Tag Archives: grima

Thursday 7th November 2019 – FATHER CHRISTMAS …

… has been today.

They say that he only comes once a year, and when he does, he fills your stocking. Well, he certainly filled one of mine with what he brought today and he’ll be coming again because this is parcel n°1 of 5 … “actually parcels n°s 1 and 2 of 6” – ed.

What is happening is that I’m fed up of saying that I’m going to be doing something and then for one reason or another not doing it. I want to be pushing on … “or pushing off” – ed … and getting these things done, and having the correct equipment to do it too.

The acoustic guitar that I have here is a cheap £25 guitar that was left over from a music festival years ago and isn’t up to very much. This guitar is actually reasonably cheap but it has a good spec and that’s important.

This, and the concert ukelele that I bought too should keep me out of mischief for quite a while, if that’s going to be ever possible.

Talking about being kept out of mischief, I must have been kept out of mischief last night because I don’t remember a thing. It was a late night again, due to listening to music of course, and once more I managed to make it out of bed before the third alarm went off.

With no dictaphone notes to transcribe from the night, I had a quick go at one or two of those until the medication worked and I went for breakfast.

When I woke up this morning it was raining pretty heavily but by the time that I’d finished having a shower, the rain had stopped so I headed off to LIDL.

For a change I didn’t buy anything exciting there and the bill was quite reasonable for a change. But there was something that I ought to mention. Regular readers of this rubbish will remember the blackcurrant sorbet that I bought the other week. They had some raspberry sorbet today, in a larger container and cheaper than the blackcurrant. There’s some of that in the freezer here now.

O the way out to LIDL I’d had my usual glance down in the harbour to see what’s going on.

And we have a visitor here today. A regular visitor in fact – our old friend Thora. She’s come in from the Channel Islands presumably with a load of something to drop off, and she’ll be picking up stuff to take back with her when she leaves.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that I had a conducted tour around her predecessor, the Grima but I’ve not managed to set my foot on board Thora yet.

One of the … “many” – ed … things that I have forgotten to mention is that yesterday on one of my walks I surprised a group of tourists being shown around the old town.

Today, there’s yet more of them. I encountered this party in the rue des Juifs admiring the architecture.

And so with all of these people around, I wonder what’s going on. I’m not used to crowds at all.

Back at the apartment after LIDL, I was treated to the most glorious sight of this magnificent rainbow just offshore.

A couple of my fellow residents were admiring it too, and just at that moment the heavens opened so I fled inside.

But that’s quite unusual for me, isn’t it? Usually the weather waits for me to leave and then soaks me all the way to the shops.

And talking of going all the way to the shops … “well, one of us is” – ed … I strode out there, strode all around the shop and then strode all the way back without stopping for a rest.

And so I’m not quite sure what’s going on. Maybe it’s with having lost this weight and maybe it’s with starting to go running again, but I’m feeling much more like it these days than I did before.

Up until (a rather late) lunch I cracked on with the dictaphone entries and by the time I stopped for my butty I had done 13 of them. Some of them were admittedly quite short but one or two of them weren’t.

After lunch I had a good play with my new toys and then attacked the web page updates. And by the time I was ready to go for my afternoon walk I’d amended 19 of them.

Mind you, I might have been ready to go for my walk, but I don’t think that the walk was ready to go for me.

There was a huge rainstorm going on out there that had totally enveloped the Ile de Chausey and knowing my luck, it would normally be heading in my general direction to have a go at me too.

But for some unaccountable reason it stayed put over there and treated the Ile de Chausey to a good dreanching.

The wind has died down now. It’s merely gale force.

We still have the heavy seas rolling in off the Atlantic, although nothing like as impressive as the heavy rollers that we saw the day before yesterday.

They were nevertheless still crashing down with some kind of fury on the rocks down here at the foot of the Pointe du Roc. It looks as if this storm is here to stay.

Back at the apartment yet again, and this evening I busied myself making a huge load of hummus. Basically, its 50% chick peas, 25% sesame seed paste, and 25% everything else like chick pea liquid, olive oil, garlic, black pepper, sea salt, and all whizzed up into a purée in the whizzer.

Finally, add a pile of olives and some fenugreek, and whizz it just enough to break up the olives, not to totally liquidise them. And then stick it in little pots one of which went in the fridge for use and the rest went in the freezer.

And it’s wicked.

But beforehand I’d peeled the carrots that I’d bought the other day, diced them and put them on to boil with some ginger, coriander and bay leaves.

When I’d cleaned the whizzer after the hummus, I put the carrots in (taking out the bay leaves of course) with some of the liquid, added some coconut cream and then whizzed that up into a delicious carrot soup.

That’s in the fridge now and that’s going to be lunch for the next day or two, with the leftovers going in the freezer.

Tea was the rest of the curry from the other night and it was delicious too. Even better than the night that I cooked it.

On my evening walk this evening the sky was perfectly clear out to the north, and you could see for miles.

There was a red light out there on the horizon flashing occasionally. It’s probably a marker light on the Channel Islands but I took a photo of it anyway and enlarged it.

You can’t see too much on the photo but cropping it out and enhancing it a little, it’s either a multiple light, I’m picking up the reflection off the sea, or else it’s that the camera was shaking around.

Not shaking as much as the guy who I surprised though. He was muttering about this “lousy sh**ty weather” so I crept up behind him and said “i quite agree”.

I bet that he went home to change his underwear.

It was such a good night that I had a good mess around with the camera taking a few night shots.

Nothing particularly serious – just messing around to have a little fun and games while I was at it. I didn’t have the tripod with me, just the monopod, so the images aren’t anything like as sharp as they might be.

To see what the quality was like, I’d left the ISO setting fairly low and was using a very slow shutter speed.

The view around the other side of the walls looking out across the town was pretty good too so I took a few photos of out there too.

What I’ll have to do is to wait for the wind to die down (if it ever does) and on a clear night like this, come out with the tripod. There were some good images that I took last year when i was practising.

And I managed my run too. I made it to my marker just about, and my lungs were bursting but I’ve got to push on and do somethign about my activity level.

Today I’ve done 110% of my daily activity and in the first week of November I’ve run for 26 minutes. I don’t think that I’d managed that much in total since my illness so things are looking up.

So it’s another late night and I’m listening to (and playing) music. I hadn’t realised just how bad that acoustic was until I started to play with this new one and I’m quite happy. But it got me going, I suppose and learning on a bad machine makes it so much more interesting and exciting to play on something much better.

So on that note, seeing as we are talking about music, I’ll leave you all alone.

I wonder what tomorrow will bring?

thora port de granville harbour manche normandy france

night donville les bains granville manche normandy france

night brehal plage granville manche normandy france

night place d’armes granville manche normandy france

night granville manche normandy france

Tuesday 15th January 2019 – CHAOS, TURMOIL AND MAYHEM!

Yes, the promises of Liam Fox and his “easiest deal in History” came thoroughly unstuck today as Mrs Mayhem suffered the worst ever defeat of any Government in the whole history of Parliament.

The whole set of wheels has come off and the UK has been plunged into total chaos. The ship is drifting helplessly with no-one at the helm and in a couple of months time it will drop off the edge of the World and into the abyss and who knows what will happen.

I don’t know how many tens of millions of lives will be affected by the failure of the UK Government to ask 65 million people a proper question and receive a proper answer. But it’s the illiterate uneducated Etonites who are responsible for all of this. All they ever learnt at Public School was sodomy, and they must have spent a lot of time at it judging by the way that they have completely buggered up the UK.

With having had an early night I had a little fit of tossing and turning during the night but managed to stay asleep until the alarm went off. And I managed to haul myself out of bed at something that resembled a reasonably early time.

First job though was to make some muesli. I’d run out yesterday and forgot to do some. And fresh muesli really is delicious.

After breakfast I started to download another pile of programs for the new computer.

But not straight away.

The computer decided that it wanted to do an upgrade of the operating system and that took a while. But since then the computer hasn’t dropped the internet connection.

Of course, I’m preparing for the worst, especially as I have tempted fate, but we shall see.

It’s nice though, nevertheless, to be able to connect up all of my external drives, a couple of portable drives, a couple of memory sticks and a memory card reader all at once and swap files around.

By the end of the morning all of the programs that I think that I need are loaded on, including the printer files and the Nikon software, so I could go to lunch in a happy state.

Lunch was butties of course, with some home-made hummus out of the freezer. And delicious it was too.

Talking of memory cards, I realised (too late) that the new computer doesn’t have an SD card slot and that was expected to cramp my style somewhat seeing as the big Nikon takes full-size cards.

But then I remembered – the card in there is a micro-SD card in an adaptor, and I do have a micro-SD card reader. So now, I’ve finally managed to load up all of the photos – almost 400 of them – that have been building up since the other laptop died. And I made a start on editing them too.

I might even be finished before the end of the month. However, I was interrupted by a brief 20 minutes asleep on my chair.

But then I was able to go off and wander around the headland for a walk in the wind.

But just offshore at the Pointe du Roc there’s something weird bobbing up and down.

I’ve not noticed this before so I was wondering what it might be. it could be a ball of some kind that’s been washed off a beach, or a cable buoy that has come adrift from its mooring in the tidal port, or even a fishing float.

Talking of fishing, there was some kind of movement out to sea near the Ile de Chausey.

Coupling up the 70-300mm zoom lens I could see that it’s the yellow and blue trawler from Granville on its way back to the harbour with today’s catch from the English Channel.

Frying tonight, obviously. But I wonder what kind of fish it has in the hold.

And talking of the harbour, we have one of our regular visitors in here this afternoon. Thora has come in from St Helier on one of her regular freight runs.

One of these days I’ll have to go down there and have a look round her. A while back I was given a guided tour of her elder sister Grima, so I’m intrigued to see what Thora is like.

It should be quite interesting, and if this stupid Brexit gets out of hand, I might find myself having to sign on as a ship’s cook so I’ll need to know my way around.

Back here with a coffee and some cake, I looked at the post. And I now have not only my duplicate telephone bills but also … wait for it … my certificate from the Tax Office. Still a few things that I need but we’re well on the way.

The new spare ink for the printer arrived today as well, and it’s just as well because I’ve started to print out the documents that I need. This is going to be a long – and expensive – job.

Another thing that I managed to accomplish was to have a shower and a haircut. My hair was getting a little out of control so a good trim with my sheep-shearer was appropriate.

For tea, I had home-made pie with baked beans and some oven chips that I found in the bottom of the freezer that had been there since last winter.

And followed that by a walk around the walls.

They are progressing with the Fibre-Optic cable work. They’ve now dug a hole on the corner where one of the little alleys joins the rue Notre Dame – presumably to drop an inspection chamber or junction box in there.

And the new little kitten was waiting for me again. he or she had another little stroke.

So now while the politicians are busy hitting the fan, I’m going to bed. I wonder what kind of news tomorrow will bring.

Tuesday 9th October 2018 – OUCH! THAT WAS …

… a tough day today.

Just before going to bed I received a message from my internet supplier saying that my site had now been upgraded as requested. And so I set to and uploaded all of the Arctic photos while I was at it.

And while I was also at it, I had a little bit of fun with one of the photos of Strawberry Moose that we had taken.

One of the people on board The Good Ship Ve … … errr … Ocean Endeavour was an Olympic gymnastics judge and she had taken quite a shine to His Nibs. And so we had done a little posing session with the two of them.

Add a little bit of text and here we are.

The result of all of this was that it was about 02:00 when Yours Truly toddled off to bed. Not the ideal way to end the day when you have to leave your stinking pit at 06:00.

But it made no difference because at 05:05 this morning I was wide-awake and awaiting the alarms. I have a feeling that I’ll be paying for this later.

I’d also been off on a nocturnal ramble again.

Just by way of a change, not to the High Arctic. But where, I have no idea. But we returned to this very impressive stone building that turned out to be a boys’ school. We were all starving and having to queue up near the door, and I had the Cunning Plan to loiter around near the air hostesses because I imagined that with them being “staff”, they would be let into the dining hall first. But when we were let in, we were allowed to take one liquid food off the trays that were being handed around, and then another thing from somewhere else and so on. And eventually someone stuck a cold sausage in my mouth. I made my way back to my room, which was at the end in an alcove off the dining hall. And I was given a large plate of food to take with me. A little later I went back into the dining hall but it was now deserted. Someone had left their mobile phone in “broadcast” mode on one of the tables so I started to look around to see where it was broadcasting to (and to salvage some more food) but the few boys who were left were making such a noise that they interrupted my search.

Anyway despite the alarm going off at 06:00 it was much closer to 07:00 when I finally arose. And with plenty of things to do this morning it was about 09:00 when I had my breakfast. That was followed by a little tidying up and a half-hour session on the bass guitar now that I’ve restarted playing.

And then I had a little snooze. The first of three or four that I had during the course of the day.

Most of the day has been spent on the voyage to the Arctic. I’ve added the photos to one of the earlier pages of the voyage and expanded the text accordingly.

Having completed that (because it took much longer than it ought to have done) I’ve updated the front page for the travel section of the website, prepared an index for the voyage, completed an individual page of photographs for each day and made a start on writing the text for the first page.

None of those is on line yet because there’s going to be so much to do, but as I have said before … “and on many occasions too” – ed … if I don’t start, I won’t finish. So I need to push on.

It didn’t help with the odd bit of dozing off here and there during the course of the day. That 3-hour sleep didn’t do me much good at all.

Lunch was on the wall with my butties, my book and a lizard. And I dropped my banana by accident.

But it was a beautiful day, really sunny and warm with a lovely blue sky. I took full advantage of the conditions by taking a nice panoramic photo of the harbour and the surroundings, all the way round to St Pair sur Mer.

Later on in the afternoon, I went for a walk around the headland. Plenty of people out there today enjoying the sunshine. And I ended up by taking off my jumper and catching a little sun on my arms.

We had a visitor in the harbour too. Thora had sailed into port today and was moored up at the crane.

I didn’t realise that she had a visor bow. I cant have been paying much attention. But there it is, raised up and out of the way of the loading operation.

One of these days I’ll get to go for a guided tour around her to see how she is and to find out how come Grima was retired from operation.

Tea was a frozen aubergine and kidney bean whatsit with pasta, more to make some room in the freezer than for any other reason. I’ll be off shopping in early course and we need the space.

And then I had my evening walk around the walls in the pleasant evening.

Fallen asleep again, but I’m going to do this and them I’m off to bed regardless of how early it is.

I need to be on form for tomorrow.

Thursday 2nd August 2018 – NOW HERE’S …

… a thing.

Not so many days ago I was saying that we hadn’t seen Grima for quite some considerable time. So when I walked into town later this morning, I was surprised to see this boat moored up to the quayside.

At first glance I thought that it was Grima, albiet having had a major refit because, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, she was looking rather tired after almost 45 years of service.

But on closer examination she isn’t Grima at all but another former Shetland ferry called Thora.

She’s not quite a sister of Grima because she’s slightly larger and has a different superstructure.

But she also worked around the Shetland Islands and the last information that I have was that she was laid up as a reserve in 2011.

Anyway, here she is in all her glory. A rather blurred photograph unfortunately but it was taken rather late at night on a very slow exposure.

And I would have liked to have found out much more about her, but there was no-one around to ask.

On eof these days I’ll have to go down there when there are people around, and see if I can talk my way into having a guided tour.

It was another bad night last night. I spent most of it tossing and turning. It wasn’t until light that I started to drift off to sleep. And so I rather ignored the alarm when it went off.

With having a late start and a late breakfast, it was getting rather late to walk up to LIDL. And then Ingrid appeared on the internet so we had a really good chat for over an hour.

No chance of going shopping now so I just popped into town for a baguette, when I encountered Thora.

I don’t understand these lizards.

For my lunch I went and sat on the wall as usual. Two lizards came to keep me company, and although I dropped three pieces of pear on the floor, they spent most of the time fighting over just one of the pieces, totally ignoring the other two.

Back here I had a shower and cut my hair, and then started to tidy up. Everywhere is vacuumed and I just need to wash the bathroom and the floors, which I can do tomorrow before I go to the station.

I also did a lot more tidying up, and there’s not all that much more to do now.

Tea was one of the pies out of the freezer, and that reminded me of something. I have some gluten-free pastry here so I made a couple of green bean and mushroom pies for tea tomorrow night. No sense in wasting the pastry, is there?

It was another beautiful evening when I went for a walk around the headland.

There were crowds of people out there tonight picnicking in the lovely weather, and while I was looking out to sea I noticed a movement right way in the distance.

And one of the advantages of having a really decent telephoto lens and image editor is that you can crop and enlarge the image to see what’s going on.

No prizes for guessing what it is of course.

It’s the Channel Islands ferry, the old one (I’ve not seen the new one for quite a while, thinking on – maybe she’s up at Barneville) coming back from the last run of the day from St Helier.

The tide is on its way in right now so it’s the right time for the ferry to come back and moor up. And then, I imagine, she’ll be going off into the inner harbour for the night.

She’s not the only one who’s back in port right now.

As well as Thora who is still where I saw her at lunchtime, Marité has also returned from her latest voyage and is moored up here at her quayside this evening.

She doesn’t appear on any port call list that I can find so it looks as if she has just been on a trip around the bay. But not, presumably, at five bob a head.

So now that I’m back, I’m going to have an early night. I’ve managed to go for a whole day without crashing out, and I’m going to be busy for the next few days, so I need to make sure I’m in good form.

Not quite sure how I’m going to manage that though.

Wednesday 25th July 2018 – I HAVEN’T DONE …

… very much in the way of catching up with the outstanding work here today.

And for a couple of good reasons too.

Firstly, I was in bed at about 22:30 last night, thoroughly exhausted despite my good sleep yesterday afternoon. But the result of that was that I was wide awake at 04:40 and out of bed working before 06:00, which will come as a surprise to anyone.

However, the downside of that is that after the usual morning routine and breakfast, I crashed out on the chair at the desk, and was out until about 08:50.

And again for half an hour later on in the afternoon.

The second reason was that this file transfer is dragging on and dragging on. I’m at about 30% of the transfer despite it being working non-stop for 36 hours.

It would have been a better idea to have done this with the laptop that has the broken screen and keyboard rather than blocking up this laptop for so long.

However, I haven’t been idle at all.

I’ve totally rearranged the living area – put all of the shelves with the CDs and DVDs alongside the glass unit and the posh bookshelves at the end of the room.

Next step was to drill out a hole in the back of the posh bookshelves And now the television, DVD and VHS players and the new hifi are all arranged properly in there.

Finally, I turned the sofa, carpet and coffee table around 90% so that they are all facing the TV, with the window now away to my left.

Everything works fine, much to my surprise, and it’s all now looking as if someone lives here. I could even be quite comfortable in here, which would be a surprise to any regular reader of this rubbish.

As a result of all of this, lunch was rather late. And as well as my book and my butties, I was joined by two of my lizards, with a third lurking away in the undergrowth nearby.

There seemed to be a lot of activity in the harbour too.

We haven’t seen Grima for quite some considerable time, but Normandy Trader was in there down at the bottom end loading up. It’s been a few weeks since we’ve seen her too.

La Grande Ancre was down there loading up too. I’m not sure where she goes but her turn-round time indicates that her destination is probably the Ile de Chausey.

Back here, in between having a little doze, I attacked the bedroom and that’s looking much more tidy too. And the things that I found that I had forgotten makes tidying up all worthwhile.

Later on, I went for my afternoon walk around the medieval walls.

The tide was on its way out and so there was a little bit of beach down at the foot of the cliff just here.

With crowds of people enjoying themselves on the sand and splashing themselves in the sea, even though the waves were just a little bit wild this afternoon.

But that was just a small sample of the people who were out there enjoying themselves in the sea.

Out there in the sea off the Casino Beach there were crowds of people swimming around.

And regular readers of this rubbish will recall from a few weeks ago that the diving platform was almost submerged by the high tide. And even though the tide is far from being fully out, you can tell just how tall the platform is and how high is the tidal range.

And you might also remember the tiny sliver of beach that we saw on our walk the other day as the tide was almost fully in.

Today, with the tide on its way out, there’s much more beach for people to spread themselves around right now.

There still isn’t enough beach for me though. I’d much rather have the whole of the beach to myself of course but that’s not really possible around here in July and August.

But I do have a cunning plan.

I carried on with my walk around the walls and ended up overlooking the harbour.

The Normandy Trader was still there being loaded up, but there was also a great pile of activity as they assembled yet another huge mound of roadstone on the quayside.

It looks as if we might very shortly be expecting another visit from Neptune or one of her sister ships.

Back here, I rather ran aground with the tidying up and loitered around for a while. But then that’s no surprise. Any previous visitor who would come here now would see a totally different place from the one that they would remember.

Tea was a vegan burger with potatoes, vegetables and onion gravy. Delicious it was too.

Later on I went for a walk around the headland.

Nothing much exciting was happening and there weren’t too many people about, but in the harbour was a yacht that I don’t recall having seen before.

It looks as if it’s quite an old yacht, with its beautiful wooden superstructure. Unfortunately its name wasn’t visible so I can’t tell you anything about it.

I shall have to go for a walk down there tomorrow if she is still about.

And hopefully an early night with a good sleep. I’m off out tomorrow so I need to be on form. And this file transfer can manage itself.

Tuesday 29th May 2018 – IT WAS A BIT …

… of a shame about last night.

What with all of my efforts of recent days I made a point of going to bed at a relatively early hour last night so as to have a head start for today. But instead, I had one of the worst nights’ sleeps that I have had for a long time. One every unhappy bunny here again.

But anyway I was up at a reasonable-ish early time nevertheless but I wasn’t in the mood for breakfast quite then. I ended up for a while talking to someone on the internet about nothing in particular.

But after breakfast there were things to do, like another batch of photos to edit and a blog to update seeing that I didn’t do it before going to bed last night.

Once all of that was out of the way I occupied myself with a knotty problem on the 3D program that I use. And while I’m none-the-wiser, I’m certainly better-informed. And it’s hard to believe that with having done nothing but that this morning, I ended up going for a late lunch.

After that, it all went wrong.

There’s lots to do here but firstly there was a crowd of neighbours hanging around outside the building so I went to join them. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that I’m not the most sociable of people at the best of times, but when one is living ina close-knit community like this, one has to show willing.

And even that was interrupted by the arrival of Gribouille the ginger cat who allowed me to pick him up and stroke him for a while, much to the surprise of everyone else.

Once all that was out of the way there was only time for a coffee before it was time for me to go out for my afternoon walk. But at the moment where I was just about to put my sooty foot outside the door the heavens opened and we had another drenching. I dunno who it is up there, but just let him know that he missed me.

Eventually it eased off and so I could go for my walk. And at least it kept the grockles out of my way which is also nice. I started off in my raincoat but by the time that I was back here it was boiling hot, clammy and close, and I was sweating.

That reminded me that I had forgotten my shower this morning so I hopped underneath for a general clean-up. And I cut my hair as well seeing as it was getting all a bit long.

While all of this was going on, Liz came on line with a computer problem that needed resolving, and Sandra wanted to chat about my plans for summer. Trying to fit my guitar practice in was all rather complicated.

Tea was a frozen kidney bean and aubergine whatsit from out of the freezer and then I had a nice walk around the walls.

There wasn’t a great deal going on on the seaward side of the walls, but round on the harbour side, I noticed that Normandy Trader was back in port.

She’s been in and out of here quite a lot just recently and so she must be getting a lot of work. And that reminds me that I haven’t seen anything of Grima for a while. I shall have to make further enquiries

And despite the huge piles of gravel building up on the quayside, we haven’t seen a gravel ship for a while either.

One ship that is back in port though, ready for the summer season, is the Marité. But she was moored in a position where I couldn’t take a decent photo.

And why I was prowling around trying to find a good spec, it suddenly came into my mind that I had never taken a decent photograph of the turret house built into the walls by the Eglise de Notre Dame du Cap Lihou.

So this seemed like as good an opportunity as ever to deal with that little issue. After all, it’s a beautiful house and I could quite happily live in one of those turrets, especially with the superb view that it has over the harbour.

And now, I really AM going to have an early night.

I hope that it’s a good ‘un.

Monday 26th March 2018 – HOW LONG IS IT …

… since we’ve had a Ship of the Day?

We have them every now and then of course but nothing like the ones to which we are accustomed, steaming … “dieseling” – ed … down the Straits of Dover or up the St Lawrence. But today was rather different.

With a huge 300 mm zoom lens and a high vantage point on the Pointe du Roc, a good image editor (Paint Shop Pro has never failed me yet after well over 20 years) and a bit of “crop and paste” I can take photos dozens of miles out into the English Channel and make them look fairly respectable, all things considered.

I’ve no idea who she is and where she’s going, but her silhouette bears a strong resemblance to the Brittany Ferries’ Pont Aven – the ferry that runs between St Malo and Portsmouth. That is of course mere speculation but she’s impressive just the same.

And that’s not the only ship that was out and about.

The rattle and clanking of an ancient Kelvin diesel engine left no-one in any doubt as to who else was just leaving the harbour as I rounded the headland.

It’s our old friend Grima presumably having nipped in last night under cover of darkness while I was flaked out on the sofa.

There was quite a crowd up here on the city walls watching her leave port. French people of course, but judging by their accents not from around here.

They were making all kinds of remarks and speculations about who or what she might be so I was able to fill them in on the details. They may be none-the-wiser, but they are certainly better-informed right now.

But never mind ships for now – during the night I was on the strangest rail journey. Rattling down the long corridor of this double-deck train furnished with cheap red and white plastic seats and trim until we suddenly came to the carriage with the swimming pool in it. The only way past was to shoot down this hole underneath the pool in which you were propelled by compressed air, and it was full of water. Definitely not the stuff for claustrophobics. So I queried it with the two Japanese attendants who at first didn’t (or wouldn’t) hear me but eventually they understood what I meant and “ohh yes, that’s the only way”. “But it’s wet!” I replied. “So where’s your towel?” they asked. When I explained that I didn’t have one they immediately offered to lend me one, with a weary sigh as if they were totally fed up with people who come on their trains and don’t bring their own towels. And I still wasn’t convinced about this escape route. I come out in a cold sweat even when the word “submarine is mentioned and regular readers of this rubbish will recall that I once declined the opportunity to visit the interior of the aforementioned.

But this all began with a visit that I had made to Stoke on Trent with someone whom I know to go to pick up something from the car spares place. It was crowded and I eventually fought my way to the front of the queue. The three little Chinese girls standing next to me were after a car part as they couldn’t go to school until they had this piece. “Let me guess – it’s a Mercedes” I said, recalling a similar occasion that had occurred to me. Of course, it was, so I leaned across to my friend, told him the story and invited him to guess. He didn’t hear me so I went across to him – and found that I had lost my place in the queue. So back again and worked my way round, and eventually I was seen. I had to go outside for my part where the person dealing with me told me that the measurements were wrong. It wasn’t 84m but he could find something at 80mm. I reckoned that it was more like 84mm but he insisted on 80mm and it was the centre boss from a Ford Escort steering wheel. The one he had was dirty so he started to clean it up but this had already taken far longer than I had planned and I had things to do, so I took it as it was, explaining to my friend (by now joined by none other than Zero) that I would see him later – although I knew that I wouldn’t really have time. My route away took me to the hospital and I ended up in a ward where I had once stayed. It was crowded with people sleeping everywhere and in the corner were people doing relaxation exercises, pretending to be rabbits asleep. Something that I found quite amusing. My route out of here took me past all of the nurses whom had dealt with me, and they all kept on asking me if I had my permit to leave. I explained that I hadn’t even been in, but they of course asked me why I was here then. And it was during one of these encounters that I ended up on board this train.

And no wonder that I was exhausted after all of that. Quite a struggle to leave my bed when the alarm went off.

And for a change I managed the medication and a breakfast, followed by a shower and even a lap round of the washing machine. High time that I organised myself.

Once everything was up and running and the medication had done its stuff I headed out for the shops. And it was an expensive day too for in three of the shops I spent €25:00 each, and that’s not like me.

In LIDL the money went on a kitchen roll holder and a set of kitchen knives (which are rubbish – worse than the one that they are supposed to replace), some absolutely delicious strawberries (I remembered that I had half a can of spray-on vegan cream left from Christmas) and a punnet of kiwis. Yes, with my new sorbet maker, I’m not going to be short of desserts for the next week or so.

NOZ was having another sale of exotic drinks plus a DVD sale with some good stuff in there, and also a nice black fleece. I realise that I don’t have enough jumpers and fleeces are good because they dry quickly when you wash them or it rains. And this one has the pockets sewn that they make little inside pockets too, which are very handy for travelling.

And a rolling pin! I’ve finally found a traditional wooden rolling pin too. Been looking for one for ages.

LeClerc was just the usual stuff but a lot of it because I’d let the supplies run right down just recently. And just €2:50 in Centrakor, on a new measuring jug. I had something of an accident the other day with the previous one.

Of course today was just the kind of day to take your butties to the wall outside and sit thereupon, so I had some soup to finish off, didn’t I? And then I had my walk and my little guitar practice session.

The postie came meantime and bought me the first consignment of my order from the other day. With having no credit card I wasn’t able to treat myself to a birthday present but once I’d organised that last time that I was in Brussels I could go ahead and order some of this year’s wish list. We had the remote control that I mentioned, and a couple of DVDs. More is yet to come.

Tea was a burger and vegetables, and the usual evening walk.

Liz was on line later on so we chatted for ages. Dylan, her grandson, has just passed his flute exam (bravo Dylan) and Robyn, her grand-daughter, has just passed her first level ballet exam.

So I’ve ordered a command performance ballet when they come in the summer, Dylan on music and Robyn on the dance floor

What more can anyone require?

Thursday 8th March 2018 – YOU MISSED …

… all of the excitement this morning.

Much of the Pointe de la Roc is out of bounds to heavy vehicles, and coaches are only authorised to use a short stretch of the road that leads to the big car park.

But that didn’t stop this driver, and his mate in the coach behind thinking that the rules don’t apply to them. And they duly came up here and then tried to negotiated the corner into the Place d’Armes.

You have probably noticed that the registration number of the bus is “75” – a Paris number. And that explains everything. Rules in the Provinces don’t apply to Parisians as we know. They are far superior to be bothered by that sort of thing

And it was quite amusing to watch the drivers as they were suddenly confronted by the roadworks here.

One coach managed just about to negotiate the tight corner after many vicissitudes, but the other was well and truly wedged and it took the driver about 20 minutes to extract himself.

I did at one stage go over to the driver to ask him if he would like me to manoeuvre the coach for him, but I was met with the kind of greeting that would have been considered out-of-place in the fo’c’sle of an Australian whaler.

But he eventually extracted himself, turned round (narrowly avoiding missing a couple of parked cars) and then disappeared the wrong way down the one-way street.

I had my early night, but I didn’t have much of a relax though because I was tossing and turning throughout most of it. But that didn’t stop me goign on one or two of my voyages.

We started off with one of our 3D characters (and when you have your own 3D characters coming with you on a nocturnal ramble you know that you have problems) having to choose a new ski suit for a holiday and ended up after many more vicissitudes choosing a lemon – coloured one. And simple as that sounds, you have no idea just how long that took.
And from there we moved into the realm of realism (such as it might be) with my father telling me about one of his former colleagues (who actually drove my schoolkids about when I had my taxis) who was selling a Ford Cortina 2000E at the local auctions – for a reserve of £4800. Of course that was way out of my price and so I wasn’t planning to go, but a series of events conspired to have me in Whitchurch at the time of the auction and so I ended up there just in time to see him list the vehicle at a reserve price of £4080. But turning into the car park I had run over a glass bottle in Caliburn, and the tyre was punctured and a ball joint damaged. This man told me that he’d look at it after the auction as he was now running a small tyre business. So the bidding started on his car and was very sluggish round the £2000 mark, when suddenly it took off and went well over the reserve. And at the end of the auction the man told me that he now had to go to a funeral – but I shouldn’t go to Garage X because they weren’t as good as Garage Y – which coincidentally was the one to which I went anyway. He went off to look for his hearse, which he couldn’t find, and his wife told me what a marvellous person he was, to which I replied that I knew all about him. I ended up (I’m not sure how) with Caliburn at Garage Y (which bore a surprising resemblance to my father’s workshop) where the puncture was repaired. But I wanted to fit the wheel, to which he hummed and haa’d because he was planning to close up and didn’t have the time. But eventually I wa son my way and it was now really late. I was obliged to crash out in Caliburn at the side of the road, thinking to myself that seeing as how I’d just got back together with Nerina (it was all happening last night, wasn’t it?) what would she think about me having promised to live a more regular lifestyle, and being out at night like this. So being crashed out like this, I was rudely awakened by a police patrol (reminiscences of Switzerland a few years ago) for a “control” and I could in my befuddled state only find half of the papers that I needed. I had to admit that while I had the insurance certificate, I didn’t have the insurance policy and that led to some harsh words and difficult moments.

No wonder that I was thoroughly exhausted this morning after all of that during the night.

After the usual start to the morning and the Thursday shower, I postponed my trip to the shops seeing as it was totally pouring down. But by about 10:00 I could see some blue sky in the distance heading this way so I took to the streets, having my encounter with the coach drivers on the way.

LIDL was the port of call, and there was nothing special to tempt me. But the place was heaving – a vast contrast to last Thursday in the snow. Four of the tills were open but we still had to queue for ages to be served. That’s why I like to go early.

On the way out I’d noticed a load of stuff piled up at the quayside and so I reckoned that Grima was due in.

And I was right too. There she was on the way back, having the sacks of gravel or whatever they were hoisted aboard, giving her something of a list to starboard.

I hope that they had corrected that before she sailed.

Back here I had my coffee and then a little … errr … relax, before another session on the bass. ANd I ws working out a couple of Groundhogs and Hawkwind numbers – so intently tht I was surprised by how quickly the time passed.

After lunch, I was once more … errr … away with the fairies (I really don’t knwo what’s the matter with me these days) but pulled myself out of it and went for a walk instead.

There was quite a number of people out there this afternoon, even though the weather wasn’t the nicest. School holidays, apparently.

But I was distracted by movement down on the quayside just here. It seems that one of the large boats is being moved – and moved by road too. It’s a huge thing and they were having to take all kinds of special precautions.

Still, it all adds to the excitement of living here.

For tea tonight I had a frozen potato and lentil curry out of the freezer. And delicious it was too.

And that took me nicely round to my evening walk.

Cool and a little windy, with another marvellous view of Jersey, and also a marvellous view of the harbour here under the lights. You can see in this pic that when the gates are up and the water isn’t high enough to admit boats, there’s a couple of chequered poles visible, presumably to warn ships not to enter.

And there were crowds of people at the bar tonight. I wonder what’s going on there.

So if I’m lucky, I’ll have another early night. I’ll leave you to digest this … errr …. 1246 words.

Monday 29th January 2018 – I’M OFF …

… on this parking thing today again.

Out on my walk this afternoon I came across two of the worst examples that we have yet to encounter. Here is Madame, parked (with her engine running of course) with two wheels on the pavement right by the school, forcing the kids to walk in the street, and directly opposite her is an empty parking space.

Can you ever get more selfish and stupid than this?

The answer is “of course you can”. And just around the corner too.

Here’s another motorist actually on the main highway, and not only does she have her two wheels parked on the pavement, she’s also parked on a bus stop and she’s blocking someone’s driveway to boot.

This particular parking probably takes the biscuit for being the most stupid of all of the stupid and selfish parking that we have ever seen – but I’m sure that as time passes we’ll see some better examples somewhere.

Just a little reminder – there’s a huge free car park just 50 or so metres from where these vehicles are parked.

The new alarm awoke me just fine this morning, although for some reason the second alarm failed to go off. But as I was up and about by the time that it should have gone off so it didn’t make much difference. But I’ll look into it all the same.

After medication and breakfast, and a little repose I went out to the shops.

And one of the penalties of living in an old Medieval walled city with narrow streets is that delivery is sometimes rather a … errr … challenge.

There are a couple of houses undergoing major renovation and someone has ordered a pile of plasterboard, insulation and the metal framework.

The lorry that has brought it can’t pass underneath the gateway so they are having to trans-ship it in several loads with a smaller van. Ohh the exciting life that we lead!

And remember our crane working on the back of one of the houses at the port?

We have a bigger mobile crane here too and he looks as if he’s beginning to dismantle … "disPERSONtle" – ed … the crane.

But then again we’ve seen that here before and I thought then that it was dismantling the crane, but apparently not. So we’ll have to take our walk around there tomorrow to see what’s going on.

And here’s a sight that I didn’t think that we would ever see. You’ll notice that the harbour basin is empty – not just of ships and boats but of water too.

I told you the other day that they were getting ready to replace the gates to the harbour and they look as if they have started.

And aren’t the seagulls enjoying it, with all of the livestock marooned in the little ponds. But it doesn’t say much for the effectiveness of the dredger that we had here the other week. He’s not done a very even job.

And the issues about the harbour and replacing the gates is that the port is not able to be used at low tide.

There’s the Grima out there riding at anchor waiting for the tide to come in and fill the basin. I imagine that she’s nipping in and out as the tide allows here and that’s going to interrupt their schedule.

And it’s a good jon that the weather has calmed down these last few days. It would have been uncomfortable riding at anchor out there in the storms that we’ve been having.

I struggled off up town (and it was a struggle too these days) to LIDL. And my luck was in.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that a few weeks ago LIDL had on special offer some of these kitchen tool kit things – whisk, chopper, shredder and squidger – ad by the time that I arrived, they had sold out.

The same offer was on starting this morning and I was in luck because they still had some left when I arrived. My squidger is an old one that I liberated from Marianne’s and the plastic body is broked, and the rest of the utensils weren’t there. So I liberated a kit. I’m going to be working on my cooking.

The struggle back here was something else too and I reckoned that I deserved the coffee.

For much of the rest of the day I’ve been attacking that pile of photos that I’ve mentioned. And on a very cursory initial examination, I’ve cleared 21.7GB of duplicates. That cheered me up to, because there’s plenty more to go.

So an evening walk too as well as the morning and the afternoon – 110% according to the fitbit. I shall be meeting myself coming back at this rate.

Lunch was soup of course, and tea was a pepper stuffed with tomato, bulghour, onion, garlic, olives, cumin, olive oil and tomato sauce. Thoroughly delicious it was too. There’s some stuffing left over too and that will come in handy tomorrow for I have a cunning plan for tea.

So bed-time again. An early night, I hope, a good sleep and a nice alarm call. For I’m in town yet again tomorrow.

Thursday 11th January 2018 – REGULAR READERS …

… pf this rubbish will not be at all surprised by today’s news.

I believe that I mentioned that I had tracked down the mobile telephone repairer in Granville – there is only one. And so this morning I set off to pay him a visit. And there on the door was a notice “Gone on Holiday”.

You couldn’t make it up, could you?

I had another excellent night’s sleep, and off on my travels yet again. My mother was having yet another one of her “performances” and so I left home yet again. I found myself in a big house where there was a place for me to stay – but it involved climbing up a rope and leaping across a three-foot gap, hanging on by my fingers and hauling myself up. But somewhere along the line I had acquired a cat, and trying to climb a rope with it in my arms was difficult, and jumping across a three-foot gap would be impossible. And then what made it worse was that another cat decided to come along and join in the fun. He climbed up into my arms too.

After breakfast I had a shower and general clean-up, and then it was tile to hit the streets.

First stop however was the port.

I’d seem them the other day unloading a pile of stuff n the quayside and so I reckoned that it might be Grima coming in. But instead it’s his rival, the Normandy Trader.

She’s a converted landing craft as you can tell, but apart from that I’ve not been able to find out anything about her history. I shouldn’t be surprised if she’s a former Caledonion-MacBraye island hopper, but who knows?

The phone repairer was closed as I said, so I struggled on to LIDL. And it was a struggle up the hill as you can imagine. I’m not really in fit state to go on foot but I do need to push myself onwards.

And seeing that I didn’t want anythinf really, I did well to spend €25:00 in there. But they had unleashed some more towels so I grabbed another set to make two now. And the last set of AAA batteries (but it’s not the batteries that are the issue in the remote control – it must be goosed).

But on the way back, I made an exciting find.

I had to make a sharp deviation to avoid being run down, and found myself face-to-face with the letter boxes of the Associations that use the public rooms.

And there are a couple of things on here that I find quite interesting, as you might expect. I shall have to make further enquiries.

Back in the town, I had a cunning plan.

Being frustrated with this message limit that is blocking my credit card from making on-line payments, I headed to the Post Office. When I was there the other day I’d seen pre-paid credit cards on offer. One of those, with a payment up front, should enable me to complete this driving licence.

But regular readers of this rubbish will not be in the least surprised to learn that the Post Office has sold out, and doesn’t plan on having any more.

You can’t make that up either.

But not to be outdone. I went to the Orange shop and had a bit of a moan at one of the salesmen. And hey! Presto! A quick manipulation with my phone and a raft of messages suddenly appeared.

You might think that I can now go ahead and complete the form, but I have a better idea that might take a couple of days to come to fruition.

All in all, I was out for almost three hours,and I’d done 82% of my daily exercise, so I’d earned a sit-down. And at lunchtime I made myself a thick vegetable soup with pasta and bulghour in it. Delicious it was too, and I even managed some bread.

I was going to say that I had a good relax all afternoon, but that’s not quite true. It was such a beautiful afternoon that later on I tore myself off the sofa and staggered outside for a walk around the headland.

There was a strange-looking yacht out there too. It’s either sailing at a strange angle or else it’s one of these historic yachts of the type that you see around here every now and again.

UNfortunately, without the zoom lens it’s difficult to say.

Yesterday I mentioned the lighthouse here on the Pointe du Roc.

I did say that I’ve yet to take a good photograph of it, and so I resolved to put that right today.

I’ve mentioned … "on many occasions" – ed … that each lighthouse is painted a different colour so that mariners can distinguish them in the daytime, and different sequences of flashes so that ditto in the night.

But I think that they could have been a little more imaginative with the colour scheme here. But at least it blends in with the ruins of the Atlantic Wall.

There’s also a coastguard station here, operated by the French Military.

It’s complete with a radar installation as you can see. A really impressive piece of equipment.

And so I continued on my way around qnd passed the 100% mark so I’m now feeling very virtuous. And quite right too. It’s been a while, although I know that I’m going to suffer for this.

Back here I had a spell on the guitar and listened to the music on the new hi-fi. And we’ve now passed onto Tangerine Dream.

I’m not too keen on some of their more experimental music, but they went through a stage – well, two stages actually – of producing some albums that were unbelievably superb, and bring back many happy memories of when I was living in Hankelow in the mid-70s.

And talking of superb, let me tell you about tea tonight. Not really knowing what I fancied, it was mashed potato with cheese, and a huge plate of mixed vegatbels with bulghour and gravy. Tons of protein in that lot.

That so buoyed me up that I went for another walk (well, more like a stagger) this evening. And I’m now up to 128% of my daily activity.

So I’m off to bed now to easy my aching joints. God knows what I shall be like tomorrow.

Friday 8th December 2017 – PHEW!

This weather is getting worse and worse.

Tonight, going out for my evening walk around the walls, I was the only one out. And that’s no surprise because I nearly wasn’t. There’s a little sally-port out onto the cliffs onto a footpath that I follow, and I had extreme difficulty in forcing myself through the aperture with the wind blowing full in my face.

It’s a long time since I’ve seen a wind quite like this.

Mind you it’s a shame that the tide wasn’t in. Watching the waves crashing onto the sea wall would have been impressive.

It took a while to go off to sleep last night but once I’d gone I’d really gone until the alarm went off. And I know that I was out and about during the night, but as soon as I awoke it all disappeared in a puff.

I’d switched the heat off in here before going to bed last night so it was cold this morning. And it took a while for the place to heat up>. And while it was doing it I was cracking on with my photos. I’ve searched through about half of them and deleted a huge pile of duplicates, some triplicates and even, shame as it is to say it, some quadruplicates.

Another thing that I’ve done is to make a huge back-up. Having freed off plenty of space on this external drive, I have the space to move things about. And a back-up is important. I haven’t done this for a while and I ned to keep it up to date.

This means that the photos that I took recently ae now saved onto the external drive, and as I have an old laptop with an *.ftp program on it, I can now upload them to the web. But having had a good search around on the internet, I am not the only one by any means who is dismayed by my web browser’s decision to discontinue the *.ftp extension.

Despite the weather I went out for my afternoon walk. Just three other people out there being tossed around in the gale. But it was so clear out there that Jersey was the clearest that I have ever seen it.

And there was a famous storm raging out in the bay, and with the sun streaming through some small gaps in the clouds it was all looking quite beautiful.

There had been a change of shipping too. Normandy Trader had gone but Grima was back.

Tea was a frozen curry out of the freezer, with vegetables and rice. And good it was too.

And here’s some disappointing news. As a reward for beating Vitré in the Cup the other day, US Granville have drawn Bordeaux – one of the best teams in the whole of France. And it’s at home too, but being played on a weekend when I’m not here.

how desperate is that?

Thursday 7th December 2017 – WE HAVE …

… a new visitor in the harbour today.

Thrashing her way into harbour today came Normandy Trader. She’s not a sister ship to Shetland Trader and Islay Trader but she is in fact a converted landing craft of the type that we have seen on several occasions in different places around the world.

She’s not by any means new to Granville – in fact she works a shuttle to here from Jersey on a regular basis just like Grima, and so I’m surprised that I’ve never seen here here before.

But here you can see her smashing her way through the storm into the harbour. It really is wicked outside and the spray is flying everywhere as the waves crash into the concrete sea walls.

The wind has turned round and is now blowing from the north-west, and that’s right into the harbour mouth. No wonder that Normandy Trader is making heavy weather of it. Landing craft aren’t designed for conditions like this, especially with a gross tonnage of just 73 tonnes. She was being tossed around like a cork out there.

Last night was a reasonable night for me. Although it took me a while to go off to sleep, I was well away. I somehow missed the first alarm, although I must have responded as the phone was in my hand when I awoke, not under the pillow where it usually is.

But anyway, the second alarm of Billy Cotton and his “Wakey waaaaaaa ….KEYYYYYY” took me completely by surprise.

After breakfast and a little rest, I had a shower and then braved the wind and rain up to LIDL.

Had I still been living on the farm, I would have bought quite a bit of stuff from their special offers this week. But with having changed my lifestyle considerably, there’s nothing that I really need.

But had I been Rhys, I would have been spending my money there. He’s trying to organise some interior lighting for his bus, and they had the rows of 12-volt LED striplights that I like so much. 212 lumens, which is the equivalent of about 18 watts of incandescent power, but drawing 0.1 watt. And you can link them together to give you a running strip light.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that I bought a pile back down on the farm and use them as work lights over the work benches. And they are great.

I walked back here in the rain and was almost trampled to death in the rush of a pile of little kids descending from a school bus. And back here, I had a coffee and a … errr … relax.

After lunch I braved the wind and gales and went for a walk around the headland. And I was the only person out there. And that’s no surprise given the weather.

Tonight I went out for my other walk around the walls – and I’ve done 105% of my day’s target according to the fitbit.

The wind has changed further round now and so I stood for hours on the headland watching the waves down below crash over the sea wall and onto the promenade. It’s an amazing spectacle, the power of nature out there.

Rosemary rang up and we put the world to rights for an hour, and I booked my trip to Leuven for next week too. I’ll be staying at the flathotel at the back of the prison.

Tea was steaeed vegetables and vegan sausages in vegan cheese sauce – and delicious it was too.

So seeing that I have no plans for tomorrow, I’m going to have a nice quiet day of relaxing and organising myself for Leuven

Wednesday 6th December 2017 – HE WAS RIGHT …

… the skipper of the Grima.

He was rushing to get away last night because he reckoned that the weather was going to turn today. And when I went out for my walk this afternoon, turned it certainly had. It wasn’t quite the violent wind that blew me back into the apartment the other day, but it wasn’t far off.

And furthermore, instead of blowing from the north, it was blowing from the south-west, so it didn’t hit me until I’d rounded the headland by the lighthouse. It was so violent that it was no surprise that there were no more than four of five of us out for a stroll. I even had to find a new way back to the apartment to avoid the searing blast of wind up the alleyway.

This evening, if anything, the wind was worse. It was okay walking around underneath the north wall of the Medieval town, but once I rounded the walls to the south side, the blast was phenomenal. If it keeps up like this we’ll all know about it. It’s no surprise that there was only me and one other person out there tonight. Not even a cat to stroke.

But apart from that, I had a better night last night. I was away on my travels during the night – trying to find some second-hand tyres for my Ford Cortina. A Charity Shop came up with the goods. They had two at £10:00 each so I paid up happily – but was disappointed when I saw them because there wasn’t much tread on them. And by the time that I had paid for the fitting and balancing and the like, I wasn’t getting a good deal at all.
A little later I was walking along a mothballed railway line which was maintained in good condition with the buildings in good repair. The thing that struck me though was that every mile or so there was a platelayer’s telephone in an old red BT telephone box.

After breakfast I had a quiet day with these photos – slowly whittling them down into manageable numbers and deleting the duplicates, of which there are plenty. And going for walkies of course.

Tea was the remains of Sunday’s vegan meat loaf, with potatoes carrots peas and broccoli done in the microwave vegetable steamer. And that worked well enough, especially with the gravy made from the water.

So thnight I’ll have an early night. I need to be on form tomorrow as I have to make my travel arrangements for next week.

Tuesday 5th December 2017 – I HAD A …

… phone call this morning. Would I like to go for a coffee this afternoon?

Clearly, something is up.

I’d had a miserable night last night – awake at 04:20 with a dreadful itch that I couldn’t scratch and it was so annoying. But I’d been on my travels too and it was rather depressing. A friend of mine – a woman – had died and someone else hand hanged her in the bathroom. And there she had hung for a couple of weeks, slowly decaying. I knew that I had to dispose of the body via an undertaker but the longer I left it, the more complicated it became of course. There was no doubt that she had died of natural causes but this prevarication is yet another story of my life, isn’t it? I’d painted myself into a corner for no good reason.

After breakfast I had things to do – liek work on this enormous pile of photos and finding that many of them are duplicates – not that that’s much of a surprise. But I’ll plug away at them until they are all properly filed.

After lunch, I had a shower and then set off down to the docks, and the Grima in fact. Her master wanted to see me.

I helped the crew (of two) load the ship, had a good chat and was given a conducted tour of the ship.

The engine room is beautiful – two old Kelvin diesels, long stroke, slow revving, with plenty of roo to move aroud them; everything eccessible, and even a well underneath so you can drop out the conrods and pistons without dismanting the engine too much.

It’s a marine engineer’s dream and a far cry from this modern hi-tech stuff. You could dismantle this engine and repair it in mid-ocean without any problem at all.

But downstairs in the hold, around a coffee,, we got down to business. The guy who does the running around, fetching and carrying for the Grima, is getting more work than he used to, and so he’s not willing to drive around picking up parcels and the odd pallet, unless he charges the standard 25-tonne lorry rate. Even for an envelope.

That van that I was telling you about the other week that came on the Grima, they have dropped that here to go fetching and carrying the small packets but it’s not suitable for large stuff and they don’t often have time. Accordingly, they need someone with a large van – Transit-size in fact.

And so we had a lengthy chat about this and that, and there might be some developments on this score in the future. Who knows?

For tea this evening, I made a potato and lentil curry. And seeing that it fell short (like last week’s) I lengthened it with a tin of runner beans. A couple of weeks ago, NOZ had a vegetable steamer for a microwave oven. Nothing like as solid as a Tupperware one, but it was only €3:50 so I bought it. And it cooked my potatoes really well. I could be onto a winner with this.

I’ve had my walk too, and so I’ll try for an early night. And we’ll see what tomorrow brings.

Thursday 16th November 2017 – RED SKY AT NIGHT …

…Shepherd’s delight
Redsky in the morning, Avranches is on fire.

We were treated to a most glorious sunrise this morning – one of the nicest that I’ve seen for quite a while. And so I snapped a photograph of it through the window. It was rather too cold to open it.

It’s the kind of thing that can cheer me up. We’ve said before about how Ancient Man worshipped the sun and it’s seeing things like this that helps you to understand why.

And I needed cheering up too because I’d had another bad, congested night. It took hours to go off to sleep and I was awake quite early on.

But I’d been on my travels too. Back to the back garden of Vine Tree Avenue where I was ill and the place was all overgrown. And who should come along to help me (in reality to do it for me) but Guus and Lieneke.
And later I was with Nerina and I was itching to show her the waterfall that I had discovered out in the wilderness. She agreed to come, and this meant descending into the bowels of an emigrant ship past all of the desperate people in there, and then going down through the holds and bilges. I could see that Nerina was unhappy about it and I was doing my best to encourage her and urge her on. I knew that it would be well worth the effort once she got to see it, but it was hard to motivate her.

After breakfast I loitered around for a while to give my tablets an opportunity to work and then I hit the streets.

From my vantage point by the drawbridge I can look down on the harbour and see what is going on.

And we can see what Combattant is doing down there right enough. There’s a lighter now moored up alongside and that has a digger on board. I’d heard about a project to dredge the harbour and it looks as if they are making a start.

As an aside, I did once hear a story about dredging in the Port of London where a dredger pulled up a car that had been in there for 30 years – and still had the occupants in it.

Grima was still down there too. She had unloaded her cargo of scrap – it was one of these mini-Ford-Transits –
and was busy loading up a pile of stuff to take back to Jersey.

But what caught my eye was the pontoon tied up to the side of the boat. It made me wonder what was going on down there and so I resolved to go down for a look on my way back.

At the moment, I was off to LIDL.

It was a struggle for me to get up the hill. I clearly wasn’t feeling much like it at all, being ill as I am. But eventually I made it up there and picked up a loaf of bread and some pastry. I fancy having a go at another pie

I had a slow walk back down to the harbour for a look at Combattant.

The lighter by her side is called Ar-Mor. That’s an old Celtic word for Brittany and means “Land of the Sea” or “Land by the Sea”. Until comparatively modern times Brittany was known as Armorica.

There was a crewman working on the Combattant and we had quite a chat. He confirmed that she was here to dredge and would be here a few days. That explains,
by the way, her erratic port movements.

Down the dockside to the Grima and I soon found the reason for the pontoon. We have a frogman in the water having a good look at the underneath of the ship.

Talking to the skipper, it seems that there’s something blocking one of the water outlets – and while we were chatting, the frogman pulled a huge pile of seaweed out.

And here’s an interesting thing – to put a diver in the water in the port of St Helier costs a minimum of £1,000. Here in Granville, it’s simply an hourly charge. And that’s the reason why he was having it done here

We had quite an exciting chat too – putting the world to rights, and as he was doing that, a lady went aboard. Subsequent enquiries revealed that he has a licence to carry 12 passengers, and that there are some cheap hotels on the Quayside at St Helier. Now doesn’t that conjure up all kinds of interesting ideas for a weekend away?

But the most interesting part of our discussion was when I mentioned that I had a Ford Transit van. He occasionally needs the odd pallet of stuff collecting and no way of doing that, and so he eagerly wrote down my phone number.

After lunch, I crashed out for an hour or so and then did some tidying up on the shelves again to make even more space.

Tea was delicious tonight. I wasn’t in the mood to cook so it was a tin of ratatouille with pasta. And doesn’t the ratatouille taste better with a teaspoon of garlic powder and half a teaspoon of chili powder?

I’ve been for a walk tonight and now I’m hoping for an early night and a better sleep.

EPIC HALL

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

Tag Archives: grima

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