Tag Archives: headstone

Saturday 6th January 2024 – I AM ABSOLUTELY…

… wasted. i4ve had a horrible day today, probably the worst that I have ever had.

You’ll remember the perfusions that I had and the hallucinations that went with it. Well, the story continues.

At 23:30 or thereabouts two guys brought a stretcher here and I clambered aboard, to be whisked off to another building here for an echograph on my lower stomach and kidneys.

When the echographist had finished, the ambulance brought me back here.

When I was tucked up in my nice little bed a nurse came round and coupled me up to another perfusion, and we started again with the hallucinations.

At first I tried to dictate them as they happened but I was totally overwhelmed. I managed so many and then that was that.

Unfortunately none of my favourite characters appeared to calm me down. Things were completely and utterly out of control. Every time I closed my eyes that was that – I was off again. It took hours for me to go to sleep.

It was quite early when I awoke too and I had to wait around ages for breakfast. I was starving.

But today, I’ve been totally out of it. This perfusion, which is a mixture of sodium chloride and calcium chloride, has finished me off.

The doctor came round to see me too. I have a critical level of creatine in the kidneys and a critical level of potassium in the bloodstream. The perfusion is intended to counteract the potassium.

When I told him about the side effects he didn’t really say very much, which surprised me.

And the side-effects are the hallucinations and the fact that I have been out of it all all day, as if someone has slipped me a Micky Finn. I’ve hardly been able to function at all and for much of the day I’ve been asleep. The rest of the day, I’ve not been able to concentrate at all on anything.

To transcribe the dictaphone notes it took ages – firstly because I was in no fit state to do it and secondly there were so many of them. And as usual, they are shown here exactly as I dictated them, with no apologies or explanations. There was a lot of noise during the night and a lot of dreams too. I dreamt once that they were making really loud noises removing some kind of perfusions out of the way of everyone whom I knew, including people like TOTGA, Castor etc but I couldn’t really see who they were. It turned out that they were nurses here tidying up. One of them awoke me to give me a perfusion in the arm.

Almost immediately going back to sleep I dreamt of being pushed around on a stretcher by a couple of young people, one of whom was playing the accordion with a lot of traditional folk melodies playing on it.

While I was awake having this perfusion I had a hallucination again. This time I was being pushed by someone in a wheelchair. They said that they were going to take me to somewhere where they would put me in a sitting position. Once they’d done that they’d take me to a place where I could sit which was much more exciting than where I was at the moment.

Also 2 women pushing me in a wheelchair to a Renault Espace but it looked nothing like a Renault Espace at all and was all glass so that everyone could see everything that was going on inside it. I was taken in this wheelchair by these 2 girls, put inside the Renault Espace which was driven to another part of the hospital where a couple of guys were waiting. Once our car arrived and unloaded me these 2 guys took over and began to push me. But I was actually awake and conscious and lying in my bed in the hospital when I was having this hallucination. It certainly wasn’t me being asleep and dreaming

Later on I was in an Indian Restaurant with a couple of people. We were chatting away. I went over to a drawer, pulled out a cheque book from there and wrote a cheque for £95:00 to the bank. One of the people watching asked me why. I said that I had debts to pay. He said something like “don’t we all”. He wondered how much it was o I showed him. It was £495:00. He said “you’ll pay that quickly paying it at that rate”. I said “it should only be £75:00 but I’m paying it in advance”. He actually shook my hand. Then a server came to see us but but was actually someone with the head of a cash machine so I fed the cheque into it. We began to talk about soup so me, the man and his young daughter sat down at a table where there were already several people sitting – it was a long bench-type table with benches either side. The guy said “you’d better go and ask the chef – he mentioned the chef by name but I’ve forgotten – because he’ll have soup that he’ll want to get rid of at the end of the night.

Then someone asked me to raise my pelvis so that they could close the ambulance doors – while I was still awake. These hallucinations are incredible.

I closed my eyes and I was immediately in a taxi queue, still in my wheelchair. There was all folk music going around. Even now as I’m dictating this I can hear folk music played on a violin. It really is strange because there’s nothing happening outside at all – it’s all in my head, whatever it is that’s going on. I’m wide awake and I’m just hallucinating like this every time I close my eyes.

They were waiting outside there questioning, joking, reduced to a question about pyjamas. I was ….. unintelligible … that was my job for the evening. Those projectiles on the bed ….. unintelligible … The room of mine was downgraded from mid-dangerous to less dangerous from a security point of view after a security patrol had been to inspect it. Someone could fire into the room but they wouldn’t be able to actually hit anyone so it was considered to be a very low risk at all.

There was a song rather similar to THE BARRICADES OF HEAVEN. I’d recorded it twice and wanted to dictate one. The thing was that one of them was in really perfect condition and sounded really well but there was only threequarters of it but the other one which was complete, the quality wasn’t as good so I was trying my hardest to figure out a way to make a complete one using the quality of the best one. But in the end I ended up deleting one of them, the one with the best quality because it was incomplete. Then I had second thoughts of re -recording it. I was sitting there scratching my head puzzling over what I was going to do

Despite being in the kind of condition in which I find myself, I’ve had some nice chats with my neighbour from Granville, with Liz and with Tina over the internet and that was really nice. The nursing staff here are nice to and bring me extra coffee, bread and fruit to make up for the food that I can’t eat.

They have bandaged up my leg where I have skin issues and done all they can to help me. One of them was very interested in my story about hallucinations too.

We have rock music fans amongst them too and I’ve had a couple of interesting chats. Apart from the perfusions I seem to have struck lucky with this hospital. Castle Anthrax was nice of course but things seem to be much more urgent here in The Land Of Yellow And Orange

Anyway, tonight there are no perfusions planned so I’m hoping to have a good, deep sleep and see what tomorrow might bring. And if it’s any more calcium chloride I’ll go spare.

But they are doing their best to treat me and if they think that something is necessary, who am I to complain? I’ll just have to take the side effects in my stride and suffer accordingly.

"SO PLACE YOUR TRUST IN SCIENCE
FOR IT HAS COME SO FAR
WHERE NECROMANCY LIVES FOR EVER
PRESERVED WITHIN A JAR"

0

Thursday 21st November 2019 – I WAS RIGHT …

normandy trader thora port de granville harbour manche normandy france… about the situation down in the harbour.

Thora has indeed moved over to the side out of the loading bay, and there in her place is Normandy Trader who has indeed come into town on the early morning tide.

And as usual, I didn’t really have time to go down for a coffee and a chat because I have a lot of things to do and I’m running terribly late as usual.

In fact I didn’t leave my bed this morning until gone 09:00

Mind you, there is a genuine reason for this and it isn’t a case of idling about or lounging around either.

In fact, after I’d finished my notes for yesterday I did as I mentioned sit down and update a few web pages, 11 in fact. And when I’d finished, not feeling in the least tired despite my very long day, I started to think about what I was going to say for my next project, which will be numbered D001 for reasons that will soon become clear.

Needing to find 3:40 worth of speech, I started to have a good muse about and dropped one or two ideas down on paper and rather than expand them in that format, I began to dictate them using the recording equipment that I have here.

And by the time that I’d finished, with various Umming and Aaahing and a few corrections, I ended up with 5:20 worth of notes – and all in French too.

Next step was to sit down and edit it. Cut out all of the pauses, the Umms and Ahhs, and that brought it down to about 4:15. So then I hacked out a few phrases here and there and after some jiggery and not a little pokery, there I was with my 3:40 or thereabouts.

Next stage was then to merge it onto the front of the music that I’ll be using – or, rather, merge the music onto the end of the speech.

One hour is what I’m allowed, and there I was, came to a dead stop at exactly 1:00:00. And I came to a dead stop too, seeing as it was gone 03:30 and I wasn’t even prepared for bed. But at least that’s one job that’s finished and complete and one less job to worry about.

Surprisingly, I heard the alarms go off at 06:00 etc and I felt that if I exerted myself I could have risen from the grave. But instead I went back to sleep again until the kids going past my window on their way to school awoke me.

A late breakfast, followed by an even later shower and then I headed out to town in the rain.

erecting publicity signboard Avenue du Maréchal Leclerc granville manche normandy franceFirst stop was the Centre Agora to take back the recording kit. Someone else needs it for a task.

So up the hill in the Avenue Leclerc I went, not quite storming up it as I have done recently, and I stopped to see what they were doing with the HIAB.

It looks as if they are either taking away or installing an advertising signboard. I don’t know which because I can’t remember if there was one there before or not

At the Centre Agora the guy in charge of the equipment wasn’t there and no-one wanted to take charge of the recording kit. But I’ll be badgered if I’m going to take it back home with me so in the end we managed to find someone connected with the service, and we persuaded him to take it.

medieval stone building allee des sycomores granville manche normandy franceThe rain had calmed down somewhat now so the walk back wasn’t too difficult.

There was a slight diversion into te Allee des Sycomores. I hadn’t noticed this stone edifice before and I was intrigued to know what it was.

There wasn’t much evidence of any particular function but to me it seemed as if it might have been a well or something similar. If it had been of no use at all it would have been demolished instead of causing an obstruction in the road like this.

Seeing as I was going past LIDL and it was Thursday I called in for some shopping. It’s the ski wear season so I reckoned that I might be able to pick up a woollen hat seeing as mine is in the pocket of my jacket in a hotel in Calgary, but no luck. It seems that everyone wears helmets these days when they are skiing.

Nevertheless I did spend a fair amount of money seeing as supplies are low.

fishing boats entering port de granville harbour manche normandy franceThe walk back here wasn’t as lively as it has been just recently, and carrying about 10 kilos of food didn’t make it any easier either.

On the way past the port I stopped and looked over the wall to see what was goign on. It looks as if they have just opened up the harbour gates. There was quite a procession of trawlers coming into port.

And when I had climbed a little further on, I could see that there were one or two that had just left the harbour too. So I reckon that I might be right.

After lunch (I bought another dejeunette too seeing as I was passing the bakery) and a little tidying-up I sat down and thought about the talk that I have to give tomorrow.

Eventually I managed to cobble together some notes and now I’m going through selecting some photos to accompany them. And that’s a hard task because that day that I was there I took 178 photos in all.

brehal Plage in sunlight granville manche normandy franceThere was a brief pause while I went out fior my afternoon walk.

The rain had now stopped falling and there was a shaft of sunlight through the clouds that was illuminating the seafront at Bréhal Plage just like the other day at Jullouville.

And how I wish that it would go for the middle and illluminate me some time soon

site of headstone pointe du roc granville manche normandy franceContinuing on my path around the headland I came to the spot where the headstone or whatever had been.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that they had removed it the other day and taped it off with a couple of bollards and some of that site tape stuff.

But even that has gone now and it looks as if they have filled in the hole. So i’ve no idea what was going on there at all.

cable reel pointe du roc granville manche normandy franceNo idea what is going on here, but it’s fun to speculate.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that over the past year or two they have been digging up all of the streets in order to lay the trunking for the fibre-optic cable.

But now a huge cable reel has arrived with a load of cable upon it. The optimists among us will be thinking of only one thing.

flowers scattered over ground pointe du roc granville manche normandy franceThe rain might have stopped this afternoon, but the wind hasn’t.

The flowers that I mentioned the other day – most of them have gone. And the trail of flowers all the way up the footpath suggests that they may well have Gone With The WInd too.

That is, unless someone has been really careless about moving them all.

omerta pecheur de lys spirit of conrad aztec lady port de granville harbour manche normandy franceThere was plenty of action in the Chantier Navale today too.

They seem to be quite busy down there. The regular suspects, Spirit of Conrad and Aztec Lady are still there, and so is the fishing boat. But they’ve now been joined by Pecheur de Lys whose stay in the water was remarkably brief, and Omerta.

And I’m rather worried by the latter. Everyone knows that Omerta is used in Italian so signify “silence”, but it’s also the name that is given to the oath that members of the mafia have to take.

fishing boat baie de mont st michel granville manche normandy franceAs regular readers of this rubbish will recall, I’m well-impressed with the devotion and courage that the local fishermen display on a daily basis, going out in some of the worst storms.

There was another one out there today, a small one, fishing away and you can see by the rigging that he has his nets out.

As I have said before … “and you’ll say again” – ed … I could do it once in a while but it would depress me having to go out there every day regardless of the weather.

Carrying on with Uummannaq took me up until tea time. And having been to LIDL I was able to offer myself a stuffed pepper with rice, followed by rice pudding.

fishing boat night donville les bains granville manche normandy franceIt was pouring down with rain while I was making tea but it had stopped later on so I went out for a walk.

Another bright light out there in the direction of Donville-les-Bains, but I was ready for it tonight. And it’s yet another fishing boat trying its luck out on that side.

It seems that a search for a new catch is definitely continuing. Fishermen casting their nets further, you might say.

In the absence of any people loitering around I went for my run. But I only managed about two-thirds of my route tonight. Lost my form completely.

But now I’m off to bed. I’ve had a chat with TOTGA this evening and downloaded tons of digital album tracks, including several that have some very distinct memories from my time living in Chester in 1972-74.

There are web pages that need updating of course and I’ve done no dictaphone notes today either, but I’m in no state to do them.

I’ll just have to catch up with them some other time

0

Tuesday 19th November 2019 – WHAT A WASTE …

… of a morning that was!

On Sunday night I had just a couple of hours sleep. And while it’s true to say that I dozed off quite a few times on the way home, that is nothing like what I would call a deep, meaningful sleep.

And so I’m totally lost and unable to understand why it was that I was still up and about working (talking to Mike on the internet about my Uummannaq speech) at 03:30.

It’s true to say that I was not anticipating an early start today. I’d disconnected the series that starts at 06:00 and replaced it with the series that starts at 08:00. Nevertheless, although I had heard them, it was about 10:00 when I stuck my head up from under the quilt.

It was … errr … somewhat later when my feet finally hit the floor and that was the morning effectively finished before it had begun.

But I’d managed to go off a-wandering during the night and it was all a bizarre couple of journeys too. The first one was about one of my sisters. I’d been somewhere and she was in another room with a few people. She was getting changed. I went off to do something, review my post figures for the week so I did a couple of hours overtime, something like that in the night to do it. As I was leaving it, all these young girls were going to leave it too, off to the shops for something. They were all wearing these white sheets and black sheets like witches and druids, whatever, and I couldn’t see my sister there. I had to go to the back office to check in. A woman was there, and that was where I’d last seen my sister. We started to talk about things that I had done and things in the road, roadworks and everything. All of a sudden it came to be 04:00 now and everyone else was milling around, and I thought “where’s my sister?” and I couldn’t see her anywhere. I was getting a bit concerned because obviously I wanted to see her but I couldn’t find her at all. The thing is that it wasn’t really my sister at all that I was talking about but Zero, who has accompanied me on my travels on many occasions in the past (although this is her first time for quite a while). She was there and her father was there as well and he figured in it right at the very start for some reason

Some time later, there was a group of us gone camping somewhere supposed to be out in the cold but although it seemed cold it wasn’t that cold to me. We were staying in some kind of weird buildings with open fronts. We had pitched our bedding in there should I say, the whole group of us and I was hanging out with a couple of girls actually and I’m not sure who they were. Everyone else, they were very early to bed and very early risers. (… I can do the latter but not the former…) so they had to keep on going to fetch me to go to bed. On one occasion they came down and got me. We were walking back up past where the kids were sleeping and I made a remark because the courtyard was totally empty but it was to me quite early. “They must be all in bed, the kids”. We walked back to where we were sleeping. Our beds were there and I could see that everyone else was in bed but one or two of them were looking disapprovingly of me coming back. I was getting ready for bed, taking my trousers off, but decided that I had to do something so I started hopping around the room like a kangaroo with my trousers around my ankles and hopped off outside presumably to go to the toilet or something. But ti was totally strange seeing everyone sleeping in woolly hats fully clothed, all this kind of thing. And when I had returned to my room with these girls there was some money on one of the beds. I said to the girl “is it your money or mine?” She replied “it’s your money because my money is down in my car down below. It must be your money” so she gave it to me.

There was the usual medication and breakfast and the first part of what was left of the morning was spent in dealing with the dictaphone entries of the last few days and then catching up with three out of the backlog.

But then I noticed the time. A quick shower and clean up and setting the washing machine on the go, and I went into town. My lettuce was somewhat sad so I needed a new one as well as some bananas and potatoes. A visit to Super U was thus on the cards.

While I was down there I picked up another one of those dejeunettes from the boulangerie. 170gms – that’s about 2/3rds of a baguette and €0:50 a throw. That’s plenty for me for lunch and I may as well take advantage of the bakery while I’m down there.

Back at the apartment, I noticed the time. 13:25 already. So I had my lunch and then a play on the guitar for half an hour.

This afternoon’s projects were many and varied.

  • Find the receipts for the medication that I had been prescribed in Belgium and scan them into the computer. I’m trying to do this straight away rather than letting a pile build up.
  • Carry on with the hunt for digital tracks for the albums that I own
  • Hanging up the washing (which I had forgotten when I returned).
  • Backing up the stuff off the travelling laptop onto the main computer and merging the data. And that wasn’t a two-minute job as I can’t find a European power pack for it so I had to make up a converter out of some stuff in Caliburn.
  • Most importantly, starting work on Project 003.

All of the music for that project is now done and I’m halfway through preparing the notes. I want to finish that off for the weekend and maybe even finish Project 004 by then too.

And I don’t know quite what happened, but I fell asleep at some point too. Only 10 minutes or so, but asleep all the same.

In between all of this, I managed to take myself off out for my afternoon walk around the headland.

gravestone missing pointe du roc granville manche normandy franceBut here’s a surprise. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that ages ago we’d discovered something that looked like the headstone of a grave stuck in the ground close to one of the old bunkers of the Atlantic Wall

But when I got there this afternoon, I noticed that it seems to have been removed. There’s a hole in the ground where it used to be and that’s all closed off with bollards and tapes.

That’s a surprise because it’s something that seems to have been ignored for I don’t know quite how many years.

sailors memorial pointe du rock granville manche normandy franceAnd when I was out for my walk during the evening yesterday, I sensed that while I was round by the lifeboatmen’s memorial I was walking on something that didn’t feel quite right to me.

In the daylight today though, I could see what was the issue. It seems that they have planted flowers all around the memorial without telling me. And with not having seen them, I’d been trampling upon them.

Ahh well! Someone should have said something. I can hardly be blamed if they go cluttering up the footpath, can I?

aztec lady spirit of conrad chantier navale port de granville harbour manche normandy franceAnd so my walk continued. Along the top of the cliff and past the chantier navale.

The two ships that were in there the other day – Aztec Lady and Spirit of Conrad – they are still in there today. Aztec Lady seems however to have grown a pair of masts since the last time that I looked.

There’s a new boat in there too. One of the little fishing boats is over there on ramps too, presumably having some work done upon her.

Back in the comfort, warmth and safety of my apartment I carried on with my work until tea time. There was a slice of vegan pasty left over from March so I heated it up in the oven with some potatoes and, seeing as I had the oven on, a large rice pudding for afters.

Peas and carrots and gravy with the pie and potatoes went down really well. And I’m running low on carrots too. I’ll have to make some more if there are any going cheap at LIDL on Thursday.

donville les bains granville manche normandy franceAfter tea I went for my evening walk around the walls.

There was some kind of searchlight shining over Donville-les-Bains so I went to take a photo of it. And just as I had finished setting up the equipment, they switched off the light.

That’s just typical, isn’t it? So I just took a photo of it normally in the dark instead.

avenue de la liberation granville manche normandy franceThere wasn’t a soul out there tonight, which was not a surprise because it was freezing cold out there and there was a high wind blowing.

For that reason I hadn’t taken the tripod with me, so I took a photo of the chicane in the Avenue de la Liberation by hand instead. It’s not come out too badly despite that.

And I was disappointed with my run. Very disappointed in fact. I could only manage about half of it and that’s no good if I intend to keep up this fitness regime. I have to take it seriously.

Just now I’ve had a mug of hot chocolate and now I intend to do a couple of web site amendments before going to bed. I must push on with this despite all of the other work and do a few each day just to whittle down the backlog.

No time like the present.

0