… writing up my notes for yesterday I was still talking to Liz.
She was telling me that tonight’s full moon was going to be excellent so I decided that before I nipped off to bed I would go off and have a quick look.
There had been a firework display over at Sp Pair sur Mer and there were still crowds of people milling around who had been watching from the clifftop here, including one of my neighbours and we had an intersting chat for quite a while.
And then I wandered off to take a few photos of the moon.
There was quite a lot of cloud out there so I took a comfortable seat on the wall overlooking the harbour and waited for it to rise up through the clouds.
So while I’m waiting for the moon to rise, I can tell you about the rest of my night last night once I’d gone to bed.
I had a really long dream but when I awoke I forgot most of it immediately. I was with Nerina last night at some kind of wedding. There were lots of people around there and gradually they started to go. Most of them were going by some means and I don’t know what it was but there were still people there and all the children were dancing etc. It was really sad to see the people disappearing one by one and even Nerina was quite disappointed when some people whom she knew started to leave. In the end someoe came over to me and said “there are all these cars here. You can take whichever one you like”. I thought “I have all my stuff in Caliburn so I don’t want to start taking it out at this time of night and changing it over so I reckon that we’ll go in Caliburn anyway”. There was much more to it than this but I really can’t remember any more.
Later on there was another dream as well involving a few kids being totally obnoxious. We had a lot of things to do and not much time to do it so we were doing things on the sly like when we were trying to deal with this party of people even though we weren’t allowed to use the kitchen we were still doing it all the same so everyone had to keep really quiet but that was absolutely impossible. Everyone was coming and going. There was no control whatsoever over anything. I had some food to make for a little boy. In the end I made him a sausage sandwich. Cooking the sausages was exciting. Half the bread fell into a wash bucket so I had to use a different kind of bread for half of it. All in all it was just absolute total chaos. It ended by some young boy in his early teens having to ring his girlfriend to tell her something important and all he got was her on an answerphone message so that didn’t work out particularly well. Again, there was much more than this that I can’t remember.
I was having a really happy time with my little girlfriend who worked on Saturdays at the library in Nantwich. I was round at her house with her parents talking about all kinds of things including alarm clocks. Of course I have the alarm on the phone that wakes me. Then we went out for a walk around the village laughing and joking. There had been some kind of story where a family who were extremely religious had gone for a pizza on Sunday which of course is not the done thing in religion so we all laughed about that “if we aren’t careful we’ll end up with a pizza”. We ended up looking around in a shop full of surplus clothing, catalogue returns etc. I don’t know what she was looking for but she had a really good look round. Then she saw some radios of the type that she had to awaken her so she wanted me to go to look at them. I did out of politeness. I was looking at the range of Mhz that the radios covered and the bands. If I could find a short-wave one with a decent coverage I might think about it but there wasn’t anything. I couldn’t even pick up my niece’s husband’s private radio station on medium wave on it, his was set so low. The salesman was extremely pushy etc. In the end we walked away hand-in-hand and skipped off down the road again. It was all very nice and very pleasant.
The idea that I would be talking to her parents is unfortunately rather amusing.
They hated me with a passion which is not a surprise because I was a different person as a teenager or a young adult … “not THAT much different” – ed.
But she was lovely. She worked in the library on Saturdays and she would go through the new arrival LPs. Any that she knew that I would like she would smuggle out and I would tape them, for her to return the following Saturday.
Christmas 1977 when we were totally broke and had no money, we devised a cunning plan. Audlem, the village where she lived, was a strange village of two halves, the rustics and the well-to-dos. We made up a pile of expensive-looking Christmas cards out of bits and pieces and then took them round to deliver to the well-to-dos.
“Oh, how nice. Thank you very much. Do come in and have a drink and a mince pie”
We were totally gone with the wind by the end of the evening and it didn’t cost us a penny. That was a really good night.
However, her parents took an extremely dim view of the proceedings and that was the final nail in the coffin of our relationship.
We did go out (as friends) to a few rock concerts later but that didn’t reignite our relationship.
A few years later I was driving a coach through Shropshire and stopped to go to the bank for some cash.
And who should be serving behind the counter?
We had a brief exchange of pleasantries because I was in a rush but I went back a few months later only to find that she wasn’t there. She was training at that branch when I met her and no-one would tell me where she had gone.
Yes, she’s another one who had a lucky escape from my evil clutches and I’ll give all that I own to speak to her again if she ever were to surface. She had rather an unusual name but it never came up on the internet. I tried.
She’s not the only one to have been on the end of a broken relationship due to alcohol.
When I was 17 and my girlfriend at the time was almost 14 (and that’s a long story too) Lindisfarne were playing at a private members’ club in Crewe. Too young to be a member myself, I borrowed the membership cards of my older sister and her husband and we both went to see them.
She hadn’t ever drunk alcohol before, as I found out far too late to do any good, and you can’t take it out once it’s gone in.
So that, dear reader, was that once her mother came to pick her up.
I was round at my niece and her husband’s house last night. It was somewhere nothing like their place at all. A whole group of us was on holiday. I was talking about work again saying that I’m over the retirement age now so if they annoy me which they had done during that week I’d turn round and not go in at all on Monday. I was outside the shop working. What I’d done was to draw a picture of what I had seen outside their shop and was busy trying to paint it. Things weren’t going too well and I’d made a big mess of the rear of a car. I was in all kinds of messes with that. Just then a couple of girls came over and started to ask me questions about myself and to chat to me. I had a little chat with them. Suddenly I looked at my watch and saw that it was 08:55. I thought “God! I have to be at work shortly!” so I had to get myself ready, grab my things and go. This picture only undeleted part of the mess that I’d done. I hoped that the rest of the undelete etc would still be in there when I came back this evening otherwise this picture is totally ruined and I’d have to start again
So when I’d finished photographong the moon, I came back home.
On the way I looked behind me and saw the moonlight reflecting on the water in the harbour. It looked quite picturesque so I took a photo, although it’s rather a shame that it’s over-exposed.
Back here I finally went to bed and ended up in the arms of Morpheus and wandered off into the dark recesses of my mind. It was quite a mobile night as you can tell, and I was quite exhausted when the alarm went off.
It was a struggle to leave my bed when the alarm went off but nevertheless I managed to go for my medication without too much trouble, even working out that I was a medication short in my pile.
Back here I transcribed the notes for my nocturnal voyages and then rather regrettably I fell asleep. And not just for five minutes either.
When I finally recovered I’ve been bashing out the rest of the photos from June. It took much longer than I expected too because I had to research one or two locations as I had written them incorrectly in my notes.
Soon enough, it was time for me to go off for my afternoon walk. Not that I went very far though at first.
As regular readers of this rubbish will recall, I have commented in the past that I won’t go on quite so much about bad parking but sometimes it just can’t be helped.
It’s not actually the fact that this person has taken up two parking spaces that is so annoying. It’s the fact that this is a private car park and whoever is the driver of this vehicle isn’t a resident of the block.
This is just plain ignorant.
But as an aside, just WHEN are they going to come and repair our entrance barrier?
In rather a foul mood after that, I wandered off towards the wall at the end of the car park.
Down below, there was plenty of beach this afternoon. The tide was quite far out today.
Surprisingly there weren’t all that many people down there enjoying it. Despite the wind, which was quite strong this afternoon as you can tell from the whitecaps, it really was a nice afternoon and I’d expected to see many more people down there.
No-one in the water as far as I can see either. In fact, I’m surprised that surfing hasn’t become a major pastime here.
Despite the high winds and rough seas, there were several trawlers out there this afternoon.
This one looks as if it might be fishing because although it was too far out for me to see if it had its nets out, it was travelling quite slowly with its stern to the French shore.
As I’ve said before … “and on many occasions too” – ed … since the recent fishing disputes flared up, they seem to be trying new fishing grounds much closer to home.
There were quite a few people wandering around on the path today. They were making the most of the warm weather. I joined them on their trek down to the lighthouse.
There was nothing going on down at the end of the headland this afternoon.
No-one on the bench at the cabanon vauban but there were several people down there on the rocks. We have a fisherman with rod and line and also a couple of dozen people at the pèche à pied.
From here I wandered off down the path on the other side of the headland and, surprisingly, there was nothing going on at the port.
Just Monaco du Nord II in the chantier naval and no-one at the ferry terminal or playing “Musical Ships” at the Fish Processing Plant.
In the inner harbour we saw Victor Hugo moored at the quayside.
We saw her yesterday out at sea off the Pointe du Roc but she has eventually made it into port. And it doesn’t look as if she’s going back out this afternoon.
Back here I had the last of my banana drink and then spent a couple of hours with the guitar that would take me up to teatime. And the timing of “Born to Run” is very difficult to grasp.
Tea tonight was veggie balls with pasta and vegetables, mixed with a nice spicy tomato sauce. That was really nice.
It’s cloudy tonight, otherwise I might have been tempted to go out and look at the moon. Instead I’ll have an early night ready for tomorrow.
It was a Bank Holiday today of course, Bastille Day. And we all know why the French stormed the Bastille on the 14th July. That ws because with it being a Bank Holiday all of the shops were closed and they had nothing else to do.
I’ll be 
