Tag Archives: controle technique

Thursday 9th February 2023 – CALIBURN IS BACK AGAIN …

… and with a Controle Technique certificate too, which has cheered me up. And seeing as he now seems to start properly whenever I want him to start, it looks as if I’m back on the road again.

Mind you, climbing into the cab is a real issue If I’m at street level when I need to climb in, it’s extremely difficult. I need to find a kerb against which I can park so that I can climb in easier and at LeClerc the kerbs are quite high and it’s a struggle to climb up that high.

One thing that I do have to remember is to exit with my left leg first. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that when I tried to exit Caliburn the other day “right leg first”, the leg collapsed underneath me and decanted me onto the floor.

But there’s a strange phenomenon going on with my legs right now. For the last couple of weeks I noticed that when I awaken in the morning parts of my legs and feet are quite numb. I wonder if it’s because I’ve been lying on a trapped nerve.

And so it was this morning. And apart from that it was another night of going to bed early, falling asleep early and then waking up and tossing and turning for a while. I was actually awake before the alarm went off at 07:30 and had I exerted myself I could have left the bed. But that was too much to hope for.

But when I did leave the bed,, I had my medication and then checked my mails and messages before wandering off for a shower. And climbing into the bath for my shower was the easiest that it’s been since I came back. This physiotherapy seems to be working.

Although the Controle Technique was arranged for 11:45 I went out quite a bit earlier than that. With not going far these days I was worried about how Caliburn would get on with the pollution test so I took him for a good run – several laps around the dual-carriageway by-pass to get him nice and hot

Anyway, he sailed through with no issues.

Armed with a valid certificate I went to fuel up and then for a good shop at LeClerc. There wasn’t a great deal that I needed but nevertheless I still ran up quite a bill. I’d bought plenty of frozen veg and some more carrots so after I’d brought up most things from Caliburn and had some food and coffee I peeled, blanched and froze 1.5 kilos of carrots. That will keep me going for a while now.

After all of that I fell asleep and was awoken by the physiotherapist who came round earlier than usual. He had me walking around the apartment with just one crutch and wants me to practice that for the next few days until our session on Tuesday next week. It’s not as easy as it sounds.

It’s been a day of interaction too. Apart from having lengthy chats with customers at the garage, I met a neighbour as I arrived home and she kept me chatting at the door for a while. And then another neighbour had a good talk with me as well. If that wasn’t enough, the people with whom I’ve been trying to arrange this money transfer rang up to tell me that they now have everything that they need. And that’s good news.

There was some stuff on the dictaphone from the night and that needed transcribing. I was with 2 girls last night. They had some kind of cupboard and were hanging up something in front of it like a system of chains etc to make it look attractive. It was obviously a project that was doomed because they couldn’t make anything hang horizontally. The wire that they were using wasn’t strong enough. Instead of pulling on the metal tubes that were supporting it, the tubes were pulling the wire and going all out of shape. Nothing was in the vertical. They were having to do all kinds of tricks to try to make these wires go vertically but the more tricks they did on it the worse it became. I had a feeling that this was going to be a project that was doomed to fail from the start. Sooner or later they would realise it but I gave them a hand just the same.

There was also something of which I had a vague recollection was taking place in a Prisoner of War camp where there was some kind of committee that was set up to investigate infractions against the prisoners who broke the camp rules or to investigate possible escape attempts etc. This committee wasn’t very successful. There was a feeling going round that the Germans had infiltrated a couple of people into the camp to serve on the committee and sabotage the work of the prisoners while they were there but I can’t remember very much at all about this.

And then there was me, a young girl and a rather large woman trying to lift an enormous suitcase into the back of an estate car. The young girl was at the front trying to do the lifting and we were at the back trying to push. It was very difficult to make it fit so I suggested that seeing as it was the other lady’s possessions she shoudl go to the front because she would be much better able to lift it. She could decide how in, what articles could be squashed and what couldn’t. For some reason the girl was reluctant to relinquish her position at the front of this line even though she was having an extreme amount of difficulty actually doing anything there.

Tea tonight was a vegan burger with pasta and veg in tomato sauce. Nothing particularly exciting but I am allowed to have a boring meal here and there every now and again.

Having fallen asleep already this evening I finished off typing out my notes for the day and now I’m off to bed. I have to go into town tomorrow on the bus and pick up some medication and my fresh mushrooms and peppers. I didn’t want to buy them today because the later I leave it, the longer they will keep.

But despite what the physiotherapist says, I’m not going down there with just one crutch. I’ll keep on using both when I’m out and about until I’m confident about it all. It’s not going to be something that will happen overnight.

Friday 31st December 2021 – CALIBURN IS BACK …

… at long last. And I’m lying down in a darkened room with a damp towel over my head recovering from the shock of seeing the bill. It was not pleasant.

And having broken the whizzer yesterday, my tale of woe and misfortune continued this morning when my little dictaphone – my constant travelling and bedside companion for the last seven or so years, went tits-up, much to my great dismay.

And having gone to LeClerc for some lemon syrup to make my hot lemon drinks and having walked away from the shop with just about everything except the lemon syrup, it’s really not my day today.

At least there was some stuff on the dictaphone from sometime during the night, as I discovered some time this morning. I’d been in hospital having all these tests done to me. Finally they took me to some kind of operating theatre or something where there were all these grotesque people waiting for some kind of surgery or lying on a bed. I was just so uncomfortable there. I couldn’t look at anything, just focus on the wall, all this kind of thing, not look around anywhere. At one stage I felt my oxygen cable being tugged so I had to walk to follow it so they could disconnect me from the other peron who was attached to the end. Then they said something like “right, Mr Hall, you can go”. But I didn’t know what they were doing or trying on me, or anything. They hadn’t even started. There was a bowl of something or other and I was looking for some medication in it, some kind of bean, trying to sort my way through. The taxi driver who transported me turned up. He asked “how much did we charge you for the Isle of Man the other day?”. I replied “I don’t know. Didn’t they pay you?” “No” he replied. “All the trips for this week haven’t been paid yet. You really ought to get yourself organised”. I replied “how the bl** he** can I get organised when I’m in here having all these tests? I have no vehicle and I don’t know what the he** I’m doing or what they are doing to me?”. I was having a really good moan and complain about this because I was totally fed up

Later on we were in Italy running the taxis and I had to go to the bank on my way to work to take the money. There was a bike handy, a really expensive type of posh bike so I got on it and cycled off towards the bank. People were noticing it because of the type that it was. I suddenly realised that it didn’t have any brakes. I had to drag my foot along the floor to slow it down or stop it. I reached the bank and had to leave the bike outside. I thought “I hope that i’m not going to be long”. I went into the bank just as they opened and put the cheques on the counter. She pointed out that one cheque hadn’t been signed and the amount hadn’t been entered in the box so I went to do it. Then I noticed that it was an odd amount of money so I thought that I would have to make this up out of my own pocket and this is going to take a while. The bike was outside and I wondered how long would the bike stay outside while I’m in here doing this before someone runs off with it.

Leaving the bed at 07:30 – well, the least said the better about that. I’m having a bad time right now, yet again.

Nevertheless, I managed to make my bread this morning – another delicious loaf of bread that I forgot to photograph before I got stuck into it at lunchtime.

After lunch I telephoned the garage. The repairs were complete but now they can’t find the log-book which they need for the controle technique. He turned out his garage while I turned out the apartment and neither of us could find it. “Ring m back in half an hour” he said.

Half an hour later I rang him back. He had found it, right where it ought to be, in the glove compartment of Caliburn. “Come round in half an hour”.

On leaving the building, I went down to the end of the car park to have a look down onto the beach.

The tide is well in right now so there isn’t a lot of beach at the moment, but a dozen or so people have managed to find enough so that they can have a little fun before the beach is swamped.

And not like the other group of people yesterday. These are actually at the foot of the steps that lead up to the Rue du Nord so there isn’t all that much likelihood of them being cut off by the tide, which is just as well. A helicopter rescue isn’t cheap.

While I was looking down onto the beach my eye was roving around out at sea too, as it usually does.

Today there was actually some maritime activity out there in the bay. A little yacht was buzzing around out there, not doing very much, it has to be said, but there it was.

Having taken a photo I leapt into the little Opel van and set off. Half an hour later the little Opel van and I were back there at the garage and having to wait yet another half an hour before they attended to me, Caliburn and I could finally leave.

And wasn’t my pocket lighter?

At Leclerc I did some last-minute shopping, including another cheap whizzer set. They didn’t have any decent ones and the delivery time on Amazon was unbelievable. No next-day delivery with the Christmas and New Year rush on. And as I said, I forgot my lemon syrup.

But they had some breaded quornburgers in the “end of range” stuff and they are now in my freezer. I do like those, with baked potatoes and steamed veg tossed in vegan butter.

Throughout the day when I’ve not been doing anything else I’ve been editing that sound file that I started the other day. That’s now done and ready for a second run-through.

There are just two more to do and I’ll start those tomorrow. I was going to make a start on them when I returned but for some unknown reason I seem to have fallen into the pit again and I can’t climb out.

Nevertheless, I managed to make tea – taco rolls with the rest of the stuffing left over from yesterday, and then I came back in here to listen to MY NEW YEAR’S EVE ROCK CONCERT.

And if you missed it, you can hear it again tomorrow at 21:00 CET, 20:00 UK Time and 15:00 Toronto time.

Here’s hoping that I’m in a better humour tomorrow than I am right now.

But before I go, may I wish you all a very Happy New Year, with everything that you wished for other people in 2021. It was a dreadful year last year and it shows no sign of improvement. But let’s all hope that we’ll see many other much happier years in the days to come and that we can all go off and do things.

Thank you all again for your support over the last year. I love you all.

Wednesday 10th November 2021 – MARITÉ IS BACK …

… in port after her little adventure filming whatever it was that she had been filming during the week.

She crept back in on the morning tide and is now happily moored back in her habitual berth and the trawler Saint Gaud has cleared off elsewhere.

Caliburn is back too, but not for very long. The examiner at the Controle Technique didn’t like the crack in the windscreen that’s been there for five years and through four previous controles technique without so much as a mention.

He also needs his headlights polishing too so I’ll go out there with some toothpaste and an old toothbrush to deal with that one day later in the week.

And if I don’t have a decent sleep some time soon I won’t be here for very long either. You can tell just how disturbed it was by the entries on the dictaphone. I started out on my way to Court last night to defend myself against a VAT assessment. I’ve no idea why except that it was something quite old and I hadn’t a clue what it was so I’d just taken a pile of pens and notepaper to write down notes. I found an empty bench and went to sit down and started to rehearse my case. The judge who was sitting at his desk told me not to rehearse my case at all so that confused me even more.

Later on I’d been tidying up a huge pile of papers that were all over the floor, books and everything. It was getting worse and worse the more that I tried to tidy up, everything like that. No matter how much I tried, there was more and more stuff to unpack. Then there was something to do with a couple of friends who came round. We ended up driving back towards Manchester. We were talking about music but the guy wasn’t really listening to what I was saying so I didn’t say very much. When we returned we measured my wall out and found that there were a couple of plssterboards that were too low and needed building up. I took one off the wall to give to him. The we started talking about do he and his wife want to come round for tea or maybe a meal or something and put back the plasterboard but they had to have a look at all the food supplies they had lying around, put it away and see what went into the fridge and let me know

Some time later there was a netball match being played last night. I was on one team. It was strange that everyone except one player was packed into the defensive circle of his own team so there was only me and one girl from the other team playing upfield. We were playing with balloons and I had the upper hand but every time I passed the ball over to the pack to try to get it into the hoop the balloon burst and they had to produce another one. Some balloons were better than others and we never seemed to be making any headway with this. It was all just playing this netball in this one particular area trying to get into the attacking semi-circle

Finally there had been a new road built from Nantwich so although Chester was posted straight on down Welsh Row, Tarporley was for some reason posted off to the right on this new road. A little later on there was a girl driving an Austin A40 in nantwich who was heading towards Tarporley. She decided to take this new road to find out why it didn’t go on down Welsh Row towards Tarporley. At some point she’d parked up her car and was having a huge row with someone. She said something like “my car’s far too new to abandon just like that and walked back to get in her car to carry on down this road. I was there because I was interested in taking photos of the signposts to find out exactly what was happening.

After the medication and checking my mails and messages I cracked on with a pile of dictaphone notes from the backlog.

A few more days have been added to the updating and there’s another pile of notes ready to follow that lot tomorrow morning too. It kept me busy for for most of the morning and there’s only four days left to transcribe now.

They aren’t going to be done as quickly as I would like either because by now my turbulent phase was in full swing are there are mounds and mounds of stuff.

There were a couple of breaks in the middle of all of this.

Firstly, I’d almost run out of bread here. And I’d almost run out of yeast too so I had to go with what I had.

For a change I spent quite some time kneading and rolling my dough and it’s come out quite well again. I must remember this technique for the future.

It actually tasted quite nice too and it would have been even better had it had more yeast in it. But I think that the mixture could have benefited from a little more water in it.

The second interruption was the nurse. He couldn’t come on Monday so he came today instead and gave me my Aranesp injection and also my ‘flu injection.

Now i’m injected to the hilt and safe against every known disease, so i’ll probably be run down by a bus as well.

While I was waiting for the bread to cool down I went to take a shower. And my weight is slowly going down. I could make it go down even quicker but experience has shown me that the quicker it comes off, the quicker it goes back on.

Having finished lunch I set the washing machine off and then set out for the physiotherapist, taking the NIKON 1 J5 with me.

L’Omerta was still moored up at the wharf underneath the fish processing plant, something that seems to be becoming a regular occurrence these days.

Strangely enough, I’d forgotten how to use the little camera and it took me a while to remember. It’s only been four months as well.

These days, my memory is becoming terrible. I keep on telling people that two things happen to you you when you reach my age.

You forget absolutely everything that there is to forget
I can’t remember what the second thing is

While I was still finding my feet with the camera (I don’t ‘arf do some strange things) I noticed that the inner harbour was strangely deserted.

It seems as if all of the big trawlers and most of the little inshore fishing boats were out at sea this afternoon. There were just a few of the smaller inshore boats left behind – and L’Omerta of course.

But Victor Huge and Granville are still there too. A sad casualty of the Channel Islanders’ willingness to leap aboard the Brexit bandwagon despite the fact that, never having been in the EU, Brexit is nothing to do with them, has been the ferries that for a couple of centuries have been running between here and there.

One of the reasons why I came here was for the ferries – a good chance to exercise my sea-legs – but it’s turned out not to be.

Last time that we came down the hill in the Rue des Juifs we saw them erecting a scaffolding to enable them to continue the repointing on the wall at the Rampe du Monte à Regret that they abandoned a while back.

By now it’s all up and they have actually started work. And it doesn’t look to me as if they are apprentices or work experience trainees either but proper time-served employees.

That’s a shame really because there are so many traditional crafts that are rapidly dying out with no-one to carry them on.

To promote this kind of thing amongst the young and the jobless is a really good way of building up a reservoir of skilled workmen and women with a trade that is a meaningful and valuable occupation.

Down the hill, through the town centre and back up the hill on the other side to the physiotherapist..

It would have given me great pleasure (well, a lot of things would, actually) to have said that I went all the way without stopping but I did actually stop once in the Rue Couraye – just to take a photograph though, not to catch my breath.

The woman was standing on the side of the road with a professional microphone into which she was talking and which seemed to be connected to something in the rear of that car.

Whatever that was about, I have no idea.

The physiotherapist had me doing kinetic exercises again because someone else was using the tilting platform. And right at the end she had me staning on something just 10cms wide, one foot behind the other while she threw balls at me to catch.
“your reflexes are really good” she said. Well, she didn’t. She actually said “vos reflèxes sont vachement bien”

It wasn’t for me to disillusion her by telling her that I spent much of my spare time in my teens and 20s as a goalkeeper and later as a wicket-keeper.

After she threw me out, then biting the bullet I headed off on foot to rescue Caliburn, stopping at Aldi on the way for a can of energy drink.

It’s all uphill to the garage – not very steep but long, long, long and it took it out of me but I made it there in the end.

Having paid the bill I went to collect Caliburn only to find that the battery was flat. One of the guys at the garage gave me a jump-start and so I went for a good long drive to put some juice back into the battery.

It was my intention to go to the shops for food but I didn’t fancy the idea of trying to have a jump start on a supermarket car park.

Back here I put the spare battery on charge just in case he won’t start tomorrow and then went to make a coffee. It was at that point that I realised that tomorrow is a Bank Holiday. I hope that one of the supermarkets in town will be open tomorrow morning.

There were some mushrooms lying around looking sorry for themselves in the fridge so I made another delicious curry with them. These ad-hoc curries with whatever is lying around are turning out to be quite nice.

So now I’m off to bed, to see where else I might be going tonight. And, more to the point, and more importantly too, who’s going with me. I’ve been having a few interesting partners on my travels just now and it’s a shame that they aren’t here in real life.

Friday 20th November 2020 – DOESN’T CALIBURN …

… look smart with his new bodywork all finished off?

Mind you, he ought to at the price that it cost me for the work. Before he gave me the bill, the garage proprietor asked me if he should fetch the defibrillator, and when I saw the cost, I wished that he had.

But there’s a 5-year guarantee on the body repairs and that will see Caliburn and I go out together. No-one has ever lived longer than 11 years with this illness and although it was only 5 years ago that I was diagnosed with it, I reckon that I had it for a good while before then. I remember CLIMBING UP TO THE CHATEAU DE MONTSEGUR in early 2014 and being totally wiped out in a situation that I would have run up without any problem a couple of years previously.

There’s no reason to dispose of Caliburn and have something else for whatever time remains. A new vehicle wouldn’t be worth it at all and if I were to buy something second-hand, who knows what I’d end up with?

What I need to do now is to attend to the wheels. He’ll need two tyres on the front sometime soon, and I have two old wheels in the back. I’ll clean those up and paint them and have winter tyres fitted, and then with the two that I take off, I’ll clean and paint them and have new tyres fitted on there too.

But I’m not impressed with the broken mirror though. That’s “disappointing” to say the least.

Something else that’s disappointing is that I missed the third alarm. What makes me feel even worse about that is that after the second one had gone off I remember saying to myself that I’ll beat the third one easily seeing as I’m so wide awake.

Oh Folly! Folly! As the late-lamented Stanley Unwin would have said.

First thing to do was to listen to the dictaphone.

There was a whole group of us looking at a map of the Far North of Russia. One of my friends was there and we were pointing out where we’d been on our famous trip to the North, although she was getting it wrong so I was having to show her on the map a lot better than she was guessing where we’d been. Another friend was there as well having a good look. We were talking about our journey, all this kind of thing very much in the same sense as we did about a dream quite a while ago when we were out in the High Arctic. I went to get my things. I had a tray with coffee and a jug of tomato juice, a few other bits and pieces. As I picked up the tray off the table the jug brushed the kitchen cupboard overhanging it and knocked it over. The tomato juice went everywhere. I just put the tray down in despair because I knew that this had really happened to me before and it’s going to happen to me again. It’s always the case when I’m in a rush – I have to do 3 jobs instead of 1. There was much to it than this but I can’t remember now – something to do with the taxis as well. I was having to go out on the taxis later but it was getting late and no-one had rung me. We were bound to be busy because it was a Saturday night and I’d have to go out. But I thought “who was going to take over on the radio?” This kind of thing. Then I thought that Nerina isn’t here either. She’s still away somewhere but she’ll be coming back and be stuck in the office. Maybe she could do the radio but I don’t know anything more about that.

Some other time during the night I had a computer and I was trying to do something. We were looking at this home video of someone’s bedroom and marvelling at the old selection of electronic and electrical appliances that there were back in the 70s and 80s that we don’t see now. Later on I had my computer coupled up to a reel-to-reel tape recorder. I was recording tracks that I was picking up on the internet radio onto that with the idea of editing them afterwards with Audacity or something. The idea was that once everything was stored onto master tapes it can be copied onto CD and filed away. I was having to work out how this was going to work

After the medication I carried on with a task that I started yesterday and hadn’t mentioned. There were almost 250 unread e-mails in my mailbox, some of which were going back to the early summer, as well as a whole pile of ones that I’d already read and which were now serving no useful purpose except to waste space.

Consequently I’ve been going through them yesterday and today, dealing with a pile of stuff that I should have dealt with a long time ago and there is still some to do. And a few more people will have a surprise over the next few days when they start to receive replies to messages that I sent out months ago.

Something else that required attention was to ring up a certain telephone number in the UK. Between 1972 and 1974 I worked for an Insurance Company in the UK and I was wondering whether I might be entitled to a pension payment in this respect. It took me ages to track down who I should speak to because the company has changed hands a few times since then but I eventually managed to speak to someone who reckoned that he could help me.

In the end it turned out that because I

was under 30
worked there for less than 5 years

There was nothing for me at all. But still, it was worth the phone call simply to find out.

It’s hardly a surprise that after all of this I crashed out on the chair for half an hour. And a really deep one too, just like the ones that I was having a week or two ago. Just recently, if I have crashed out at all, it’s just been drifting off for 5 or 10 minutes or so.

After lunch I headed off to pick up Caliburn – yes, I’d telephoned the garage too to see if he was ready.

Down in the harbour there was a trawler that I don’t recall seeing (although I must have done, I suppose) before. She’s registered in Cherbourg and she’s called “Le Pearl”, and proudly displays on her superstructure the fact that she comes from Granville

She’s quite a pretty craft, and by the looks of things she’s fairly new too so maybe she really is new and has replaced an older one that has been put out to grass somewhere. She’s only been mentioned in shipping records since 20th October this year.

We’ll have to see if there’s anything in the papers about it.

Further along in the harbour, there are signs of activity at the loading bay underneath the crane.

A whole pile of builders’ material is now there ready for loading. It looks as if one of the Jersey freighters is going to be coming back into port very shortly to take it all away.

The next question is not “which one will it be?” but “will I get to see it?”. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall having seen just recently a really rapid turnround of the ships and we’ve probably missed more than we have seen since they have begun to extricate their digits

I pushed on … “pushed off” – ed … into town on my way to the garage, but I only got as far as the Cours Jonville before I stopped again.

Regular readers of this rubbish will also recall that we’ve seen the Christmas decorations pushing up like mushrooms all over the town. Here I was lucky enough to stumble upon a couple of Council workmen with a cherry-picker who were busily stringing up a collection of fairy lights around a few of the trees down here.

Leaving them to it, I pushed on along the Boulevard Louis Dior (and forgot to take the photo of the alley yet again) and up the steps at the end, past the railway station and out of town.

It’s a long, weary trudge all the way out of town but I was determined to do it on foot as a form of good exercise, and I’m glad that it wasn’t very warm.

Past the centre of St Nicolas and into the countryside and here at the roundabout on the edge of town is the water tower that we have seen in the background of so many photos. I quite like this water tower. usually they are simply slabs of dull-grey concrete but with this one they have made an effort to try to make it blend into the environment.

By now, I’m well in the countryside and still a kilometre or two to go.

However I wasn’t alone on my travels.

There is a housing estate on the very edge of the town beyond the roundabout and here standing on the corner watching the world go by is a chicken. What he’s doing here I really don’t know but seeing as he near to a pedestrian crossing he might be trying to cross the road.

And as for why he would want to do that, it’s anyone’s guess.

At the garage they clearly have more faith in me than I have because they had left Caliburn parked in the street Had I had a spare pair of keys I could simply have driven away.

And I made rather a fool of myself in here by complaining that they had set the Controle Technique to expire in July, before I realised that I had been looking at the insurance sticker.

Having paid the bill and recovered from the shock, I went down to Leclerc for the weekend shopping, where I spent a fortune.

One thing that I like about the end of the grape season is that it’s the start of the clementine season and I can polish those off just as quickly as I can polish off grapes.

With not having bought any heavy stuff for ages the bill was somewhat elevated but a lot of that can be blamed on the soya milk that was in three-packs on special offer. My mid-morning hot chocolate gets me through a lot of that.

And interestingly, when I arrived at rhe checkout I found that I had a pile of ham in my trolley. Somewhere along the line I had picked up the wrong trolley and had to retrace my steps until I found mine

Ohhh! The exciting times that we lead these days!

Back here I made a start on the arrears, still getting nowhere rather fast. This isn’t doing me any good at all.

The hour on the guitars was successful again – I enjoyed it just as much as yesterday – and for tea I had a burger that needed eating with some pasta followed by apple crumble.

Just as I was about to go out on my run, Rosemary phoned for a chat. And 2 hours and 48 minutes later we stopped. We had a lot to say.

23:15 is far too late to go out for a run so I was glad that I’d had the marathon walk this afternoon.

Tomorrow I’m going to try my hand at baking seeing as I’ve finished off the banana bread. See what damage I can do to a chocolate cake. But that’s for later. I’m off to bed.

Sunday 21st June 2020 – HAPPY SOLSTICE!

Yes, that six months from winter went pretty quickly, didn’t it? It’s all downhill now until the end of the year

So while you admire one of the Birdmen of Alcatraz entertaining the crowds with his daredevil stunts, let me tell you something of my day today.

And it all started off on the wrong foot as usual, when I found myself wide-awake at 07:40.

And if anyone thinks that I’m going to be heaving myself out of my stinking pit at that time of a morning on a Sunday, especially as I didn’t go to bed until 01:30, then they have another think coming.

09:30 is a much more reasonable time for me to see the light of day on a Sunday.

It’s a day of rest of course and I allow myself one day a week when I can do nothing at all if I so choose and not feel guilty about it.

First task after the medication was one that I had forgotten to do. The dashcam is almost full and the files need downloading onto the computer.

It had to be done quickly because otherwise I’d be tempted to drive off somewhere and forget to take it with me.

26.7GB of files on there, and they all need converting to *.mp4 one of these days whenever I find a moment. There’s masses of them all told.

But while I was doing that, I forgot to do something else – and that was to check the dictaphone.

Well, rather, I did check it, saw that there was a voice file on there (so I must have been somewhere during the night) but said to myself that when I unplug the dashcam I can plug it in.

And then I forgot.

However I did subsequently remember.

There were a couple of little girls who were having some kind of wrestling fight. There had been three of them, one a little older than the other two. This worked its way round to me being in Belgium and having to come home. I had to do it with a whole series of buses and I had plotted out this route and then forgotten it. All I knew was that I had to be at the Gare du Midi at 09:00. It was 08:45 and I had to get back to the hotel, get all of my stuff, check on this route, arrange – make sure that I got on this bus, book a hotel, all this kind of thing. So I was running back to the hotel but the hotel seemed to get further and further away.Eventually I got there, got my stuff together but there wasn’t enough time to look for a hotel. I realised that I was going to be stranded in the middle of the country somewhere in a small town and if there wasn’t a room at that hotel I was going to be stuck for the night. So I ran out of the hotel and ended up in the company of a friend and she was looking at old derelict houses that another friend had told us about. I was trying to push on to this bus station and she was still looking at these houses. In the end I was looking at cars to see if there were any cars that I could buy just to go there. They were old wrecked lorries the kind that even the Africans wouldn’t touch. We ended up looking at this really depressing single-storey building in a really rough area. She went inside and I thought “God at last I can push on”. She came out and I thought that she had finished but ohh no “can you pass me this tape measure?”. God, I thought all my chances of getting this bus have just totally evaporated now.

Next task was to look for the paper from the controle technique where the guy pointed out a few things about Caliburn that needed attention

That ended up being a massive paper-filing job … “at long last” – ed … and general tidy-up, but there was no trace of it. So I grabbed the new door mirror glass for Caliburn that finally came a few weeks ago, the dashcam and the insurance certificate for the coming year to take down to Caliburn because I was going to search in there for the papers.

However, I stuck my nose out of the door and changed my mind. There was a torrential downpour going on out there.

Back up here I carried on with the tidying up. This time the medication in the bathroom needed arranging to see what I have in stock and what I need from Leuven.

That reminded me – I needed to book my travel to Leuven and my accommodation while I am there. So that was the next task.

Mind you, I don’t know why I might need accommodation. I noted that my appointment is for 16:00 and not at the Outpatients department either but at the main entrance. For a 5-hour process that’s not going to be possible in a department that closes at 17:30.

Do they mean to keep me in, I wonder?

By now the rain had stopped so I went to pick up the stuff to take to Caliburn and there, on the windowsill right underneath where I’d put the stuff was the note from the controle technique.

Anyway, all of that is now in Caliburn and he has his new mirror glass. Let’s see how long this one lasts.

There was no hummus for my lunchtime sandwiches (I’d done all of that this morning!) so I went to make some more.

By the time that i’d finished, I had two batches. One with olives and cumin and the other with dried tomato and herbs. Both with plenty of garlic, pepper and sea salt of course.

As for the olive and cumin, I dunno about that but the dried tomato and herbs is wicked, it really is. No danger of any werewolves and vampires coming around anywhere near me tonight.

With it being Sunday, that’s the day for me to go for my walk down into town for my vegan ice cream.

There were hordes of people out there today. We’ve seen the Birdmen of Alcatraz swarming around like Nazguls after a Hobbit, but there were a darn sight more than 9 walkers out there on the paths.

And on the narrow path around the headland we were jammed shoulder to shoulder in places. I don’t think that social distancing was much in evidence today.

These people over there are certainly respecting their social distancing though.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that we have seen countless fishermen perched on rocks at the water’s edge casting their lines into the sea and with the tide being right out just now, they have gone right out with it.

And as I have said before – I have yet to see anyone ever catch anything.

With the tide being out the harbour gates were closed so I could walk across the path over the top to the other side.

What was interesting me was the pontoons at the ferry terminal. With the tide being out, I wanted to see how they were holding up. And the answer to that question is “not very well”.

Either the silt is building up quickly around them, or else the pontoons are slowly sinking into the mud. My money is on the latter and I wonder how long it will be before they have to send a few diggers in to dig the pontoons out again

Not much else was happening at all around the harbour so I went into town to pick up my ice cream. The guy in the shop recognises me now and that’s bad news.

On into town and life here is definitely back to normal, as the monthly brocante is in full swing.

They aren’t anything like the brocantes that we used to have in the Auvergne which is a shame.

Over there it would be private people clearing out stuff that they no longer wanted or needed. Here, it’s professionals trying to make a living and so the stuff is basically banal rubbish sold at 10 times what it’s worth and probably 100 times what they paid for it in a deceased person’s house clearance.

Just out of interest I had a wander round to see what there was.

A book on the History of Normandy looked interesting, but not €8:00 worth of interesting by any means. And a nice looking work bench with built-in vice and clamp caught my eye, as did the price of €250:00. Free woodwork thrown in – or burrowed in more likely.

So at that point I abandoned my stroll around and headed for home.

The weather might have been quite nice, warm and sunny but there was quite a rolling sea out there this afternoon.

The yacht was quite obviously enjoying the windy weather but the fishing boat was making quite heavy weather of it all. Towing a dinghy behind it can’t have helped much either.

All of this windy weather is making me very nostalgic for the sea and a maritime voyage so somewhere – anywhere in fact. I need to stretch my sea legs at some point pretty soon.

Back here I had a bake-in.

First task was to make a pile of pizza dough. Just like bread dough but wit a little oil in the base. 400 grammes of flour is enough for three bases, and having mixed it and got it really nice, i left it on one side.

Next stop was some pastry. 250 grammes of flour and 125 grammes of vegan margarine makes a decent-side pie. Knead it all together for about 10 minutes until it’s thoroughly mixed through, and then add a couple of spoons of water and mix that until it reaches the right texture.

Take 2/3rds of it, roll it out and put it in a greased pie dish.
Peel, core and slice a couple of large apples and fill in the pie base.
Desiccated coconut, sultanas, lemon juice, cinnamon, nutmeg go nicely in there too.
Trim off the excess pastry, and damp the edges of the pie with some milk.
Add the trimmed-off pastry back to the 1/3 of pastry, roll it out and stick it over the top, pushing the edges down with a fork onto the dampened edges of the pastry base to seal it in and then trim off the excess.
Brush the top with milk, dust with brown sugar, pierce a few holes to let out the steam, and bung into a hot oven.

With the excess pastry that you trimmed off, roll it out into a square, add some of the apple and the other interesting bits, dampen the edges with milk, fold it over and squeeze together, brush with milk, dust with sugar, pierce some steam holes and stick that in as well.

By now the pizza dough will have risen so divide into three.
Lightly dust two of them in oil, wrap in greaseproof paper, put in a plastic bag and stick in the freezer.

With the third one, roll it out to size and stick it in a greased pizza tray. brush with tomato sauce, add your toppings and herbs, then cover with your grated cheese.
Then stick your pizza in with the pie and the turnover.

“And here is one I made earlier” – not out of a toilet roll holder and sticky-backed plastic as we used to do with Peter Pervert, John Dope and Valerie Simpleton.

Well, actually, this is the finished product. Today’s culinary offering. The pizza was delicious but I don’t know about the pie because I wasn’t that hungry so I didn’t try any of it.

My run tonight was painful – really painful – but I pushed on al the same and did it all.

But we have a new visitor on the car park by the lighthouse. Not exactly new – in fact he’s been there for two evenings now.

It’s an old rescue van from the fire service and you can still see where the vinyl writing used to be on it. But now it seems to have been converted into a mobile home of some description.

But I couldn’t help but admire his optimism when I read this notice.

He’s looking for a female companion to accompany him on his travels “in search of the sun” and he plans to be gone a long time.

Judging by the dampness in the plastic and the faded writing, the sign has been up for a long time too so he’s not been having much luck in that respect.

And I can’t say that I’m surprised either.

My walk continued on around the headland to the other side.

There was a strong wind that was blowing and we were having a really rough sea this evening. This fishing boat, which at first I thought was our old favourite Coelacanthe but is in fact her sister la Tiberiade was really making heavy weather of it.

She’s only just out of harbour too – hasn’t even passed le Loup – the light and marker for the big rock that is out there and the entrance light for the harbour itself

From there I ran on all the way down to my first resting place.

And there I was entertained by an interesting spectacle on the roof of one of the buildings in the Boulevard de Terreneuviers. A group of seagulls were having a fight over something, although I don’t know what.

It was a nasty fight too. They chased one away but he kept on circling and coming back for more. This battle went on for quite some time abd the seagull didn’t seem to have any attention of giving up easily.

From there I ran on all the way down on my elongated run right to the viewpoint at the Rue du Nord.

No picnickers again, but that was hardly a surprise because there was only a couple of feet of beach here right now. The tide is well and truly in. there was a fisherman here on the rocks, so I hope that for his sake the tide was on its way out.

If on the other hand it’s on its way in, he’ll find himself stranded if he’s not very careful

The sunset tonight was a little much – a little too bright to be able to reproduce a good effect.

This is the best of several photos that I took and it’s still not what I would like to see, which is a shame.

So after a couple of minutes and no sign of improvement I ran on home to write up my notes.

Back to work tomorrow and there’s plenty to do. A live concert for a start, followed by my Welsh homework.

We’ll see how far we get with all of that but right now I’m off to bed.

Saturday 9th November 2019 – CALIBURN IS BACK.

But he won’t be back for long.

Although he passed his controle technique, and with ease too, the garage owner and I had quite a chat about him.

He’s now not far short of 13 years old and several areas of corrosion on his bodywork have been brought to my attention and need to be looked at before the next full controle technique in 2 years time.

As a result of our discussion, I’ve been provided with the name and address of a good body repair place in Gavray that the garage owner recommends and I’ll be going off to have a chat with him in due course as soon as I find out what I’ve done with the paper.

It might cost me €1000 or so to put him right, but I know every nut and bolt on the vehicle and apart from the very odd little bit here and there, no-one else has ever driven him. If I move him on and buy something else, I don’t know what it is that I’ll be buying and that could be fraught with danger.

The kind of vehicle that I want – another van of the same or similar size – could have been doing anything and being driven by everyone. So in the circumstances I’m going to stick with Caliburn

It was a nice walk out of the apartment this morning. The weather was coo and overcast – an ideal day for a good walk.

Passing by the harbour I gave my usual glance over the wall to see who was in there today. Granville and Victor Hugo are there, and so is Charles Marie. But there’s a new boat down there that I haven’t seen before.

It’s some kind of landing-craft type of freighter and I can’t see her name from up here. I shall have to go for a walk down to the harbour tomorrow for a closer look

With it being Saturday, it was market day. And as well as all of the stalls in the Market Hall, there’s something of a street market too.

One of the attractions of the market is the woman who has got crabs. There’s always a large crowd around her as she is selling her wares and se seems to be doing quite well.

Mind you, I have enough problems of my own without adding crabs to them.

There’s definitely something going on that I don’t understand because I stormed up the hill to the top in the kind of fashion that I would use as if I were invading Poland, even singing to myself as I strode out.

And I kept on going all the way out to the garage with just one or two little deviations (and if its deviations you want, then in the words of the late, great Bob Doney “I’m your man”).

I don’t know if I mentioned it but the last time that I was out this way on foot I’d noticed a big red double-decker bus being used as a restaurant. And so I went for a closer look.

Regular readers of this rubbish in one of its long-disappeared guises will recall that that was my plan with Laurence – to have a mobile restaurant. And I actually encountered one once on Cape Breton Island in Canada.

One of the places that I called in at was the motorbike shop to see what they had on sale. There was only one bike that I liked – a Yamaha 4-cylinder. But it was too heavy for me to manoeuvre easily so I’ll have to forget that idea.

The second-hand shop, Happy Cash, had a few things in there that looked interesting, including a couple of decent bass cabinets. But my eye was caught by an electric piano on sale at €25:00 and I’m still wondering about it now.

That wasn’t all the excitement either.

It seems that the gilets jaunes are back demonstrating again. Both of them in fact. They must find it a pretty lonely vigil standing out there like that.

It’s not as if they serve any useful purpose either. They can stand on that roundabout for as long as they like and it won’t change anything one single iota.

Talking of changing things … “well, one of us is” – ed … just for a change, I didn’t have another early night either. I was playing on the guitar again until some silly time of the morning.

And yet again I managed to beat the third alarm to the draw. And that’s not like me at all.

Not enough time to go on a nocturnal ramble either last night. I was doing something with a couple of this big briques – the two and three-litre ones the kind that milk and so on comes in and just as I was getting myself organised and about to pour some orange juice or something into them the alarm went off.

So I’ll never get to know what happened about that.

After the medication I sat at the laptop and dashed off a few dictaphone notes – 9 to be exact. There’s a lot to be said for making an early start.

Another thing that I did was to go back to a project that I started a while back in Canada and look on the internet for digital recordings of “complete albums” that I own on vinyl. Over the course of the day I found 6 and they are all now downloaded and coverted to *.mp3 ready for splitting into individual tracks.

having picked up Caliburn I went to NOZ for the first time in months and although there was nothing special, I spent €16:00 in there.

For the benefit of my new readers (of which there are many) NOZ is a shop that sells off bankrupt stock, near-shelf-life items, overstock and that kind of thing. Occasionally you can pick up bargains in there and I’ve had a lot of good stuff from there.

The near-shelf-life products can be interesting too. And there are always some surprising things on offer that make quite a nice surprising change to my diet.

At LeClerc I stocked up with stuff that I hadn’t been able to carry while I had been on foot, although I forgot to buy any water. I’ve decided to cut out completely the sugar-laden fizzy pop stuff and just go for water instead.

Tap-water is always a possibility of course but here it’s held in a storage tank on the headland so I don’t know what its quality will be like.

By now the heavens had opened and I was soaked walking to Caliburn. And back here I was drenched as I ran down the road chasing the papers that had blown out of my hand.

Lunch was a baguette with salad and my home-made hummus. And it really is wicked too. I shan’t be bothered by vampires, that’s for sure.

This afternoon I did another pile of upgrading of the website but ran aground when I found a half-completed web page that I must have uploaded by mistake. To rectify the situation I had a go at that, and it will take much longer than I anticipated.

To have a little rest and to fight off the fatigue here and there, I had a play on the guitar too. I must keep on keeping on.

Suddenly though, I noticed the time. 17:20. Kick-off was at 18:00 and it had stopped raining.

That was the cue to leg it off up town to the Stade Louis Dior.

On the way through town though I stopped at the Place General de Gaulle because there was some kind of ephemeral air about the kiddies’ roundabout tonight, all lit up as it was in the damp and doom and gloom.

And then I sailed off back up the hill that I had climbed this morning.

By the time I reached the football stadium I was in great form, which is surprising, and also just as well because we were drenched by the torrential rainstorm that suddenly opened up.

This was a match that I hadn’t wanted to miss because I hadn’t seen Entente Sannois Saint-Gratien – the Entente SSG – before.

They had been relegated from Division 2 last year and were still struggling to find their feet at this level. It’s a tough league.

In view of the rainstorm, they allowed those of us brave souls out in the open to come along and sit undercover in the grandstand, which was nice of them.

We could then settle down and enjoy an exciting match, although some of my fellow spectators didn’t think it as exciting as I did.

Granville had the better of the first half without anything to show for it despite the several good chances that had fallen to both teams – mainly down to the unusual formation that they had adopted. They were playing a kind-of 4-5-1 lineup with a centre-forward who hasn’t been getting much game-time, and probably the club’s best attacker playing in central midfield.

It clearly wasn’t working and so at the start of the second half he pushed Sullivan Martinet up front. And almost straight away the match transformed itself into one-way traffic towards the ESSG. For about 15 minutes the goal was bearing a charmed life as Granville peppered it from all directions.

And eventually it paid off for Granville and Martinet who broke the deadlock.

Granville were still pressing forward and threatening the goal, but the trainer pulled off his two attackers and went to shore up the defence.

A strange decision to me because Granville lost their momentum and allowed ESSG back into the game.

And they could have equalised too but for some wretched luck in front of goal, but Granville held on for the win.

Back here in the rain without a pause for breath, and I even ran up the slope at the top of the hill just to get my heartbeat racing. It’s been an excellent day from that point of view and I notice that I’d walked 16 kms and done over 21,000 steps today.

Tea was a frozen aubergine and kidney bean whatsit followed by rice pudding. And once this posting is finished, I’m off to bed. I’ve had a long, exhausting day, I’ve done a lot of things and, surprisingly, I’m feeling so much better.

And it’s Sunday tomorrow too. I can have a lie-in.

Tuesday 5th November 2019 – CALIBURN HAS GONE …

… to the garage today for his annual service and Controle Technique.

He should have gone sometime towards the end of June but as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, I was dealing with other issues like a broken right hand and a damaged kneecap which meant that I couldn’t drive.

And then I was heading off on my mega-adventure.

So this is the first time that Caliburn has turned a wheel since about the middle of June – 5 months – and then it was only around the block. So all in all, he did very well. There was a dashboard light illuminated when I set off but after about 10 minutes it went out again.

And talking of things going out, you won’t believe what time I was going out of bed this morning. Up and about and actually working at … wait for it … 05:45 and when was the last time that I was up and about long before the alarm? Even without a late-ish night?

But it’s not all about the new lean, keen, mean me. I woke up with the most incredible pain in a place that many men will understand and although the pain eased off somewhat, it was still giving me grief. So no point in lying in bed when there are things to do.

An early start means an early medication and an early breakfast, and being well-advanced with the dictaphone notes backlog, I could hit the streets with Caliburn.

There was a brief stop at the Centre Agora to pick up a recording kit. I have piles of audio to record in the near future and the quality of the dictaphone isn’t good enough.

Caliburn was then dropped off at the garage and I’ll tell you what’s frightening about all of this. I’ve only ever been there twice, the last time in June 2018, but the guy there this lunchtime saw me and said “ahhh – Mr Hall”. I don’t like the sound of this one little bit.

On the way back, I went into the cheap electrical shop where I’ve bought some stuff before and today I fell in love with an oven. Then down to LeClerc for a bit more shopping. Not too much though because this audio kit is quite heavy.

The route back took me by surprise because I walked all the way back up the hill to here from town without even stopping and I’ve not really managed that too often in the past.

After lunch I made a start on project 002 and the audio kit came in very handy, although it took me a while to work out how to use it. And I was so impressed that I was thinking about getting one of my own – until I saw the price. Now I’m trying to find something similar but cheaper.

As usual, I went out for my afternoon walk at about 15:45 as usual – a nice mid-point between lunch and tea.

Round the headland again, and the sunlight is still playing tricks. We had yet another delightful TORA TORA TORA effect out there across the bay over onto the Brittany side between Cancale and St Malo.

You can see how this strange light is playing havoc with the colours of the sea out there

And that wasn’t all the excitement about the sunlight either.

The way that the rays of the sun were shining through the gaps in the clouds over there had illuminated the promenade between Jullouville and Carolles just as if it had been some kind of actor on a stage.

All of the surrounding countryside was in the darkness and this little area was properly bathed in sunshine.

Given the foregoing and the lack of comment about any high winds, you could be forgiven for thinking that Tempete Amelie has abated.

But not a bit of it. Although the wind has calmed down somewhat (but not very much) we are still having the heavy rolling seas coming in from mid-Atlantic.

They are pushing along and smashing into the sea wall with some kind of incredible violence as you can see.

But as well as the one just above with the huge rolling wave, this one here is one of my favourites.

I waited just an extra second later before I pressed the shutter on the camera and while the wave has rolled away, I’ve captured the spray splattering down on the top of the sea wall and splashing everywhere.

It’s not very likely that I’ll be able to take another photo quite like this, right at the best moment.

There was a fishing boat in port … “there were about a dozen actually” – ed … that caught my eye.

At first glance, Joker looked rather too much like the very ill-fated MV Darlwyne for comfort. But of course it isn’t.

However if someone were to tell me that it was a direct descendant of the aforementioned I wouldn’t be in the least bit surprised.

And talking of ships in the harbour … “well, one of us is” – ed … I had a nice mail (this contact form thingy really works!) this morning from some of the crew of Normandy Trader, a ship that has featured on these pages no fewer than 26 times, admiring my photos and inviting me aboard next time she’s in the harbour.

That’s a nice plan

There wasn’t enough time for me to finish off the audio work so I need to do that tomorrow. But for tea I had a scrounge around in the fridge and found some onion, green pepper, mushrooms and a few other things so I cooked some lentils and made a curry.

There’s enough for two days too so I’ll use the left-over stuffing in some taco rolls tomorrow and the rest of the curry on Thursday.

Outside, there were some thick clouds scudding about in the wind.

But just as the right moment the clouds parted and I had a lovely view of it. Just for a change, the camera was quite handy too and so I was able to take quite a good shot of an Autumn half-moon.

It’s come out quite well considering that it was hand-held and taken in a hurry. When I was taking all of those last year I was using a tripod and going for a slow exposure.

For my walk in the wind I was all alone, except for Minette the cat sitting on her windowsill. She still remembered me and allowed me to give her a good stroke.

And I had my run too – and even managed to run half-way up the hill at the end of my usual straight. You’ve probably noticed from the photos of the waves and the spray over the harbour walls that the wind has changed direction today. For a change I had a following wind.

We had a photo earlier of Carolles bathed in sunshine.

Tonight there was no sunshine of course but the atmosphere was beautifully clear despite the clouds and I could see Carolles perfectly lit up tonight by the street lights along the promenade

Again, no tripod so it was hand-held and it’s not come out too badly. But some of the other night-time photos weren’t up to much.

So before I go to bed I’ll just have time to do half a dozen web-page updates. I promised myself that I would do that every day and I do need to catch up with the arrears of work

But no reason to go out tomorrow (I doubt that Caliburn will be ready) so I can do plenty of work if I put my mind to it.

That’s some “if”.

diving platform granville manche normandy france

ile de chausey granville manche normandy france

storm high winds tempete amelie port de granville harbour manche normandy france

moon hidden by clouds granville manche normandy france

jullouville granville manche normandy france

rue paul poirier granville jullouville manche normandy france

Tuesday 18th June 2019 – IT’S NOT BEEN …

… as productive a day as I would have liked today. Full of all kinds of petty interruptions and so on that prevented me from cracking on.

It started well enough though. Up and about long before the third alarm had gone off. I’d been on my travels too, although this was all very confusing. It concerned someone who was allegedly running a taxi, driving around with music playing pretty loud but he didn’t have any taxi plates. He was summoned to talk to a couple of people about all of this and it turned out that the message had come from the Taxi Owners’ Association. He went very begrudgingly to the meeting but came out much happier. Apparently it was just two neighbours from somewhere or other who had written, so he just bought them a drink and the matter had been brushed under the carpet and he was quite happy about that because obviously he didn’t fancy going up against all these taxi drivers because they could all turn nasty and there were so many of them. His wife said something along the lines that they were all pussies anyway and that he would just sweep them aside. She turned to me and said “you’ve had enough confrontation with them and you were relatively unscathed from that point of view” (which was true). And that was that. But then it turned onto trains and we were working with coal trains. I was bragging that we had dealt with every coal train that came out of Crewe. There was that Keith Morris there and he asked “how do you know that you do?”. I said that I was sure. We ended up talking about one particular one that went out early in the morning at about 05:00 and was pulled by two Class 27 locos with 40 wagons. I looked at Margaret for confirmation and she didn’t really say very much. he wanted to know how I knew that they were class 27s. Of course you can tell by the number but I replied “well, I ask! If I want to know something, I ask because I take photos and edit the photos and write about them so if I want to know something about the photos I’ll ask someone locally and they will tell me the answer”.
From there we moved on. I had an old Ford Escort van like I have and we were all going somewhere. There were two seats in the front and a settee in the back but facing backwards rather than forwards. People were clambering in there. I was back in the house getting things ready to leave these people. I had a mattress that I was going to put down in the van for me to sleep on and al old blanket because there was insulation in part of the Escort but not down the left-hand side. So I put the blanket in and used it to fill in the gaps in the walls. They were all looking at it and I explained about condensation and how I was going to sleep in there and then I went to fetch the mattress.

With an early start I had an early breakfast and then cracked on with some work.

First task was to deal with all of the photos from yesterday, and then to attack the dictaphone notes. Another 5 have now disappeared and we are down to just 55. I’ll have to push on and deal with those pretty quickly if I can.

But I was interrupted by trying to arrange another blood test. Eventually, after much binding in the marsh I managed to arrange it for 11:30 tomorrow.

But even as we speak, I had a phone call from the nurse to say that she will be here at about 08:30 tomorrow morning.

After that, I went for another experimental run with Caliburn. But I didn’t get very far, for there was a police road block.

It seems that there was a Fete de dix-huit juin according to the policewoman holding up the traffic.

Whatever the Fete de dix-huit juin is, I really have no idea but the place was swarming with anciens combattants decorated in medals and the like, so it’s quite possibly something to do with the liberation of the town, although that didn’t take place until 31st July 1944.

Whatever it was, we were held up for half an hour – me in a queue of vehicles held up by the police and no controle technique on Caliburn

One thing that I can say is that I could drive reasonably comfortably all things considered. Seeing that I could move hi about, that prompted me to ring up about his annual service and controle technique.

But to my dismay there are no vacancies until the beginning of July and I won’t be here then. So I’ll have to sort out my flights and book him in for as soon as I return.

That took me up to lunchtime, taken once more indoors because it was raining yet again.

It had cleared up by the time I had finished, so i hit the streets for the laboratory.

The men were still working on the medieval walls, but the workmen on the house extension in the rue du Port were likewise working.

They are now working on the rendering on the second wall of the lift shaft – assuming that that there is indeed the lift shaft.

Only one more wall to go, and then I’ll be wondering what they are going to be working on next. There’s such a lot of rebuilding going on in the town right now.

Not much further along, I came to another stop.

There are some remains of an old Jeep dumped on the roundabout at the end of the Place Godal. Presumably that’s something to do with the fete too.

At the Laboratory I handed over the stuff that was extracted from my knee, and found to my surprise that they do blood tests there – and without an appointment too.

If only I had known!

Across the road is the station so I went to pick up my rail tickets for next week, which I had forgotten to do yesterday.

The sun was on the way out as i walked back, and that cheered me up somewhat.

A cold drink followed by a start on adding the photos to yesterday’s blog. But I was surprised at just how quickly the time passed.

For tea I had a stuffed pepper with spicy rice, gollowed by one of the cocount dessert things that I had made earlier. Liz had told me not to mut as much milk in, so I put about 350 ml of milk and 50ml of that coconut soya stuff in, mixed it up, and poured it into four bowls into which I had previously put a couple of pineapple rings.

After a couple of hours in the fridge it had set really well and it was delicious.

later on I went out for my walk.

First stop was to the monument at the Rond-Point des Francais Libres to see if I could see anything that might give me a hint of what was happening.

There were a couple of wreaths out there, but nothing that gave me any indication.

I shall have to make enquiries.

Down on the rocks at the bottom of the cliffs was a youth standing there, cut off from the mainland by the rising tide.

I gesticulated at him, but he didn’t reply and didn’t seem to be in any distress whatsoever.

He clearly didn’t seem to need any help, and so I left him to it and continued my walk

But had he really be stranded, it wouldn’t have mattered to me because not only would I have been unable to do anything, there was a speedboat loitering around just offshore

They would have been much better-placed to give him assistance.

But they didn’t hang aroudn long after I moved on. They roared past me like their boat was on fire.

Excuse the rather blurred photo but I was taken by surprise by these kids (of course, it’s very bad form for any photographer to be taken by surprise, but that’s neither here nor there).

Just as I was looking at them wondering what was going on, one of them stood up and dived off the sea wall straight into the sea.

I reckon that I was lucky enough to catch it, but what wouldn’t I have given to have had a faster shutter speed?

Meanwhile, as all this was going on, the roar of a couple of diesel engines told me that something large was coming ino port.

It’s our old friend Granville, the new Channel Islands ferry that has been suffering a load of problems just recently.

That’s twice now this week that I’ve seen her in the harbour here. Probably more than I ever saw her in the whole of last year.

She wasn’t the only visitor in the harbour either.

Charles-Marie is down there too, moored up in the inner harbour. She might be preparing for her summer season of voyages.

And while I was admiring her, I overheard some squealing coming from further down the road. Some young girl and her boyfriend were trying to walk along the top of the railings like some kind of tightrope walkers.

The girl wasn’t all that good, and after about four steps and a loud squeal, she fell off, right at my feet.

So now I’m back home and I’m ready for bed. I’m hoping to have a better day tomorrow.

speedboat pointe du roc granville manche normandy france

channel islands ferry granville manche normandy france

Saturday 26th May 2018 – I HAVE JUST SEEN …

… something that I have never ever seen before.

One of US Granville’s attacker bursts into the EC Tessy Moyon Sports box, and goes down under a challenge from a defender. The referee blows hiw whistle and points to the penalty spot.

The match is being played at the Stade Louis Dior despite it being the 3rd XI. I’m in the grandstand, absolutely level with the incident and quite high up, so I have a perfect view. And in mt opinion that was one of the best challenges that I have seen at this level of football.

The Tessy Moyon players are furious, their coach is livid, The US Granville player comes to the touchline and shouts something to his captain. The captain takes the kick – and kicks it to the corner flag.

Apparently the referee was the only person in the whole stadium who thought that that was a penalty. But I’ve never seen a team kick away a penalty before. The Age of Chivalry isn’t dead after all.

It was another struggle to leave the stinking pit this morning, We Went through the usual morning procedure followed by a shower, and then Caliburn and I hit the streets

We went the long way out to the garage, out to near Bréhal and down the by-pass. The idea is to get the engine stinking hot so that it burns more efficiently and shows a better reading on the air meter. The best laid schemes o’ Mice an’ Men gang aft agley, as Robert Burns would have us believe. I ended up being stuck behind a load of grockles crawling along the road.

However, none of this caused a problem and at the Controle Technique, not only were we early but we were in and out and finished even before the time of the appointment. Caliburn passed with no problems and there is nothing to worry about as far as his bodywork goes. He’ll be 11 on Tuesday by the way

Sopping today was just Noz and LeClerc. I didn’t feel like going all the way round to LIDL. And it didn’t take me long to buy what I needed (and to buy nothing else) and I was home by 11:30. Maybe I ought to go out this early again.

Having put everything away and having had a coffee, it was lunchtime. Beautiful weather for it too, sitting on the wall watching the shipping, eating my butties, reading my book and chatting to the lizard. He was enjoying the weather too.

Back here, shame as it is to admit it, I crashed out yet again for a good hour too. Perhaps this early start wasn’t such a good idea after all. But I was up and about and ready for my trek up town.

Some of the trek involved following a couple of beautiful young maidens. They stopped somewhere along the route and gave a kiss to some boy who was clearly a friend.
“Could I have a kiss too?” I enquired. But the trouble today is that no-one has a sense of humour.

It was a beautiful evening for football and we were lucky enough to be at the Stade Louis Dior for this. It’s not very often that the 3rd XI get to play here.

No-one on the gate at all of course so we could just walk in and go anywhere, so I blagged a seat in the stands where the view is quite good.

US Granville were 8th going into the match and EC Tessy Moyon Sports were 7th, and eo we expected a hard-fought tight match and that’s exactly what we got.

Granville had most of the play but couldn’t convert the chances that they were making. And it seemed that fortune might have been on their side when Tessy Mosson were obliged to replace their goalkeeper with an outfield player after a collision.

But the new keeper was actually quite good – he’d clearly played in goal before and at a reasonable standard too. He was coming out for crosses – and catching them too – and his handling and distribution was quite good too.

But he was eventually beaten by a ball over the top and a Granville player running on for a one-on-one. No-one could complain about the keeper there.

But the real highlight of the evening was the weather.

There had been some rumbling and grumbling in the distance, and then a huge dark cloud started to blow over the ground.

And you can see, if you look closely, the torrential rain that is falling, away over there in the distance. We were going to be in for it.

The rain waited until we were leaving the stadium before it let go. And then we got the lot.

Luckily there was a strong wind blowing so I kept in the lee of the buildings at the side of the road. Had I been in the open, I would have been a drowned rat before I’d gone 50 yards.

But it was quickly over. And we had one of those unusual phenomena of a sharp weather front, where you could see the end of the rainstorm like a curtain as it drew away from me up the street. It’s been a while since I’ve seen something like that.

Back here, I hadn’t completed my 100% daily activity which is a surprise. There’s definitely something wrong with the fitbit.

And so I went for a lap around the block until the 100% came up, and this enabled me to watch the sun sink slowly into the sea, surrounded by flashes of lightning and rolls of thunder something like The Return Of The Demon King.

But I was too tired to do much back here. I even fell asleep talking to someone on the laptop. So in the end I went to bed.

Sunday tomorrow. A day of rest. And I need it too.

Saturday 12th May 2018 – IT’S A WELL-KNOWN PHENOMENON …

… that when you lose something that you desperately need, you can’t find it anywhere even though you know almost exactly where it ought to be.

And it’s an even more well-known phenomenon that while you are looking for the aforementioned, you find something that you lost a while ago and were totally unable to find and you had since given up all hope of ever finding it again. And – you usually find it in a place where you are certain that you have already looked – and on several occasions too.

So for this reason I unreservedly and unequivocally withdraw all of the intemperate remarks that I made at the time and have made since then a propos the mobile phone which disappeared from my possession just before Christmas.

The next question of course is – “what will I have lost and be looking for when I find the spring retaining clip off Caliburn’s window winder?”

Now here’s something rather strange. I was sitting here last night feeling somewhat (but not all that much) tired but I couldn’t find anything that I wanted to do all that much. So in the end I gave it all up as a bad job and went off to bed in default. That’s not at all like me, is it?

And it didn’t take me long (like a matter of a couple of minutes) to go off to sleep too.

The first part of the night was quite restless though and I was tossing and turning somewhat. But eventually I settled down and was well away with the fairies.

We had another one of those nights where I was wandering around aimlessly, my clothes in my hands, from one big public building to another trying to find where the public showers were.
But later I was with a couple of people, one of whom was a young girl of about 10 or 11, on bicycles waiting at a roundabout for the traffic to clear. It was early one morning and still dark and the girl had no lights on. Suddenly she darted off between the traffic and took the wrong road. I had to chase after her, which wasn’t easy seeing as I couldn’t see her, but caught her up eventually on the Coleridge Way estate in Crewe. She’s come to a dead end and couldn’t work out where to go next. I knew where we were although I couldn’t understand how we had arrived there, and to return to our route we had to go down a footpath that would lead us back to the road. But there were these anti-bicycle gates on the footpath so I had to lift her bike over them, and in doing so I scratched the paintwork. You could see through the deep pink down to the original purple colour. She was most upset about that.

It was another struggle to leave the bed this morning. I’m clearly suffering the after-effects of my journey the other day. But having made a nice new muesli mix yesterday I could enjoy a nice fresh breakfast – even if I did forget the orange juice.

A shower and a shave and a general clean-up and then I hit the streets. My trip out took me to LIDL, NOZ and LeClerc where I bought nothing special but nevertheless spent a lot of money because the stocks here are right down.

But I couldn’t help thinking to myself that they must have some strange men doing their shopping at NOZ. Here on the “men’s” shopping rack we have a nice selection of dresses and an even better selection of handbags.

It takes all sorts, I suppose. I wonder if Lee Pottymouth does his shopping here. But then, I didn’t see any fairy boots on offer.

I also visited the Controle Technique station to book Caliburn’s next appointment and also the garage where he goes to be serviced, but they are taking advantage of this week of two Bank Holidays by being closed until Monday.

With the controle technique being due, I reckoned that it might be a good idea to find out why the driver’s door on Caliburn no longer opens from the outside. It was a good morning – not too hot, dry, no wind, so I could work in comfort.

And it didn’t take too long to discover the problem. There’s a rod that operates the door latch and it’s adjustable with a nut on the end. Only there was no nut on the end. It’s fallen off. So I rummaged around, found a nut of the correct size, and reassembled it. It’s not quite adjusted correctly, but it works and that’s good news.

Then, the reassembly bit. The window winder is held on by a spring clip, not a screw, and it’s flaming awkward to fit. The first time that it sprung off I actually caught it as it flew across Caliburn’s cab – much to my own surprise – but the second time it disappeared off in the general direction of under the driver’s seat.

So I bent down to look for it – and the rest is history.

The phone was under there looking as if it had been placed there. It’s impossible for it to have fallen out of my pocket into the position where I found it. And in any case, I’m certain that I’ve looked there before. So I dunno. It’s mystifying me.

The weather was nice enough to work on Caliburn but not nice enough to eat my sandwiches outside. And then, much to my dismay, I was gone with the wind for a good hour or more. Clearly not up with it, am I?

Nevertheless I went for my walk this afternoon and then settled down to watch the football. Cardiff Metro v Barry Town in the Europa League playoffs. Barry unbeaten in the last 10 matches and the Met having been on a woeful run of form although they came good in the last two matches.

And everyone in a packed ground at Cyncoed and those watching on the internet were treated to a thriller for the first 25 minutes. Barry had most of the possession but Cardiff Met played some good, neat football. And then the Met took the lead with a goal out of nowhere. And then a second ditto. A third followed shortly thereafter – an own goal from a defender who headed a free kick into his own net. And that was that.

The second half was pretty much the same although the killer instinct had gone from Cardiff Met. They scored a fourth but Barry pulled one back to make the score a little more respectable. Cardiff Met were the better team to be sure, but not three goals better. If they play like they did in the first half against Cefn Druids next week and win, they’ll tear up Europe next season.

I had my little walk this evening after a tinned tea, and now I’m vegetating. No alarm tomorrow as it’s Sunday so I’m going to sleep until I awake. I reckon that I need it.

Friday 26th May 2017 – HOW LONG IS IT …

… since we featured a proper “Ship of the Day” on these pages?

When I was in Montreal or somewhere down the St Lawrence we could take our pick of dozens each day, but it’s usually pretty thin pickings whenever we are elsewhere.

But not today though, because today our ship really has come in.

It’s another really high tide this week and it’s brought in the Victress, who has sailed in from Southampton to pick up a load of gravel. Built in 1992, she flies the flag of Barbados and displaces about 1500 tonnes.

Not the biggest ship we’ve seen, but the biggest that we’ve seen in recent times and the biggest that we are likely to see here in Granville. She’s not there now, though – the ground’s all flat. And she’s somewhere out in the Channel so it seems. And I’ve not been able to find out where she’s heading.

She was formerly known as Uranus but this was changed due to ribald remarks from captains of other ships – something along the line of “with my binoculars I can see Uranus from here”

After breakfast this morning I had a quick shower and shave and change of clothes and hit the streets in search of the bus stop. Of course I have a choice of two, and of course it was “the other one” but just €1:00 and pretty painlessly (and I’ll do this again) I was decanted at the top of town to rescue Caliburn. He’s had his service, and the strange noise seems to have gone, and he’s had his controle technique. That gives me two years motoring without any major worries, which is always a bonus.

And on the way back, I picked up my oven. That’s now installed and working – and I had to change round my kitchen a little to fit it on the shelves and things don’t fit as well as they did before, which is a shame. But tomorrow I’ll be tracking down a pizza tray, some bread-making stuff and some oven chips. THis is going to start to become interesting.

For lunch I headed off to my usual spot – the clifftop overlooking the port – and this was where I made the acquaintance of Victress. But not for too long because once more I was burnt out of my position and head to retreat to here where I promptly crashed out for an hour.

And while we’re on the subject of photographs … "well, one of you is" – ed … it occurs to me that you have yet to see the view out of my living room windows.

It’s not very inspiring unfortunately (although I’ve seen much worse) but if I look over to the right-hand side I can in fact see the sea.

It’s not exactly the sea view that I was hoping to have, and I don’t have a terrace which would have been perfect, but here in Granville I can’t do much better than this. Especially as if I just step outside the front door of the building the view is stupendous as you know

Later on, I went out to Roncey. Liz’s grandchildren (whom you have seen many times on these pages) are coming to stay tomorrow and it’s important that Strawberry Moose is there to greet them. So now he’s playing hide-and-seek down the bed.

Back here, I had another dollop of the kidney bean stuff that I made yesterday and it was just as delicious too.

So tomorrow it’s a mega-shop again. So just you watch me forget something important.

Saturday 13th May 2017 – I’M DESPERATELY DISAPPOINTED …

… about my hi-fi. 6 years in a cardboard box in a very damp and dusty environment hasn’t done it any good at all.

It’s a really expensive system too – cost me a small fortune back in the 1980s. All hi-quality Marantz stuff too. I connected it all up this afternoon and it’s crackling and popping and not doing too much in the way of sound.

I’m not sure what I can do about it. I’ll try to find some electrical contact cleaner to give everything a good going-over but I’m not too optimistic about this at all.

In other bad news, the new frying pan and small wok that I bought don’t seem to make sufficient contact on my halogen hob. It won’t detect them and so it won’t fire up. And I’m dismayed about that too.

Another thing is that the thing that I bought at IKEA to hang my curtains is the wrong thing and i’ll have to take it back.

But it’s not all bad news.

I’ve had a very productive – and successful – day. For a start, I’ve arranged for Caliburn’s Controle Technique for the end of the month.

And I enquired about a garage to service Caliburn and prepare him for his test. He told me of a place that he knew and could recommend so round there I went. I mentioned the little problem that I have with the front end and before I’d even finished describing it, he told me exactly what it was. Anyway, he’s booked in there and we’ll see if the garage proprietor can walk the walk as well as he can talk the talk.

On the way back into town, I noticed a shop that sells factory-reject and shop-soiled electrical equipment. And here I hit the jackpot. They had a new combined microwave/grill oven thing with no box and a missing grill support (but I can invent one of those anyway) for just €49:00 instead of €99:00 which it would have been had it been perfect. It didn’t take me many seconds to have it in the back of Caliburn.

It was a busy day shopping too. I now have a telephone so I might even be able receive calls if I’m not careful. As well as that, I have a nice oilcloth on top of my new table. A red strawberry and cherry design and it looks quite nice.

And while I was there I found exactly what I need for the curtains, and about a quarter of the price too. So I’ll have to measure up now and go back there next week for the stuff that I need.

still no vegan cheese in the Bio shop, but they did have vegan sausages and so for tea tonight I had a welcome variation to my diet. No tinned stuff and pasta today but microwaved potatoes, baked beans and vegan sausages. It certainly was nice too and thanks to Alison for buying me the beans when she went to the UK last winter.

And the carpet is down too. I fetched it up from Caliburn this evening and now there’s nothing left from IKEA in there (apart from the curtain rail that I intend to take back). I assembled the two chairs and finished off the big cupboard by the door too. So on Monday I can take all of the cardboard downstairs to Caliburn and take it to the dechetterie. And on the way back I can buy what I need for the curtains.

So I might have an early night tonight. It was a late night yet again last night what with one thing and another, but I did have a decent sleep – all the way right through until the alarm went off.

And tomorrow, it’s Sunday and there’s no alarm, so I might even have a lie-in just for a change.

Thursday 19th May 2016 -I WAS OFF …

… on my travels again today.

I started off at the Doctor’s this morning at &0:00, only to find that my doctor is on holiday and it was a locum in attendance. That means that most of what I wanted to discuss was pretty pointless but I handed over a few letters from the hospital and had a form signed, as well as a quick check-up. My heart-beat is high but apart from that, things seem to be quite normal for now.

Montlucon was the next port of call. I had to pay a bill at the laboratory that does my blood tests and then another bill at the tax office for all of the documents that the hospital gave me before I went off to Leuven. There’s nothing else outstanding that I cans ee for the moment, although I have a couple of bills to pay at Leuven when I return.

Once that was out of the way I went back home for an hour, most of which was spent chatting to Nicolette whom I encountered in the lane. She seemed to be quite concerned about my health, which is nice of her.

Caliburn had his controle technique at 15:OO and the garage had forgotten that I was coming. But they squeezed us in and of course Caliburn passed with flying colours. And then we nipped off to the other side of St Gervais d’Auvergne for his service. So he’s all done and dusted now and ready for the road.

Back here, I crashed out for an hour and then made tea. Microwaved potatoes and mushroom and lentil curry was on the menu followed by some of Liz’s home-made vegan ice-cream. And now I’m off to bed. I’m feeling even worse than yesterday and to make matters worse, my “upset stomach” has returned.

I’ll see if I can pick up where I left off last night because I was off on a few travels too. The first part involved my being somewhere on the continent – it may have been in Occupied Europe or a neutral country during the war but it was a big tower-block kind of building. I was talking to a woman there who was expressing her surprise that the top floor was occupied by the British Royal Air Force Bomber Command which was using the premises to direct the bombing attacks against Germany, whereas just a couple of floors down, the German Luftwaffe had offices used to direct fighter control against the British bombers. I replied that that wasn’t the only thing that was unusual – out in the grounds was a military hospital where half the staff was British and half was German and they were dealing with wounded soldiers of both armies.
From there, I found myself in Crewe in a huge traffic queue trying to go over Edleston Road bridge. I was in a driverless car – a while Volkswagen Karmann Ghia – and so I left the car to see how it would do. And it advanced quite nicely in the traffic, except that it was going too fast for me to walk after and with my illness I wasn’t able to run after it – and this really had be worried. I remember that on the bridge was an end-terraced house with the door round the side (which actually fronted onto Edleston Road) and it was actually my house. I was reminiscing about how many of these houses used to be built on the bridges in Crewe.
We haven’t finished yet, because there was a football match taking place between one of Pionsat’s teams and a team that consisted mainly of females and which only had 10 players. Pionsat were however struggling to get on top in this game and on one occasion they broke clean though the defence and the player had a shot but a defender stuck out a foot and diverted it out onto the post and out for a corner. From the corner the ball came in and the keeper missed it but a Pionsat player headed the ball in off the post for a goal. There were three Pionsat players in an offside position but they weren’t interfering with play so there was no reason why the goal should be disallowed but one of the defenders, a young man, argued so much with the referee that in the end he was sent off the field, which tilted the game even further into Pionsat’s favour.

I’ll see if I can pick it up from there.

Thursday 21st January 2016 – SO IT WAS NERINA …

… who drew the short straw tonight, coming with me to take a coach party down to the south coast, Worthing or somewhere similar. We stopped the night at a town not too far away, somewhere near Lewes. While we were there, I rang up the hotel on the coast to make all of the arrangements for our arrival, and to find out the directions to the hotel. When I came out of the telephone booth into the bar, there were several giant-sized people in the bar, all professional wrestlers who were handing out promotional gifts. I was given a cigarette lighter (of course, I don’t smoke) but it leaked and I was getting all of the fluid all over me and smelling like a tart’s boudoir. In the end, Nerina sent me to wash my hands so I went into the toilet but all of the sinks were full of baby clothes – someone had filled up all of the sinks and left the clothes in there to soak. This had annoyed everyone in the hotel. I went to someone else’s coach because I knew that he had a kind of tap and hand-washing arrangement on an extendible pipe right by the driver’s seat (it was a left-hand drive coach but the entrance was on the left). I used this to wash off my hands. While I was doing this, other coach drivers came up to ask what I was doing, so I explained. I had difficulty closing off this tap no matter what I did, so the other drivers had a try and they couldn’t do it either, so they started to fill their bottles of drink with it. Coming off the coach I heard some woman talking to one of the coach hostesses talking about exit doors on coaches. She was going on about a particular kind of coach and describing a particular kind of door, to which I interjected that that was a B10M (which, incidentally, is a model of chassis, not a body) but no-one was listening and the hostess was saying that it’s not an E62 like we have. So I said “B10M” again, to just the same amount of notice. And back in the hotel still filthy, still covered in cigarette lighter fluid, and I eventually found a map of how to reach this hotel. It wasn’t where I thought at all but to the west of the town on a headland and fairly easy to reach. There was a big coach park right opposite just by the headland and also a small restaurant close by which was useful because I knew what hotel food was like and I could see me eating out every night if the hotel food was rubbish.
And Maria, having made her rather dramatic entrance onto our stage yesterday, is back for a follow-up appearance. This time however, she was quite seriously ill and had been discharged from her employment at the EU. I was running a business from my home with about three or four people sitting at desks doing things (I can’t remember what now) and so to help out Maria and make sure that her Social Security obligations were met, I offered her a small job at my place. And so she came to work, not doing very much. On one day needed to go to a medical appointment so I offered to take her. “You can’t go like that” she said, indicating my present attire, and nipped off upstairs (I’ve had exactly the same conversation with a friend of mine a couple of months ago, by the way). She came back down again with a pair of denim jeans. “Put these on”. “What size are they?” I enquired, to which she replied that they were 32-inch. Now up until I stopped running in the late 1990s I could fit into 32″ jeans, but even on a nocturnal ramble I knew full well that they would be too small, but I tried them on and found that I actually needed a belt to hold them up, which amazed me. But anyway, off we went to the hospital and on the way, I found that the two of us were holding hands, something that Maria would never ever do in real life (and which parallels, incidentally, something that was going through my mind with another person just before I dropped off to sleep).
Later on, the two of us found ourselves out on the ski slopes. We were fighting our way out through hordes of children up the steps to the three ski-lifts that were there and then I came to a sudden stop. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that on three or four occasions in the past my nocturnal rambles have taken me to a certain ski-run which involves a passage down a narrow valley, a difficult passage through and over some kind of watershed and then a glorious run down another valley which made all of the hard work quite worthwhile (and we even visited it in our red Cortina estate on one occasion during one night) – anyway, this was where I was heading. But I couldn’t remember how to get there now. Looking at the map board, I could see a black run indicated (ski runs are colour coded to give their degree of difficulty and black runs are the most difficult) which I reckoned would be the one that I wanted, but I couldn’t work out how to get there. Maria said that she knew the way but was surprisingly evasive when it came to actually telling me. I was looking for a map to take with me but there wasn’t one available and so I was feeling really disappointed about this as I had really been looking forward to revisiting this ski run.

On that note of disappointment the alarm went off and I came downstairs. And then had a long loooooooooong wait for the nurse to come. He’d forgotten that it was blood test day and was busy doing his rounds elsewhere while I was sitting here starving.

And talking of blood tests, here’s a shock. I have an id and password so I can go to the laboratory’s website any time after 16:30 and pick up my results. And this evening I found that my blood count has NOT gone down. Now there’s a surprise. I wondered why I had not been “summoned to appear at nine o’clock in the forenoon to answer to the aforesaid” at the hospital.

But this brings with it it’s own problem. I mean – this is good news, make no mistake – that if the blood count is down on Monday, I may well be called in on Tuesday, but I’m being admitted to hospital on Wednesday for my operation on Thursday. On Wednesday I’m definitely having a transfusion (I’ve been told that for definite) and it’s likely that on Thursday and Friday they will be carrying on (assuming that I’m still here on Friday). Too much strange blood all at once can provoke a strange reaction and I don’t want one of those while I’m under the knife. I would have been much happier to go in tomorrow regardless.

But apart from that, I’ve had a quiet day in the house doing not very much at all. I’ve not even set foot outside (although Terry took his van for the controle technique – it passed, by the way). There was a huge mega-sale of items on the 3D site that I use so I spent a little money today (and I would have spent a great deal more had I had it to hand) and I pressed on with my 3D Animation course.

The course set us an interesting challenge. We are doing computer-generated 3D animation now (the part of the course that is of most interest to me) and the aim was to produce a bedroom and fit it with items so that the occupant of the room could be clearly identified. I have therefore been scouring www.sharecg.com – the leading free resource community for the 3D program that I use -for items and happily building a bedroom for my K4 character. She now has a bed with teddy bear, a desk with homework scattered about, a chest of drawers with a boom box on it, a wardrobe with clothes hanging in it (it took me hours to do that), a skateboard with helmet and also a pile of clothes scattered about the floor. No prizes for guessing who is the occupant of THAT room.

Apart from that, I’ve had a shower (so that’s me sorted until September) and a change of clothes (ditto) and done badger all else. And ask me if I care.

But I suppose that really, I do care. I can’t go on like this. I’m not looking forward to the operation and I’m looking forward even less to the week or so that will follow. But I need to do something positive and put my life back on the rails. Much as I enjoy being here, I really want to go home and get on with everything.

Tuesday 26th May 2015 – REMEMBER ME TALKING …

… the other day about the incident at Barrat Ford in Montlucon and my enormous estimate for repairs to prepare Caliburn for the controle technique?

So I duly took Caliburn along to St Gervais for his controle technique this morning, and guess what?

Yes, well done that man. Caliburn passed his controle technique with just a comment about the left-hand rear brake.

The two bald tyres on the rear, according to Barrat (€200 plus TVA plus fitting), have 3.5mm of tread according to the MoT examiner.

The bodywork that is rusted through, according to Barrat, is good for another 10 years, according to the MoT examiner

The knocking from the front end, that is the steering rack about to fall apart and needs replacing according to Barrat (€564 + TVA + fitting) is a worn bush on the anti-roll bar (cost €2:50) according to the MoT examiner.

You can draw your own conclusions from all of this. But anyway, I’ve booked Caliburn in to another garage on Friday for a final check, just so I can have yet another opinion.

With all that was going on, I was wide awake by 06:00 and up and about long before the alarm went off. After a good wash I was on my way and was early at the controle technique.

I had time for a coffee with Liz too. She had come up to St Gervais to run some errands and so we met up. And then I went off for some shopping.

I spoke to Terry too. We’ve agreed to go on Friday afternoon to tax his new van, and on Monday morning to go and register it.

I’m going to be busy these next few days then.

EPIC HALL

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

Tag Archives: controle technique

Thursday 9th February 2023 – CALIBURN IS BACK AGAIN …

Friday 31st December 2021 – CALIBURN IS BACK …

Wednesday 10th November 2021 – MARITÉ IS BACK …

Friday 20th November 2020 – DOESN’T CALIBURN …

Sunday 21st June 2020 – HAPPY SOLSTICE!

Saturday 9th November 2019 – CALIBURN IS BACK.

Tuesday 5th November 2019 – CALIBURN HAS GONE …

Tuesday 18th June 2019 – IT’S NOT BEEN …

Saturday 26th May 2018 – I HAVE JUST SEEN …

Saturday 12th May 2018 – IT’S A WELL-KNOWN PHENOMENON …

Friday 26th May 2017 – HOW LONG IS IT …

Saturday 13th May 2017 – I’M DESPERATELY DISAPPOINTED …

Thursday 19th May 2016 -I WAS OFF …

Thursday 21st January 2016 – SO IT WAS NERINA …

Tuesday 26th May 2015 – REMEMBER ME TALKING …

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