Tag Archives: Easter

Monday 13th April 2020 – IT WAS HARD …

… this evening going for my runs.

It’s a lot colder than it has been of late and a pair of gloves and a hat would have made a great deal of positive difference to my comfort this evening.

But really what was to blame for it all was the howling gale. A couple of my runs, including the longest one, was right into the teeth of the gale and while I managed to accomplish them all, including the little additional extra metres that I’ve been doing. But I certainly knew all about it by the time that I returned home and I don’t want to have to do it again in a hurry.

A Bank Holiday today, of course. Easter Monday. And so I celebrated by having a lie-in. And in a change from just recently, it was actually only about 07:45 when I awoke.

Even more interestingly, it was 08:15 when I left my bed too. Not the best lie-ins that I’ve had, but some of them just recently have been somewhat excessive, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall.

Nothing on the dictaphone either, as I found when I went to check it after the medication. So it must have been a decent night’s sleep too.

After breakfast (and my last hot cross bun) I made a start on the digital sound files. I’m on the cassettes now of course and by the time that I’d finished, I’d dealt with another 4 albums.

Three of them went quite quickly and I didn’t have time to deal with many of the Iceland photos. But of course there’s always one that is a struggle and it took me an age to sort it out, to find the files that I needed, to get them to download and then to convert them to *.mp3.

But having done that, I could start (better late than never) on the next two radio projects.

Despite having a stop for lunch, by the time I came to knocking off at 18:00, I’d chosen all of the music for both projects, joined them up into pairs as I would usually do, and even made a start on writing the text. I don’t know where this sudden energy has come from.

For my hour on the guitars, I’ve made a start on writing another song. I’ve been a bit quiet on that front since November. I was warming up, just running through a few chords, and a certain chord pattern caught my attention. I had a little work on it and while I was doing so, a lyric pattern that fitted it came into my head too.

So half an hour on the 6-string and half an hour on the bass working around it to see where I finished. There will be a lot more to it of course, and then I have to work out the drumming to it now that I have my electronic drum kit.

Tea was a stuffed pepper followed by some of the apple pie that I baked yesterday, with soya coconut whatsit. And it was all really delicious too.

That was the cue for me to go outside for my evening’s exercise.

It was still quite light while I was out there and the sun was a good 20 minutes or so from setting. But there was a fishing boat out there, presumably having left the port and heading off to the fishing grounds somewhere out by the Channel Islands.

Here’s a nice photo of her, disappearing off into the sunset. And into the haze too.

Yes, nothing like as clear as it was yesterday which is a shame.

But regular readers of this rubbish will recall that last night there were the three (or four) lights of fishing boats down in the Baie de Mont St Michel where I wouldn’t really expect to see them. But there they are again tonight.

In the light and with the NIKON D500 and the 70-300mm LENS I could see them clearly. There are seagulls around them too so they are certainly out there working.

There were another few fishing boats out there too, but I suspect that these two are hovering around the harbour entrance maybe waiting for the tide.

Mind you, their working lights are on too and they are also surrounded by seagulls. So even if they aren’t actually working right now, they must have full loads and they are sorting the cargo.

Struggling against the headwind as I did, I finally made it back to my apartment, totally wasted. And Rosemarie rang me up so we had a lengthy chat about nothing in particular. But then that’s what friends are all about.

And that’s why I’m late doing this – not that I’m objecting of course.

So tomorrow, back at a full day’s work, alarms and everything. And who knows? I might even make progress. Stranger things have happened.

Sunday 12th April 2020 – REGULAR READERS …

… of this rubbish will recall a short while ago that we saw a fishing boat heading out deep into the Baie de Mont St Michel, and I expressed my surprise, because I didn’t recalls eeing a fishing boat that deep in there before.

But if yuo look at those white lights just there, you’ll understand that what we are seeing is actually three fishing boats down in thz bay somewhere off the Pointe de Carolles. They are stationary with their working lights on, and that would indicated to me that they are working.

There was a fourth one too, out way off to the left close inshore, but couldn’t fit the photo to include it.

So there you go. It seems that they are starting to look around for more places to fish, and I wonder if that is something to do with Brexit.

What isn’t surprising of course is the fact that I didn’t see the light of day until about 10:30 this morning.

Not that I’m complaining today either, because it’s a Sunday and also a bank holiday so in effect i’m allowed two lie-ins.

It was just as well because just as I was thinking of going to bed last night an interesting track came round on the playlist so I had a bash at it with the 6-string guitar.

And not just any old how either. I plugged in the VOX AMPLUG, turned it full up and put on the headphones.

It was just like being in a studio or on a stage, and I was so carried away that I ran through a pile of the repertoire until getting on for 03:00

And do you know what? I don’t regret it for a minute.

This morning after the medication I had a listen to the dictaphone to see where I’d been during the night.

I was in Gainsborough Road last night and the place was an absolute tip with stuff everywhere, tons of stuff all over the place. There was an insurance guy who was trying to sell me some insurance policy so he could come round to the house and I could tell him to clear off. Then I got to thinking about the state the place was in but before I could do anything about it the front doorbell went – a strange doorbell like a couple of dogs barking. I went downstairs and there was this guy. Of course the two cats and a dog in my house went immediately rushing out. He made a remark about a mentally-handicapped person, having a couple turning around. He indicated a couple of people to me – one was a young girl with long albino blonde hair. He pointed to her.
A little later I was driving a lorry, a big artic with a trailer with an old van and a pile of wood on it. I was doing all right – even in a narrow road I pulled right over to let a Polish bus come the other way. Suddenly the road petered out and I ended up in the wrong section of the road. I’d been right about which was the main road but I’d taken the wrong turning at a really confusing junction because I wasn’t sure. I had to reverse around in some yard. I did it basically without looking at first and just missed a parked car by about a quarter of an inch. The guy in the house came out and was quite cheerful about it. He told me what I’d done. I said “well I’ll turn it round but the difficulty is that I can’t see what I’m doing”. He put a light on but it wasn’t what I wanted because of course you have loads of blind spots on artics. He said “do you want me to do it?”. I said “no, I’m going to do it” I don’t know why, because I wasn’t at all confident and it was really tigh but what I wanted was someone to watch me. But he wandered off. While I was sitting there examining this I noticed that the van had come loose on the trailer. I thought that this was probably just the awkward positioning that it’s in and it will straighten out when I have the trailer straight again. That didn’t look right to me. This girl came out for a conversation so I thought I’d get her to watch, but I’d still rather have the guy watching.

There was more to it than this too but you’re probably having your tea or something like that right now, so I’ll spare you the gruesome details.

After breakfast, which was well after midday, I made a start on the digitalised file splitting.

As I suspected, I seem to have run aground. I’ve started to come up against albums that for one reason or another I can’t do right now – mainly though because the digital sound files just aren’t available.

They will need a good sorting out to see what’s what and for me myself to digitalise them as necessary. But that’s for another time. In the meantime I made a start on the cassettes.

What with one thing and another it was a long, weary early afternoon trying to sort all of this out and I didn’t have much opportunity to edit many photos from July last year. We’re just pulling into port at Akureyri and photo 0542. That’s probably about a quarter of the way around my July voyages.

Finally I was able to deal with the two outstanding radio projects. They are both now complete as far as I can go right now, and the final two tracks have been timed and chosen. I just need to write and then dictate the text, edit it and merge it all together.

But I think that I’ll do what I did last week and that is to choose the music for the next two radio projects, and then write and record all of the text in one go.

And I’m not sure if I mentioned, but I had a really lovely note from someone about our outside broadcast for the GRANDE MAREE VIRTUELLE, and for those of you who understand French, you can download the Podcast at the link that I posted.

Having had a good play about on the 6-string guitar late last night and here and there today, I just had half an hour on the bass tonight.

One thing that I’ve noticed thought is that with having played a lot just recently on the 5-string fretless bass, I found today that the Ibanez acoustic 4-string just isn’t up to what I want it to do.

In my old age, I’m becoming spoilt. That’s for sure.

With it being a Sunday,as well as vegan pizza night, it’s also pudding for the week-making night.

having had rice pudding last week and having used a couple of the apple pie slices from the freezer during the week, I decided on a big apple pie and an apple turnover. What I don’t eat this week can go into the freezer to build up the stock again.

The pizza was delicious, and half of the apple turnover was equally nice. I shall have to make this again sometime.

It was really late tonight when I went out for my evening perambulations.

Once more, I ran all the way up to the end of the hedge and could have carried on, incorporating run n°2 down to the clifftop but I stopped to catch my breath.

Down at the cliff top, this fishing boat was going past on its way towards port. The fishing boats are still working out of Granville (as we saw in the first photograph earlier) whether they are working anywhere else or not.

They are even allowed to sell their fish directly off the quayside here, as I mentioned a while ago, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall.

But it really was a beautiful night and I regretted bringing the NIKON D3000 with me instead of the NIKON D500.

The sky was really clear and you could see for miles. The street lights of St Malo right across the Baie de Mont St Michel were reflecting beautifully from the sky and the extra versatility of the bigger camera would have done it much more justice.

What was sad about this was that I was the only person here enjoying it. There wasn’t another soul around at all.

And it was hard to say if there was even anyone manning the radar in the Coastguard station either.

There was certainly no shadow or anything moving around in there, so I continued on my merry, mazy way.

The same four boats in the chantier navale so I left them in peace, and carried on home. The usual 5 runs in total and although I’m totally wasted and sweating by the time that I return, I notice that I’m pushing on the distance, a couple of metres here, a couple of metres there

That’s quite important to me because I need to keep on top of my health as much as I can.

But it’s a Bank Holiday tomorrow, so no alarm and a lie-in. I hope that no-one comes along to spoil it.

Friday 10th April 2020 – WE HAVE HAD …

… a calamity!

Opened the fridge door this morning, the top shelf fell off, dropped on the one beneath it and broke that off too. At the moment they are wedged in position but at this rate I can see the fridge becoming the first major item in here to be replaced once the shops reopen, if they ever do, that is.

At least my morning went as planned. It wasn’t particularly early when I went to bed, but I slept right through until about 09:30.

And it was more like 10:15 when I arose. That’s what a Bank Holiday is all about, anyway.

After the medication, I had a look at the dictaphone to see where I’d been. I’d actually been in London during the night and on my way back I’d had to go a long, mazy, merry way round by Newport, the one in South Wales, to reach home. I ended up back in Stoke on Trent where someone whom I know and his family were living. I was in a Mk III Cortina Saloon and I had to drive into their drive but usually I reversed in so that I could swing round into their garage. For some unknown reason I drove down this morning and I didn’t have anywhere to turn to drive back out. It was a really steep hill as well. Down at the bottom you could see that there was all new concrete so I wondered what had been going on there. I’d heard that they had had a water leak of some description but there was a torrential river that was flowing down their driveway with all of this rain that was happening. I had to climb my way back up there and it wasn’t easy with the force of the water. When I reached the back door I knocked and a voice said “come in”. I recognised the voice – it was the voice of Zero, who at one time used to accompany me quite regularly on my little nocturnal voyages but has been conspicuous by absence just recently. Anyway I said “hello beautiful”. There was another similar person in there so I said “hello and called her by her name”. The guy’s wife said “hello” but with a “why aren’t you speaking to us” kind of “hello”, so I said “hello” and tpld them about the weather and told them about the rain. She went to look and saw this torrent of water and made some remark. Something to the effect that we were supposed to be going out for a meal that night but how were we going to do that with this torrent of water cascading down the drive? I had already realised that there was far more water coming down the slope than could have possibly come with the rainfall that we were having.

What was so sad about all of that is that the batteries must have gone flat in the dictaphone because it simply petered out to a dead stop. and so I wonder what happened after that and where it all went to. It was starting to become quite interesting.

It’s Good friday today, one of the Easter Holidays of course. And i’m lucky in that last year I bought two packets of vegan hot cross buns and froze one of them. That came out of the freezer yesterday and defrosted overnight, so I had a toasted hot cross bun with my breakfast.

We then had the digital file splitting process, and another 4 albums have bitten the dust today. Not so many now to go at that can be done in a short time. Probably this time next week I’ll be into the cassettes.

There was a break for a taco roll in the middle of all of this but really things went so quickly that there wasn’t a great deal of time to do too many photos and I only reached 0506, which isn’t a great deal of progress.

Later on I made a start on the dictated notes for the radio projects for the rock music. I ended up yesterday with 4 audio files and now, three of them have been edited and i’m working on the fourth.

At 18:00 I came to a dead stop and had a good play around on the guitars for an hour.

Tea tonight was a falafel with vegetables and what should have been a vegan cheese sauce but the grated vegan cheese was off. And, of course, with not having gone to the Health Food shop in Leuven last time, I have no more.

The rice pudding was off too – I thought that it tasted rather peculiar yesterday – so that went into the bin and I had an apple turnover out of the freezer. On Sunday I’ll make a big apple pie and freeze some of it.

After the washing up I went outside for my evening runs.

And you can see from this photo that I’ve pushed on the finish of my first run right up to the corner of the hedge where I usually start my second run down to the clifftop.

So, in other words, I can link up two of my runs – well, in theory because I’m well out of breath by the time that I reach here.

Anyway, having recovered my breath I ran on down to the top of the cliff and arrived just as all of the lights were coming on over in Bréhal-Plage.

It was well worth a photograph. And when I enlarged it back at home later, i could see other lights up and down the coast.

That’s one thing about this f1.8 50mm lens, that it does have a good resolution when it wants to. And that’s quite handy in this kind of light.

So having recovered my breath again I carried on with my walk.

This evening there was a beautiful view right across to the other side of the bay round by St Pair sur Mer and I caught a glimpse of the lights of the town through the War Memorial

That was another one of these “must-have” photo moments, even though the focusing on something like that was a bit hit-and-miss. Still, I did my best.

Despite what it looked lke in the previous photo, it wasn’t as dark as all of that.

The view of the old sentry cabin on the Pointe du Roc and the surrounding sea came up very nicely in the dusk light.

And it really was a beautiful evening too. For the first time this year I didn’t have a jacket on at all for my evening walk. It was 18°C outside when I went out so I’ve no idea what it must have been during the day.

There was yet another nice view across the Baie de Mont St Michel too down towards Jullouville and Carolles.

It was going dark quite quickly now and the light at the entrance to the harbour was flashing quite brightly. I don’t think that I’ve ever seen it look quite like this – it’s probably something to do with the very high tides that we are having right now.

And the lights on the coast in the background have come out quite well too. It was a good night for photography, I reckon.

There’s yet more excitement in the chantier navale tonight.

There were four boats in there on Wednesday night, then last night there were three. But today we are back up to four again, with the one on the extreme left.

And it’s not keeping its social distance either. That’s risky behaviour in these times.

So I ran back to the apartment – in two stages of course, to make sure that I had all of my five runs. And they are slowly but surely prolonging themselves, which is something for which I had been hoping the more that I run

It’s not going to be much better than this but we have to remember that four years ago I couldn’t even walk. And since then I’ve had all kinds of bits taken out of me, with not very much success.

So having spent most of the evening talking, it’s really late now. I’ll feel like death tomorrow and it’s shopping day too.

Still, you only live once.

Friday 18th April 2014 – I HAVEN’T DONE A TAP …

… of work today, you know.

Well, that’s not true. Through the night I was out on the Saguenay River in the Province of Quebec. Mind you, that’s no surprise because I’ve been writing rather a lot just recently about William Price and the Clarke brothers, pioneers of the lumber and pulp industries around that part of Canada.

No alarm clock either and so it was 09:50 when I crawled out of bed. And why not? It’s a Bank Holiday.

And so all day I’ve been working on my web pages and I’ve arrived in Baie-Comeau at long last. This is where our 2010 journey branched off to go to Labrador on the Trans-Labrador Highway.

Followers of the 2012 journey will be able to come with me along the North Shore of the St Lawrence River all the way to the end of Highway 138 way beyond Natashquan, and then didn’t we have a surprise?

Apart from that, not very much at all. Cécile rang up for a long chat and that was about it.

I’ve not done anything that I was planning to do today – I’ve been quite leisurely. But I don’t begrudge it. If I can’t have a few days off over a Bank Holiday weekend, it’s a pretty poor do.

-3

Thursday 17th April 2014 – I HAD A BAD START …

… to the day today. Waited until all of the alarms went off – and then went back to sleep. It was 08:44 that I finally surfaced this morning.

That meant that I didn’t have as long on the website as usual, and I was back outside by just after midday.

I had another design change to make to the shower unit and when I’d done that and screwed it all together I gave it the first coat of wood treatment.

After lunch I cut the shower base to fit, and then gave it all the final coat of treatment.

While I was waiting for that coat to dry I made a list of what I needed to buy for the fittings, and then I had a look around to see how many of them I actually had. This led to a full-scale sort-out and tidy-up of all of the plumbing accessories and I found that in fact I have all that I need. However, it was too late to assemble it by the time that I had finished.

I found enough time to clad the sides of the shower unit with the sheets of corrugated perspex.

Or at least, two of them, because the problem of what to do about a door solved itself when I opened the door to the lean-to, as you can see. Even the bolt on the door goes right into the correct place, and that can’t be bad.

Mind you, it was all of 19:45 by the time I finished, but at least the shower unit won’t take much to finish off when I start back to work.

Yes, “start back to work” because it’s Easter and I’m having 4 days off.

-2

Monday 9th April 2012 – On the way back from the footy …

… there was a really good view of the Puy-de-Dôme in the distance from the top of the brow of a hill near St Priest. It’s been quite some time since I posted a photo of the Puy.

So what was I doing out at St Priest? The answer is that as there was no local football at all this week I had to cast the net rather wide, and I ended up at St Priest. To my surprise, the 1st XI of St Priest don’t play in local football but in regional football. That’s about 3 levels higher up the pyramid than Pionsat’s 1st XI. Anyway, they were playing in the Cup against a team from down south somewhere and so I wandered over there to watch.

The match wasn’t as good as I was expecting. St Priest were deservedly beaten by a better team, even if the opponents didn’t have much idea in the final third of the field. St Priest were rather lacking all round although they had their chance – hitting the bar and the post and a couple of their forwards taking one step too many with the ball, or trying to do the difficult thing when the simpler thing would have been much more appropriate.

After that I went round to Liz and Terry’s to drop off some stuff, and I was treated to tea which was very nice. And not just tea, but a doggy bag too – and home-made hot cross buns. Aren’t I the lucky one?

And this morning? Well, to be honest, 11:15. Say no more.

-3

Sunday 24th April 2011 – It has finally rained

We had 0.5mm of rain during the last 24 hours. Not a lot, but the first rain of significance for 20 days. The garden was pleased to see it, but the water butts weren’t. With all of the messing and mauling about, the plastic connections on the line that joins the two butts together has worked itself loose and the water leaked off out of the sides.

And so this morning instead of having my day off I had the butts stripped down yet again and sealing all of the plastic joints. And now there don’t seem to be any leaks, but I’m not vert happy with this. So what I’m going to do is to go to Montlucon on Tuesday, buy some more bulkhead fittings and connections, and couple them up with brass fastenings and proper reinforced plastic pipe. I’m also going to put a tap in between the two butts so I can switch off the connection and drain the tanks individually if I need to. That’s much more like it. The plastic joining kits are fine for water butts for watering plants and so on but for domestic use I need something much more solid.

And so once that was done I came back up here and watched a film – Our Man Flint, one of the films that I bought just recently.

I’ve not been out either. There’s been no footy and so I haven’t had any reason and I may as well stay here and relax for a change. It is a Bank Holiday after all

-2

Friday 22nd April 2011 – I haven’t done a tap today.

Well, it’s Easter (Good Friday to be precise) and I don’t work on Bank Holidays, as you know. I’m entitled to some time off anyway.

And so a lie-in until 10:00, a leisurely breakfast, watching a couple of films, working on my voyage around Newfoundland (I’ve arrived at Cape Race just now) and that’s my lot. I’ve not even cooked tea tonight and I’m off to bed in a minute.

We’ve not had any rain today either – that shower we were promised never arrived. And so I’m off to Montlucon tomorrow to buy the bits to redo these water butts. I may as well make the most of this good weather.

But there’s no footy this weekend – nowhere in fact. Whatever am I going to do?

-3

Sunday 4th April 2010 – Easter.

Yes, it’s a Bank Holiday and that can only mean one thing – a day off.

So coffee in bed once more and a lie-in until 10:15. After that I read a book and did some work on the computer and that is the sum total of my day.

In fact I’ve been having a bit of fun on the computer. There’s a 3D animation program that’s been doing the rounds – pretty old technology and ages out of date, and it’s just been released on freeware with a few specimen characters. Anyway I downloaded it (it took almost all afternoon because it’s huge) and had a play.

Actually it’s something of a misleading offer because although it’s true that it’s all free, you get characters that are for all intents and purposes featureless and although you can animate them as they are, you have to buy the accessories like hair, eyes, clothes and the like. The program is tremendously complicated and there is also no instruction manual or help facility – what there is is an on-line forum where the contributors, in typical internet on-line forum manner, just hurl all kinds of abuse at each other. Total waste of time.

But after about 3 or 4 hours at it and with a shed-load of perseverence I managed to create my first animation – not very exciting but it’s a start. It’s the kind of thing you can have hours of endless fun doing if you have the time to spare. But it’s not something I’m going to be chucking any money at.

In other exciting news it seems that our radio programme has attracted the attention of French television who want to be put in touch with the presenters (Liz and Yours Truly). It’s something to do with a television programme about the Combrailles. It all sounds thoroughly exciting.

And in other other news, I see that the Zionists have allowed a delivery of clothes into Gaza – the first since 2007 in case you were wondering. For a race that complains about the inhuman treatment that they received 70 years ago they should know better about treating others with even more inhuman treatment. And the fact that they claim so bitterly about “terrorism” when the territory they occupy was captured through terrorism is so ironic as to be insulting and indecent.

I have no sympathy with them at all – if they treat the Palestinians (many of whom are Christians) like dogs, then they deserve to be bitten.

-2

EPIC HALL

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