Yes, I’m off again. You didn’t think that it would be long before we returned to the subject of pathetic parking, did you?

The little street outside NOZ is notorious for it. And there are posters all over the place advising people that parking in this street carries a more severe penalty, for Parking Très Genant, not merely Parking Genant. And notices to say that there is a big free car park right behind the shop.

So today we don’t just have people parking half-on, half-off the pavement on one side of the street, we have them on both sides. Just how ridiculous is this going to become before we start seeing the Police towing cars away?

How can people be so bone-idle?

Talking of being bone-idle, I missed the alarms today. Not bu much but it was still disappointing. I’d been to bed early too, having crashed out while writing up the notes for yesterday.

There was the usual procedure, namely firstly the medication and then to check the dictaphone. Last night apparently, I had been with a group of people and we were discussing religion seeing as something had cropped up about that just recently. We were discussing these religious sects where they would send a preacher off somewhere to convert the people and get them to worship his way and then gradually expand a bit outward. It’s all divided into halves like “could you use another half a person to help you with your area of your ministry” so they would send out someone young and keen to help you out and gradually take over part of it. It would keep on expanding like that. Then one day of course it would all go “POP” as someone worked out what was happening and made the announcement to everyone so they all quit the church. It was just at that point that two people actually had discovered the truth behind this particular religious sect. He’d left and gone to mull over the situation and that was when the alarm went off.
Somewhere along the line I was doing something with the people from the radio too but I can’t remember now.

After breakfast I went for shower ready to hit the shops. I weighed myself too and the weight that went back on over the last couple of weeks while I’ve not been too well has mostly gone. I’m now just 900 grams from my target weight.

Hopefully I can press on and lose that too. I was actually beyond it once just before my last bout of ill-health and I’m hoping to be there again.

Back here ready to leave and I noticed an e-mail telling me that our meeting at 12:00 today has been brought forward to 11:00. Not enough time to go to the shops before hand so I stayed behind and finished off the notes.

When that had been done I cut up a few digital tracks and at the same time was involved in a discussion with a couple of people who are extremely touchy about any hint of criticism about HS2. That touchy in fact that it makes me wonder what they are afraid of.

Anyway, off I went to the huge Council hangar at the back of town where I met up with a couple of colleagues from the radio and where I discovered that I had forgotten my microphone.

The purpose of today’s visit was to interview the owners of the chars – the Carnival floats that will be parading in the streets next weekend. We’re broadcasting Carnaval live and what we intend to do is that as each char passes our commentary point, we’ll have a soundbite that we recorded today that we can broadcast, with the owners telling people about their char rather than us.

Unfortunately I’m not going to tell you lot anything about it because we have been sworn to secrecy, as you might expect. No-one wants any details to leak out until their chars appear in the streets.

One thing that I did learn is that Carnaval isn’t just a town wide, or déprtement-wide, or even nationwide event. It’s actually listed on the UNESCO World Heritage sitelist so it’s of International interest, which is good news.

When we’d finished I went off to the shops.

At NOZ I spent a bit of money but it was all on good stuff, including some stainless steel pastry-cutting rings. I don’t have any and it’s pretty inconvenient cutting round saucepan lids and the like.

Another white board too because the one that I bought last week has since then become a permanent wipe-off calendar and to-do list, so I can keep track of what I’m doing and when I ought to be doing it.

Pride of place though has to go to the half-litre tub of Alpro vegan icecream, almond and smoked caramel flavour. There’s no room in the freezer but nevertheless I wasn’t going to pass that one up.

LeClerc was next and that was a very cheap shop. That came to almost nothign at all and would have been even less had i remembered to buy the mushrooms and peppers at LIDL on Thursday.

Another thing was that I bought a couple of vegan pastry rolls. I’m going to make a tofu bean and lentil pie and an apple pie tomorrow while the oven is on – and while I have some ice-cream to eat with the pie.

Back here I had lunch and then started to edit the sound files that i’d recorded.

a couple of interruptions though.

Firstly of course there was my afternoon walk and in view of the fact that I hadn’t walked much today I went on a super-long walk around the walls, part of which included my run, down into town, around the block and then back up the hill.

Nothing whatever of any interest at all happening there, although I did go for a little diversion for a look around inside the library.

But not for long because almost as soon as I had put my sooty foot inside they announced that it was closing time.

The second interruption was, unfortunately, a little crash-out for five minutes. Only five minutes but five minutes I could well have done without.

Tea was out of a tin tonight as it’s Saturday and it was delicious. And pudding, of banana and raspberry sorbet, was even nicer because NOZ was selling some chocolate sauce for ice cream so I bought a couple of bottles.

That’s one thing that I like about NOZ – every so often it comes up with things that I don’t normally buy and it varies my diet.

And they would do more if they were to price everything. Much of the stuff, like the Sodastream syrups in there that interested me for example just didn’t have a price at all.

later on I went for another really long walk to push up the 100% on the fitbit (it made it to 105% in the end). Not around the headland because we now have Storm Dennis. I went to town

And as I walked past the Place Godal I noticed that the caravans have started to arrive. Carnaval is always accompanied by a Fête Foraine, a funfair. Officially they aren’t supposed to arrive until Sunday but some of them anyway are here this evening, much to the displeasure of the motorists who would normally park here.

But it’s all good fun and brings piles of money into the town so you can’t criticise it from that point of view.

It was while I was there admiring the caravans that a trio of women came over to me. “Did I know where … (some restaurant) … was? It’s at the docks” they said.

The name rang no bells with me but i knew where the restaurants on the docks were so I led them that way. It occurred to me that as far as I was aware, I didn’t have a photo of them at night from down here so I resolved to deal with the issue.

And why not? No time like the present and I can add them to the list of photos that I’m making of the town.

Ohh yes, that’s the restaurant there – Le Regate. Anyway, I took them over there and left them to it.

While they were trying to find whatever it was there that they were seeking, I took a photo of the place. I may as well do that while I’m there.

And from here I went foe a leisurely walk into town down past the library. There were a couple of people sleeping in sleeping bags ina dorrway and I hadn’t noticed that before.

The Police Station os right by there too. I wonder why the cops haven’t taken these people in to arrange for them to have help.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that we saw them erecting the kiddies’ roundabout in the Place General de Gaulle a couple of weeks ago, and then we saw it in action.

It’s a different story this evening though. They are actually dismantling it to take away. Obviously his period of rental is over and now, I imagine the whole place will be turned over to Carnaval

On that note I came back here to listen to the rest of my radio programme and then to write up my notes for the day.

And now that they are finished I’m going to go to bed. Sunday so no alarm and, for a change, nothing whatever that needs my attention that will divert me from a totally free day off.

And it’s been a long time since I’ve had one of those.