… “and you’ll say more often too” – ed … that it is really nice to speak to people, especially friends. And that friends always come first before almost everything.

So despite the amount of work that I have to do and how much of it is piling up and how I decided that I would crack on and have a really good whack at some of the outstanding backlog, then spending … errr … 2 hours 16 minutes and 34 seconds instead talking to Rosemary on the telephone was nevertheless quite enjoyable, even if it isn’t getting the baby bathed.

Not that I’m complaining. Far from it in fact … “perish the thought” – ed … but I seem to be going one pace forward and ending up two paces backwards right now.

Last night was another late-ish night as I was working on project 005 and trying to sort out the mess that I’d made of the vocals. But seeing as I was getting nowhere, in the end I finally gave up and went to bed.

Not much time in bed last night – probably not more than four hours in the end, but still time to go on a voyage of some description. I was out and about being placed into a group of people for some reason or other. They were going through the names of the groups and there was one group with a name like Anvil Brown and the Red Shoes, something like that. I knew that there was a girl in charge of this group and running it so I immedately opted to go into this particular one. I went over to see her to present myself and it was at that point that I awoke.
Back asleep, a little late I was doing some photography with a group of young girls. I was wanting to do it my way instead of the way that some interfering busybody was trying to have me do it and which was totally wrong in my opinion, but I awoke pretty smartly there too so I’ll never know how that one ended either.
But strangely, these are two other circumstances in which I can see parallels with actual events, and it’s rather worrying.

Not so worrying that it’s disturbing my sleeping and waking patterns though. I managed to struggle out of bed before the third alarm and deal with the medication issues followed by breakfast, and then I attacked the vocals for my project.

In the end I gave it up as a hopeless task and re-dictated them. And with a little judicious “cut and paste” I was able to make some kind of progress. It took ages though before it finished and I do have to say that I learnt quite a lot while I was doing it.

There was an interruption though from a text message. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that I had a message yesterday evening telling me that my train for Thursday had been cancelled due to industrial action. And so I booked a seat on the bus last night. And so today I had a message to say that my train has now been restored, as you might expect.

There was just about enough time for me to have a shower and clean up before heading to town. And HOORAY!!!! I’ve reached my target weight – a weight that I never thought that I would ever see again. But I’m not going to stop. I’ll keep on pushing my fitness regime. 12 kilos in 5 months means that in about 33 months I’ll be gone completely.

At the Grand Café I met this musician guy who showed me his songs. Luckily there are no glaring errors like in Alquin’s Mountain Queen where Dirk Franssen invites a girl to his house to “see the Morning Glory”, although I did reckon that he should change “the Poles are melting” to “the Ice is melting” in one of his songs. After all, Poland has a tough enough time as it is.

For my trouble I was given a coffee and a CD of this guy’s band, and from there I walked up to the railway station to chat to the clerk about the trains.

I had to wait half an hour for her to come back from lunch, so that gave me plenty of time to have a nosy around the station to see what was going on. And the short answer was “nothing”. There wasn’t a soul about and the train that does the route Caen – Granville – Rennes, a Bombardier B82500, was parked up and abandoned.

Something similar to the Marie Celeste, I reckoned.

Granville is also home to several of the GEC Alstom Regiolis trains too – the ones that perform the service between Granville and paris and on which I travel.

But they were all down there parked up in the sidings and slearly had no intention whatever of moving today either. This strike looks pretty much complete.

Eventually the girl in the ticket booth came back. And when she did, she knew even less than I did. “We won’t know until tomorrow” she said.
“What time?” asked our hero.
“After 17:00” she said. So that’s a lot of help then, isn’t it?

La Mie Caline for the dejeunette was next, and then the doctor’s. It pays to be on the good side of your doctor because when I asked him about a prescription for a ‘flu jab, “ohh, I’ve got some stuff here” and gave it to me on the spot.

On my way down into town I’d noticed that Normandy Trader was in the harbour again.

I was pushed for time (as usual) just then but now I don’t have anything particular organised for the rest of the day so I went to pay a courtesy call.

But I didn’t have very much success at all. I shouted and shouted but there was no answer and so seeing as it’s inappropriate to go on board without an invitation, I wandered off and I’ll go back down there again in early course.

Although the weather was failrly miserable, I decided to come the long way home all the way round the Pointe du Roc.

That route would take me past the chantier navale that we had seen in the dark last night and I could see how things were doing in there. As we can see, Aztec Lady is there in the foreground and in the background behind it we have Spirit of Conrad.

Both of them are still there receiving attention although there doesn’t seem to be anyone about down there just now.

From higher up the hill we can see just how rough the seas are this afternoon.

There’s quite a heavy sea out there right now and La Grande Ancre – for I’m sure that it is she – has a battle on her hands as she fights her way across the baie de Mont St Michel towards the harbour.

And you can see how the weather has closed in across the bay at St Pair sur Mer

For a change just recently, I managed to make it home without falling over. I wonder where it all went wrong yesterday.

The first part of the afternoon after lunch was spent working on this teaser for this project of mine. That’s all done and dusted now and you can hear it here.

That led up to my afternoon walk time in the rain and the wicked wind. This storm that we’re having is blasting just about everything that gets in its way.

The tide is still quite a way out but even so you can see the mess that it’s making of the sea wall down here. Imagine what it must be like at high tide when the waves are at the peak of their force.

I wouldn’t want to be standing right there at that particular moment, that’s for sure.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that my photos are being constantly photo-bombed by the flocks of the feathered and flying creatures that live around here.

While I was admiring the scenery, another one came flying by right in the area where I didn’t want it to be so in order to humour the bird I took a photo of it with nothing else in the image at all.

Now perhaps it will go away and leave me alone to get on and do other things

Although the tide wasn’t right in, there was still enough of it in for the fishing boats to be able to tie up at the quay by the fish processing plant to unload their catch. It was quite useful to dredge out a little channel there so that the boats would have more time.

The cranses up on top are working full-tilt winching up the catch to the processing plant and to the large commercial vehicles that will take the catch off to market somewhere.

But underneath where the private and small-scale operators unload their catch, they are quite busy too. In fact, it’s a very busy port with a lot of fishing activity going on.

Mind you, it must have been a magnificent sight down there 50 years ago with all of the deep-sea trawlers that went out to the Grand Banks, and the working railway line down to the port and the trains that took the catch away.

Apart from that there wasn’t a lot going on, although I did have to give directions to a passing motorist and then I came back here.

One of the things that I’m doing is to work on a live project for 27th December, so I made a start. And despite it being in theory quite straightforward, it wasn’t ‘arf complicated because the raw material that I had to work with was full of holes. You’ve no idea the lengths to which I had to go to in order to make some reasonable patches, but in the end it sounds something like a live project – all 56 minutes and 4 seconds of it, so I need just under 4 minutes of talking. That will be a challenge.

Tea was the leftovers from Sunday evening, with a few oven chips to lengthen it out. Totally delicious it was too

When I went out for my walk later in the evening, I noticed that there had been a change in the wind outside this evening. It had gone from being ridiculous to violent.

At times it was a real struggle to make any headway, so I didn’t hang about outside for too long. Just long enough to take a couple of photos including this one of Donville-les-Bains in the dark with that big floodlight thing shining away in the background.

But despite the wind I did my lap around as usual, even managing the full length of my run, and into a headwind too. Even I was impressed with that.

Rosemary rang me as soon as I returned home and now having updated my notes, I’m off to bed. All that I had planned to do this evening, well, it’ll have to be done some other time.

Story of my life, I suppose.

storm waves on rocks granville manche normandy france

fog at sea english channel fishing boat granville manche normandy france

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normandy trader port de granville harbour manche normandy france

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christmas lights place cambernon granville manche normandy france