… no tea last night, a very very tired (despite having slept for much of the way home) me crawled off to bed at about 22:30 and promptly passed stark out.
The alarms went off at 06:20 and 06:30 as normal, and I do remember leaning out of bed to switch them off but it was more like 07:20 when I finally crawled out of the stinking pit. Aching all over too. Obviously not feeling myself this morning (which is just as well for it’s a disgusting habit anyway).
Despite all of that though, I’d been on my travels during the night. To some local council somewhere where there was an enormous waiting list for the more “upmarket” council houses – the brick-built 1920s semis with gardens – instead of the usual poor-quality council flats. And how there was uproar when it seemed that someone had been “parachuted in” from elsewhere. But council house exchanges were quite a well-known phenomenon back in the old days. People would want to move house and area for all kinds of reasons and would often advertise for someone willing to swap in the area to which they wanted to move. As long as either council saw no good and valid reason to refuse the exchange (which they very rarely did) then the exchange would go ahead regardless of waiting lists and priorities. It’s quite a normal, logical procedure when you consider the necessity of having a mobile labour force. But you try to explain that to people who have been on a waiting list for 20 years.
A little later, I was involved in some kind of defensive operation to fortify a residential area against an invasion. But it was a very desultory, half-hearted affair and I don’t remember too much about it now.
We had the usual morning performance and then I actually managed to unpack some stuff and put it in the fridge. Only the food that I had bought though. The rest can wait until tomorrow when I’m feeling more like it.
A little later I went on down into town. I needed a couple of things for lunch and for breakfast tomorrow. The Coccinelle supermarket has been taken over by Super U so I had a little look around and it’s not any different than it was.
And it’s come back!
Regular readers of this rubbish will recall a while ago that we had a visit from a rather elderly and somewhat disreputable Bedford CF box van that had been converted into a mobile home.
And here it is again, parked up just where it was the last time. And it’s not looking any better either, poor thing. But it does have to be said that it deserves a medal for still being here.
For lunch I went to sit on my wall but the weather had changed dramatically. Earlier when I was out it was windy but nice and sunny. By the time that I was sitting on my wall the wind had increased and the sun had gone.
And it wasn’t long before I had gone too – I wasn’t going to stay out too long in that.
But I did stay ut just long enough to catch the boat lift lowering a boat into the water from the ship repair yard.
It’s been one of my ambitions to catch the thing at work as you know, and today I was in luck. In fact, there were quite a few people enjoying the spectacle.
Later on in the afternoon the weather had deteriorated even more and round about 18:00 it was raining.
Welcome home, hey?
But in between lunch and my walk I crashed out rather dramatically and was well away. I’m always like this after my journey back. Out for about an hour or so. And it was only the telephone that awoke me. Some medium thinking that he could tell my future. But I know my future much better than he does, don’t I?
Tea was a burger and baked potato, with some rather over-cooked vegetables that I had left too long in the microwave. That’ll teach me.
And then with the rain having subsided, I went for another walk
And then with the rain having subsided, I went for another walk this evening.
But now we were having to contend with a rolling sea fog that made life difficult. Especially for me as, peering through the gloom I noticed some shapes that didn’t correspond with anything that I recognised.
This is where a good long-range telephoto lens comes in handy. I can snap the image, bring it home and crop it to size and then digitally enhance it.
That’s when I find out that it wasn’t a collection of ships at all but a couple of offshore islands that I hadn’t noticed before.
But the time that I spent sorting out the above image meant that I was just that little too late to catch the sun descending over the horizon.
In fact, I was amazed at the speed at which it did go down. Took me quite by surprise. I only just managed to catch the final segment.
Impressive nevertheless.
Another early night is called for. I have shopping to do tomorrow and I need quite a bit of stuff. I’ve been letting supplies run down again, haven’t I?
