… today.
Or, rather, one visitor. The person who is responsible for this radio shambles came to see me this afternoon about the e-mail that I had sent him on Monday evening.
And basically, I told him about my take on the events of this weekend and, for good measure, all of the things that I’ve been telling the regular readers of this rubbish ever since last November.
Anyway, he’s gone away to mull over the things that I mentioned.
The irony is that of everything that went wrong, it could all without exception have been prevented and would never have happened had they been willing to listen to advice right from the very start.
Simple things, like “we had no contact” because one particular mobile phone network doesn’t reach to where the control was. The idea of swapping phones over so that the person at the control had the phone that worked in there and those in the street had the others went totally over their heads.
All stupid little things like that which destroyed the broadcast.
Anyway, I promised that I wouldn’t mention anything, so I won’t. But it remains to be seen whether things change and whether he has the courage to confront the major issue.
But to my surprise, I’m not alone either. By pure coincidence the other two people who were implicated in this affair as “victims” (as opposed to “perpetrators” of the actions) had been in touch with him and told him pretty much the same thing that I told him too.
As for me, I had a late morning this morning. It was 07:00 when I finally crawled out of bed and had my medication. That’s already 45 minutes of my day lost before I begin.
After the medication I looked at the dictaphone but for once it had been a quiet night and I hadn’t gone anywhere. Ahh well!
Instead I spent much of the morning splitting up some digital sound files into their individual tracks. It was another one of those “all mixed up” days with tracks in any kind of order.
Furthermore, two of the albums weren’t from digital masters and were so deformed that no effects function that I had could restore them. In the end I had to search even further to track down a better copy of each.
Round about 11:00 I called it a day and headed off towards town and La Mie Caline for my dejeunette.
Once more, now that the wind had subsided from last night, I went the long way, all the way around the headland. And out in the distance I could see something moving on the water.
It was too far away for me to identify properly so I took a hopeful photo with the aim of blowing it up (the photo, not the object) when I returned home to see what it was.
And actually it’s nothing really exciting. Merely Joly France on one of her ferry trips out to the Ile de Chausey.
A little earlier, I mentioned that the high winds had subsided from how they were yesterday evening.
But even so, it must have been powerful out in the English Channel and the Atlantic Ocean because the seas were roaring in. The harbour gates are still open, which means that high tide is at least two hours away but even so the waves are crashing up to and in some cases right over the harbour walls.
The energy that there must be in those waves, just waiting to be harvested instead of using coal, gas, oil and nuclear.
The tide was out, as I mentioned, so the harbour gates were closed and I could take the path over the top to the other side.
As I crossed over the top of the gates, I could see that one of our regular visitors is back again. Normandy Trader is sitting at the quayside over there underneath the unloading crane.
She must have sneaked in on the early morning tide while I was asleep, I reckon. Whatever blockade there might have been of the Channel Islands ships, it’s clearly over.
Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that yesterday I mentioned the large grey post that had appeared at the quayside across by the rue du Port.
The big floating pontoon was back over on this side of the harbour so there was a very good view of what they had been fitting.
And so even though I’m better-informed, I’m still none-the-wiser. I shall have to make further enquiries. But at least you can see the new pontoons that they’ve been fixing.
There are things that I need to discuss with the skipper of Normandy Trader and also with the skipper of Thora, the other Jersey freighter.
And so I took myself off over there for a chat. I stopped on the way round though to look at all of the shelfish that they had been unloading. Normandy Trader works for, amongst other customers, the Jersey Fishermen’s Co-Operative and brings in the catch for the buyers here.
It’s one thing that the silly Brits have forgotten. There’s very little market for shellfish and the like in the Uk but that’s the predominant catch in inshore fisheries there.
However, there’s a huge market for it on the Mainland and that’s where most of it ends up. The British fishermen need the European market to sell their catch and the imposition of tariffs will kill the trade stone-dead.
We saw earlier this month how the Channel Islands were brought to their knees after just 4 days of boycott.
The skipper of Normandy Trader wasn’t about. In fact the whole ship had the air of the Marie Celeste about it.
Disappointed yet again, I pushed on … “pushed off, more like” – ed … to La Mie Caline where my path was interrupted by this rather large lorry trying to squeeze its way in between the fairground vehicles and the parked cars.
One thing that i’ve noticed is that the pontoon mounting brackets are now starting to be affixed on this side of the harbour wall too, and here are a couple more making their way onto the construction site.
While you admire a couple more photos of the storms at sea I bought my bread and headed slowly back up the hill to home.
Plenty of time before lunch so I dictated the notes for Project 027, uploaded them to the computer and began to edit them.
Not that I managed to go very far because I stopped for lunch – and then there was my visitor for the afternoon.
Basically, I vented my spleen – or, rather, I would have done had I still had my spleen – for a good 95 minutes (I timed it) but unfortunately it didn’t make me feel any better.
Not that I was expecting it to either. But I made my point and that was the important thing.
After he had left I carried on with the editing and managed to turn 10:24 minutes into just 7:10, which is always good.
But when I played it back, there was a horrible noise. Somehow I’d made an unconscious manoeuvre of some control or other and it had distorted the sound.
Had I known what I had done I might have been able to reverse it and restore the sound but in the end I had to redo it.
Somewhere in the middle of all of this I went for my afternoon walk.
Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that buoys pop up every now and again in the sea around here, and there was another one out there today. I still haven’t worked out what their purpose is though.
There were plenty of people around today so I wasn’t able to fit in very much in the way of a run. The way that I run these days is quite embarrassing and I’d rather not be observed.
The radio project is now complete and ready to go (in about 3 months time) but I didn’t have time to finish a “live concert”. Mind you, I’ve had plenty of tile to think about things and I known now what i’m going to do if none of the irons that I have in the fire come up trumps this time round.
No harm in preparing something and being well ahead.
Because tea was late, I had an aubergine and kidney-bean whatsit with pasta and vegetables followed by the last of the rice pudding. It won’t be long before I have to start cooking mega-curries again. The pile in the freezer is diminishing.
Outside tonight, it really was beautiful.
There was a really cold wind out there but the skies were clear and you could see for miles. This trawler here right out in the English Channel stood out really well and the photo hasn’t come out too badly considering the distance at which it was taken.
But at least, after the wicked storms that we have had just recently, they’ve been able to go back to work.
Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that the other day I took a photo of the lighthouse and the coastguard station her eon the Pointe Du Roc.
It subsequently occurred to me that I don’t remember taking one of the same view in the dark. So seeing as I was going that way this evening, I duly obliged.
As you can (or can’t) see, it’s nothing whatever to write home about. But I suppose that it’s something for posterity.
“The fishermen are back at work after the storms” I said earlier.
And as I rounded the headland I saw this bright light heading my way. The fishing boats aren’t merely just coming into harbour, there are others heading out to sea too at the same time.
This is another photo that could have been much worse that it actually is, but I’m clearly in need of much more practice at shooting in the dark if I want to do anything special.
There have been changes in the Chantier navale too just now.
Yesterday we managed to make it up to three fishing boats, but this evening we’re back down to two again. So it’s all go in the shipyard.
It wasn’t all go though on my little running route. Far too many people about, as well as two cats squaring up to each other.
And so I continued my walk to another one of my reserve courses and had a good run along there instead. Must keep going as much as I can.
So bed-time now once the good music stops. Shops tomorrow, do the text for this live broadcast and then spend the rest of the week attacking the arrears of work.
It’s all go here after having fallen considerably behind. I must pull myself together.
again just now but it won’t ever be the same again.
