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Tuesday 9th September 2025 – I AM IN …

… Isabelle the Nurse’s bad books at the moment. Apparently, I said something at the dialysis centre yesterday that I shouldn’t have said, and she went through the roof.

It’s a shame really. She’s usually a very nice, chatty, friendly person, but I have noticed on more than one occasion that if you push the wrong button, she goes up like a four-bob rocket. I think that in future, I shall have to refrain from saying anything to anyone.

Last night, I didn’t have much to say for myself … "a mere 1600 words, that’s all" – ed … because it was another night where I was totally and utterly flaked out after dialysis and the effort of coming home. I was in a rush to finish my notes and crawl into bed.

Not that it actually worked out like that though because for some reason, I just can’t seem to press on. From what should have been an early finish, posting my notes online at 22:16 precisely, it was yet again after 23:00 when I finally made it into bed.

Once in bed, I slept right through until all of 03:40 when I had one of those dramatic awakenings that I sometimes have.

The first thing that I noticed was the absolute silence in the apartment. There was none of that steady, deep humming from the fuse box just outside the door to tell me that the water heater was drawing current. In the end, I left the bed to look and sure enough, it hadn’t switched on yet again.

For a change, I managed to switch it on manually so there was some heat going in there. And I went back to bed.

With an interruption like that, I didn’t think that I’d go back to sleep but when the alarm went off at 06:29 I was well-and-truly away with the fairies (although not in any fashion that would incite comment from the editor of Aunt Judy’s Magazine).

As usual, it took a good while for me to summon up the motivation and energy to leave the bed but eventually I staggered off into the bathroom, having a quick glance at the fuse box, noticing that the water heater had at least switched itself off at some point.

After the medication, I came back in here to listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. I was travelling through Austria and ended up on the border with Liechtenstein. The moment that I drove into Liechtenstein I was stuck behind a traffic queue with a huge articulated lorry with three huge tractors on the trailer, with a load of other vehicles in front. Gradually, we inched our way through the country until we came to the Swiss border. A Swiss border patrol man walked out in front of the van, and I wasn’t sure whether to swerve around him or stop, so I tried a bit of both. In the end, he came over to me so I told him that I wasn’t sure what he wanted me to do. He asked me to lift up the bonnet of the van, so I did, and to my amazement it was covered in silt as if it had been swamped in a river or something. He poked and prodded around inside, and in the end, slammed down the bonnet. He came over to me and asked for my passport, so I showed him my identity card from France. He had something of a moan about that. In the meantime, someone else came over to talk to me, someone else in the queue, and asked what the engines in these vans are like. I said that they were great. The one in my van had done a quarter of a million kilometres and it’s still working fine. In the end, the Swiss border patrol guy waved me on, so I drove off.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that we have DRIVEN THROUGH LIECHTENSTEIN IN THE PAST and I also drove through here with Nerina when we were on our way to see her family in Italy during our honeymoon.

The incident at the Swiss border though is very much like the incident that I had CROSSING THE BORDER BETWEEN HUNGARY AND AUSTRIA in 2020.

The silt under the bonnet is something that defeats me though. Unless it’s a reference to that Rolls-Royce that I found in a scrapyard in Stoke-upon-Trent that had about a foot of silt inside, looking as if it had been caught in a flood somewhere.

As I mentioned earlier, Isabelle the Nurse blew in to deal with my legs, and blew out again in something of a storm. One very unhappy bunny here this morning. However, she’s gone off for a week’s rest and she’ll probably feel better when she comes back.

Then I could push on and make breakfast, and read some more of ADVENTURES ON THE COLUMBIA RIVER.

The other day, I mentioned that our author seemed to be very good at fortune-telling and predicting the future. Well, he’s at it again today. He’s discussing the spread of American settlers across the Native American lands of the West and concludes "Their anti-republican love of aggrandisement, by the continual extension of their territorial possessions, must sooner or later destroy the unity of their confederation"

His book, written in 1831, was 30 years ahead of its time.

Something else that he mentions that seems to have been missed by many historians is the question of tinned food. It’s generally assumed that the ill-fated Franklin Expedition to the High Arctic, 129 men of which there were no survivors, in 1845 was the first major use of tinned food, produced by Steven Goldner in London.

However, our author notes that in 1814, a supply ship brought a "quantity of prime English beef, which they had dressed and preserved in a peculiar manner in tin cases impervious to air ; so that we could say we ate fresh beef which had been killed and dressed in England thirteen months before"

That’s the earliest ever mention that I have seen of tinned food.

He also makes mention of a primitive Native American Sauna and an ice-plunge, both used by the natives as an excellent cure for rheumatism. I shall have to try that, to see if it works.

The tinned food is preserved by sealing it in a vacuum. That’s done by rapidly heating the liquid in which it’s stored. Hot liquid is much less dense than cold liquid so when it’s hot, you quickly ram down a lid onto it and seal it (or solder it with lead solder as Goldner did to the tinned food that he sent to Franklin’s men, thus killing them all by lead poisoning), when the liquid cools down, it shrinks in volume and the resultant empty space becomes a vacuum.

Back in here, I went through my LeClerc order and sent it off, asking for delivery between 15:00 and 17:00. And then I had things to do.

Now that I’m fully down here and the cleaning of the apartment is more-or-less finished, we no longer need the electricity up there. Consequently, I telephoned the electricity company to talk about them cutting the power to it and finalising my bill. The new tenant, whoever that might be, can arrange for the power supply.

And seeing as we have been talking about the new tenant … "well, one of us has" – ed … the letting agent rang me to ask if someone could come along and view the apartment tomorrow at 16:00. That’s not a problem.

After a disgusting drink break, I had another ‘phone call to make – this time to Canada. It seems that there’s an issue with my Canadian bank account, something to do with a change of account number that I need to note.

Having ordered my shopping for between 15:00 and 17:00, it turned up at 14:55 when I wasn’t ready for it. It was a large order too, seeing that I’d been letting supplies run down for a while, and contained lots of new stuff now that I have a place to store it.

There were also 2 kilos of carrots that needed cleaning, dicing and blanching, so that was this afternoon’s work sorted out for me

With what little time that was left, I had a listen to the radio programme that needs sending off for broadcast this weekend, only to find a glaring fault right in the middle. Consequently, I had to rewrite, re-dictate, edit and re-assemble the programme. I really need to take more care when I am doing these programmes.

Tea tonight was a stuffed pepper and now I’m off to bed, ready for a good sleep … "I don’t think" – ed … I’m having far too many wake-up calls awakening me these days – a sharp contrast to how things were a few months ago when I’d be up and about after a mere three or four hours’ sleep. What’s happening to change all of that?

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about vacuums … "well, one of us has" – ed … a girl from Crewe was on one of these quiz shows on TV, and the presenter asked her "if you were in a vacuum and someone shouted, would you hear it?"
She thought for a while, and then asked "would the vacuum be switched on?"

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Saturday 3rd May 2025 – THAT WAS SUPPOSED …

… to be one of the easiest sessions of dialysis that I have ever had, with only 1.6 kg of fluid to be removed. However, it’s totally exhausted me and in a few minutes I shall be off to bed.

It probably wasn’t the early start that did it – after all, being up and about at 06:20 is pretty much par for the course these days. And as well as that, it was a comparatively early night last night – in be by 23:30.

What with one thing and another, I had had a good session at the work that I needed to do after tea last night and I didn’t hang around at all. I suppose I could even have been in bed before than had I applied myself.

Once in bed though, I remember very little of the night until, once more, I had rather a dramatic awakening for no good reason at about 05:55.

Try as I might, I could not go back to sleep and, checking the time once more, I nipped out of bed just before the electric water heater switched off.

After a wash and shave (in case I meet Emilie the Cute Consultant this afternoon) I went for my medication, sitting at the table when the first alarm sounded at 07:00.

Back in here, I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. There was a group of us, including my father, in a car driven by some young lad whom we knew. We’d come by Leighton Hospital and on the old road cut-off there was a Sherpa minibus. It had a taxi radio aerial on the roof and another one bolted onto the back door. I had a quick look but couldn’t see a taxi plate on it so I suspected that this one was operating illegally. We carried on down the hill towards Pym’s Lane, and this Sherpa caught us up. It was probably half an inch from our back door but we were probably doing about fifty mph. As we reached the bottom and began to come back up the hill the Sherpa became even more aggressive. We told the driver “take your foot off the throttle”. The driver took his foot off the throttle and the Sherpa drove straight into the back of it. Of course, we stopped and he stopped and we all alighted. We could see the driver of the Sherpa beginning to panic. He tried to escape but my father reached in through his window and took the keys out to stop him driving off. We made him alight from the vehicle to talk to us about the accident. In the meantime the young lad who owned the car had set up some kind of workshop at the side of the road with all his tools. He was busy preparing stuff to make a running repair of the damage. I was impressed by all of this. He said “well, I have nowhere else to keep it except in my car”. I replied “it won’t be long before you have your own place, and then you’ll find somewhere”. I’d been to the new place that he had bought. It was a tiny two-bedroom flat much smaller than mine. He would have a great deal of difficulty putting stuff into it. He took the top off a tube of something or other but dropped the top and someone nearly walked on it. We were all there, becoming busy while my father and one or two of his friends were stopping this guy from driving away.

This was an extremely realistic dream. The road layout was just as I remember it from when I lived in Crewe and Winsford and travelled that way regularly back in the 1970s and 80s. But once again, someone from my family seems to be involved in one of my dreams, even though there was nothing at all from which I might have needed saving.

Then later on, there had been a group of us. We had been for a walk in the hills over by Macclesfield. We were walking around there looking at all the mountains on the horizon, trying to identify them, which was which, which were the fields beyond it. We were trying to identify where the Salt Way, the ancient road over the hills between Cheshire and Derbyshire went. We were all pointing out amongst this group of people what we’d seen and where we’d seen it. I’d had a really good view five minutes earlier and I told everyone about it. They all came back but we couldn’t see it, or I couldn’t find it again. We ended up on a pub car park, looking. Just then, a group of five motorcyclists and their pillion passengers pulled up. The riders alighted and we noticed that one of the riders had the most enormous feet you have ever seen. They parked their motorcycles anywhere, one of them in the middle of the road. We thought that it wasn’t the best place to leave it. They went in but we were all sitting around a table outside. The manageress came out with the notepad and wanted to take our orders. She ran through the menu. One of the girls with us said that she would have a “Vegan Delight” but she would be horrified if she knew how much it was going to cost. The woman said that the devilled kidneys alone were £31:00. nevertheless the girl ordered it. I ordered the “Vegan Delight” but without the kidneys.

A few of those people I recognised – members of my Welsh class. What we were all doing walking over the moors at the back of Macclesfield I really don’t know either. But the biggest puzzle about this, something about which I am still shaking my head, is whatever would devilled kidneys be doing anywhere near a “Vegan Delight”. It’s no surprise that I eschewed them.

The nurse didn’t have too much to say for himself this morning, although he was not at all happy when I told him that he needed to be here at 06:45 on Monday morning at the latest. He told me to go to bed in my compression socks, which was what I suspected that he would say.

After he left I made breakfast. And my new mini-loaf is really, really nice, just as it should be. As far as MY BOOK goes, we are still in the Tower of London having the guided tour. I’ve long-since abandoned any hope of having any military architecture explained to me.

Back in here, I had a few bills to pay. There’s still no earthly reason why this monthly standing order won’t go through. Whenever I go to pay it manually, it automatically inserts my bank details so it must have them on file somewhere.

There was also a sum of money to transfer from my Canadian bank account for my great little niece (or little great niece)’s graduation from University, which is tomorrow.

There was time to start writing the notes for radio programme 260403 but I didn’t go very far before my cleaner came round to fit my patches.

After she left, I waited (and waited, and waited) for the taxi to turn up. Eventually it arrived and we set off, picking up someone else along the way. I was the last to arrive and so was the last to be connected. But there was only 1.6 kg of fluid to lose today so it was a session of three and a half hours. Imagine how early I could have been out had I been first to be connected up.

For a change, it wasn’t me who had a crisis in there. It was someone else. The nurse explained to me afterwards that she had been coming for several years and was now on the final downhill slope.

No-one bothered me and the machine behaved itself. I revised my Welsh while I was waiting.

Julie the Cook uncoupled me and while she was compressing me, she showed me some photos of a cake that she had baked. It looked lovely, a kind-of flan with fresh summer fruit on a cream base.

The boss came to pick me up this evening, and the poor woman who had come down with me had had to wait half an hour for me to finish. I felt awful, even though it’s not my fault.

After the taxi driver drove away, I realised that he had taken my jacket with him in the boot of his car. He brought it back later on, full of excuses. I told him that my cleaner was most upset about it and wanted a word with him so he made a quick getaway.

Tea was a baked potato with vegan salad, delicious vegan mayonnaise and breaded quorn fillet followed by vegan chocolate cake and soya dessert.

That was followed by a lovely chat with my niece and her three daughters who are in Antigonish ready for the Graduation Ceremony tomorrow. How I wish that I could be there. Antigonish is a lovely little town – I went there on several occasions when her elder sister was studying here – and it would be a lovely day. As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … I remember bouncing Amber up and down on my knee as a tiny baby (Amber, not me) when she was just a couple of months old in 2003 that winter that I spent in Canada. It’s hard to believe that she’s graduating from University.

Right now though, I’m feeling pretty miserable so I’m off to bed. It’s a good job that there’s nothing to dictate because I would not have felt much like doing it.

But seeing as we have been talking about Julie the Cook … "well, one of us has" – ed … regular readers of this rubbish will recall that she appeared a couple of weeks ago in one of my nocturnal rambles.
So this afternoon I told her "I dreamed about you the other night"
"Did you?" She asked
"No" I replied. "You wouldn’t let me"

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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!"

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Friday 22nd March 2024 – I’M NOT HAVING …

… much luck with my footfest this weekend. Cymru’s Under-21 match against Lithuania isn’t being streamed on a foreign carrier either tonight.

It’s just my luck, after last night’s stunning victory of the senior team against Finland following on from Cymru’s “C” team against England on Wednesday night. I was really looking forward to some football tonight. Watching Stranraer slump to a controversial 2-1 defeat to Elgin City on the swamp that is Stair Park was hardly any compensation

It’s been a really long time since I was at Stair Park – almost 50 years in fact. I was coming off the ferry from one of my trips to Northern Ireland when I saw crowds (well, perhaps not “crowds”) of people heading all in one direction, all wearing blue and white scarves. So I had to follow them to see what was going on, as if I didn’t know.

It’s so long ago now that I can’t remember who they were playing. Probably someone like Arbroath or Montrose or something. And as I don’t have my photos here from that period, I can’t even tell you the colours. But one thing that I can tell you is that the ground hasn’t changed one iota in that time. It still looks the same as it did back then.

Mind you, that’s a relief. The Taylor Report swept away many traditional football grounds and with football attendances in Scotland being what they are, we were left with far too many of these modern, soulless one-sided wonders with “room to build the other three sides when attendances improve”.

Yes, quite.

The problem in Scottish football can be summed up in two words, “Celtic” and “Rangers”.

Regular readers of this rubbish in one of its previous versions will recall that I stood outside Albion Rovers’ ground in Coatbridge where the average attendance was about 300 watching busload after busload of people wearing green and white or blue and white scarves all heading into Glasgow.

And then I was at Broadwood in Cumbernauld once watching a game between Glasgow Rangers reserves v Celtic reserves, both teams full of players that would have been a boon and an asset to any other club in Scotland. Rangers and Celtic had signed them not because they needed them but because they didn’t want any other club to have them and become a competitive threat.

And absolutely nothing whatever has changed, except that Albion Rovers have been relegated from the Scottish pyramid into the Lowland League. But as former Spurs manager Terry Venables once famously said, "if history repeats itself, I should think we can expect the same thing again"

However, I digress … "again" – ed …

Last night was another one of those nights where I couldn’t tear myself out of my chair and into bed. It was something like 01:30 when I finally moved a muscle and set about doing my nightly chores. I’ve absolutely no idea what’s happening to me right now about this.

Anyway it was another really deep sleep like last night where I can’t remember a single thing until the alarm went off

When it awoke me I really was dead to the world and I had quite a battle to raise myself from the dead. They talk about “the quick and the dead” in Biblical terms but there was nothing whatever quick about it.

First thing was to check the blood pressure. 15.9/100, pretty similar to last night’s 16.0/10.1, taken when I was feeling rather stressed out trying to exert myself to go to bed. So what was winding me up during the night?

Anyway I wandered off into the kitchen to sort out the medication. I’m beginning to run low on certain things again – just supplies of a few of the tablets for a couple of weeks. I need to keep an eye on everything to make sure that I don’t run out.

Next task was to make the bread. And I put a lot of thought and effort into this lot and tried my best to knead it correctly, which is not easy.

After that I went for a good wash, scrub up and shave and all of that kind of thing, as well as washing to shorts that I’ve started to wear in bed. But I didn’t get as far as I would have liked because for once in his life the nurse was here early.

When he came in, he saw the bread buns slowly rising, said “oh look, bread!” and poked one, which promptly sank

He eventually managed to find a vein and extract some blood. And I’ve had the results already. The red blood count is slowly rising, which is no surprise given the amount of stuff they are injecting into me every Wednesday, but so is the carcinogenic protein. It should be between 59 and 104 and it’s increased from 267 to 275.

So if the red blood cells are increasing, what is the protein attacking? The answer is that it’s now attacking the platelets. They should be between 140 and 380 and they have decreased from 108 to 92. That would seem to indicate that the cancer is now moving into my bone marrow.

So what’s the next move going to be? Someone will tell me something in due course, I imagine.

Having switched off the heating in the apartment, I checked the bread again and it had risen really well and for once I was impressed, especially as I’m making hot cross buns on Sunday and I need some confidence and encouragement.

The bread baked perfectly too, lovely and soft. It made some really nice cheese on toast and there is bread for the next couple of days too

Later on today I went to pay the Property Taxes on my place in Canada. I tried for an age unsuccessfully to log into my bank account, only to discover that I was trying to access Scotia Bank Trinidad and Tobago rather than Scotia Bank Canada.

Once I’d found the correct bank, everything went really smoothly. I do like how easy it is to make payments and so on in the Canadian banking system

It’s not so easy making payments on-line in France to the French Government.

The French Government has at long last started a system of on-line payments where you can pay your bills via internet rather than sending a cheque. I went to set it up for me this afternoon, but it’s not easy.

The logical way to organise payments is to index everything by reference to a person’s identity card number, so you can log in, see your account, see what’s owing and pay it off all at once with just one payment.

Instead, everything is indexed by invoice number, so if you have more than one bill to pay, as I did, you have to log in more than once, entering all of your details, including card details, more than once, and it takes an age.

What makes life even more complicated is that it asks you to enter certain details from the invoices into certain boxes on the computer screen, and the names don’t correspond. You have to use some intuitive guesswork to figure it all out.

But what am I going to do about my place in Canada?

it was an inspired decision to buy it because all you need when dealing with Canadian administration is a Property Tax Assessment. I could open bank accounts, buy pick-ups, obtain insurance, have mobile phones, all of that, simply on production of a Property Tax Assessment and it eased my passage (if you’ll pardon the expression) around Canada.

But I’m never going to use it now and it’s just going to sit there with the apples falling off the trees year after year until the cows come home unless my niece goes up there to pick them up.

But while we’re talking about Canada … "well, one of us is" – ed … I wonder how Strider is getting on with his new owners. We travelled miles together, him, me and STRAWBERRY MOOSE. I hope that they are looking afer him.

And that reminds me – I told my niece to dispose of most of the stuff that was in there – tools, camping gear, expedition equipment and so on – but there was a Fender bass and amp in there that I used that I wanted her to keep for me. I need to think of a way of bringing them over here.

The cleaner came round this afternoon for her Friday cleaning spot, bringing my mushrooms and tomatoes with her. I retreated into my bedroom while she was here but I actually had a fall while I was in the bathroom. Luckily the chair was in my way and I fell onto that, otherwise it could have been nasty

There was some stuff on the dictaphone too, surprisingly. I had several Ford Corsairs in my drive last night. One of them was driven away and I can’t remember where it went. Someone else borrowed a set of my number-plates but hadn’t brought them back and I was becoming rather concerned about that. Anyway there was some more car-swapping that needed to be done. I had to bring another Ford Cortina into my drive. That was parked in Gainsborough Road so I had to go down there to it, start it and bring it back. That was a Safari Beige colour but I was thinking that if I were to paint it blue I could put on the number-plates that this guy had borrowed because they belonged to a blue estate. I could make a set of plates but what would be the position if someone saw both vehicles, mine and the one on which presumably the guy had put the plates, and noticed that there were two vehicles with the same set of plates? What would my neighbours say if I were to turn up with yet another car after I’d just had one taken away somewhere? I got into the Cortina Estate. The clutch was right down on the floor and it was difficult to start. I thought that I better hadn’t leave vehicles lying around for so long without actually starting them up otherwise I’m just going to make myself a lot of problems

This is something of a recurring dream, isn’t it, having Cortinas scattered all around the town. It’s just like in real life when I actually did, including a beige Cortina estate and a blue one too.

But swapping over number plates from one car to another? And VIN plates too? I look back on those years with amazement and wonder how on earth I managed to keep clear of some serious trouble. Six months at Her Majesty’s Pleasure would have been nothing. I had to stop and leave the country because those years were catching up on me rather rapidly

My excuse was though that when you are up to your neck in alligators, it’s hard to realise that you are really trying to drain the swamp. Taking drastic and rapid steps to solve short-term issues can lead to some really long-term problems further down the line.

It’s a surprise though having Ford Corsairs around the place for a change. I didn’t think that it would be too long though before a Cortina or two appeared.

So this afternoon I’ve chosen some more music for another radio programme and began to pair it off before tea but I ran out of time, mainly due to going away with the fairies for an hour or so. And miles away too, it has to be said.

But tea was lovely – the last Kale and Quinoa burger from Noz, and I’ll have to find a way of making those because they were nice, especially in breadcrumbs.

Last of the home-made mayonnaise too, although it might not have been had I used a more convenient container. Still, you live and learn.

However, the mayonnaise was an unqualified success. It was too thick and I’d used too much garlic, but those are minor problems. The principle was perfect and tomorrow, I’ll make some more, having learned from my first batch.

So what with that and making hot cross buns on Sunday it looks as if I’m going to be in for a busy weekend. And it’ll do me good right now because I seem to be doing too much of nothing right now.

So what else can I make while I’m at it? I shall have to pick Liz’s brains, and I’ll welcome any suggestions from anyone else too

But before I go, the story of my mayonnaise in the wrong bottle reminds me of that aerosol that came onto the market in the 70s. The publicity for it went something like "enough paint to cover 70 square metres of panelling"
And someone wrote underneath the advert "and enough propellant to get just about a quarter of it out of the can"

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Thursday 15th February 2024 – I REALLY DON’T …

… know what’s happening to me right now.

Once again, I was absolutely flat-out this afternoon, sleeping quietly on my chair for a good 90 minutes. And nothing whatever disturbed me, not even a message on the ‘phone from Rosemary, and regular readers of this rubbish will recall the racket that this ‘phone makes whenever I receive a message or ‘phone call.

It was just like yesterday in fact, where I was well away with the fairies on the way home from Paris.

One thing that I can’t blame is tiredness. Just for a change I was in bed early and actually had a comfortable night’s sleep without waking too much.

Mind you, I could have done with another couple of hours when the alarm went off. It took me several minutes to work out what was going on (and that’s not unusual, is it?). What I mean by that is that I had the impression that there were several beds in here with several people, and a whole series of alarms was going off to awaken different people. I had a hard time believing that my alarm call was real.

But anyway I slid eventually to my feet and went for the blood pressure machine. 17.2/10.6 this morning. But as for last night’s, where did I record the figures? They aren’t written on my little booklet thing where I record them so I don’t have a clue.

They’ll turn up one day so I left them to it and went for my medication. Tons of it as usual and it’s really becoming quite ridiculous, but never mind. 10 tablets or powders in the morning and 5 at night before I go to bed is where we’re at right now.

Back in here I had a listen to the dictaphone to see where I’d been during the night. I was having a dream last night about the words dim ond da – that’s “not but good”, messing around with them, trying to fit them into different sentences that I’d written. Then we came across some of the radio notes that I’d written and just dictated. I decided that they were horrible and needed amending. I added in some bits but they were even worse, but then I couldn’t remember how to return to the original. That confused me for quite some time. When I did, I found that I’d still missed some out. Nevertheless the programme sounded better but there were so much more that I could do with this particular programme that I thought that I was going to start to rewrite it and dictate it again but that would have to be something that would have to be done later and not now.

And there have been more than just one or two occasions where this kind of thing has happened in real life when I’ve been writing a radio programme or editing a website, ending up forgetting all kinds of important things that I had included and somehow seemed to have managed to wipe out some important stuff that I really wanted to include.

This was another night where I was with my former friend. We were chatting to two other people whom we knew who we’d met some time previously. We’d arranged for this meeting so they came round . We showed them how to climb into my attic up the electric cable but the guy’s girlfriend was afraid to do it so my former friend’s wife stayed down with her and the other four of us climbed into the attic which was full of rubbish as usual. We spread ourselves out to make ourselves comfortable to talk. This started in the attic but ended up standing in Nantwich Road by the old police station. We were as usual discussing cars. My ex-friend was talking to him about several cars including one with a particular registration that would suit his wife but not while they were living in Porthcawl because it was a dangerous place to be apparently, according to him. I was talking to the other guy, telling him that I was having to dispose of some of my cars because I’d sold my house and had nowhere to keep them. I was renting a warehouse at the moment but that was precarious. However there was also a car that I wanted to buy, a yellow Ford Zephyr 6. While this was all going on there was a road rally taking place and all these old historic cars were going past. While I was talking to him about that particular one, I could hear something going past running on 5 cylinders instead of 6. It was this Zephyr so I pointed it out to him. I told him the story about how the driver had taken it out for a run 2 weeks ago but the insurance wasn’t correct at the time and he’d had a collision with a police car. As the policeman was looking round his car and preparing to nab him for no insurance, there was another bigger accident immediately right by them. The policeman went over to that and waved this guy away which was probably about the luckiest break that he’d ever had in his life

These days I seem to have a thing about Ford Zephyr 6s. There was one in my dreams a couple of nights ago and I’m sure that there have been others. They are MkIII Zephyrs, the kind that my father had in the late 60s and early 70s. Lovely, comfortable roomy cars with plenty of woomph.

A couple of nights ago I mentioned the one that I had – a MkIV model – that caught fire after a Jethro Tull concert in Manchester.

However, the story about “no insurance” rang a bell with me. When I was living in Winsford I bought a Rover 2000 at the auctions at Prees Heath and took a chance on driving it home. It goes without saying that I was pulled over by the police and asked for the documents for the car, like the MoT and the … errr … insurance.

Not having any of course, I pleaded ignorance and so was given the dreaded white slip “to produce your documents at your nearest Police Station within 5 days – or else …” – “or else” being anything from a slap on the wrist to three months at Her Majesty’s Pleasure, and in my case, it would be nearer the latter than the former. The Cheshire Constabulary and I didn’t get on very well.

Two days later I had a phone call – “this is PC Grindlay here. I stopped you the other day in that Rover. I forgot to write the date on the copy of the white slip. You will write it on for me, won’t you?”.
“Of course I will” I said, lying through my teeth. I could just picture the scene in the Nantwich Magistrates’ Court. “Five days from WHAT date, Your Honour?”.

But to be on the safe side I promptly put the Rover through the auctions at Queensferry so that someone else, presumably in North Wales, would have more headaches than I would.

Queensferry Auctions was quite fun though in the old days. Having little money we once bought a Citroen Dyane from a scrapyard for £25, drove it to Queensferry and put it through the auctions where it fetched £35. A few of those used to keep us going when we were hard-up

Another thing that we used to do when we were broke was to wander round the scrapyards and take the back seats out of cars. You’d be surprised at the amount of money that had slipped unnoticed out of people’s pockets.

It wasn’t just money either – all kinds of things were “salvaged” including, on one occasion, a really complicated food tester with temperature probe.

Anyway, I digress … "again" – ed …

Once I’d returned to the Land of the Living I started on the notes for the radio programme. There were several that I hadn’t written so I worked my way through them and now they are all ready for dictation on Saturday night. Hopefully all of the Carnivalers will have gone home by then and we’ll go back to being quiet again.

THis afternoon I was doing paperwork. It was the middle of October when I last filed away my papers so there were piles here in all kinds of heaps all over the place.

Anyway, they are now all sorted away, bills paid, actions taken and quite a few filed under CS. The place is looking much more like home now in my bedroom/office.

My cleaner came round too. Yesterday I’d given her the prescription that I’d had from Paris and she’d been this morning to the chemist’s. Now you can’t move around here for medication.

Then there was another task that needed doing now that it was after 09:00 in North America.

My Canadian bank card expired in March last year and of course I hadn’t been to North America this autumn and so didn’t have the new one.

After six months I had the dreaded “your account is now placed in suspense” notice so that was that. And then I had a letter from Service New Brunswick about paying my property taxes on my place there, which, with a suspended bank account, will be extremely difficult.

Consequently I had sent my niece along to ransack my mailbox and she found it under a pile of rubbish, and she posted it to me – the card, not the rubbish.

Now I needed to unfreeze the account and that was not the work of five minutes either. I shudder to think how much the ‘phone call will cost me at the end of the month but it needed to be done. So now my Canadian bank account is working, my bank card works, and the letter from Service New Brunswick wasn’t even the demand for payment in any case.

But buying that place in Canada was an ace of a move. No-one asks for Visas, your right of residence in Canada, that sort of thing in Canada. You can buy cars, take out insurance, open bank accounts, have mobile phones, absolutely everything as long as you can produce a property tax certificate.

As regular readers of this rubbish will recall, I’ve blagged my way through all kinds of situations that would have forestalled many other people, thanks to my little piece of Canada. I might have the noisiest, most mentally-unstable neighbours in the World on my southern border, but so what?

After that I went for my hot chocolate and then came back in here ready to work but as I mentioned earlier, I went off with the fairies instead. And I can tell you where I ended up too. I’d been running some kind of football training sessions for boys and girls. I’d heard a complaint that two boys had been overheard saying that they couldn’t wait to see a certain girl use the toilet again so I went to check and was confident that no-one using the toilet could be seen from outside. The rumours continued so I arranged for a piece of white canvas to be fitted to block the window arranged in such a way that it would shield the toilet but still allow light in. I was sure that there could be no possibility of anyone being seen from outside but the rumour gained ground again, I checked the toilet and was confident, so I didn’t really know what I could do now apart from bricking up the window. And I wasn’t convinced that that would stop the rumours either.

Tea tonight was that vegan sausage-meat patty with baked potato and a tin of mixed peppers that I’d found on the shelf. I felt rather like Mr Carmichael and SUPPER WAITS ON THE TABLE INSIDE A TIN.

The patty wasn’t a success. Not that it didn’t taste nice, but that in the fridge it hadn’t really kept its shape and consistency. But never mind – it was a rather ad-hoc thing using up some left-over stuffing. I’ll just have to work on it and improve my technique.

So right now I’m going to work on my sleep and improve my technique there. Having felt like Tommy Cooper this afternoon and "I knew a man who dreamed that he was awake, and when he awoke, he was!", I want to dream of nicer things.

However, rather like Barbara Follet, "my dreams are going through their death flurries. They are dying before the steel javelins and arrows of a world of Time and Money" and that will be the end of the World if that does happen. It’s only my dreams that keep me going these days

And as Dietrich Bonhoffer said "the only fight that is lost is that which we give up" so I’ll go and fight the good fight in bed right now.

See you all tomorrow.

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Monday 6th November 2023 – IT’S BEEN ANOTHER …

… one of those days when I’ve spent much of it asleep.

A least, the afternoon anyway. And I’m not sure why because it’s not as if I’ve been exerting myself or anything like that.

Last night I was actually in bed at something like a realistic time – later than I would have liked but not by all that much And once I’d managed to go off to sleep I actually had a few hours of decent, deep sleep without very much at all going on.

When the alarm went off, I was fast asleep but Clive John had come round to see me. All his recording contracts had ended and he’d been handed back the rights to his material. He was thinking about relaunching his career and wondered if I’d be interested in helping him rework a few of his songs. The conversation drifted on from there. We had an idea that maybe we could find a bassist who could sing and had a few songs and a drummer who could sing and had a few songs then put together some kind of group. He was then wondering about a rhythm guitarist who could sing harmony and that was when an idea came into my head about maybe that might be a place for me. I went to have a little think and was walking down a beach. The sea came in over my feet and it was freezing so I had to walk on top of a bank at the end of a hotel garden where there were one or two people sitting drinking but I couldn’t climb up the bank – I didn’t have the force in my legs to do that.

Once I’d had my medication I waited for the nurse to come round to talk to me about his plan for the Covid injections for his housebound patients, but he didn’t show up. After a while, I gave up the idea of waiting and carried on with my work.

There was more stuff on the dictaphone from last night. I was down with this illness and it was affecting all aspects of my life including my military training (yes, it MUST have been a dream). When I’d spoken to my colleagues they hadn’t really expressed anything about the urgency of that so I’d just sent in a sick note and let it drift. A few weeks later I had the impression that there was something serious developing so I undertook that I’d go back into the office at the next available opportunity. When the next day for military training came round, I’d completely forgotten. I was at home doing some things when I suddenly remembered about it so I set off. I eventually found my officer who was not in the least bit pleased that I’d been away so long with only a simple sick note. In the end I explained that I was completely immobile and had no way of doing anything more than that for a while. He asked me a few more questions. When I mentioned that I’d been feeling better since Monday he asked me what I’d been eating. I replied “nothing”. He answered “that’s three days. You really ought to have something” and began to organise a huge meal for me. The last thing that I wanted to eat was a huge meal. I just wanted to go home and put my feet up ready to start again at the next class of military training but he was so insistent that I didn’t think that I could possibly get away without submitting to this meal.

And later on a friend of mine was to be married. His girlfriend was thin, fairly tall, had very long fair hair and round glasses. We went to church and she was waiting there already when we arrived. We left the car and went into the church and the ceremony took place. Then there was the reception that took place on the top floor of this building. We had to climb several flights of stairs, the whole wedding party, and at the top there was a footway that went across the huge void that was several floors down and into a room on the far side through a door. The pathway was only maybe two feet wide and there was no handrail. As soon as I saw it my stomach hit the floor. I had to wait until everyone else had gone then slowly try to make my way across it. I just quite simply couldn’t do it. There was nothing on earth that would bring me across that gap. Someone who was watching said that I ought to join one of these mountaineering scieties where they would help me overcome my fear of things like this. I replied “actually I already am”. They asked “which society?” and I replied “the Everest Society”. There was then an Appeal that had come through that a farmer had several of his sheep stranded on the mountains in the Bannau Brycheiniog. I happened to mention it and they asked if I was going to be one of the people going out to the rescue. I replied “not this afternoon while I’m attending this wedding”.

And that’s not like me either, is it? The amount of roofing that I did when I was living in the Auvergne and the scaffolding that I’ve swarmed over, and clinging on to a ladder 30 feet up above ground while rebuilding fieldstone walls – I won’t be having high anxiety any time soon.

After that, I made a start on the radio programme that I had in the queue and although it ended up being a late lunch, at least the programme was finished.

This afternoon, I’ve been quite busy. In between falling asleep, I paired off the music for the next radio programme and began to write the notes. Not that I actually managed to go very far because I kept on drifting off into sleep.

Something else that I did was to update a few more entries from when I was in hospital last year. And it’s a good thing that I did because there was some important stuff in there that I had forgotten.

There was the usual pause for my mid-afternoon hot chocolate and biscuits. And those chocolate and coconut biscuits with a hint of orange that I made yesterday are delicious

Something else was to try to contact my bank in Canada as my bank card has expired and I can’t access the on-line banking.

And the answer is that I can’t access my account there until I have the new card in my possession, and I can’t have it sent anywhere outside Canada. They’ll quite happily send it to my address in Upper Knoxford and then I’ll have to go to fetch it.

If that’s ever likely to happen.

It’s not a problem that was unexpected however. I remember feeling so ill a few days before I left Canada last October that I went to the bank and liberated a large pile of transfer slips, signed them all and left them with my niece. At least my property taxes will be paid when they come due, but it’s not an ideal situation

Tea tonight was a stuffed pepper and for some reason, it wasn’t cooked as well as it usually is. I’m not sure why because everything was set up as usual.

So even though it’s early, I’m off to bed right now. I have my Welsh lesson tomorrow, if it’s not half-term again, so I need to be on form.

And then I’m off afterwards to the Centre de Re-education, so I suppose that I’ll be absolutely exhausted for the rest of the day once I return.

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Monday 16th January 2023 – AND IN OTHER …

… exciting news today, when the alarm went off at 06:00 this morning I was busy adding the final touches to the radio programme that I was planning to prepare today.

Despite having gone to bed at the early time of 22:00 last night, at 02:28 I was still wide-awake and unable to go to sleep.

A short while later, still wide awake, I arose from the dead, made myself a coffee and by 03:00 I was sitting at the computer working on the radio programme. There’s no point pretending that I’m trying to sleep.

So by the time the alarms went off I was up and running and raring to go, so the first place I went to was the bathroom where I had a shower. I was hoping that maybe the nurse would come round and inject me and I need to be something like clean.

With no sign of the nurse though, by about 10:30 I was pretty well gone with the wind and I went to bed, where I slept for a couple of hours. I went off ona little wander here and there while I was asleep. I was somewhere in the country. There was a neighbour who was bad-tempered like the one who lives in Virlet. I was wandering around outside and saw that he had a lot of animals there. I walked that way to see what they were. He had a really vicious sheepdog thing that snarled and growled at me, pulled on his lead so I turned round and walked away from there

Rosemary had sent me a message while I was asleep so we had a good chat for a while once I awoke, and then I went for some more coffee and some food. It’s been a long day already.

During the afternoon I was extremely busy. There were some issues with my property in Canada that needed attention so I had an exchange of e-mails with the Provincial Government in New Brunswick. It’s nice to see someone who is quick and efficient.

Another thing that I’ve been doing is to shuffle some money around from one place to another. I have a feeling that I’m going to need to lay my hands on some money at some point in the future and as I’ve not touched my holiday fund since I went to the High Arctic in 2019 I need to bring it closer to home.

That’s not as easy as it might sound either and I had to rely on Rosemary to give me a little hand with one or two things. I’ve also had to send out a pile of e-mails to shake some people up and tell them to extricate their digits too.

One of my plans was to go outside to see how Caliburn is doing. But we’re in the middle of a hurricane right now. Just after 06:00 this morning a gust of wind of 162 kph was recorded. I made it outside with some rubbish to put into the bin but that was all that I was going to do because the wind was still roaring and quite literally it was blowing me over. I’m not as strong on my feet as I might be and I was nearly bowled over a couple of times so I came back in. I’ll have to have another go at some other time.

Tea tonight was a delicious stuffed pepper, with plenty of stuffing left over for my taco roll tomorrow. But with a Welsh lesson, the Social Services coming round to see me and then the physiotherapist, will I actually have time to eat it?

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Friday 14th October 2022 – THE NEXT PERSON …

… who tells me that there’s a recession will receive a smack in the mouth.

This afternoon I went down to the border between the USA and Canada at Houlton as I had heard that there were a couple of freight forwarders with offices there. The idea was to talk to them about shipping this sunroof back to Europe.

When I eventually found the offices (thanks to a helpful officer in the Canadian Customs Post), the guy in the first office, that belonging to Kühn and Nagel, couldn’t even be bothered to leave his seat to come to the counter. The gist of his information was to tell me to clear off and not bother him.

Mind you, that was better than at the second office. There, there was a notice to the effect that they are not welcoming personal callers.

And there’s the rub. I have all of this money burning a hole in my pocket and it needs to be spent, and it’s far too much effort for anyone to come and take it. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that this is a regular occurrence. Nobody these days wants to earn any money and I’m completely on my own when it comes to dealing with this.

It’s not the only thing for which I’m completely alone either. I was completely on my own last night too. Cujo the Killer Cat didn’t come to share my bed, something that quite disappointed me.

Consequently there was tons of stuff on the dictaphone from last night but I haven’t transcribed it yet.

And there was a good reason for that. Once everyone had gone to work I left my bed and while I was checking my mails and messages I had the old-time radio on the computer. And on came a “Paul Temple” episode, all 3 hours and some more of it, so just for a change I did very little except listen to it.

At a certain moment Cujo the Killer Cat came to join me so we listened to it together.

After lunch I set out for the border and after my disappointment there I went to Woodstock to buy fuel , and by the time we got to Woodstock we were … etc.

Next stop was the bank at Florenceville and for a change I followed the west bank of the Saint John River and crossed over the river at Hartland on the world’s longest covered bridge where I got the protocol about crossing horribly wrong and annoyed just about everyone.

The tyre depot was extremely busy so we never had time to weigh my packets so I’ll have to do that tomorrow, but I had a lovely chat with a very verbose 4th grader who was waiting for her father who was having a tyre changed.

And it’s not just very verbose 4th graders that occupy my time either.

mill cat centreville new brunswick Canada Eric Hall photo 14th October 2022The mill here is full of corn as you might expect and so it’s quite an attraction for the local wild rodents which upsets just about everyone concerned. Consequently there’s a fleet of mill cats here, as you would also expect.

They are extremely wild, ferocious cats whose job is to tear to shreds any unsuspecting rodent that falls into their clutches. You can see just how wild and ferocious they are by looking at this photograph.

Honestly, if you were a wild mouse bent on stealing some corn from a corn mill, wouldn’t you be frightened to death on encountering such a savage beast as this?

eggless molasses cake new brunswick Canada Eric Hall photo 14th October 2022On the way home we called at the house of an old woman in the neighbourhood who is a friend of Rachel, and had an interesting chat. And she gave me a recipe for egg-free molasses cake.

When I returned home later I tried it out and it was quite delicious. But I wish that Canadians and Americans would use weights for their ingredients rather than volume. And what is a “cupful” anyway? How dos anyone know how big your cup is?

It all goes back, I suppose, to Pioneer days when no-one could afford scales or just didn’t possess them, and a cup was a standard size sold by the Sears, Roebuck or Hudsons Bay Company traveller

Surprisingly I had a lot in common with this lady and we talked about churning butter, water-powered fridges and the like.

We were there for hours so I’m running quite late yet again. A “left-over supper” of my Chinese vegetables, potatoes and burger followed by rice pudding was quick and easy, and now having written my notes, I’m off to bed.

Eventually I managed to transcribe all of the dictaphone notes. We’d been talking about the shop round the corner at the top of the street in Wardle. Someone was saying that they weren’t very friendly and didn’t seem to want to help anyone out and wouldn’t do deliveries. That really surprised me because if I were living in a small village like that and a shop I’d have one of these Vespa-type scooter freight delivery vans. I’d be happy to drop off anyone’s shopping anywhere for an extra £1:00 or so a time. I’m pretty sure that that’s the way to go and it would be a success but these people at Wardle didn’t seem to be interested at all.

And then I was going skiing. I was ready to go but I suddenly found myself without my skis, boots, and bag in which to put them so I had to go back to the apartment where I’d changed and I couldn’t find them there. Then I thought that I’d been in my brother’s apartments so I thought that I’d go there. I had to persuade him because he didn’t want to let me go back in again. Eventually I did and I had a really good hunt around. I couldn’t find what I needed. In the end I had to go. There were several buses going past his apartment which was something like one every hour carried on to where I wanted to be. While I was waiting for it I was doing some work sitting at a desk but I hadn’t quite finished it when the bus came so I missed it. I decided that I’d set out and walk. It was pretty dark. Nevertheless as I was walking down the track from one bus stop to the next I came across a couple of small families with young girls who were out for a walk. One of the young girls didn’t want to go at all and started to make a scene. There was a church so I popped in. They were celebrating the death of someone with the same name as me. I sat down for a couple of minutes to listen to it. Then I wanted to get back up again and carry on but I had to disturb the people sitting in my row and possibly the row in front and behind in order that they could make space to leave but I didn’t feel like embarrassing everyone to make them do this in the middle of e ceremony.

At another moment I was dictating to my hand again. I was playing in defence for a football team last night. There was the local Sunday league team training and was a player short so I helped out at left-back for them. I was totally exhausted in the warm-up. We were kicking the ball around. One guy who looked very much like Cedric Pény was always kicking it out of play and I had to leap over the barbed wire fence to get it. I did that once and then after that let someone else do it. On one occasion it had been tormented by a wasp or something like that so I went over to see. Someone asked what it was. I said that it was a bestiole but they didn’t know what that was. There was a rabbit so I threw the ball at it to move it but the rabbit grabbed hold of it and tried to run off. In the end Cedric Pény picked it up like you would a cat and threw it out of the door. It was all completely surreal. I remember the times that I’d been playing in goal for this team during the dream and of course I’ve never played in goal for anyone for 40 years. This was what surprised me the most was reminiscing about turning out for this team a couple of times in goal because it seemed to be so real and so vivid as well.

This is another one of which I only remember bits. Of the bits that I remember, we were going to a dance but we couldn’t get the usual car going so we got this old Rolls-Royce to go. We encountered a girl who said something about the Rolls-Royce so I said “well we don’t usually bring it out in the rain but we thought that we’d give it a bit of a run-out today”. I didn’t like to mention that the Rolls wasn’t taxed or insured or MoT’d or anything and shouldn’t have been on the road anyway but it was the only car that we had when the first one wouldn’t start. There was lots more to it than this but I can’t remember.

With a bit of luck we’ll weigh these packets tomorrow and then I can press on with my plans. And hope that I can find a way of posting them without having to rely on a commercial courier.

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Wednesday 12th October 2022 – JUST FOR A CHANGE …

… I had one of the best sleeps that I have had for a long, long time. So much so that there was absolutely nothing at all on the dictaphone. I must have been really deep in the arms of Morpheus.

In fact, I was in bed quite early too. I fell asleep while I was listening to the radio but I must have awoken at some point to switch it off because the laptop was off when the alarm went off.

There was no time to hang around this morning. For a start, I had to clear off a huge pile of ice from Strider’s windscreen. We’re in the grip of autumn here with sub-zero temperature through the night and cloud-free crystalline skies.

But when I could see where I was going, I set off for Woodstock.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that the Saint John River isn’t far from here. It runs in a deep valley and early in the morning at this time of year there’s a hanging cloud in the valley, slowly rising up.

Up here we’re well above the cloud but Woodstock is deep in the valley and I couldn’t even see my hand in front of my face. At one point I drove through a red traffic light that I couldn’t see was there

Having fuelled up, I went to pick up my passenger and we set off for the hospital at Fredericton, about 110 kilometres away.

Following the river valley on the Trans-Canada Highway, we were sometimes in a fogbank, sometimes above it. But by the time that we arrived in Fredericton the fog had cleared away.

My passenger alighted at the hospital and I went to Tim Horton’s for a coffee and bagel – my first visit to a “Timmy’s” for three years – and where the guy at the counter got my order completely wrong.

Next stop was at Bulk Barn. People from Crewe will remember the “Weigh and Save”, where produce was displayed in barrels and you bagged and weighed as much as you wanted of it. It was an excellent shop but Bulk Barn will knock it for 6.

And I had some really good luck there. They had the artificial rum and brandy essence that you can’t buy in France so I bought a few bottles. Now I can make my Christmas cake and Christmas pudding with the proper ingredients

Value Village was next. They don’t have charity shops in Canada as they do in the UK. They all club together and have just one outlet in a town and the price labels are colour-coded so that you know which organisation is which. I bought a couple of books and a couple of CDs to add to the collection and I would have bought more but like most charity shops these days, their prices are somewhat exaggerated.

My passenger wasn’t ready yet so I loitered around in a Sobey’s until she texted that she was ready so I went to pick her up.

We stopped half-way home for coffee and toast and then went back to Woodstock the pretty way where I dropped her at home and she gave me some vegetables for Rachel.

My next port of call was the Scotia Bank at Florenceville to make “certain arrangements” and then went on to the mill.

Just before I left Canada in 2019 I ordered a chip for Strider to curb his enthusiasm and improve the fuel consumption. Darren had fitted it when it finally arrived and I have to say that the fuel consumption has improved slightly and the racing spirit had evaporated somewhat, which is good news for me. Strider has an old-type 6-cylinger long-stroke engine and it’s not made for high revs in low gear. It’s much more comfortable using his torque to pull him along.

After much discussion we all decided on a take-away from the Chinese restaurant in Florenceville so I drove down there to pick it up. I’m not a big fan of Chinese, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, and this was nothing special. But I’m going to have to like it because there’s enough for several days.

So now I’m off to bed. There’s nothing to do tomorrow so I’m going to have to find a shipper for this sunroof and book myself a hotel back in Montreal for when I’m on my way home. It’s only a short stay this time, nothing like the usual three months, so I need to organise myself so much better and so much quicker.

As if I could do something like that.

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Tuesday 11th October 2022 – THE CAT SAT …

… on the mat, as the old saying goes.

But this morning, she didn’t. As I found out when I went to sit on the chair to take part in my Welsh lesson.

Of course, at 05:55 it’s quite dark and you can’t see all that much. And as I’m half asleep anyway and my eyes aren’t focusing properly after another miserable night, seeing a black cat on a dark blue chair is not easy.

However, she soon let me know that she was there. Poor Cujo, the Killer Cat.

The Welsh lesson itself was quite awful. I wasn’t in the mood, I was tired, I was having to juggle computer screens around and at one point my microphone stopped working. I was really glad when the lesson ground to a halt.

cujo the killer cat centreville new brunswick Canada Eric Hall photo 11th October 2022Cujo the Killer Cat had forgiven me for my faux pas earlier because during the first part of the lesson she was on my knee.

She cleared off at some point but as soon as the lesson ended she came back again. For an hour or so while I was dozing after the lesson I didn’t mind but when I wanted to work she just sat on the laptop on my knees and that was that.

No chance whatever of actually doing any work this morning so I relaxed instead.

Later on, I went for a shower and a clothes-washing session, and having rounded up all of the felines, I hung up my clothes in the wind. Then Strider, STRAWBERRY MOOSE and I headed for Woodstock.

And by the time we got … errr … etc. etc.

This sunroof is enormous. It only just fits into the back of Strider. It’s heavy too and sending it back to Europe is going to be astronomical. Buying it hit the limit on my bank card so that’s grounded out right now and I had to use my European card for the balance.

It was a good job that I had some cash on me for my purchases at Sobey’s afterwards.

From there I drove to Florenceville to go to the bank to sort out my card, but I wonder is any of the regular readers of this rubbish would recall which day of the week is the one when the Scotia Bank closes early?

Round to the mill in Centreville to see what was happening there but, falling asleep, I ended up going back home for a coffee and a doze.

There was time before tea to transcribe the dictaphone notes from last night. I had joined some kind of internet chat room but the nickname that I had chosen, I didn’t really want to advertise so I only published it as a form of coded URL so that only a certain few people would be able to know the URL and know that it was me but that’s really all that I remember of this at the moment

I should mention somewhere that Hannah and Jake were involved in this but I can’t remember how or why.

But I remember a bit more about that dream now. We were having a party somewhere in North America. I’d had a friend on the internet, a girl whom I knew. They wee talking about travelling so I said that if ever they were to find themselves in the UK they can come to Crewe and I’d be quite happy to put them up, cook a meal, that sort of thing. She said that that wouldn’t be possible because she and her partner were lesbians. The authorities would look very dimly on the idea of a pair of lesbians travelling with a very young girl and sharing accommodation with her, that kind of thing. They needed to be very careful about it which I thought was ridiculous.

Tea was a burger with baked potatoes and the left-over beans from yesterday’s brunch. I had a long chat with Darren and when Rachel came home we had a good chat too.

But right now I’m off to bed. It’s early but I’m exhausted and I have a long day tomorrow. I need to be on form, and I also need to avoid sitting on any cats. If they want to sit on me, that’s fine. But not the other way round.

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Tuesday 8th September 2020 – THIS EVENING …

… I have seen something that has caused me a great deal of disquiet.

There was an ambulance and police car in the rue Cambernon here and about half a dozen people, ambulancemen and police, were struggling with a hysterical adolescent girl to put her into the ambulance.

There was no clue as to what had caused the incident, but her hysteria was way beyond the norm and quite suggestive of some kind of stupefiant-ignited issue although of course from the distance at which I was observing the affair and the fact that it was in the dark, there was nothing other than the audible indication to promote this idea.

But whatever it was, my hat goes off to the police and ambulancemen. It was a very stressful event, quite a battle to put her inside and strap her in, and they showed far more patience and discipline than I ever would have done.

It goes without saying that it’s not the kind of incident that one photographs, but it’s still bad news when the affairs of the banlieux of Paris come to, quite literally, our own doorstep.

As for me, much to my and everyone else’s surprise, I was out of bed before the third alarm went off. At least – I was sitting on the edge of the bed trying to summon up the courage to take some kind of drastic action, like moving.

Once I’d gathered my wits, I had a listen to the dictaphone.

I was on a galleon last night, one of these Spanish galleon things with crowds of people on it, a big tourist attraction. I was there with a certaib lady of my acquaintance. Something happened, me being careless I think, and she ended up with a sea-full of face – or, more likely, a face full of sea. I said that I was sorry but she started to whine on and on and on in this silly voice that she had, mimicking what I was saying so on that point I’d had enough so I just turned round and walked away. She changed her tune afterwards, apologised and asked me to come back but I’d really had enough so I just walked off. There was someone climbing up a ladder into the rigging of this ship. He was carrying a tray with about 10 different drinks on it. I thought that that was adventurous. I wouldn’t even do that with two. I was wandering around this ship, trying to find my way around and try my best to totally ignore her while she was still having one of these tantrum display things. There were some people sitting down – I was wondering whether to go to sit with them but I thought “no. I really want to be somewhere quite a way from this end of the ship somewhere on my own”.
Somewhat later we were having a look at some photos last night about all of the abandoned properties around Crewe and Nantwich, places like the old Co-op brewery and so on, a lot of them with photos of abandoned cars on them. There were several in Nantwich, three of them being churches close together in Hospital Street and their congregations transferred to the main parish church there. These churches, one of which was called St Werburgh’s, were all very eerie but very magnificent, Victorian Gothic-type but in terrible states of disrepair and decay. Even though I don’t remember them as a kid (because they weren’t there) we were having a good prowl around these places last night in this dream. It was really quite interesting. On one occasion we ended up being at a church service. They came along and asked for a collection. The girl I was with said she didn’t have anything and I just had a few copper coins that I gave them. later, we were on a railway station watching the trains come in. We moved away but a train had pulled in so I prepared my camera to take a photo. As it pulled out another one, a magnificent really big powerful locomotive pulled out of this station hauling an express train so I went to take a photo of them with the NIKON 1 J5 as it pulled out of the station but it wouldn’t work at first. I had to press the shutter a couple of times for it to work. While I was doing this there was some woman standing nearby. She was excited because she could see the main railway station from here. I thought that she meant the one at Manchester which was quite some way away and you can’t see with the naked eye, but bathed in fog anyway. But she said “no, it’s Denton station! Look over there! So I looked over there but I couldn’t see it at all with my naked eye.

Having dealt with all of that, I finally got round to having a look at Sunday’s effort. And after a good deal of listening, of thought and of transcription I managed to sort something out and you can READ IT HERE.

Surprisingly, even though I had the strongest impression that Pollux was one of the people with me, there was no mention whatever of her name at all, so I’ve no idea where this impression comes from. Mind you, there are several minutes missing here and there, either because

  1. I didn’t dictate it (there seems to be a hole in the middle of the story somehow).
  2. I didn’t transcribe it because I couldn’t decipher it (there was some of that too)
  3. I didn’t type it out because there was a significant part of the voyage that would put you off your tea. And there seems to have been quite a bit of that just recently. I’ve been having some really disturbed – and disturbing – nights just recently.

As I was finishing everything, which had taken me long enough, someone with whom I wanted a chat appeared on the internet. We ended up having a lengthy chat and that was, basically, the morning finished.

After lunch I set about the radio programme. All of the tracks have been paired and combined and the text is written. Not dictated though because I ran out of time.

There had been a few interruptions during the afternoon.

speedboat english channel granville manche normandy france eric hallFirst of all, there was the afternoon walk in the beautiful pleasant if not slightly windy afternoon.

There wasn’t all that much activity out there at sea this afternoon. Whatever that big ship was yesterday, that’s cleared off and there was only a speeedboat roaring past out at sea.

They are clearly going far too fast for fishing and I can’t think of any other good reason why they would be out there this afternoon. It’s not as if there’s anywhere to go in that direction.

tractors beach breville sur mer granville manche normandy france eric hallIn theory I suppose that they might be heading towards shore because there is something exciting going on over there on the beach by the looks of things.

We saw the other day that the bouchot harvesters were out there on the mussels beds at Donville-les-Bains. Over there on the beach bear Breville-sur-Mer they seem to be gathering again.

They are quite possibly waiting for the tide to go out so that they can access the mussels beds over there too. I doubt that the cabin cruiser there has any involvement in the activity.

fishing pointe du roc granville manche normandy france eric hallThey are probably local fishermen, because there have been quite a few of those out there over the last week or 10 days. There are plenty of mooring buoys and pot markers out there right now.

And plenty of other fishermen too. While I was walking along the path on the north side of the promontory a boat came around the headland. They are clearly intent on fishing as they have rods and fishing nets clearly on display.

It beats me why, because I have yet to see anyone out there ever catch anything.

painting trawler chantier navale port de granville harbour manche normandy france eric hallMy route arounf the headland took me past the viewpoint overlooking the chantier navale.

And there was plenty of activity in there once again. The usual seven boats of course – nothing has changed that much. But the fishing boat from which they had been stripping the paint the other day, that’s now in the process of being resprayed.

Give it a week or two and we may well find that boat back in the water. And one or two others because there was a considerable amount of work being carried on on the other boats too.

Back here, another interruption was to deal with the question of Strider’s insurance. That expires in a few days and needs to be paid, even though I won’t probably have the pleasure of going over to Canada to drive him this year.

So this involved several e-mails, a ‘phone call to Canada, a complicated series of transactions with the bank and then a discussion on the internet with Rachel.

That took much longer than I expected and meant that my third interruption, my session on the guitar, was somewhat curtailed.

Tea was my burger on a bap with potatoes and vegetables, followed by a slice of my delicious apple pie and soya dessert.

yacht sunset english channel granville manche normandy france eric hallWhen I went out for my evening walk it wasn’t quite dark outside.

In the distance out in the English Channel there was a yacht looking as if it was heading towards port. Of course it was far too far out for me to be able to identify it.

There were also plenty of other lights out to sea on the horizon. It wasn’t possible to say anything whatever about those.

Instead, I carried on and ran all the way along the footpath underneath the medieval walls. And, having recvered my breath again I ran across the Square Maurice Marland

trawler docking in port de granville harbour manche normandy france eric hallDuring my walk across the Place Cambernon I observed the incident that I related earlier and by the time that I moved on, it was now quite dark.

We’ve seen a couple of fishing boats here and there just recently – not as many as we saw three or four months ago. However there was one coming into port and performing a U-turn to tie up alongside the fish processing plant, presumably to unload its catch.

From there I walked down to the road and then ran all the way home to write up my notes.

And having done that, I’m now ready for bed. A nice early night, finish off the radio programme (which might take all day) and then do some tidying up

There is still plenty of work to be done and I’m not really catching up with very much at all. That needs to be changed, and rapidly too.

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Tuesday 10th September 2019 – IT MIGHT BE …

… only 20:00 right now, but what I don’t understand is that I’m absolutely whacked and I’m going to bed in a moment.

In fact I’ve been fighting off the Sandman (and not always successfully either) since about 15:00.

It’s not as if I have done anything exerting either. I had a reasonable (for me, anyway) night’s sleep with an awakening round about 03:00 as seems to be usual.

Not sure where I was during the night (I’ll find out when I listen to the dictaphone) but Nerina was in there somewhere, presumably come to keep an eye on me. She used to have that rather bizarre knack of turning up just when she was needed or when it was most useful, and I was convinced that she was much more in touch with her spirit side than she ever let on.

Ghost hunting (in the days when I lived with a ghost), water divining, she was quite good at all of that and much much more. In fact it wasn’t until I started to meet other women after we moved off down our separate roads that I realised how lucky I had been for nearly 9 years. I just wish that we had learnt to talk to each other.

But back on the subject of dreams and changing planes, I remembered that on several occasions on board I had dreamt that I had dictated my dream into the dictaphone, only to find that I had dreamt it and not done it.

So that’s at least a climb up onto the third plane, so I am moving about quite dramatically.

This morning, I didn’t have to do the school run. Instead Darren came to fetch me and we went back down to Woodstock to pick up the springs that we took down yesterday. With a hydraulic press the size that they have, it didn’t take them long at all to push put the seized bolts and bushes. And so successful were they that two of the bolts were reuseable – although we aren’t that desperate.

Back at the house I made my lunch and then went on down to the depot. We were really busy today and most people were pleased to see me.

Zoe took the afternoon off so I quickly went into Florenceville. The insurance on Strider is due for renewal and needs paying, and because I’m a non-resident with a foreign driving licence they punish me severely. Nevertheless, it’s still cheaper than hiring a vehicle and there’s no-one complaining about where I go and what to do. And a 4×4 high ground clearance vehicle is important in many places in which I travel.

Thanks to Scotia Bank for helping me with the e-transfer

At the depot this afternoon I was doing a bit of everything. But I did recall a sign that I once saw in a garage in the USA –
OUR HOURLY RATE IS CALCULATED AS FOLLOWS –
Talking to the customer – 5 mins
Looking at the job – 5 mins
Fixing the job – 5 mins
Testing the job – 5 mins
Looking for the tools that we had in our hand 5 minutes ago – 40 mins.

That was me this afternoon. Changing a fuse in a radio connection is a 30-second job, but not when you then spend 25 minutes looking for the top of the fuse holder that you just had in your hand.

The accounts balanced at the first attempt so Rachel and I were leaving at 17:20, and collided straight away with someone who wanted to know if we had any scrap tyres.
“Just one or two” we said, waving our arms about in the general direction of the large scrap pile.
He’s coming back tomorrow to take some away.

This evening I was alone for ages so I had some of the left-over chick pea curry with rice. Everyone came back all at once so I retired to my room in peace and quiet, and here I’m going to stay.

I need an early night today too. Apart from the fact that I’m whacked, Darren is on his own in the garage tomorrow so I’m expecting to be rather busy fetching and carrying, and lifting heavy objects.

Still, it could be worse. I could be on holiday.

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Monday 5th August 2019 – I’M BACK …

… in Sheridan again tonight.

Not at the same motel as last time though. At probably the cheapest in the town and certainly the cheapest in which I’ve stayed.

“So what’s it like?” I hear you ask.
“The cheapest motel in which I’ve stayed so far” reply I

But seriously, it might be old and dated and worn but it’s clean and everything works. The shower is good too, and what more can any man desire?

The air conditioning is much quieter than last night’s motel (although that’s not saying a lot). Last night it was a case of “turn off the aircon and lie awake sweltering” or “turn on the aircon and lie awake because of the noise”.

But I did manage to drop off a few times.

Much to my surprise I dropped straight back into exactly the same place where I had left a nocturnal voyage the previous evening. And even more interestingly, after I went back to sleep after an awakening, I stepped right back into where I had left it a couple of minutes earlier.

And I did get the girl too. Not ‘arf I did!

It was a struggle to awaken as you might expect and I vegetated for quite a while. I made it into breakfast (a couple of rounds of toast with jam but included in the price) then came back for a shower.

By now it was time to phone the bank and I’ve no idea how much it’s going to cost me but my card is now unblocked and I can use it.

Heading into town I went to look at the “exhibition” locomotive where the railway station used to be. It’s a 4-8-4 “Northern” steam locomotive and, rather like “Big Boy”, who we met in Southern Wyoming in 2002 it’s in pretty miserable condition, slowly rotting away – a stain on the character of the town.

And it might not be there long because they have now “discovered” that it’s full of asbestos.

From there I went shopping in Walmart (my card does now work) where I found some vegan cheese and broke the weighing scales at the check-out.

From there I headed north, stopping every 10 minutes or so to photograph a locomotive. I’m in the deep open-cast coal mining area and they run merry-go-round trains to move the coal. Most of the locomotives are Burlington Northern and Santa Fe outfits although I was taken by surprise when a Kansas City Southern locomotive went rattling past, miles out of its territory.

Eventually I reached the Little Big Horn battlefield where the miserable bar stewards refused to give me the senior citizens’ discount. “That only applies to US citizens” – the first that I’ve ever heard of that in a National Park. I had to pay the full $25:00.

But I was there for hours. I had a good walk down to the deep ravine where the final deaths took place as the native Americans mopped up the surviving troopers, a good walk around Last Stand Hill, the cemetery and the Native American monument, and another good walk around Benteen’s final hold-out position where the survivors hung on (and there were survivors, despite what people think. It was only the troops with Custer, about half of the 7th Cavalry complement) who were lost.

The drive between the various points was interesting, and the trail of bodies along the route and down in the Deep Ravine only goes to confirm that apart from a couple of isolated actions, it was basically a panic-stricken rout. Why else would 41 troopers be running down the hill TOWARDS the native village if they weren’t running away from the fighting up on the ridge?

That took all afternoon so I set out to find a motel. None in Busby, which really is a miserable one-horse town so I headed for the mining town of Decker.

Nothing there either so calling at the site of the “battle” of the Rosebud (which I’ll be visiting tomorrow) to say “hello’, I came back here.

In my room I noticed a “do not place anything on the heater”. I don’t recall having been here before, have I?

But the room is cheap, old and worn out. But then again so am I so what’s the difference? It’ll do me until tomorrow and then I can think again.

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Monday 6th May 2019 – AND IN OTHER …

… news, I have made great advances today.

The number of files left to deal with on the backlog of dictaphone notes is down to a mere 94. And every one of those relates to my voyage around Canada in autumn 2015 and thus are very likely to have already been copied onto text.

Even more surprisingly, I’ve actually managed to trace the notes, so tomorrow’s plan is to listen to the dictaphone notes while I’m reading the text and make sure that it’s all there.

And then that will be at least one of my long-term plans all done and dusted and out of the way.

Now the one problem with having a really early night (like 21:45, for example), a really good sleep with just one or two slight interruptions, ignoring the alarms and sleeping through until 06:45, the fact is that when I finally did crawl out of my stinking pit, I felt … errr … even worse.

Plenty of time to go on a travel too during the night. I was in some town or other not too far from where I live, and came across an Auchan supermarket. I thought that I’d go in there to see if they had any of their weigh’n’save stuff. So off I trotted and it suddenly became an internal market hall. I wandered around it but then everyone was being ushered to one side. I asked a girl what was going on, she replied that the President of the Republic was coming. I asked why, and she said that he was going to have treatment at the local hospital and this was where they were dropping him off. So why didn’t they drop him off at the hospital? She replied that he wanted to be seen as very populaire dropped off amongst the people and he could walk up there. He and his entourage would walk up there, about half an hour or so to get there. That might be OK for him but what about everyone else? I could see in the distance a big Mercedes van about to pull up and I imagined that that was him in there.

There was plenty of other stuff going on too during the night, but as you are probably eating your evening meal right now, I’ll spare you the gory details.

So with a late start, it was a late breakfast and so on, and then I cracked on with the dictaphone notes. And that’s how I’ve spent most of the day.

trawler ile de chausey granville manche normandy franceWe had several interruptions though. lunch, of course, and my afternoon walk.

There were plenty of trawlers out there again off the coast. This one was out there in the channel between the Ile de Chausey and the Pointe du Roc.

There were a few other ones further out too, closer to the Ile de Chausey.

working on monument de la resistance pointe du roc granville manche normandy franceRegular readers of this rubbish will recall that a few days ago we witnessed a few people marking out the grass and telling me that they plan to erect a memorial here.

Sure enough, today they have brought in the diggers and earth-moving equipment and they have made a start on digging up the grass.

They’ve already laid some gravel on what they have dug out, and there’s a compactor there busily firming it up.

working on monument de la resistance pointe du roc granville manche normandy franceBut this is something that I really don’t understand.

Regular readers of this rubbish willrecall a while back that they had dug up part of the grass and eventually, after much delay, they installed a noticeboard and a path leading thereto.

But only a few months after spending all of that time and money doing all of that, they have gone along and dug it all up again for this work.

It’s not what I would call “joined-up thinking”.

lifeboat memorial harbour light baie de mont st michel granville manche normandy franceIt was a beautiful afternoon for photography and the view from the lifeboat memorial was particularly impressive.

The tide is quite far out this afternoon and the harbour marker light is clearly visible on its rock. We can see the red bands around it that give some kind of indication of the condition of the tides.

I’m wondering whether there is some kind of correlation between the markings and the opening of the harbour gates. I shall have to check this.

trawler brittany coast granville manche normandy franceRemember yesterday when I saw something out there on the horizon over on the Brittany coast?

With it being such a beautiful afternoon I took the photo again to see whether there was any difference between the two, which might indicate whether there was a moving object on there.

The view was particularly clear and we can see the Brittany coast all the way down past St Malo. There’s the island of cézembre at the mouth of the harbour at St Malo and the tower is, I reckon, a lighthouse on one of the outlying islands.

But we can also see in the background the Brittany coast all the way along to Cap Fréhal (about 60 kms away) and maybe even beyond as far as Paimpol.

chantier navale port de granville harbour manche normandy franceWe went along on the cliffs above the chantier navale to se what was going on down there today;

one of the trawlers has gone back into the water and in its place is a large sailing yacht. It looks vaguely familiar to me but I can’t recall its name right now.

It’ll give me something to do on Wednesday to go down there and have a look at it to see who she is.

Another interruption was a visit from the courier too. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that my Canadian bank card ran out last month and I need the new one before I can get to my branch, so I called them up the other day.

And I certainly didn’t expect it to be delivered so quickly, and by courier too. So hats off to the Scotia Bank.

And remember the bank card that I left behind in the cash machine in Leuven? The replacement turned up today too from the BNP Paribas.

Tea was baked potatoes and potato curry from November, followed by a slice of my apple pie and the last of the soya cream. The base of the pie is slightly under-cooked, which means that either the temperature was too high or else the pie was too high in the oven.

I was planning to go on my evening walk afterwards, but a football match came on the internet. The final of the Welsh FA Youth Cup between Aberystwyth Town under-19s and Cefn Druids under-19s.

This was a really exciting match, won 2-1 quite rightly by Aberystwyth, but what was even more interesting was that there were half a dozen players out there who could walk into almost any Welsh Premier League side and not be out of place.

Both keepers were excellent as were both left-backs. But star of the show has to be Aberystwyth’s centre-half Lee Jenkins. He’s only 17 but captains the Wales under-18s and has been a regular in the Aberystwyth Town first team for over a year.

He’s a player who is destined for bigger things, I’m sure.

So now, rather later than planned, I’m off to bed.

But I’ve had a good day so I don’t really mind.

trawler english channel jersey granville manche normandy france
trawler english channel jersey granville manche normandy france

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Wednesday 1st May 2019 – BANE OF BRITAIN …

… strikes again!

There i was, up before the final alarm clock, breakfasted and tidied up, and even on the point of starting work, and wondering why I hadn’t heard the kids going past on their way to school.

And then suddenly it struck me. It’s the 1st of May today, and in France that’s the Fête du Travail and in France they celebrate the Festival of Work by … errr … taking a day off work.

It’s a Bank Holiday today and usually I celebrate Bank Holiday by switching off the alarms and having a lie-in. And that’s when I remember of course.

Despite the early start there was plenty of time to go on a nocturnal ramble. Last night there was something going on in the place where I was living where we had been overrun by the enemy or a new political party or something but there were people wearing blue tee-shirts and pink shorts like footballers who seemed to be in charge and the general view was not to resist them. But you can imagine me – I was having none of this at all. This was unfortunately all that I could remember – there was much more of this. There was something about a concert (I couldn’t transcribe this as I didn’t understand it) and I was riding a horse in this and despite all of the difficult arrangements of the course and the way that it had been set out and how it had been set out to please the invaders I managed to get round there with no faults which impressed almost everyone who was watching me.

There was more too but I shall spare you the detains seeing as you are probably eating your tea or something.

After I’d organised myself for the day and started work, I had a telephone call from Rosemary. And so we were chatting away for quite some considerable time.

Once I’d gone back to work, I started on the dictaphone notes. That took me up to lunchtime and another load has disappeared into the “filing” drawer. Only another 211 to go, so I need to get a wiggle on.

Lunch was inside again, and then I had a couple of duties to perform this afternoon.

Fighting off the fatigue I got in touch with Acer. Being as impressed with the Solid-State Drive in this computer and having an old laptop with a failed hard drive in an accessible position, I enquired as to whether a Solid State Drive would work in it. I explained that it was working on Windows 8.1 but he was talking at great length about Windows 7.0 and how my laptop wouldn’t be compatible with a Solid-State Drive.

I suppose that I’ll have to buy one and try it and see.

hang glider pointe du roc granville manche normandy franceThis was the cue to go for an early walk.

And with it being a Bank Holiday I wasn’t alone out there. Not only were there hordes of people taking the air this afternoon, we were being entertained by a group of hang-gliders likewise taking the air.

I’m absolutely certain that I wouldn’t like to be up (or down) there doing that.

map atlantic wall pointe du roc granville manche normandy franceThe main reason for me being out and about early was that I had an appointment this afternoon.

As regular readers of this rubbish will recall, a few weeks ago I caught them opening up one of the bunkers of the Atlantic Wall.

I met the guy yesterday and he told me that they were preparing an exhibition for D-Day and he wondered whether I might like to speak to any English-speaking visitors who might be present.

interior bunker pointe du roc granville manche normandy franceThe boss was due to be there at 15:00 so I turned up at about 15:15, only to find that he wasn’t coming at all.

I had a conducted tour of another bunker as recompense. This was one of the ones that overlooked the approach to the harbour and was fitted with a 105mm gun of the type that would be carried on a submarine.

They are hoping to be able to obtain one to mount in here as a display once the bunker is opened to the public

Back here, I rang up my bank in Canada. My bank card has expired and I won’t be back at the Branch where it’s held until September. However, I’m planning on being in Canada much earlier than that so I need access to my account.

After a lengthy discussion they agreed to post it to me here instead.

That left me just enough time to deal with the outstanding photos for the recent blog entries – and they are now up-to-date as far back as my trip to the High Arctic.

I’ll need to press on with that.

Tea was exciting though. all kinds of bits and pieces left over, like a couple of mushrooms, a bit of a pepper, an old potato and so on, so I cooked it all up into a curry with some bulghour and had it with rice and veg, followed by the last of the rice pudding.

thora port de granville harbour manche normandy franceOn my walk this evening there wasn’t much going on, except the fact that Thora has appeared in harbour again.

What drew my attention to her was the fact that she had a shipping container on her deck. I’ve no idea what there might be in but it must be something important.

And with the rather rapid turn-round that they seem to be doing in the harbour these days I wonder if she will still be there in the morning.

So with shopping tomorrow, I’m going to have an early night. There’s plenty to do and not much time to do it.

hang glider pointe du roc granville manche normandy france
hang glider pointe du roc granville manche normandy france

hang glider pointe du roc granville manche normandy france
hang glider pointe du roc granville manche normandy france

fishing boats baie de mont st michel granville manche normandy france
fishing boats baie de mont st michel granville manche normandy france

hang glider pointe du roc granville manche normandy france
hang glider pointe du roc granville manche normandy france

hang glider pointe du roc granville manche normandy france
hang glider pointe du roc granville manche normandy france

bomb damage pointe du roc granville manche normandy france
bomb damage pointe du roc granville manche normandy france

fishing boats baie du mont st michel granville manche normandy france
fishing boats baie du mont st michel granville manche normandy franc

beach plat gousset granville manche normandy france
beach plat gousset granville manche normandy france

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