifteen minutes after she had gone, Leclerc turned up with the shopping. So I had all of that to put away (and it’s still not all away) and one kg of carrots to dice, blanch and freeze. And to save the water for the base of the butternut squash soup.

Back in here, I drifted off on my travels for a short while and then had a look at some of the notes that I’d dictated just now. Two of them were the notes for joining tracks so I edited them both and assembled the programmes. That’s me now well ahead for self-sufficiency.

Tea tonight was the curry that I was going to eat last night, a korma from out of the freezer, with rice and veg followed by vegan trifle. And I noticed that the agar-agar jelly seems to be breaking up. It’s probably not meant to be kept as long as this, so I shall have to make a smaller one next time. I hope that this one survives a little longer and doesn’t end up completely in the waste bin. That would be a tragedy.

It will also be a tragedy if I don’t get a move on and go to bed while I still can. I need a good night’s sleep and this looks like the best chance of having one.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about weddings … "well, one of us has" – ed … someone once asked "why does the bride always wear white at her wedding?"
"It’s to symbolise purity and chastity" I replied
"Of course it isn’t" retorted someone else. "If you look around, you’ll find that all kitchen appliances come in white these days."

Thursday 4th December 2025 – GUESS WHO …

… forgot to reset one of the alarms last night, after having switched them off as a result of his early start?

That’s right, Brain of Britain strikes again! When the alarm sounded this morning, I slowly rose from the Dead and sat on the edge of the bed, waiting for the second alarm to go off before staggering off into the bathroom. And waited, and waited.

Eventually, I had a look to see what had happened. Having switched the alarms off yesterday so that they wouldn’t sound while I was in the bathroom, I hadn’t switched the first one back on. It was the second that had awoken me, and that was that.

My excuse is that I was quite tired yet again last night and hadn’t had time to clear my head. I’d fallen asleep … "yet again" – ed … while preparing my notes and couldn’t wait to go to bed. I’d obviously not checked everything as I normally would.

Once in bed, though, I fell asleep quite quickly and stayed asleep until about 05:40 or so. Although I awoke at that moment, I’m afraid that I simply turned over and went back to sleep until it was time to meet my Waterloo. And how I wish that I could do that every time that I wake up.

So after my exciting start to the day, I staggered off into the bathroom and then into the kitchen to take my medication and make my ginger, lemon and honey drink.

Back in here, I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. And I was surprised that I’d been so far. There was a guy who lived up on Leighton Park estate who had a couple of Mk IV Cortinas. I used to drive past and look at them. He happened to mention a while back that he would be acquiring a third one, a car formerly used by the Church, a kind of missionaries’ or vicars’ car etc. I thought that that would be out of place with the slogans and stickers that he had on the two others. One day, the third car was there, and it was up on ramps. I didn’t notice anything special about it. But then I’d had some bodywork done on mine, and I wanted a Cortina badge, so I wondered if he happened to have one that he could spare. I went round and noticed that one of his two previous cars, the one without all of the stickers and writing on it, was quite nice. It had recently had a respray and there were no badges on it. He came to the door, so we began to chat about the cars etc, then he mentioned that he needed to fit a “doughnut” onto the new one that he had bought. He wondered whether it would be possible to do it. I didn’t know what he meant by “doughnut” because the only one that I knew was on the propshaft. However, I said that I didn’t see any reason why we shouldn’t. He replied “that’s what I thought”. He wandered off inside and came back with some strange-looking bracket and handed it to me. I went off and went to lie on my back underneath the car. His mother came along and said that I must be brave for offering to help him do this. I noticed that the engine in this vicars’ car was a transverse engine and the equipment at one end of the engine was missing. Then I saw where this bracket was supposed to go – it was to reinforce the bonnet. He came along, pointed to the bracket and asked “what do you think?”. I replied “it looks straightforward to me”. I lay down on my back underneath the car and began to unscrew the bolts and nuts. I managed to attach the first part of it without any real difficulty at all, and then I went to attach the second part to the first part and bolt them both up onto the bonnet again.

This reminds me of a time back in 1981 when a taxi proprietor in Winsford had done me a favour. When I went round to thank him, he was trying to change a differential in one of his Ford Zephyr taxis. He was struggling away with it so, instead of thanking him verbally, I changed the differential for him. I often wonder what might have happened had I continued to cultivate that friendship.

The bit about the religious Ford Cortina is interesting, though. I’ve no idea where that came from. But it’s true that when I was breaking Ford Cortinas for spares, I pulled more than one or two off the Leighton Park council estate.

I was back in the Welsh Premier League again. There was some kind of TV programme discussing the clubs. I was giving some kind of commentary. I explained that the league divides into two halfway through the season, with the six highest clubs and the highest of the seventh playing a play-off for a vacant European place. I was able to talk about the positions of some of the teams at the end of the season and to advertise games etc. They used to float balloons across the stage with their positions in, that kind of thing. The clubs at the bottom half were the ones that were competing against relegation. I mentioned one of them, which was at the eighth position in the league at that moment. Then, the sub-manager came over and complained about the new female coach that they had had, how he didn’t think that she was any good and how he wished that she would leave. I thought that in that atmosphere, she had no chance really. In the end, I noticed that there was another coach who turned up with the team and even I was asked if I would take some training sessions at the club at one time.

This dream must surely relate to something. I’ve not given a talk on the JD Cymru League (as it’s known today) for years, and the story about the female coach is something completely new to me. I wonder to whom it relates.

Going back to that other dream, the team that was eighth in the table, a woman, and the manager of the team wasn’t very happy about it. He didn’t like her at all. I thought that the situation wouldn’t last very long if they are arguing like this. In the end, I noticed that the woman had resigned. I went along to the ground to watch a few training sessions and to take part in some and even organise some, but I had no intention of becoming the club’s permanent manager or anything like that at all.

This would seem to be part of the same dream as the previous one. However, interestingly, the timestamps are forty-three minutes apart, so it’s not as if I’ve repeated the part of the previous one. There have been occasions when I’ve had the same dream a second time, and I wonder if this is another one of those.

It was the Welsh Cup, and TNS had been drawn at home to Birmingham. The manager of the Birmingham team was interviewed on the TV and said that he was really excited by this draw and was looking forward to the game. In fact, his club was bringing over seven thousand spectators to watch it. However, with talking to TNS, TNS said that their ground had only a capacity of three thousand, so what were they going to do? TNS had to think of some kind of emergency plan. Their response was that whatever they did, there were going to be a great many people disappointed by whatever decision they made.

Welsh football seems to be an obsession right now. I wonder what’s going on. Certainly, Birmingham wouldn’t be competing in the Welsh Cup, and if they were and they turned up at Park Hall with seven thousand fans, that really would cause a problem seeing as the ground does in fact only hold three thousand.

The nurse was early today. And he didn’t stop around for long. He sorted out my legs and that was that – off like a ferret up a trouser leg, and I could push on.

Once he’d gone, I made breakfast and read some more of Thomas Codrington’s ROMAN ROADS IN BRITAIN.

Today, we’re roaming over part of Hadrian’s Wall and in particular, the Roman fort of Chesters and the Roman North Tyne bridge. The bridge is particularly interesting. The first one, built round about 120 – 140AD, crossed the North Tyne on eight stone piers.

The second one, which incorporates the remains of the first, was built about eighty years later. It seems to have had four arches built on three massive piers and must have been an astonishing feat of engineering for its day.

Back in here, I had a few things to do and then I began to write the notes for the radio programme that I started yesterday.

By the time my faithful cleaner appeared to deal with my anaesthetic, I’d written a good half of them. I can finish the rest tomorrow morning.

The taxi was early today and as I was the only passenger, we arrived at dialysis early too. However, it made no real difference because I still had to wait until they had plugged everyone else in.

No-one bothered me at all today. The doctor (not Emilie the Cute Consultant, unfortunately) kept her distance, and the blood pressure alarm didn’t sound once so neither did the nurses. I just mooched around in my bed until it was time to go home.

The guy who thinks that he runs the show brought me home, and my cleaner helped me into the apartment. To my surprise, while I’d been out, she’d dismantled my old office chair and someone whom she knew had taken it to the dechetterie. That cheered me up no end

Even better, when she dismantled it, she put all of the screws, bolts and metal brackets on one side “in case I ever need them”. She’s definitely a woman after my own heart.

Tea was a mushroom and potato curry followed by ginger cake and coconut soya dessert. And now I’m off to bed, looking forward to a day with no Centre de Ré-education. Won’t that be nice?

But seeing as we have been talking about Hadrian’s Wall … "well, one of us has" – ed … Hadrian was on the border, supervising its construction when he noticed a slave who looked exactly like him.
He stopped the slave and asked him "I don’t suppose that your mother ever visited Rome at all."
"Oh no" replied the slave, "but my father did."

Tuesday 1st April 2025 – I HAD AN UNEXPECTED …

… lie-in this morning.

Every now and again, except that it’s more often than not these days, the battery in my mobile ‘phone is evaporating before my eyes.

Now that has taken me quite by surprise because it’s not as if it’s all that old. I only bought it in March 2017 so it’s really quite new. Anyway, yesterday it was doing it again so I switched the battery saver to “maximum” and charged it up from the travelling laptop while I was at dialysis.

It goes without saying that I was aware that quite a few of the services would be disabled while the battery saver was at the max, but I really and honestly didn’t expect the alarm function to be one of them. I can’t believe that my own telephone would play a poisson d’avril on me!

It was therefore actually quite a good night for sleeping. In principle I could even have been in bed by 23:00 but as usual, I loitered around for a while. Nevertheless, it was still before midnight when I crawled under the covers.

As far as the night went, I can’t remember very much at all. I was well away with the fairies, although not in any kind of fashion that would incite comment from the editor of Aunt Judy’s Magazine.

One thing that I can definitely say is that there seems to be nothing at all wrong with my body clock. In real money, the time is one hour less than the time on the clock since the clocks were altered at the weekend, so it was really 07:02, not the indicated 08:02, when I opened my eyes this morning.

Once the actual time had registered in what remains of my brain these days, I leapt to my feet … "not exactly" – ed … and staggered off to the bathroom. Of course, it had to be the day that the second nurse starts his round, so with no injections or blood samples to take, he arrived quite early, long before I was ready.

After he left, I could finish my scrubbing, change my clothes and then wander off for breakfast. And armed with my porridge, toast and coffee (and orange juice, and medication) I could read MY BOOK.

We’re reaching the end of the book now. He’s finished his exploration of stone circles and menhirs … "PERSONShirs" – ed … in Cornwall and Devon and we’re now off to Egypt where tomorrow we’ll be comparing the sacred sites there with those that we’ve encountered in Britain.

What I have to say though is that, enjoyable and informative the book may have been and I don’t regret reading it, I expected a book entitled “Stonehenge and other British Stone Monuments” to have much more than 60 pages out of 332 pages of content devoted to the principal subject.

And having spent so long before coming round to the important issue of cultural migration, he abandons it and moves on much too quickly. In my humble … "?!?!?" – ed … opinion, whilst all of the physical details of the monuments are important, it’s even more important to consider the progression and evolution of the monuments in general, either in a time-basis at the same location or a place-location at various different times so as to see how the various cultures have migrated, bringing their gods and so on with them as they travelled

As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … there must be a lot of mileage in plotting the spread of cultures from their original place and throughout their track to their point of arrival and final settlement.

Back in here I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. I was telling one of the nurses to be careful of this guy from the Wild West who started to appear. It seemed that he had chosen a couple of my clothes to wear to make his first appearance. That was very confusing because one of the nurses undid the wrong set of clothes for me so I warned them about it and warned them that this person would be coming in to dialysis. I would be stopping two days and taking a little more out each day. The dialysis for me went OK but everyone else was bothered by the noise coming from the bathroom where this little guy had come into the World and now wanted to go out again and go away. They asked me (…… fell asleep here …) it seemed that the guy had actually come into dialysis wearing a pair of my clothes and that’s why he wasn’t noticed. It wasn’t until they’d shaken them that he fell out. By that time the dressing room was closed and locked etc – no-one could go in. They had to find someone who had the key to the place to let him out.

If I’m dreaming about my dialysis sessions, it really IS the end of the world. I want to forget all about them when I’m not there and to relax, but I can’t do that if it’s preying on my mind like this. Especially when it all deteriorates into some kind of incomprehensible mutterings. However as for the guy who had just come into the World and wanted to leave and go away again, I can’t blame anyone for wanting to go out of this World once they’ve seen what’s going on in it.

Next stop was to prepare for my Welsh lesson, and there was a lot of ground to cover. It had to be thorough too because there would only be a couple of us today, what with ill-health, holidays and the like. So for once, I had to exert myself.

It’s not very often that I’m right, but there were only three of us today (a fourth arrived half-way through). We worked hard and quickly, and to my surprise, I enjoyed it and I thought that I did quite well, which makes a change. Since I’ve been using the dialysis as a kind-of enforced revision period, I seem to be making better progress.

After I finished, I had a disgusting drink break and then there were things to do. I needed to contact the Canadian Border Security people about that strange letter that I had the other week. That was quite important.

There were also some bills to pay, including the rates on my Canadian property. They have increased to their highest level ever this year, and for my couple of acres of North American hillside, I’m having to pay the massive sum of $145.60 – just under £79:00.

That was an interesting exercise. It took me an hour all told – five minutes to connect with my Canadian bank, five minutes to make the bank transfer and the remaining fifty minutes to look for my Canadian bank card.

There was a hospital bill to pay – there’s a daily charge of €20:00 for your food etc but as I’m classed as terminally ill, I can claim it back from the Social Security later.

Finally, there’s the indexation increase for my rent here. It’s now increased by €2:70 per month. But not for long, because I’m hoping to be out of here by the end of summer.

Having put all of that out of the way, I put another plan into action. I mentioned my failing telephone just now and as it’s the anniversary of my contract, I’m entitled to a substantial discount on a new ‘phone. I had a look on my provider’s website and saw that they had the “previous model” of the latest 5G ‘phone.

It has 128Gb of internal memory and also a compass, something that would be useful if I install the “Skymap” and some other geographical features. Last year, when it was the latest model, it was selling at an “upper three-figure” price but because of my contract renewal, it was available to me for just the two final digits. That has to be the way forward, I reckon, and so it’s on its way even as we speak.

The rest of the day has been spent on starting the next radio programme. This is going to be an interesting one because there are quite a few birthdays, deaths and album releases to celebrate. Some of the stuff that I need I don’t have, so I spent the latter part of the afternoon tracking it down.

Tea tonight was of course a taco roll with rice and veg followed by orange, ginger and coconut cake with soya dessert. Delicious as usual. However, I am going to come across a problem, namely that I shan’t need a LeClerc order for another few weeks, with the amount of stuff on hand, but I shall be running out of peppers to stuff – there’s only one left in the freezer.

That means that for once in my life I shall have to use my imagination and make several meals that aren’t on the programme. That should be interesting, to say the least. But it’s high time that I varied my diet.

But that’s something to worry about later. Right now I’m off to bed.

But not before this subject about people leaving this World because of the mess that we have made of it, about which we were talking just now … "well, one of us was" – ed … has been explored.
A few years ago a couple of extra-terrestrials came down to Earth to look for intelligent life on our planet, but they soon departed.
"Did you find any?" asked the commander of the expedition, back on their spaceship
"Intelligent life on Earth?" retorted one of them. "You must be joking"
"What do you mean?" asked the commander
"They have these incredible nuclear weapons" replied the extra-terrestrial visitor " and they can defend themselves to the death with it. Anything that comes close to them, they can exterminate it and everything for thousands of miles around, simply at the push of a button"
"And who are they pointing them at?" asked the commander. "Mars? Jupiter? Alpha Centauri? Sirius?"
"You won’t believe this" replied the visitor "but they are pointing them at each other!"

Wednesday 27th December 2023 – I’VE HAD YET …

… another day during which nothing seems to have gone right at all.

And we started as we meant to go on because When I eventually went to bed last night I couldn’t go to sleep and spent a very uncomfortable night watching the clock go round.

When I finally did go off to sleep, for some unaccountable reason that only my phone will know, it began to sound the alarm at every time that I have ever set an alarm call since I bought this phone in 2017.

So at 05:23, off it went ad infinitum until I realised what was going on, and switched everything off.

And then I must have gone to bed and left the fridge door open because there was ice everywhere all over the fridge and a large pool of water on the floor. So the morning’s task was to defrost the fridge and give it a good clean.

There was some medication in there that had to be kept cold but luckily I have an emergency system for that – a couple of thermal pouches and some small ice packs that live in the freezer.

The nurse came by this morning to give me my injection and to have a moan about having to take a blood sample. It’s true that it isn’t at all easy because I have small veins that move about, but I don’t like the idea any more than he does.

It’s actually rare that someone can take a blood sample from me first go. There was that famous time at Castle Anthrax several years ago when a more senior nurse managed it quickly and painlessly.
"What’s your secret?" I asked her out of curiosity
"In 1982 and 1984 I was Belgian ladies’ darts champion" she replied.

But the results are back already. The shots of last resort stuff seem to have done the trick and my blood count has risen to 9.4. Still a long way short of where it ought to be of course, a healthy person having between 13.5 and 15.0, but a lot higher than 7.3 which is below the critical limit.

But it’s done it at a hell of a price. Your blood viscosity should be between 40 and 50 units. Mine is 29.5

That means that my blood is as thin as water. If I cut myself, it comes streaming out and won’t clot.

And that’s embarrassing because the side effect of one of these medicines that I take is that it “irritates”. So if I remember, I have to smear it with cold cream. If I forget, I scratch it and it bleeds. And if it’s on my right leg where I have no feeling, it bleeds like a tap because I don’t notice and keep on scratching.

If things go on like this I’m going to start to have to wear clothes in bed because my sheets in the morning will look like a charnel house.

But as for the medication, I’m now up to 15 tablets per day and that’s a record. And some of them are monsters. Judging by the size and shape of a couple of them, I’m not even sure that I’m supposed to be taking them by the mouth.

By the looks of things, there are about three or four that I’m supposed to be taking for the illness that I have and the rest are to counter the side-effects of that three or four.

There was some stuff on the dictaphone from the night. Not much because it was a short night. I was driving something like an old 1924 Syracuse heading through the wilds of rural France when I came across something strange happening with a big Daimler driven by someone so I followed it for a while, keeping my distance. When it began to loiter around a set of crossroads I crossed over and went into a bar there, which was completely and utterly deserted, pretending to go to the bathroom. I had a quick look out of the window. Just then another car pulled up, a bottle-green Rolls Royce. I knew someone who owned a car like that and he wasn’t a very pleasant person so I flushed the bathroom and came out. I was sure that the Daimler had parked where I’d parked mine and I almost got into it. He had a couple of young girls and he was putting their coats on them etc. I apologised for getting into his car and got into mine. I thought to myself “maybe I ought to be thinking about an evening meal but in actual fact I’m not hungry. I’ll just drive until I find a suitable place where I can stop and lay my head down for the night.

When the alarm went off at 05:23 by mistake I was busy trying to add someone’s name to a database on the computer. I’d received some forms from someone and filled them in on-line and sent off but for some reason the image of the form had burnt onto the screen. Even with the computer switched off you could still see the burnt-on image. I was in a really bad mood about this. There were several blacklists around the internet so I tried to add this guy onto one but no matter how I tried, it kept on throwing me out. I was becoming really frustrated at this.

The taxi came in plenty of time and I headed off to the Centre de Re-education. Ophelie the ergotherapist and I had a good chat about things. She thinks that I ought to have more help at the apartment and while I’m not disagreeing with her, I can’t see how.

She thinks that I ought to be delegating more tasks but I told her that I didn’t know how I could, on any kind of regular basis.

"You need to make a list" she said. "For example, how often do you wash your clothes?"
"Whenever the basket is full"
"And when do you take down your clothes from the clothes airer?"
"When they are dry"
"Yes, I see the issue"

On many occasions I’ve been told that I “ought to be saving your strength for the battle that lies ahead” but as I said yesterday, I’m not the type of person who could sit back and wait for the inevitable to catch up with him. I’d much rather go out and meet it head-on.

Back here I had a few more spoonsful of Christmas cake and a mug of hot chocolate, and then took it easy until tea time – a stir- fry of rice, veg and some of those Chinese things, all sautéed in vegan butter and soy sauce. I’ll have to work out how to make these Chinese things when my supply runs out

Now that the meds are sorted, I’m off to bed. Tomorrow the new medication will begin and I’m not looking forward to it. A sudden jump from 10 tablets to 15 is nothing but bad news and tells me everything that I didn’t want to know about this illness.

Where will I be tomorrow after all of that?

Friday 27th January 2023 – I HAD ANOTHER …

… lie-in this morning.

But that was completely involuntary and by accident because the alarm failed to go off this morning.

When I checked the mobile phone I found that the battery had gone flat and it had switched off. Further enquiry revealed that what had happened was that the charging plug had somehow become detached from the telephone. With no possibility to repair something like this, that was that.

We aren’t lost though. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that a few years ago I lost my mobile phone and being totally unable to find it, I bought another one. A few months later, when I was tidying Caliburn looking for something else, I found the ‘phone down underneath the driver’s seat. so it went into a drawer and I forgot all about it.

Today’s events made ne remember where it was so I hunted it down but found, to my dismay, that the SIM card wasn’t the same size. But not to worry – I’ll sort it out later.

The morning was spent working on the notes for the radio programmes that I’ll be doing on Monday and chatting to Liz and Rosemary on the internet. But once the afternoon came round I dressed myself up and went out to catch the bus.

And today I’m very proud of myself in one respect, but not in another. When the bus dropped me off at the Place Godal I set off on my marathon hike to the Orange Telecom shop. That really is quite a walk, only about 400 metres short of the railway station and I was really impressed that I made it all the way there on my crutches.

But not so impressed when I spoke to the assistant at the shop. he took both telephones, took the SIM card out of the one that i’m going to use, peeled off the small adapter that was around it, put the SIM card from the broken ‘phone into the adapter and put that in the other ‘phone.

It was as simple as that and had I noticed that earlier when I was at home this morning, I could have saved myself the walk.

However the walk did me good and it’s made me think a little more about how I might go for broke and try one of these days to walk on my crutches to the railway station. But the last 400 metres is a killer hill, and I bet that the whole route will be a lot more difficult when I have things to carry.

Back down in the town I went to the Carrefour and bought a few bits and pieces, like mushrooms, peppers, tomatoes and the like.

At the bus stop there was a 45-minute wait for the bus and it was cold out there and so I decided that I’d cross over the road and catch the bus in the other direction, round to the terminus at the other end of the line and then rode the bus back. At least it was warm and comfortable on the bus out of the wind.

Just about 45 minutes after I returned home I had to go back out again. The taxi came to pick me up to take me to this nerve specialist. and I’ll tell you now that pumping electricity through me as he did was one of the most painful things that has ever happened to me.

There’s nothing much wrong with my arms but there’s an issue with my left leg. As for my right leg, well, the least said about that the better. It’s quite clear according to him that there’s some serious damage.

He’s going to discuss things with my doctor but he did warn me that I need to pack my suitcase. I suppose that I’ll have to buy a couple of pairs of pyjamas too. Hospital nightwear is pretty depressing and I … errr … don’t actually have any of my own.

After I returned I transcribed the notes of my voyages from last night. I’d just finished work and I needed something for the weekend, which was in Chester, so I set out for Chester. It was such a nice evening so I decided that I would walk. I took a t-shirt, a cagoule, a fleece and another rainproof jacket just in case. The walk as far as the suburbs of Chester was quite uneventful and I quite enjoyed it but as I arrived closer to the city, it went really dark. We suddenly had a torrential downpour of rain. Luckily with the 2 rain jackets that I had and the fleece in between the 2 I kept warm and dry. I was able to walk quite comfortably up to the traffic lights on the edge of the city. Then the rain stopped and it went bright again. I stopped to take off the rain jacket. There were some people coming the other way who started to admire my rain jacket and particularly my yellow fleece, starting to talk to each other about it. They asked me a few questions but for some unknown reason I replied in French. I could see a look of puzzle on their faces as I did so but I didn’t really want to hang around and chat to them because I had a lot to do. I wanted to have it done as quickly as possible because of course it’s a long way to Chester and a long way back if you are walking.

As an aside, I walked back through the night from Chester to where I was living near Audlem a couple of times – all 30 or so miles of it – when the girl whom I was seeing went to College there and I didn’t have a car. It didn’t take me as long as you might think and even once or twice I walked straight to work and did 8 hours before going home to bed. I couldn’t do it now, even if I didn’t have the crutches.

I can’t remember who I was with later on, but it was a married couple. They were my age. It concerned a Ford Granada and there was some work that needed doing on it, the front wheel bearings and a few other bits and pieces. It had been around for a while and the work hadn’t started. I was with the woman who said that she had had a dream last night about her husband who had gone off to do this and that and somethign else. She’d happened to mention the Granada and he replied “oh yes, I’m going to get down to do it starting tomorrow”. He seemed so enthusiastic so she said that that’s possibly a good sign that means that he will. I said “strangely enough, I had a dream about someone working on a Granada too”. Then I told her the story of a friend whom I knew who had a Granada and who had been in the same position. He just wouldn’t start doing the repairs which was something to do with the wheel bearings and the front wings. After so many months he’d just put everything in a box and sold it, including the car, for someone else to do. She was surprised. Next time I went round her husband was there. He said “by the way, I’d done one of those front wheel bearings. It only took me 15 minutes as well”.

Tea tonight was some of these mini sausage rolls with baked potatoes, veg and gravy. They were actually quite delicious. I’ll have to work out a way of ordering some more of these “Green Cuisine” products. Noz has them in on the odd occasion but I’d love to have a more regular supply. It’s not possible to order stuff like this from the UK these days, what with Brexit and all that.

So hopefully tomorrow the alarm will go of and awaken me properly this time. Not that I have too much to do this weekend – do my cleaner’s accounts, do some more work on sorting out how I’m going to pay for this apartment that I’m supposed to be buying and that kind of thing. So I might even finish the notes for these radio programmes.

And having been to the shops this week, I have everything that I need, I reckon, but I really am going to try to go out for a walk more often, even if it isn’t far. Having made it as far as the Orange Mobile place today, I need to keep up the good work and see if I can exercise myself back into some sort of condition.

Only time will tell.

Thursday 2nd December 2021 – I’M NOT SURE …

… what happened today. It didn’t feel as if I’d done very much but when I look back on it, I don’t have too much cause for vomplaint.

Mind you, it started off as rotten as it could be because the alarm didn’t go off and I awoke bolt-upright at 07:54. Apparently I hadn’t plugged the phone in correctly at night and the battery had gone flat. I can do without days like that.

Once I’d had my medication and checked my mails and messages the next step was to check the dictaphone for messages. There were a few entries on there that were transcribed. The earlier days have been added to the relevant entries, and then I turned my attention to today’s.

Last night I was on board a small boat heading towards Greenland and this was going to start to become very interesting for the people who were around here with me but I awoke instead.

Later on I was working at the radio. We were going to record a discussion but for some unknown reason I could not get the sound correctly on my recorder. I’d been trying for half an hour and everyone was really fed up of waiting. Just towards the end of the time it began to be more promising so I thought that I’d go for a trip down the corridor while they were waiting for me. They were playing some music while they were waiting. I had my little Acer laptop and the back was off it. And if you want to know the rest of what happened here, you’ll have to wait until you’ve finished your meal.

Later still I was with Nerina last night. I’ve forgotten a lot of this but we ended up being in Germany. We didn’t really have much time but we found ourselves somewhere round by the border where East Germany used to be. We crossed over the border, not that there was a border to cross these days and picked up a road that was signposted “Dresden”. We followed that for a while. Nerina asked “how are we going to find our way back?”. I replied “we’ll drive down here for a bit and then look on the map for villages near the border, turn down to a village near the border and then go back that way”. We drove that way for a while and then came to a whole row of black and yellow posts and a deserted strip of countryside. That looked immediately like the border to us and we followed it for some time. In the meantime, we encountered a convoy of old British cars, Morris 1000s and the like. There was no border where we were but the posts that held the fencing and barbed wire were still there as a kind-of symbolic gesture. Nerina was driving. We went round a bend and came to a ford so I told her to take it easy. She did, and she got through. She reminded me of a time where she’d driven through a ford but had stopped, got out ang got her feet wet as she stepped into the water. I said “you’d done the difficult bit, hadn’t you, but you fell down on the easy part”.

There was something somewhere where I’d had a new starter fitted on the car. I’d ended up in a garage somewhere while I was waiting to load up the car with my stuff but I could walk around underneath the car and could see that a couple of bolts on the starter were loose. I thought that I’d go and find a spanner. I had my tool kit with me but could find an open-ended 15mm spanner but these looked like 16mm bolts to me and I couldn’t find a decent 16mm spanner. I thought “this is typical. Here I am in an ideal situation to put this right. I couldn’t wish for anywhere better. I can walk around and work on the car in perfect comfort but yet here I am and I can’t find the flaming tool that I need”. All this sounds familiar, doesn’t it?

Incidentally, when I say that I “awoke”, I don’t actually mean that. I’m still asleep when I’m dictating these notes, as you could tell if you were to listen to them, but I snap out of the deep unconscious into something that is not so deep that enables me to control the dictaphone, that kind of thing. I don’t know how else to explain it.

Once I’d finished that I went downstairs to put the first coat of paint onto Caliburn’s wheels. It was pouring down and howling a gale so I had to do it inside the back of the van and the smell was overpowering.

While I was out there I bumped into a neighbour and we had a lengthy chat about nothing in particular.

Back in the apartment I grabbed a coffee and then I busied myself again. I had a few entries to update from while I was at Leuven the other day. They are now all on line and up-to-date.

After lunch I had to order the bits that I need for Caliburn – a new rear light unit, a door mirror glass and a windscreen wiper. And that wasn’t as easy as it might have been either because my on-line payment system kept on kicking me out. It worked fine on the computer but not on the telephone.

Next stop was to go and put the second coat on the wheels. The rain had stopped by now but there was still the wind so I asphyxiated myself in the back of the van again.

By now it was time for me to go out for my afternoon walk.

First port of call was down at the end of the car park to have a look at the beach to see what was happening there. Today we have a small part of a beach, but there didn’t seem to be anyone on it this afternoon.

But you can see how nice the weather has become by looking at the contrast between the part of the photo that is in the shade and the other part that isn’t. Unfortunately though you can’t see the effect that the wind is having.

You can do in this photo though.

While I was down there looking at the beach I was also looking out at sea to see what was happening and I noticed that we had two trawlers heading our way, on their way home after a day’s fishing.

And they are making heavy weather of it too which is no surprise. You can see the whitecaps on the waves even that far out to sea so you can imagine that there is plenty of force in the wind this afternoon.

This afternoon I was the only person out there. I could walk in comparative pece along the path without being disturbed. Some of the kids were out there orienteering but they were well off in the distance.

Around the headland I walked and then down the path to where I could overlook the harbour.

And there’s plenty of activity with the portable boat lift this afternoon. For a start they seem to have painted it. It’s no longer a rusty white but a nice light-primer grey.

They’ve also painted the wheels too. They were a rusty dark black before but now they are a nice white. If I’d have known that they were painting the wheels I would have taken Caliburn’s down there and let them get on with job on my behalf.

Meanwhile, over at the ferry terminal activity seems to have come to a dead stop.

We saw Chausiaise and, behind her, the older of the two Joly France ferries over there a few days ago and by the looks of things they haven’t moved an inch since then.

But then again, there doesn’t seem to be any custom about. I can’t see anyone at all on the sea wall over there. I don’t think that I’ve ever seen the place looking so deserted. You can tell that it’s winter time already and it’s going to be like this until Carnaval.

That is, if there is going to be a Carnaval this year. i’ve just seen today’s infection figures.

Having said that activity at the ferry terminal seems to have come to a dead stop, that’s hardly the case at the fish processing plant.

There are quite a few fishing boats over there unloading and as we saw earlier when we set out for our walk, they are still coming in. So despite the lousy weather over the last few days, the work still goes on out at sea.

Having finished my walk I went back home and made a coffee and my work then went on too. I’m off to Leuven in two weeks’ time so I needed to make all my arrangements.

It seems that my cheap 07:13 train has died a death. That’s good news in a sense because I’m not scrambling around so early trying to catch a train to Brussels. The train at 06:33 is plenty early enough.

Tea tonight was a couple of those small burgers in breadcrumbs with baked potatoes and veg. They are delicious of course but now I’m running rather low. I foresee a trip to Noz in the near future, although where I’m going to put them is anyone’s guess because the freezer is full.

Having finished my work, I’m off to bed. I have Caliburn’s new tyres to pick up tomorrow and the Law of Averages states that they’ll decide that the worst tyres are the ones that are on wheels that I haven’t as yet painted.

That’s how things usually work around here of course.

Tuesday 20th July 2021 – I’VE DONE SOMETHING …

… today that I vowed never to do – but needs must when the devil drives as we all know.

What I did was to change the times of the alarms from 06:00 etc to 08:00 etc and try for a decent lie-in to make sure that i’d be fighting fit for my course today.

The lie-in bit worked, I suppose, but the fighting fit bit didn’t – by the time that the lesson ended I was feeling rather groggy.

But while I might not have been fighting fit today, something else was.

Having a good sail around the Baie de Mont St Michel with a load of passengers on board was none other than Marité. She seemed to be coping quite well and she’s 30-odd years older than me.

In case you are wondering, she’s the last of the Newfoundland Grand Banks wooden fishing trawlers built in 1921 if I remember correctly. When her service was over she was sold a couple of times and finally rescued by an Association here.

She’s been fully restored and is licensed to carry passengers for hire, and that’s how she makes her living.

But I’m not going to be able to make a living the way I’m going on with this fatigue that’s getting me right down.

It might have helped had I had a continuous 8-hour sleep, but I noticed that there was some stuff on the dictaphone from the night.

I had to go to work down in London so I had to leave my old office so I went into there and thanked them all, particularly one group wit whom I worked. Then Nerina and I got into the car and headed off. I was telling Nerina a little about my house but not too much as I wanted to surprise her about the house that I had down in the south that was about 10 minutes from Croydon on the train. We drove down there and ended up at my house which was a 3-bedroom semi just like Gainsborough Road except that it was in the middle of a row. It had a garage and I showed her around the garden and took her indoors and had a look round. She came back and said “it’s better than I thought it would be, judging by the way you were telling me”. She started talking about how she would want a job. I replied “with 10 minutes on the train to Croydon you can find any kind of job you like”. So we started to open the post, there was some post there. One was a bill and then a reminder saying that they were going to cut my electricity all for £60:00 for three months that I’d been living there but hadn’t had a bill or anything so Nerina wanted a job and I said that we could find one for her quite easily.
Something else that occurred in this dream and I don’t know if I mentioned it … “you didn’t” – ed … but in the back garden of this house I had BILL BADGER up on ramps and the back wheels off while I was checking the brakes but it looked as if I’d backed him up into next door’s garden partly so Nerina and I put the wheels on with the aim of dropping it on the ground and pushing it forward away from next door’s garden. Somewhere in there Rosemary appeared as well. She’d been a taxi driver and had picked up a fare at Crewe Station to go to Battersea so she had taken the opportunity to go to her house which was in Main Road Shavington near the Elephant and Castle to pick up some paperwork that she needed to take to London so she had gone that way to Battersea. I met her when she was back. She had one of these Dacia – the vans, there’s an estate car version of the Dacia van and she had one of those.

What’s interesting about all of this is, as I have probably said before, that I haven’t seen Nerina for well over 25 years but she’s quite a regular passenger with me on my nocturnal rambles. Since those days, a variety of people have come and gone from my life and have also come and gone from my nocturnal rambles too, but Nerina still persists.

Whatever happened to TOTGA, Castor and Pollux, Zero, the Girl From The Auvergne and countless others who blazed a trail through my nocturnal rambles at one time or other, hung around for a while and then disappeared just as rapidly as they came?

It’s probably something to do with lives being so entwined, I supposed, that it’s impossible to untangle then. Mind you, some of these other relationships, well, maybe not “relationships” in the way that you might think of them, were pretty intense too.

One day, when I can find the right words to express it, I’ll fill in those missing three days of my journal from the end of August 2019 about one of the most intense experiences that I have ever had.

To quote Agatha Christie, I was “embarking on a hazardous journey in troubled waters facing who knows what currents of misfortune” but “one must follow one’s star wherever it leads, even unto hell itself”.
But then, to quote Agatha Christie yet again, “Beware of the day when your dreams come true”.

But that’s enough of me being all maudlin. That’s not helping anyone at all.

After the medication I transcribed the dictaphone notes and updated yesterday’s entry with the details of the night’s journey, did some organising and by then it was time for my Welsh course.

Armed with my hot chocolate and fruit bread I took my seat in front of the computer and we were off. Another hectic place with 52 pages of documents that needed to be downloaded from the internet.

In the lunch pause I had a shower and then I was back at my place for round two. And we belted along all the way until the end.

Coincidentally, the subject of Welsh Bibles came up and I was proud to be able to show the class my grandmother’s Welsh Bible. When she died, my father threw it away with the rest of her possessions and I had to hunt it down to rescue it.

When the lesson finished I found Liz on line so we had a chat and made plans for a date next week

By now it was long-past the time for my afternoon walk and peer over the wall at the end of the car park to look down on the beach.

So off I set across the car park and had a peer. And while there wasn’t all that much beach to be on, that didn’t bother most people.

They were deep in the water and having a really good splash around this afternoon. But to my surprise there were very few kids down there in the water.

Usually it’s the first thing that kids do – go charging down the beach and straight into the water without even bothering to change into their swimwear, as we have seen on several occasions.

We even had a few frogmen, or were they frogwomen down there as well joining in the fun.

They seemed to be enjoying themselves this afternoon but I’ve no idea what they were finding to do there. If they have lost something, they can just wait until the tide goes out.

But it was no surprise to see so many people because it really was lovely. One of my neighbours came over for a chat, carrying his towel. He’d just been for a dip.
“Why don’t you go in?” he asked. “It’s lovely”.

So I made my excuse about my catheter port that I had used on several previous occasions, including once with Castor. But in all reality, if anyone thinks that I’m going to be putting my sooty foot into any water that is less than 37°C they are sadly mistaken.

It wasn’t just on the beach and close in to shore that there were loads of people. There were plenty of others much further offshore.

This was just one photograph of any number that I could have taken of any water craft out there this afternoon.

The reason why I chose the yacht was because it was just so majestic out there in the Baie de Granville. She was riding at anchor a couple of miles off the shore

There were some people on board but I couldn’t see how many or what they were doing, so I cleared off along the path round the headland for my walk..

Now here’s a very familiar sight to the many regular readers of this rubbish, who will recall having seen it on endless occasions.

From this distance there was no change of reading her name, because she was about 10 miles out but her rigging gives us a clue.

She can only be one of two boats, and the fact that she is white and not brown tells us that she is La Granvillaise, even if we can’t see the tell-tale number G90 on one of her sails.

She plies for hire around the harbour too and it looks as if she has a full load this afternoon. I’ve no idea where she’s going but wherever it was, I have to admit to being quite envious

One thing that we haven’t seen very much of just recently is fishermen..

It’s always usually very popular and we’ve had week after week in the past of fishermen perched on every rock within a radius of 20 miles, but I haven’t seen any for a while.

But never mind, there’s one out there this afternoon on a rock at the Pointe du Roc, not looking as if he’s going to catch anything. He has no net to haul them in and no basket in which to keep them.

However that won’t matter because regular readers of this rubbish will recall that we’ve never ever yet seen a fisherman haul anything out of the water – not even a bicycle wheel or an old boot.

While I was admiring the fisherman at the Pointe du Roc, I was overflown yet again.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall a few days ago that we saw a pair of powered hang gliders or whatever they are flying over our heads while we walked around the path. Well, here they are again, flying past my knapper as I’m busy doing some thing else.

As I have said before … “and on many occasions too” – ed … one of these days I’ll have to go for a drive out to the airfield and see what’s happening there because there must be tons of exciting stuff and I’m missing it all.

That includes machines like this one too, that overflew me a few minutes later.

Its registration number is 50SA and that’s not a number that’s on any national database so I’m not able to search it. We’ve seen plenty of this type of number and this type of aircraft and the number must be on some kind of register somewhere that will tell me more about the aeroplane.

And the only way to find out is, I suppose, to go to beard the lion in his den and receive the information first-hand.

But not today. I have far too much to do right now so I’d better push off and get a move on or it won’t be done.

Meanwhile, it looks as if Marité has caught me up.

She was sailing round to the harbour so I reckoned that she was going to put into port. But instead she continued on her way past, doing a circuit of the bay by the looks of things.

One of these days I’ll have to go out for a sail on her too, even if I don’t think much of the people who are in charge of her.

While I was here I had a glance into the chantier naval but there was no change of occupant in there today so I pushed on elsewhere.

Like to the viewpoint where I could see into the inner harbour.

And look who’s in here today! It’s Thora, one of the two little Channel Islands freighters that run between here and the Channel Islands. They don’t come in here as much since Brexit, having to go instead to St Malo where there are proper Customs facilities.

Back at the apartment it was already 17:45 so there wasn’t all that much time left before it was guitar practice so I couldn’t do too much in the time available.

For tea I had steamed veg with veggie balls and vegan cheese sauce and it really was delicious. The apple turnover that I’d made on Sunday for dessert was also delicious – cooked to perfection.

So anyway, right now I’m off to bed. I’ve kept the alarm set at 08:00 because there’s no point in getting up early and then falling asleep again. I promised myself that I’d never surrender to this illness but having fallen asleep in a Welsh lesson recently, it’s not fair on the teacher and I need to show some respect, no matter how dismal it is..

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.

Saturday 24th April 2021 – THERE ARE MANY …

… things in this life that I don’t understand. And the older that I become, the more I realise that the less and less I actually do understand.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that a few weeks ago I was going through a phase of not being able to haul myself out of bed at any price regardless of however many alarms that I set and how loud and for how long I set them.

On Thursday I switched off the alarms so that I could have a lie-in and then on Thursday night before going to bed, I switched them back on.

The chattering birds outside my window, helped by the rattling fridge downstairs, awoke me at about 05:20. And not being able to go back to sleep, I lay awake waiting for the 06:00 alarm.

When I checked the time again, it was actually 06:10 and the alarms hadn’t gone off. It seems that last night I’d set them for 08:00 in error. And had I not been awake and instead slept right through to when the alarms would have actually gone off, I’d have missed my train home.

So what would have been the odds on that in similar circumstances a couple of weeks ago?

And this is what I just don’t understand – that I can actually do it when I have to so why can’t I do it when I don’t have to?

But anyway, there I was, up and about on time so I tidied everything up, made my sandwiches, packed up and headed off for the railway station.

Here’s something that is extremely interesting.

Something else that regular readers of this rubbish will recall that not long after I came to live in Leuven in 2016 they closed off the Martelarenplein outside the railway station in order to completely refurbish it. And since then, it’s been all fenced off and the fences covered with tarpaulins so it’s impossible to see through it.

This morning though, some of the tarpaulin covering has been taken away and it’s now actually possible to see what they have been doing for all of this time.

And to be quite honest, it really doesn’t look all that different than it did before, although I do have to say that judging by how the place appears right now, there is still a great deal of work to be done. Another project around the town that has gone on far longer than it ought to have done.

So on the station, I didn’t have to wait too long for my train to come in.

The train that I’m catching this morning is the 08:19 to the Belgian coast, calling at the Airport, and then the city centre before it clears off coastwards.

Just for a change, it’s not one of the depressing and dirty AM80 units but a much more modern AM96, the type with the rubber bellows and the swivelling drivers’ cabs. Bang on time it was when it pulled in and it pulled out on time too.

When we arrived in Brussels I still had 90 minutes to wait before my train came in so I went and sat in the main concourse for a while.

Once I’d worked out where my train would be arriving (there’s only a choice of 2 platforms for the Thalys and the train to Amsterdam pulled into one of them) I went up there to wait.

A few minutes later I was joined by a young lady. “This platform is quite big and lonely and there aren’t many people about” she said. “Would you mind if I waited near you? I’d feel safer”? She clearly didn’t know me very well.

Soon enough, a train pulled into the station at my platform.

It’s one of the PBKA (Paris – Brussels – Cologne – Amsterdam) units, number 4331, a nice clean and shiny one just out of the carriage wash. But it only had 8 carriages, numbered 1-8 which didn’t really suit me because I had a seat in carriage number 18.

My lady-friend had a seat in carriage 8 so she cleared off to board the train and take her seat. I had a few enquiries to make, such as to go and find an arrivals board to find out what trains were due to arrive in the very near future. That should tell me everything that I need to know.

And I was quite right too. 5 minutes before my train was due to depart, a TGV was coming into the station from Amsterdam. And sure enough it pulled up at this platform and I had the pleasure of watching them couple up two trainsets together.

This one is one of the PBA (Paris – Brussels – Amsterdam) Reseau 38000 tri-volt trainsets, number 4536, and once it was all coupled up I could take my seat in carriage 18. It was really busy too which is no surprise seeing as it’s the only train to Paris this morning and I’m not sure whether there will be one in the afternoon either.

We set out bang on time and arrived bang on time in Paris too, and there the passengers had to run the gauntlet of a police barrage, checking papers.

Although I don’t have a valid Covid test result, I’ve been out of the country for less than 72 hours and have a Carte de Séjour to prove my address and residence status, so I didn’t have a problem. A really good plan, that, to apply for my Carte de Séjour when I did.

And I’ll tell you something else as well, and that is that the gendarmette who questioned me at the station can detain me for further questioning any time she likes. Actually, I should be being paid by the police force, judging by the number of times that I’ve had to help them with their enquiries.

The metro was quite rapid and when I arrived at Montparnasse I even managed to find a seat, which was just as well because I had a wait of about 90 minutes for my train. I could eat my butties in comfort.

It was a 6-carriage train (the one on the right, not the Bombardier B82500 on the left) to Granville and it was packed.

Even worse, there were no reserved seats. But I was one of the lucky ones in that I didn’t have a neighbour so I could fall asleep and drop my laptop on the floor in comfort.

We were held up somewhere in the countryside by electrical current issues but we made up the missing minutes as we hurtled down the line towards the coast.

And when we arrived, actually a couple of minutes early, we’d somehow managed to throw out most of the passengers and there weren’t all that many of us left.

When I’d left Leuven this morning it was pretty cold but here in Granville we were having a heatwave and I had to strip off to walk home, down the steps and through the park.

In the past we’ve seen some pretty awful and horrible-looking cars but this is one that really takes the biscuit.

It’s a Citroen Ami all-electric car and I do have to say that it’s one of the most hideous that I’ve ever seen.

The climb up the Rue des Juifs was rather painful in the heat and seeing as I’m not feeling myself right now, I had to stop for a breather half-way up the hill and that’s not like me at all. And I can’t blame the shopping that I was carrying because I’ve come up the hill with much more than this.

Having put the cold stuff away I came in here to watch this evening’s football.

And this was the match of the season – TNS, top of the table, against Connah’s Quay Nomads in second place. The Nomads do have some quality but they aren’t consistent enough to do it every week, whereas TNS are like a well-oiled machine and tick over quite smoothly.

Ordinarily we might be expecting a tight game but Nomads have been known to crumble at the most inappropriate times so I don’t think that too many neutral supporters would have had their money on the Nomads.

But while you always find the odd player here and there who has a bad game, it’s very rare to find half a dozen who are having a poor performance all at the same time. And if that wasn’t bad enough, the TNS centre-half pairing of Blaine Hudson and Ryan Astles were having a nightmare match.

Despite having 60% of the ball TNS never really did much with it and Connah’s Quay simply swept them aside. Michael Wilde, a player released by TNS a few seasons ago, scored a hat-trick and Jamie Insall scored a fourth while Astles and Hudson stood around watching them.

In the end TNS had 5 strikers on the field and while they did manage to score one early in the game, they never ever looked likely to trouble the Nomads back line and when they were awarded a penalty towards the end of the game, Oliver Byrne in the Nomads goal saved it quite comfortably.

It’s been about 20 years since I’ve been watching the Welsh Premier League and I have never ever seen TNS play so badly as they did today, although a lot of the credit should go to the Nomads back 4 and Callum Morris just in front of them who stopped almost everything that TNS tried to do.

One thing that I forgot to do until later was to listen to the dictaphone to see where I’d been during the night. I’d started out with a former friend of mine and we were in Nantwich, Crewe Road end, going to visit some people. There were two girls there talking away and the guy was some kind of electronics guy and his house was a total tip worse than mine and there was stuff everywhere – all bits and pieces for making radios and so on. These 2 girls were young teenage girls busy talking away and at a certain moment I said to one of them “what language are you speaking? Is it Welsh”? They replied “no, it’s Slovensko”. So I asked “Slovene”? and they replied “no” so I asked “Slovak”? and they said “no” so we agreed that they were talking Czech. I was intrigued to know what they were doing while they were looking at all these bits and pieces. At the end of the road I looked out and there was an old guy on a walkframe, delivering the newspapers. It looked as if he had a paper round. I thought “it’s one way of keeping busy when you are old”. I went off into my shed, rooting around for something. There were all these old people standing around, not saying or doing anything, just standing there and it was making me feel uncomfortable. I of these 2 girls came in and she asked me for something. I couldn’t remember what it was she asked me but she saw it while I was searching through stuff so I let her have one. The other one came in and asked “where’s mine”? So I had to find one for her as well. I told her to make sure that she used it otherwise I’d be wanting it back.

Later on I was in Winsford with my father and a few other people, and Denise was there (as if that was ever likely to happen). One of my sisters was talking to Denise about operations, telling her about how she should have had a breast cancer operation a long time ago. Paul Ross rang up but my father was on the other phone so he couldn’t speak to him. Paul Ross came round and said that yesterday evening Dave Clark had died. We worked out that since Christmas we’d had 4 deaths in the immediate close circle and it was enough to make you wonder who was going to be next. Everyone looked at me but I said “as far as I’m concerned, it’s the creaky gate that hangs the longest, isn’t it”?

Anyway, now I’m off to make some sourdough mix and then I’m going to bed. No alarm in the morning and quite right too as I deserve a lie-in after my efforts today.

Sunday 22nd December 2019 – REMEMBER A WHILE AGO …

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

That’s much more like it for a Sunday.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

By now it was becoming quite dark.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I hope.

storms high winds plat gousset granville manche normandy france

Friday 14th June 2019 – HOW MANY …

… employees of the Credit Agricole Bank does it take to sign a form and put a rubber stamp on it?

The answer is “at least three” – and if the girl who finally dealt with me went to see a colleague or two when she disappeared with my form, it might even be more than that.

Yes, I’ve been out and about today, haven’t I? I need to push on and exercise myself, and as there was a letter to post (my hospital bill), a blood test result to pick up, and a form for the bank to sign, this afternoon seemed like as good a time as any.

Today started off quite surprisingly.

Despite the issues of yesterday I was awake at 04:10 and couldn’t go back to sleep at all. By 05:40 I had given it up as a bad job and was up and about.

To my surprise, the alarm didn’t go off. We had had another upgrade during the night that had switched off the phone. I really must do something about that.

And I’ve been a very busy boy too. I’ve started to transcribe the … gulp … 78 voice files off the dictaphone. I need to catch up on that, and catch up quickly if I’m to be up-to-date before I go away.

Another thing too is that I steam-cleaned the fridge. In an effort to tidy up and clean up, and with the ice box iced up, that was a good place to start. It took a good while but now it looks like it’s supposed to.

A few items went to that great dustbin in the sky and now there is tons of room in there. Well, maybe not tons, but plenty of room all the same.

And that took it out of me a little and I had a little … errr … relax for about 15 minutes.

After lunch I had a shower (the first “proper” shower for a while) and then attended to the accounts. That led to my walk up town.

There wasn’t all that much excitement out there this afternoon.

Down on the docks we had a fuel lorry lined up ready to refuel one of the trawlers, and that was about that.

First stop was the laboratory for my blood test results from Wednesday. Some of the results are right off the scale, but bad as they might be, none are quite as wild as the “vitesse de sedimentation”.

That should be less than 9, and my figure is 123. I’ll have to see what the doctor has to say about that.

Then to the bank and the pantomime in there. It’s do do with my Belgian pension, and I bet that they are spending more on the admin of it than they will on the monthly payments.

But I did have some luck there;

There’s a special offer there right now on Savings Accounts, and for once I just about fall into the correct category. So I took advantage.

At the Post Office I posted off my payment to the hospital and then staggered up the hill back home. You’ve no idea how unfit I’ve become after two or three weeks without much exercise.

The knee was aching rather a lot by the time that I returned but as Rosemary rang me up for a long chat, I sat with my leg up on a chair for an hour and twenty-four minutes and that eased it off.

While I was tidying up the fridge I threw away some horribly out-of-date stuff but I found some lentil-and-carrot-burgers on the point of expiry, so I had one of those with some pasta, vegetables and tomato sauce.

This evening I had a chat with Liz and now I’m off for an early night. I’m surprised that I’ve kept going for as long as I have and so a good sleep will do me good after my walk.

Saturday 8th December 2018 – JUST TYPICAL, ISN’T IT?

Ohh the decisions!

Do I go out in a howling gale and rainstorm to watch US Granville’s 2nd XI, or do I stay in in the comfort and warmth of my own living room and watch Y Fflint v Y Bala in the Welsh Cup?

After a great deal of deliberation, I decided to watch the latter. And I hadn’t even had time to sit down on the sofa before the floodlights failed and the ground was plunged into darkness. Match abandoned, and that was that.

That was almost that this morning too. Another mobile phone upgrade during the night and so despite being awake at 05:15, it was 06:45 when I realised that something was amiss.

That wasn’t all of the activity during the night either. I’d heard on the grapevine that there was a driving job on offer on a temporary basis at an engineering firm in the locality, so putting on a pair of overalls, off I trotted. When I arrived there they wouldn’t let me in so being fed up about being left hanging around like this, I just strode in, through the doors and into the machine room where I loudly asked to speak to the foreman. There was a guy who was sitting on a bench behind a table with several other people. He lifted up his head and announced himself. And I recognised him. He was one of my father’s former colleagues and naturally he would identify my overalls, as they were a pair of brown ones from may father’s place (they didn’t use brown, by the way) that had been liberated at one time. He wasn’t sure about this job but said that there was a pile of scaffolding behind the factory that needed moving. A manual job wasn’t quite what I had in mind due to my state of health and I visibly wilted, but it was a start I suppose.
A little later I received notice that my employer was sending me to work in London on a temporary basis. So I was no idea why I was looking up trains to Glasgow. But anyway I sorted something out ready for the early morning (it was very late in the evening) but then I suddenly realised that I didn’t have the address of where I was supposed to be going. I needed my papers out of my rucksack. On the way down tea was served for the group of people with whom I had been travelling. There was absolutely nothing that I could eat so I decided to try my luck with a cheese sandwich. But to my dismay, I found after I had taken a bite out of it that it had chicken on it. So there was nothing at all that I could eat. When I reached our bus, which was an elderly worn-out school bus rather like the one at Pond Inlet there were already people on board waiting to move on. I asked the driver if there was any food that I could eat so, after a great deal of thought, he reckoned that there might be some pasta somewhere. I could see that this particular trip was going to be extremely difficult. I went on down the bus to see if I could find my rucksack to find out the details of where I was expected to be tomorrow.

With a late breakfast there wasn’t all that much time to organise myself before it was time to shoot off to LIDL. And they still had one of the big slow cookers left. The small one that I have here was bought for travelling and hotel use, and is too small for cooking in here. When I make a mega-curry, it overflows. So a 3.5-litre one is a much better idea.

NOZ didn’t have anything special except some of the alcohol-free beer that I bought last year. So I bought a tray of it. They also had some real and proper Digestive biscuits and I can eat those.

At Leclerc there was nothing special.

We’re back on the bad parking though. Someone who can’t even park his vehicle between two white lines, and can’t manage to pull it off the public highway either.

It’s worse than Belgium around here at times, where people used to find their driving licences in packets of crisps, as the old story used to go.

They had some more of the coconut-flavoured soya dessert but there was also some almond-flavoured soya dessert with €0:30 off on special offer, so I thought that I would try one of those this week.

And just two of the gilets jaunes today on the roundabout – looking bemused and bewildered as the motorists drove past ignoring them.

Back here I crashed out for a while and then put away everything that I bought.

Lunch was indoors of course with some more of the home-made hummus – delicious it was too.

This afternoon I attacked the pile of images from the desktop computer and removed yet another pile of duplicates. It’s getting to be something of a habit. There won’t be any left at this rate.

The walk around the walls this afternoon was in the wind and rain.

The tide was out so no waves crashing over the sea walls, and not many people out there either which is hardly any surprise.

The waves were quite wild down there, rolling along the beach there like that. I didn’t fancy being out there myself

It gave me a good opportunity to have a look at the housebuilding that is (slowly) taking place along the rue du Nord.

I can’t remember now what was there before they originally started on the building, but whatever they are doing, they are taking their time doing it.

I imagine that we’ll be ending up sometime with a couple of apartments with a sea view or a single residence or something.

Tea was a stuffed pepper and spicy rice, all of which was a little more spicy that is good for me. I’ll have to put the toilet roll in the fridge for later.

And then the football – or lack thereof.

And a walk around the Pointe du Roc in a veritable hurricane – the storm had increased tenfold in velocity but strangely the wind had dropped. The waves were pounding over the sea wall by the harbour but there was nothing like enough light to capture it and I shall have to work on that.

Instead, I had to make do with the Christmas lights that have been installed down on the rue du Port.

They don’t look all that impressive from up here, and I bet that they are even less impressive from down there.

I can’t help thinking that they need to make more of an effort to brighten up the place and make it much more attractive and artistic.

It’s Sunday tomorrow so I’m in no rush to go to bed. I can have a lie-in instead, but I bet that someone will come along to disturb me.

bad parking leclerc granville manche normandy france

beach graffiti plat gousset granville manche normandy france

Friday 9th November 2018 – I HAD A SURPRISE …

… lie-in this morning.

Apparently my phone decided to do an upgrade in the middle of the night and it was waiting for me to switch it back on.

It’s twice now that this has happened so I’ll have to think about having some kind of back-up in case it ever becomes a crucial issue, because I can see this one day ending in tears.

So with a late start this morning and a late breakfast I was getting a little behind in my work. And seeing as I’m now getting to some kind of crucial point in my journey in the High Arctic then I’m going to be doing an awful lot of research just now.

And as a result I had only done half of what I intended to do with Day Three of my blog by lunchtime. That’s not going to be back on-line anything like as quickly as I might have hoped.

Lunch was taken indoors today. It looks as if the outdoors eating is over now, especially given the wind.

This afternoon I did some tidying up – not as much as I would have liked of course but I’m finding it difficult right now to keep up with things.

That took me nicely up to my afternoon walk, when I braved the hurricane and set off around the headland.

And despite the wind, I wasn’t the only person out there.

We had some more pool-dippers down on the beach looking for crustaceans and the like in the tidal rock-pools. And whatever they find, they share with their friends because, as I have told you … “and on many occasions too” – ed … you mustn’t be selfish with your shellfish.

Remember a couple of weeks ago when I showed you a photo of the workmen digging away at the side of the car park at the Pointe du Roc?

It’s quite clear now what they have done, but even though I’m now better-informed, I’m still none-the-wiser because I can’t understand why they have done it.

I suppose that all will be revealed in due course.

With the wind pushing me one step forward and two steps back, I eventually made it back here.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch …
Cold telephone canvasser – “I would like to introduce you to Madame Klara, astrologist …”
Our Hero – “Well she’s not much good, is she?”
CTC – “How do you mean?”
OH – “Well, if she had been any good at foretelling the future, she would have known that I would tell you to !*à# off!”

Once I’d dealt with that, then back on with updating the blog entry.

Not very far though because Rosemary rang up. And we had a good chat for all of, would you believe, one hour and forty minutes. We had a lot to talk about.

Tea was a delicious steamed vegetable mix with vegan sausages and cheese sauce. That really was nice too.

The evening walk was round the walls, but even though it wasn’t too far off high tide, the sea round by the Plat Gousset was in the lee of the old town so that the sea wasn’t all that rough. No waves crashing up over onto the promenade.

But once round by the Place Maurice Marland I got the whole lot again, with rain and plagues of locusts too. If anything, the hurricane is blowing even stronger.

Gribouille had been rather stand-offish this afternoon but this evening Minette was sitting on her windowsill and being quite friendly.

There’s a little bit of a problem too. The dashcam was full so While I was out for a walk I set it to download all of the films onto the storage device. But for some reason or other the dashcam has reset its date so all of the films are out of order.

Not much that I can do about that, but at least I can reset the date. And this proves that the stand-by battery that will power the dashcam when the ignition is switched off works perfectly.

So now I’ll go for an early night again.

And hope that I get up at the right time tomorrow morning.

Monday 14th May 2018 – REGULAR READERS …

… of this rubbish will recall that when I bought my cheap Chinese smartphone back in January, I couldn’t remember the times that I had set the alarms to awaken me.

Well, I know now, don’t I? It was 06:00 and 06:15 and I’m sure that you can gather how I managed to find it out can’t you?

So heaving myself out of my stinking pit and going through the usual morning routine, and also chatting to Liz who appeared on line before she went to work.

After breakfast I had a little relax and then phoned up to book Caliburn in for his annual service. And it seems that the garage is closed on Mondays too. So I’ll have to phone them back tomorrow now, won’t I?

Once that was out of the way pro tem I had another task to perform. There is another huge pile of photos having accumulated over the last week or two, so I sat down and edited them.

Having done that, I started to work backwards in the blog and add photos that were missed off. I’ve done about a week’s worth so if you missed them, you need to check back and have a look.

Lunch was quite late what with one thing and another (and once you get started you’d be surprised at how many other things there are) and I didn’t eat much. Perhaps that’s a good thing, or else I’m sickening for something yet again.

But I did have a really bad afternoon. Wave after wave of fatigue overwhelmed me and it was all that I could do to tear myself out into the hurricane and go for a walk, not feeling much like it at all.

But I’m glad that I went out because we haven’t featured an old car in these pages for quite some time, and there parked on the car park down by the lighthouse is a old Land Rover.

It’s British of course, and the registration number tells me that it was registered in Lancashire some time during the second half of 1969 and the first half of 1970.

Leaf springs of course, not coil springs, and the headlights in the wings not the grille means that it’s probably a later Series IIA model, and also, of course, it’s a very desirable station wagon.

In my opinion, although I wouldn’t say this at any Land Rover gathering, I consider the IIA Land Rovers to be the best model that they ever produced, especially when fitted with a “two and a quarter” diesel.

Back here, I made a coffee but I never had the chance to drink it. 18:20 when I awoke and the coffee was cold. Hardly surprising – I must have been stark out for a couple of hours.

I’d fallen asleep reading the works of Henry de Bracton, one of the first of the modern judges from the 13th Century. And I carried on reading them during my voyage. And my voyage took me to the coast where the seas were stormy, just like they are now in fact, and most people were leaving the beach. But a couple of boys were doing some slalom stunts in a kayak through the waves, with a girl on the beach pleading with them to come in. “Even …. (she mentioned the name of someone who was clearly important in this sport) has come in now”. But my route took me along the headland and I came to a car park where several people were boarding a bus. Standing next to the bus was TOTGA, a very young TOTGA, dressing herself up in black leather and a crash helmet and sitting astride a silver scooter of the Vespa type. “Did you come on the bike or in a car?” I asked, being aware that she didn’t have the brats with her. “Yes” she replied helpfully. “Yes?” I enquired. “Yes” she answered. “I came here in the car and I’m now going home on the bike”. And even during a nocturnal ramble that sounded most illogical.

This evening I made myself a surprise tea. Someone on the internet was talking about Bombay aloo, and that had my mouth watering. And just as it happens, I had some tinned potatoes left over from my lentil doodah last week.

So I chopped up some onion and garlic, diced a carrot and put them in a casserole dish, added the potatoes, cumin and turmeric, covered it all in oil, stirred it up and put it in the microwave for three minutes.

While that was doing, I started to cook some rice and frozen peas.

Once the stuff in the microwave was finished, I added some water and gravy powder, stirred it all up, and then put it back in the microwave on medium heat for six minutes.

And absolutely beautiful it was too. I’ll have to make some more stuff like this, I really will.

I mentioned “hurricane” a little earlier didn’t I?

It was high tide again later this evening and sure enough, during my little evening walk around the walls, I stood and watched the waves crashing onto the sea wall and the spray going over the top onto the promenade.

The amount of power that there is in the sea during a storm like this is impressive. No wonder people want to harness the energy from it.br clear=”both”>

Another thing that I noticed was that there’s now a huge pile of gravel from the quarry near Avranches accumulated in one of the berths down in the harbour.

It looks as if we might be having a visit some time soon, doesn’t it? And that’s probably just as well because it occurs to me that there’s been no gravel ship been here for quite some considerable time – since the new lock gates in fact

We could do with building up the maritime traffic in the port otherwise my utility as a ship reporting station here will be called into question.

So now it’s bed time. I hope that I’ll feel more like it tomorrow.

Monday 9th April 2018 – IT SEEMS …

… that I have forgotten to reconfigure the alarms on my phone after the Easter break.

As regular readers of this rubbish might recall, the alarms didn’t go off o Friday (which I put down to a flat battery in the phone) and they didn’t go off today either. I was awakened at 07:00 by the church bells summoning the Faithful (both of them) to early morning Mass.

I’d been on my travels again during the night too. A young boy had come to our house to be looked after until a neighbour could come to pick him up. But chatting to him, it turned out that his mother had died most unexpectedly and this neighbour didn’t know. The best description that he could give me about his neighbour was that she wore a flowered skirt so I went to the end of the lane to wait for her, to intercept her and break the news to her. A variety of people came past, including a group of old ladies with walking sticks and we had quite a chat, and eventually a woman appeared, a large woman wearing a dark blue-grey skirt with the outlines of flowers drawn in white. She was indeed the neighbour concerned so I drew her to one side to break the news to her.
A little later I was back in Crewe at the house of a lorry driver who worked with my father. He had a caravan for sale and I was very interested in it. It was an old one but a lightweight fibreglass vehicle and the plumbing inside was rather eccentric to say the least. But I’d seen this type of plumbing before and couldn’t understand how it worked so I reckoned that the purchase price of this caravan was well worth it just for an informal course on how the plumbing on these things worked.

Eventually managing to tear myself out of my stinking pit, we had the usual morning ritual and then after a little repose and a coffee I attacked the packing.

I’ll be away for a week so I’m not taking much with me. I shall me relying on hotel sinks and washbasins to keep my clothes clean while I’m on my travels. That should do me fine for that kind of period although if I do spot a holiday on offer in the middle of the Sahara Desert I shall be somewhat at a disadvantage. You don’t need many clothes in the desert that’s for sure, but I don’t want to give any of the donkeys an inferiority complex.

And the desert! Yes. Given the dreadful weather that we’ve had and how thoroughly fed up I am of it all, a week or two at an oasis in the middle of the Sahara will do me the world of good.

The morning – and the day – gradually went downhill from there. In the post was a letter from the EDF about yet another issue with my standing orders thanks to the Crédit Agricole (who are quickly establishing themselves as the Worst Bank In The World) and I ended up on the ‘phone to the EDF for 45 minutes sorting things out. The guy there was very helpful and very friendly but that’s hardly the point now, is it?

Rummaging through the freezer at lunchtime, I discovered that I had run out of bread for lunch. There were however some bits of baguette in there left over from when I was ill over Christmas so I made some soup and had them with it.

After lunch, I steam-cleaned the kitchen. And it needed it too. I’ve been letting things lapse in here for a while and I need to get myself back on track.

That led me up quite nicely to my afternoon walk around the headland. It was grey, miserable and overcast again but not really cold – and not raining either which makes a big change.

And back here I made myself a coffee and sat down to drink it before carrying on with the cleaning. But the next thing that I remember, in a hazy, fuzzy kind of way, was that it was 17:35 and my coffee was stone-cold. By my reckoning, I was out for almost 90 minutes. This cleaning is clearly getting to me, isn’t it? And there’s so much to do before I can go away.

Tea was the other burger from last night with a bap, baked potatoes and vegetables steamed in the microwave. And very delicious it all was too. One thing about it is that I’m eating well.

And then we had our little walk this evening where I was interrogated by a grockel.

I’m hoping for an early night tonight and a good sleep. I can’t keep on going like this. I’m so short of energy and motivation that I’m doing nothing at all and that’s not part of my plan at all.

EPIC HALL

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

Tag Archives: alarm issues

Friday 27th March 2026 – AND SO, AFTER …

Thursday 4th December 2025 – GUESS WHO …

Tuesday 1st April 2025 – I HAD AN UNEXPECTED …

Wednesday 27th December 2023 – I’VE HAD YET …

Friday 27th January 2023 – I HAD ANOTHER …

Thursday 2nd December 2021 – I’M NOT SURE …

Tuesday 20th July 2021 – I’VE DONE SOMETHING …

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

Saturday 24th April 2021 – THERE ARE MANY …

Sunday 22nd December 2019 – REMEMBER A WHILE AGO …

Friday 14th June 2019 – HOW MANY …

Saturday 8th December 2018 – JUST TYPICAL, ISN’T IT?

Friday 9th November 2018 – I HAD A SURPRISE …

Monday 14th May 2018 – REGULAR READERS …

Monday 9th April 2018 – IT SEEMS …

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