Tag Archives: home made apple puree

Sunday 23rd March 2025 – MY ORANGE, GINGER …

… and coconut cake is absolutely delicious, if it tastes anything like the mix that I sampled and the crumbs that broke off when I brought it out of the oven. The proof of the pudding is indeed in the eating and I’ll have to wait a couple of days before I start on it, so I’ll tell you more in a few days time.

So last night, after I’d finished my notes, I dictated the radio notes that I’d written during the week and then went to bed. It was only a few minutes after midnight too so with my Sunday morning lie-in until 08:00, I was looking forward to a decent sleep.

To be on the safe side, I’d found an old fleece jumper in the chest of drawers so in desperation I put that on before going to bed. And while I may well have awoken in the middle of the night for a variety of reasons, cold wasn’t one of them. For once just recently, I was quite comfortable in that respect.

When the alarm went off at 08:00 I was away with the fairies, although not in any fashion that might incite comment from the editor of Aunt Judy’s Magazine. However, wherever I was and whatever I was doing evaporated completely from my mind and that was that.

In the bathroom I had a good scrub up and then came back in here to listen to the dictaphone to find out what I’d been doing during the night.

Not that I advanced very far because the nurse came round to sort me out. He had a lot to say for himself this morning but nothing of any importance, so I could crack on and make my breakfast, including some home-made orange juice and home-made apple and kiwi purée with home-made bread out of the toaster and porridge.

I also read some more of MY NEW BOOK and, unfortunately, Sir Norman Lockyer is tying himself up in knots.

Having criticised the builders of these stone monuments on the grounds of their uncivilised nature, to day he tells us that, according to Caesar "that in the schools of the Druids the subjects taught included the movements of the stars, the size of the earth, and the nature of things … Studies of such a character seem quite consistent with, and to demand, a long antecedent period of civilisation.".

He also talks about the stories that the Greek, Hecataeus, told of the Hyperboreans – "so called because they live beyond the point from which the North wind blows". That’s interesting to me at least because the early Polar explorers were convinced, for some reason, that there was a warm sea beyond the ice belt, a delusion that led so many of them to their deaths. I always wondered why it would be possible to believe such a thing but if the myth of the Hyperboreans really was believed, (and Hecataeus was convinced they and the Greeks had been in contact and that the Hyperboreans were "in general very friendly to the Greeks.’") that would explain everything.

There was a bap to make this morning so that I could have my cheese on toast for lunch. I made the mix rather wetter than in the past to see what happens and it was rather difficult to knead. But once it was made I left it to fester for a while.

Back in here I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out what had happened during the night. There was something about my youngest sister last night – I can’t remember exactly what it was but I wanted her to do something or to go somewhere and pick up something where I was. It took her a while to turn up and I can’t really remember any more about it because it’s another one of these dreams that evaporated away.

Just as well really. I don’t want my family loitering around my bedside during the night, that’s for sure

Later on, I started work being an Accompanier … "you mean ‘escort’" – ed … on a school bus in New Brunswick. I had to go to the local small town pick-up point to run a check on all of the pupils there. There were probably fifty children waiting there. Each of them wore a badge with their names, and several of them had changed their names and put “Bigfoot” there instead. After I’d reviewed all of the names I asked “how many Bigfoots have we here?”. Someone replied “well, there are five “. I replied “well, it’s New Brunswick, isn’t it? That will explain it”. Everyone burst out laughing.

As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … you could put everyone in New Brunswick, and in particular, Carleton County where my place is, into Tennessee and no-one, neither the New Brunswickers or the Tennesseans, would notice the difference. Much as I love that area of North America, western New Brunswick, Maine, Vermont, it is like going back seventy years in time. That’s probably why I like it.

Next, there was football. And I despair of Stranraer FC. Having played like a championship side last week and blown away so convincingly the leaders of their division, and away from home too, this weekend they were at home to the bottom club, played one of the worst games that I have ever seen them play, and lost 1-0.

These Jekyll-and-Hyde performances have to stop if they want to be serious about keeping their place in the league. Last season they had a lucky escape from demotion out of the League, and they haven’t really improved all that much.

And while we’re on the subject of demotion and relegation … "well, one of us is" – ed … the weekend’s results in the JD Cymru League mean that Aberstwyth are relegated, as predicted at the start of the season, and Y Fflint just need one point to be assured of staying up – and with three matches to go.

With Aberystwyth’s relegation, it means that Y Drenewydd are the only club to have been in the league for every year that it has been in existence, and they are looking by no means safe quite yet.

Next task was the radio. Last night I’d dictated the notes for eleventh track of a radio programme and so I edited them and joined everything up together. The whole lot over-ran by seven seconds but I always dictate stuff that can be edited out without disrupting the sense and the rhythm and that was soon accomplished.

Lunch was next and I do have to say that my bap was absolute perfection today, the best that I have ever made. I’m certain that my water measurer is inaccurate and that’s been the root of all of my problems. The air fryer baked it really well and made some lovely cheese on toast, even if it is vegan cheese.

This afternoon I attacked the next programme. Last night I’d dictated the notes for ten tracks and so I edited it all down and assembled it. Later on, I chose the eleventh track and wrote the notes for it ready for dictation next weekend.

After the disgusting drink break I set about making my cake.

It’s a standard oil cake of

one cup of flour
one cup of sugar
half a cup of hot water
half a cup of oil (I use 50% vegetable oil and 50% coconut oil)
half a teaspoon of baking powder
half a teaspoon of salt
one teaspoon of vanilla essence

to that I added

a couple of inches of ginger paste (Heaven only knows where my fresh ginger has gone
a teaspoon of ground ginger
a teaspoon of mixed spice
some desiccated coconut
an extra half-cup of flour
all of the orange pulp from which I had extracted the juice yesterday
some whizzed-up almonds and Brazil nuts

All of the dry stuff was whizzed up in my whizzer, then all of the wet stuff was added in and whizzed into the mix, and it was all then poured out into a lined cake tray and baked for 35 minutes at 180°C

While that was going on, the pizza dough that i’d taken from the freezer was defrosting. I made the pizza while the cake was baking and then popped it into the hot oven when the cake was done.

The pizza was perfection too, especially as I had remembered everything this week, for a change.

Now I’m off to bed ready for dialysis tomorrow, I don’t think

But while we are talking about Bigfoot "well, one of us is" one of my friends in Crewe contacted me the other day and told me that there was a big, hairy monster running around Crewe scaring everyone.
"Crewe’s equivalent of Bigfoot, I suppose?" I asked
"Very probably" he replied "but here, he’s called ‘Big Thirty point Four-Eight Centimetres’"

Saturday 22nd March 2025 – IT WAS ANOTHER …

… freezing cold night last night when I had to leave the comfort of my stinking pit to put on my dressing gown and go back to bed. I’ve no idea what’s happening here but as I said yesterday, it’s completely the opposite of how things were even a week ago.

At least it wasn’t quite such a late night as it was the previous night. After midnight, I was still letting it all hang out, but not for long and I was glad to see the inside of my bed, where I fell asleep quite quickly.

Not for long though, because I froze again. And after awakening a couple of times I gave up and put in the dressing gown, and then went back to sleep.

When the alarm went off I sat bolt upright and was out of bed in an instant. I’m not sure why because I certainly didn’t feel like it. It was another uncomfortable stagger into the bathroom to sort myself out ready for dialysis – a wash and a shave in case Emilie the Cute Consultant is there, not that it makes any difference because she doesn’t love me any more.

There was also some washing to do, including the bedding from last week that my cleaner changed. And as you might already have guessed, there’s still some washing left to do that I couldn’t fit into the machine

In the kitchen I had some things to do. There were six oranges that were definitely looking the worse for wear so I whizzed them up in my whizzer and filtered out the juice.

There’s a load of whizzed-up pulp now so what I plan to do is to make an orange, ginger and coconut oilcake and put all of the orange pulp in it. It might not work but if it does, it will certainly be different

The nurse came round and told me a few of the details about the funeral yesterday. He also asked for my medical card, that I don’t have, so he searched through the apartment too and couldn’t find it. I did tell him….

For breakfast I had some diluted fresh orange juice and some of my home-made apple and kiwi purée with my porridge and toast made of home-made bread. And it was all beautiful too. That’s what I call a good breakfast.

I also read some more of MY NEW BOOK. Our astronomy lessons are continuing and we’re still discussing different New Years, but we’re now coming round to the more practical aspects of what we have learned so far.

He’s come up with some surprising facts, including the fact that there are many similarities of religious and cultural practices between the Ancient Egyptians and some of the contemporary races of Central America. I wonder if this book is where Thor Heyerdahl found his ideas that led him on his adventures in papyrus and balsawood rafts

Going back to the story about various New Years, of which there are more than just a few scattered around the globe, the English New Year was the 25th March until 1752, and it still is for Income Tax purposes, although with the change of calendar, also in 1752 when England lost 11 days to bring it into alignment with everywhere else, The Income Tax New Year is 6th April these days.

Back in here I had the dictaphone notes to transcribe from last night. There was something going on about one of the earliest airports and airfields in Wales, created in the early 20th Century by someone who was wandering around there looking for something special. He came across a very flat piece of land that people were using from which to fly some kind of primitive machines. He was immediately captivated by this and went back to London to create the idea of having the first airport in Wales based on this particular site in the hills.

And if someone could find a flat place in the Welsh hills big enough to build an airport they will be doing well.

There was also an article that I saw in something that I’d written about Granville being the site of one of the very first ports for armed reconnaissance in the New World. But as I looked at it I saw that it was a considerable jumble of words rather than being anything coherent. I wondered whether it had been a dream that I’d written down some time or other in the past without thinking about it and had come across it again. It certainly made no sense, but on the other hand it was a lot of truth in what I’d written.

As it happens, unlikely though it might seem, there was a famous corsair authorised by the French Government who sailed out of Granville, Georges-René Pléville Le Pelley, whose statue is just down the road from here. But “a considerable jumble of words rather than being anything coherent” – my dreams “certainly made no sense”. Perish the thought, hey?

And later still, I went out around Brussels with Zero’s father. We’d come past one of the supermarkets so I suggested that we go there and do some shopping for me while we are out. Eventually we found a car park after several wrong turnings but I didn’t have my disabled car badge and there was nowhere to park really close to the supermarket door so I had to stagger all the way over to the supermarket. We found a parking place right outside but for some reason he didn’t go to fetch the car. We went to go in but I suddenly realised that I didn’t have my crutches. I was finding it extremely difficult to move. I could see that this is going to be extremely difficult if I didn’t have my crutches with me to be able to move about in the supermarket, or anywhere for that matter.

Zero’s father? But no Zero. That’s a disappointment. And how I would like to be able to stagger somewhere without my crutches, difficult or not. However, I recognise this supermarket. It’s one that I’ve been to in Canada in the pouring rain, but I can’t remember where it is now, apart from the fact that it’s in Québec.

Back in here I had a few things to do and I was in the middle thereof when I was interrupted by my cleaner who had come to fit my patches. And while she was here I went to answer my telephone and there in the pouch inside the case was my medical card. However it managed to find its way there I really don’t know.

The taxi at lunchtime was driven by a very garrulous driver and we had an interesting chat all the way to Avranches.

At Avrenches they put an ice-pack on my arm for ten minutes and then went to connect me up. And while it did hurt, it didn’t hurt as badly as some have in the recent past.

No-one bothered me at all today so I watched the highlights of last night’s football, carried out a few tasks that have been meaning to do, and then cut up a few sound-bytes. But the travelling laptop is not the quickest machine in the World and it takes forever.

After they unplugged me it was the same taxi driver who brought me home and we had another interesting chat coming home. My cleaner was waiting for me and we went through the medication and made a list of what I need, seeing as we now have a medical card to take to the Pharmacy.

Tea tonight was a baked potato, salad and one of the breadcrumbed quorn fillets that I like, seeing as I have now run out of baps for my vegan burgers. Maybe I ought to experiment and make some myself

So now I have radio notes to dictate and then I’ll go to bed. Tomorrow there will be the notes to edit and my orange, ginger and coconut cake to make. I’ve some pizza dough left for tomorrow night and I’m using up the bread that is in the freezer right now to make some space.

But seeing as we have been talking about Georges-René Pléville Le Pelley … "well, one of us has" – ed … it’s not very well-known that he and his corsairs sailed occasionally with a group of pirates.
One day, in company with the pirates, his corsairs came across a British ship that, after a spirited fight, they managed to seize.
They rounded up all the British crew and upon doing a headcount, found that there were two missing, so the pirates and corsairs searched the ship for them and eventually dragged them out of hiding.
Later on, back in London the two men were interviewed by the Admiralty about their capture.
"How was it that you were captured?" said the First Sea Lord to the first one.
"I was dragged out of my hiding place by the pirates"
"And you?" he asked the other one
"I was dragged out of my hiding place by the … errr … other ruffians"

Sunday 16th March 2025 – I HAVE BEEN …

… a very busy boy today and have hardly stopped at all. I could do with a few more days like that, except that almost none of it was to do with any of the work that has been building up in here.

It actually started last night when, after finishing off my notes and doing the back-ups, I recorded the notes that I wrote for the radio programme that I began last week, and also for the final track for the previous week.

That took me up to just after midnight and it wasn’t many minutes after that that I was in bed, underneath the bedclothes.

When the alarm went off at 08:00 (it’s lie-in day today) I was already sitting on the edge of the bed. I had beaten the alarm, not by many seconds, it’s true, but nevertheless I’m going to claim it as an early start all the same. They all count.

After a good wash I came back in here and began to transcribe the dictaphone notes while I waited for Isabelle the Nurse to turn up.

She was late again – even later than usual, but she brought with her the photos and videos of her Carnaval float and costumes. They did a really good job again and it was quite impressive. The way some of the owners of the floats let themselves go with their designs and lampooning of politicians, local and national, should be an inspiration for other countries to let themselves loose.

After she left I made a late breakfast and read MY BOOK. And it’s now finished, ready for the next one to start tomorrow.

Our author, having explored the effects on Christianity is summing up and tells us that he considers that the folklore that existed in many rural communities until fairly modern times is not Celtic but belongs to the Brythonic people whole the Celts found when they arrived here.

He quotes the mystery and mysticism that surrounded it that the Celts, whom Caesar encountered, told him all of the rumours and fairy-tales that litter Caesar’s writings. That may well be the case because Pytheas, who voyaged around the British Isles in the 4th Century BC, presumably met some of the Brythonic peoples in their coastal outposts before the Celts arrived, and he told similar (but not identical) stories.

Gomme states further that he considers that the Celts and the Brythonic people lived side-by-side, with the Celts in their tribal settlements and the Brythonic people in their rural villages, and there they stayed. But we’ve seen anthropological evidence that there was very little, if any, mixing of the people, and all of the later Brythonic human remains were found in caves, hinting that they may probably have been in hiding out of the way of the marauding Celts.

Furthermore, many of these magnificent hill-forts that we saw earlier date from round about 500-400BC – the time that the Celts were beginning to arrive in Britain. That doesn’t look to me like anything like people living side by side at all, It looks like defenders living in total fear and panic.

And so,even though it was a very interesting and thought-provoking book that made quite a number of good points and taught me quite a lot, as far as the contact between the Brythonic and Celtic people, and indeed the Celtic people and the subsequent Saxon people, I’m still going for defeat and extermination.

There was bread to make after breakfast – a bread roll for lunch. With the air fryer, it’s much easier to dash off a roll like this rather than go for a batch in the big oven. So I ran up 100 grams of flour and made a dough, leaving it to fester.

Back in here I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been. And I’d travelled far during the night. I was in a strange town and fancied going to the swimming baths. I turned up, paid for my entry and went in, changed and went through the double doors. It was the smallest room that you could imagine. There was some clear tiled flooring and there was a shower tray that was probably big enough to fit ten people. That was the bath, just one shower head. I thought “how disappointing this is for having spent this money to come for a swim. Nevertheless, people began to arrive. I thought “they probably enjoy it” and made ready to leave. Just as I was about to step out of the door, the room made a really funny noise and began to move. I looked out and the room was turning round through 90°. At the end of its cycle it coupled up to something. I had a look through another door. There was a huge Olympic-quality swimming pool there with cafés, shops, a swimming costume shop, everything like that. I was obviously in the ante-room where you showered before going into the water. At opening time the room simply spun round and connected up with the main pool. I was ever so impressed. I had a listen to the conversations of some of these people talking about what they had been doing, where they had been, what swimming clothes they had bought. It was really interesting.

When I was driving coaches I’d often go to the swimming baths to relax when I was away on a tour. When I lived in the Auvergne I looked forward to my Saturday afternoon swim at Neris-les-Bains and later at the new pool at Commentry. But my worst-ever encounter with a swimming baths was in Loretteville, a short distance from the city of Québec where I froze to death in water that was, if I remember correctly, 11°C. I must have been out of my mind, but there again I’d been living in a car for two weeks so it was not before time that I washed.

Later on I’d just been uploading a file to my computer, watching it, and it was going up, 20,000 items, 30,000 items and still going on. I was wondering how long it was going to take before it loaded. It was only supposed to be one item that I was adding.

And how many times have I, instead of deleting a single file, deleted a whole directory instead and had to go scurrying off to the recycle bin.

Later on, I’d been in a pub in Audlem. I asked if they had something to eat, but apparently not. I explained that i’d been on the road all day and was desperate to try to find something. In the end she suggested that I could make a sandwich if I had some bread, but I didn’t have any. She took me over to a corner where an old man was asleep. She said “see what he has”. I opened his bag thinking that there were some fish and chips in there but there was a loaf of bread which of course I couldn’t touch – the loaf of bread of someone else. A guy came over and gave me a set of keys. he said “take my tractor, there’s a blue Massey Ferguson, and go down this road. It’s called Cegidfa Road but it goes nowhere near Cegidfa and that should take you to the shop if you do a zig-zag as you go down”. I climbed into the tractor and set off but ended up in a completely different town so I climbed out and walked down a street of old, decaying, crumbling terraced houses with water cascading off the roofs etc. I suddenly found myself standing next to this really big, heavy stone wall. I wondered what it was so I looked round behind it and it was like a forest but with bits of building and bits of equipment and an old, decayed toilet in there. I saw a poster that said that this was the old RASC Stafford military base. Regretting that I didn’t have a camera I set off to go back to the tractor. But there was some discussion going on about how in view of the increased tension in the World and talking about National Service there is just not the infrastructure in the UK for supporting the National Service any more with all of the military depots that have been closed and wound down, some sold off, the rest abandoned. If they were to have a general call-out for one day it would be absolute chaos and totally impossible

This deserted and abandoned camp reminded me very much like Camp B70, the civilian internment camp at Ripples in New Brunswick that WE VISITED IN 2011. And it’s true that, having lived for so long under the shade of the American umbrella, Europe is totally uprepared for war. Regular readers of this rubbish in an earlier guise will remember the endless disputes that I had with the Finnish General in charge of the EU’s military force, trying to steel the force into filling the power vacuum that was developing in the World at the end of the 20th Century.

Later on, down the coast towards St Pair I’d met some British people who had a house right on the seafront. I’d come down from London. I wasn’t quite sure exactly whattheir game was but they were rather shady characters, I suspected. I was out with them one day. We’d been to some kind of do and there had been a buffet there. They told me where I could find something to eat. I went to the table to ask what they had but they didn’t really have anything. I had a coffee in a plastic mug so they poured it into a glass mug and they charged me £0:40, or €0:40. All I had was a £5:00 note so I paid with it and they gave it all back in change. I went and sat down and began to talk.
Shortly later we found ourselves in their house. It’s a big rambling house but so untidy, the garden was full of rubbish and the room in which we were sitting was full of paint tins, people and objects, all DiY stuff etc, paper everywhere. They were talking about all kinds of things, saying that they had a job available for someone who wanted it. I suggested “why don’t we write down on a piece of paper all the skills that we are all good at doing and we can see what we can do”. They thought that that was a funny idea but I thought it an excellent one. In the end they all dispersed and I was sitting there having a think when a girl came in. She asked me if that job had been taken. I replied “as far as I’m aware it’s still going”. She wondered what she could do about it so I told her “why don’t you ask?”. The woman of this house then came in to say that they were all planning to go off to London for a concert or something or other. I said “I’d like to go too”. She replied “you can go in a car with someone and the rest of us will have to go in the buses”. We began to think about preparing to go. I began to have this really uncomfortable feeling about this situation. It’s nice to meet people and it’s nice to be friends and to be involved in things but this was simply far too shady a situation in which I should be involved.

And this reminds me of the “Pink Palace” – that place where I stayed while I was waiting for the previous occupier to move out of “Reyers” when I’d bought it, so that I could move in, back in 1994. That house was a huge house with many single rooms, each one occupied as a kind-of pied-à-terre by single British businessmen when they came to do business in Brussels. That was a very happy three months and I learned a great deal from those people.

Having dealt with the dictaphone I sat back and watched Stranraer totally demolish league-leaders East Fife up in Methil. 3-0 was the final scoreline and it was not undeserved. What I wish though, having seen the dismal displays against Clyde and Forfar, is that they could do this every week.

Next task was to edit the radio notes that I had dictated. But I was nowhere anything like even halfway through when I had to break off for lunch

My bread roll was perfect, my cheese on toasted bread roll exquisite, and I ate it in here, something that I vowed never to do, but today it was because of the other Welsh Cup semi-final.

Cambrian United are seventh in the second tier and have had better seasons than this, and today they have the unenviable task of facing runaway Premier League leaders TNS, fresh from their triumphs in European competition

For the first five or so minutes the team from Tonypandy took the game to TNS but when TNS scored their inevitable first goal, the heads went down and the floodgates opened. At half-time the score was 5-0 and it looked as if we were going to be heading for an embarrassing scoreline.

However, I don’t know what the Cambrian manager put in their half-time cup of tea but I wouldn’t mind a swig of that myself, because it was a different game in the second half. Cambrian were much more relaxed and played some neat football. They kept TNS out for the rest of the game (although I suspect that TNS could have changed up a gear had it been necessary) and had a few chances of their own. Had the referee seen the foul by McGahey on Tim Parker as he was one-on-one with Connor Roberts in the TNS goal, TNS would have finished the game with ten men.

After the final whistle there was bread to make as I have run out (well, I haven’t – there’s some in the freezer but it can stay there for now). It was another sunflower seed loaf, and I set the dough off and left it to rise.

While it was doing its stuff, I had some over-ripe fruit here, apples and kiwis. I’m right of my fruit at the moment so I made a batch of apple and kiwi purée to have at breakfast with half of the stuff. I’ll make some more later on with the rest.

There’s also some oranges that I can’t seem to eat (my taste buds changed dramatically a few weeks ago when I was ill) so when the current breakfast orange juice is finished, I’ll experiment with the liquidiser attachment on my food processor and make some fresh orange juice.

The bread was excellent and my pizza (I’d taken some dough out of the freezer earlier) was perfect too. In fact, all of today’s baking etc seemed to have gone very well. It killed my legs though, standing up, and when I move downstairs I’ll have one of these screwable stools that I can raise the height of the seat.

But now I’m going to bed. I’ll finish the radio notes tomorrow and do half of my Welsh homework too ready for Tuesday’s lesson. We’re cracking on with our Welsh course but we won’t be anywhere near finishing it by the end of the year and it’s going to over-run.

But while we are on the subject of swimming pools … "well, one of us is" – ed … a boy at that swimming pool in Loretteville ws thrown out while I was there, for … errr … relieving himself into the water.
"But everyone does that in a swimming pool" pleaded the boy
"Maybe they do" said the lifeguard "but not from the top of the high diving board"

Tuesday 2nd June 2020 – I’VE NOT BEEN …

… feeling myself today.

“And quite right too” I hear you say.

But never mind that for a moment, I’m definitely sickening for something and I know that for definite because I’m off my food. Which, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, is not something that happens every day.

The day didn’t really get off to a very good start today , as seems to be usual these days, I missed the third alarm. Only b a couple of minutes, but nevertheless …

The notes on the dictaphone from my night’s voyage were interesting too. There were two new people who had started work on the radio – a girl and an older guy. I’d had a listen to a piece of music on the girl’s site and I wasn’t very impressed with it but everyone’s taste is personal. Anyway I was in the queue to ge tmyself organised when these two came over the hill. They were talking and the guy was saying something about “there’s only one song on your web site and it’s the same one that i’ve got”. She was saying things like “well I’m very new” but she’s only just started, all this kind of thing. I said “I’m quite happy to help anyone with any kind of help that they need” but they just drifted past as if I hadn’t said a word. They ended up in the queue in front of me to have their work dealt with and they were going on about this being new and all of this kind of thing. Then it was my turn so I gave me name and asked if there were any special instructions for me. he was looking down the list to see whether there was anything. I was going to say that if anyone like these two people needed a hand to get themselves started I would be quite happy to do it but instead I ended up dictating the notes of the journey.

But looking back, how long is it … ” that’s a rather personal question” – ed … since I’ve had some pleasant company with me on a nocturnal voyage? It must be an age – or, at least, it feels like it.

After breakfast I made a start on updating the journal entry for Sunday – the one that I had left hanging in the air. And by the time I knocked off for the evening I’d actually finished it.

However, there was a whole variety of interruptions today – tidying up being not the least of them. If I go video-conferencing, I need to have the place looking quite nice.

Terry came round too. he had an appointment in town and so came for the hat that Liz had left here the other day. And, furthermore, and even more importantly, he brought me a fresh supply of home-made cake from Liz.

So that’s one crisis solved.

At 11:00 I had my Welsh lesson on the internet. That meant doing quite a bit of preparation too, which was not easy because I don’t have the course book. In the end the tutor sent me a *.pdf version which was very nice of her

A few important things had come up during the lesson that needed attention so I had to organise those, and that meant once more a very late lunch.

It was another really gorgeous afternoon and so I decided once more to take my sandwiches outside and sit on my wall overlooking the harbour.

Not that I managed to go very far at first. In fact I came to a shuddering halt at the front door of the building. Regular readers of this rubbish will know about the underground refuse system here in the town and we’ve seen one or two lorries emptying them

But we’ve never seen a lorry this close with this much detail. Just look at how big these subterranean containers are.

Down at the wall, I was there all on ly own today. Everyone is either back at school or back at work and I was late as well.

But there was an awful lot going on in the harbour today. I’m not sure at all what was happening here but we had one of the smaller fishing boats tied up at the fish processing plant and there were a couple of people in a zodiac-type of boat inspecting it.

Mind you, in that depth of water they didn’t need a zodiac to go out there. They could quite easily have walked.

Mind you it didn’t stay there long.

Into the port came another one of the shell-fishing boats, a rather larger version. Our zodiac was clearly in the way so it set off and piddled off out of there

What that was all about, I really didn’t know because I couldn’t see at all what was going on.

It was pretty busy in the inner harbour too, and there was a queue of boats waiting at the crane for unloading.

In pole position for loading and unloading is our old friend Chausiais, looking as if she’s making ready to set off with a cargo for the Ile de Chausey. And behind her awaiting her turn – or maybe having already had hers and waiting for the harbour gates to open, is Normandy Trader

She must have sneaked in on the morning tide when I wasn’t looking.

Something else caught me rather by surprise too.

There I was, sitting there quietly eating my butties when suddenly a horn went off around the corner, that almost made me drop my book.

Of course, the tides are almost half an hour later every day, so it’s round about now that Joly France would be coming back from the morning ferry out to the Ile de Chausey.

And you can tell that the tide has only just started coming in.

The smaller boats with a shallow draught can pass over the sandbar at the entrance quite easily but boats like Joly France have much more trouble and have to go all the way over to the eastern side of the harbour entrance.

The water that drains out of the inner harbour has scoured a deeper channel on that side and that gives the larger boats more depth to play with.

Even so, when we went out there A WHILE AGO we grounded out on the way back in.

But Joly France didn’t hang around long. She dropped off one load of passengers, picked up another and headed back out to sea.

And as I watched her disappear, one of the medium-sized fishing boats came around the corner heading for port, presumably with a full load of shellfish ready to be unloaded at the fish processing plant.

She was travelling at a fair rate of knots too. At first I thought that she was a large speedboat of some description, making waves like that.

But better late than never – I came back inside and carried on with the work that I had to do. Choosing the music for a radio project was on the agenda this afternoon.

And I didn’t really have all that long to spend working because, with being rather late, it was time soon enough to go back out for my afternoon walk.

By now I reckoned that the harbour gates were well and truly opened because I have never ever seen so much nautical traffic just offshore as I have today

There were boats heading in all directions, and not just to and from the port either. This speedboat in the foreground was putting quite a spurt on heading along the coast towards Bréhal-Plage.

And those ships and boats in the previous photo – I thought that I recognised one of them.

And I was right too. It’s Chausiais. The harbour gates are definitely open now, because she’s been able to leave the port and head off on her little trip to the Ile de Chausey.

One of these days I’d love to be able to see what she’s carrying but her holds are closed in and with covered hatches so it’s not that easy at all. But I suppose that it takes all sorts of cargo out there.

Of course, if the harbour gates are open to let one boat out, they will be open to let everyone else out too.

And sure enough, out of the port right behind Chausias comes Normandy Trader off on her way back to the Channel Islands with another load of freight.

She’s an open freighter of course – a former car ferry by the looks of things, so it’s easy to see what she carries. But of course you can’t see anything at this distance.

As a small car ferry, she’s not really equipped to deal with the seas in the same way that a ship with a pointed bow would be.

And, for that matter, neither is Chausiais.

There’s quite a wind blowing out there and I had to take off my cap as I was walking around the headland. And the ships, with their less-than-conventional design were making rather heavy weather of the journey out to sea.

There was some beautiful spray flying around as Normandy Trader smashed her way through the waves. This photo has come out rather well, I reckon.

So that’s enough ships for the moment.

In the beautiful sunny sunshine I carried on with my afternoon walk around the headland and it was my turn to surprise some people. It looked as if they were practising Tai Chi, although I don’t think that you need yoga mats for that.

Anyway they must have seen me coming because as soon as I pointed the camera they folded up their mats and they too piddled off into the sunset as well.

It wasn’t my day, was it?

And what was quite amusing about this afternoon was that we seem to have had a tactical substitution of freighters in the harbour.

Chausiais and Normandy Trader may well have sailed out of the port on the afternoon tide, but the tide has also brought in with it another one of our old friends, Thora, also from the Channel islands.

And how I would have loved to have been at the harbour and watched her come in. There would have been an extremely interesting nautical danse macabre as all three boats were jostling for position in there.

The high winds have brought out a whole load of people and nautical craft as we have seen.

And you can tell just how windy it is out there, simply by looking at the sail on that yacht as it comes round the headland.

Look how much it’s billowing out. I bet that it’s pulling the boat along at a ferocious rate despite the load that it’s carrying. I can count at least 10 people on board and that’s quite a load for a boat like that.

But I bet that it’s exciting on there.

With all of the fishing boats out there, it’s no surprise that they are expecting a bumper load of fish and shellfish coming into the port today.

As a result there are three large artics, a smaller 17-tonne lorry and several other smaller refrigerated vehicles waiting at the fish-processing plant this afternoon

And the fork-lift truck – that has quite a load on it that’s goign to be deposited into the artic trailer over there. That’s a never-ending chain of product that will be stuck in there and the other vehicles.

There’s a really high turnover of product down there these days

And talking of high turnover of product, I used the last of my apple purée this morning. Time to make some more.

Six apples, one and a half pears, some desiccated coconut, cinnamon, nutmeg all put on the boil and then left to simmer. And when it was ready, the liquid was drained off and bottled, the solids were put in the whizzer and whizzed into a purée.

Then a handful of raisins was added, and all of that was bottled too. Of course the bottles were sterilised by giving them a minute in the microwave with some warm water in there to spread the heat.

But it wasn’t all as easy as that. Our Welsh group has set up a communication group on the internet. A couple of us set it up and were testing it – to such an extent that I completely forgot about the fruit on the stove and instead of 45 minutes simmering, it had just about two hours.

That’s not a good idea.

By this time I wasn’t feeling too good, and I don’t know why. I hadn’t been able to concentrate all day and I’ve done none of my Accountancy or Music studies because of it.

And not only that, I’ve lost my appetite, and that’s the sign of a major relapse heading my way – no surprise seeing how many months (over 4 months in fact) since I’ve had my four-weekly cancer treatment.

So no tea tonight, but I was determined to carry on with my running despite everything. So off I went, with all of my aches and pains and grouches.

Despite the wind, it was a beautiful evening and the colours were splendid. The big marker light on the rock just outside the harbour entrance, the sea, and the resort of Kairon-Plage in the background all came out really well

Surprisingly, after all of the excitement today, there wasn’t a boat to be seen anywhere at all in the baie de Mont St Michel. I wonder where they all went.

As fr me, i went off on my run all the way down the Boulevard Vaufleury where one of my colleagues from the radio drove past and waved to me.

My run ended up at the viewpoint in the Rue du Nord and I had a look over the wall to see how we were doing for picnickers tonight. And do you know what? After all of the excitement here over the last week or two there wasn’t even a one.

But not to worry. Because as I was musing over the situation, down the steps came a few young people carrying blankets and bags, and they began to settle themselves down in the evening sun.

And evening sun there was plenty of tonight.

We’ve had some good ones just recently but tonight was one of the best. But I didn’t hang around too long. I just stayed for a minute or two and then ran on back home.

Tonight I made a determmined effort to finish my notes even though I didn’t feel like it. And now I’m off to bed, rather later than I had hoped.

Here’s hoping that I feel a little better tomorrow because otherwise we’ll be heading for a tragedy again.

Monday 25th May 2020 – A FEW MORE …

… things to add to the pile of things that haven’t been done today. I’m not having a good start to the week.

It all went wrong right at the very beginning when the third alarm found me somewhere in Wyoming, and a very dry, dusty Wyoming at that too. I’d been in my old Opel Senator and had an accident in which it was written off and I’d had to wait around for a taxi. Eventually the one that the insurance company sent fo me tuned up – an old blue Volvo 244. On the way back (and the name Irmo – which Rhys might know – was mentioned) I mentioned how I’d be happy to settle in a place like this and I asked what taxi-driving was like around here. The driver told me with alarm “ohh don’t go settling around here” but didn’t elaborate. He told me that he might have a buyer for my car so we were talking about buying old cars and dismantling them like I used to from the abandoned car auctions in Brussels but at that point the alarm went off.

After the medication (I was up and about by 06:30) I had a listen to the dictaphone. And there was something very enigmatic on there from round about 02:30. “Yes sometime during the night I dreamt that I was actually writing up my blog. Yes, it’s getting to me, isn’t it?” was what I heard when I played it back. But what it was all about I really didn’t have a clue.

Between breakfast and lunch there was a variety of things to do. First off was to send off the radio project for the forthcoming weekend. And seeing as it’s the end of the month we’re having a live concert again.

Then it was time to choose the music for the next radio project.

It’s a friend’s birthday so I had to prepare a special birthday card for her. That was quite important.

My Welsh homework needed doing too, and that involved some research and more than a little tidying up of my notes. And the questions had come in *.docx format which Open Office doesn’t read correctly – so I had to reformat that by copying the text and paginating it which took an age.

Then back to the radio project and by the time that I knocked off for lunch the tracks had been joined in pairs, I’d chosen a speech for my guest and I’d started to write the notes.

After lunch there was cookery to be done.

This morning I’d used the last of the purée so I made some more. It hadn’t kept as well as previously so I’ve decided to make smaller amounts more regularly. Today’s effort was apple and pear, and I remembered the cinnamon and nutmeg.

With the juice that was left over, I added some syrup to make a cordial, and we’ll see how that goes.

As well as that, there was the remaining kilo of carrots to be peeled, diced, blanched and frozen. They are in the freezer right now too.

There was a break while I went out for my afternoon walk in the glorious sun.

There were a few people staring down at the foot of the cliff so I went along to see what there was going on. I’m not sure what it was that they were seeing, but I saw this beautiful little yacht go scudding by right under my nose.

One of my neighbours was there too – Gribouille’s mum – with her arm in plaster. She’d had a fall in the market on Saturday and broken her wrist.

She started to tell me all about it but no thanks – I don’t want to know things like that.

The next couple of photos look as if the quality is quite dismal too.

In several respects that’s true, but it was necessary to enhance them to bring our exactly what it was that I wanted to see. These are two fishing boats – in this photo and the next one, but it is what is in the background that is more interesting.

In all the time that I’ve been living here I don’t think that we have ever had such perfect weather out that way

As regular readers of this rubbish will recall, on a good day we can see the island of Jersey from here even though it’s at least 54 kilometres away.

Today, not only could we see the island quite clearly but we could even see the buildings and the radio masts on the island. I’ve seen them before, but only with the zoom lens at full-extent and with some severe cropping and enhancing. But today, it didn’t take much to bring them out.

In places you could even see them with the naked eye, and that was impressive.

Having chatted to another neighbour who was in the vicinity I went off for my afternoon walk.

There were crowds of people out there today – picnicking on the lawn, walking around the headland and even down on the beach. Some corners of the beach are not easy to get to but the seafood pickings must be really good. Here was someone having a go at the peche à pied by the looks of things

It would be really interesting to find out how much he actually was able to catch and, more importantly, how he was going to prepare it for eating.

Talking of good seafood pickings, regular readers of this rubbish will recall a few days ago that we saw a whole sock of fleagulls perched on the rocks, looking as if they were Waiting for Godot.

At the time I speculated that they were waiting for the tide to recede from the mudflats so that they could get stuck in to supper. The tide is out right now and here they are, having a feast.

There must have been several hundred here and it shows the capacity of the shellfish to regenerate themselves every day to be be able to produce enough food to satisfy this lot.

A little earlier I mentioned the beautiful weather.

Over towards the Brittany coast the weather was rather misty and hazy but down at the end of the baie de Mont St Michel we could see quite clearly.

The large white buildings are all of the hotels and the like that service Mont St Michel. Having seen the prices that they charge for even the most basic services down there, I shudder to think how much they would want for a night in a hotel down there.

Over to the left we have the Pointe de Carolles with the Cabanon Vauban – the customs lookout post – perched on the edge.

And notice how far out the tide is? You can clearly see the orange sand down at the head of the bay.

There was the usual pause to admire the scenery down below the cliff on the south side of the Pointe du Roc.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that we always keep an eye on the chantier navale to see what goes on there. Just ecently we’ve seen them whittle themselves down from five to four to three to two. But today, they have gone back up to four with the arrival of two more.

Only small ones, but then I suppose that everything helps. Someone was sanding down one of them. I couldn’t see which one it was but I could certainly hear the sound.

Up on blocks in the chantier navale is not the only way that boats receive attention around here.

Careening is a regular feature when there’s a high tidal range, although I’ve yet to see that applied in any seriousness. Being strapped tightly to a knuckle on the harbour wall so that the boat grounds out safely when the tide goes out is on the other hand something that we’ve seen on a regular basis and there’s another one over there receiving similar treatment.

There was quite a crowd up on the wall by it too, so something exciting must have happened to it.

Over the last few days regular readers of this rubbish will recall seeing the giant crane that appeared on the docks at the end of last week.

Whatever it’s come here to do, it’s doing it right now. Its width with its safety feet is such that it’s blocked off half of the road and there afe traffic light sontrolling the traffic.

It’s not possible at all to see what it’s doing from here. One of these days I’ll have to go for a walk down there and take a closer look. It has to be something worthwhile to have attracted machinery like that.

There was the usual hour on the guitars, somewhat later than usual, and then tea. Tonight was a stuffed pepper and the last of the apple crumble. I’ll have to make another pudding tomorrow and I have a cunning plan for that.

There was the usual run out tonight – an agonising crawl up the hill in the teeth of a gale. But I recovered my breath, ran down to the clifftop and then walked round the corner.

The other day, regular readers of this rubbish saw the marker light for the harbour entrance standing well clear of the water on its rock. By my estimation it’s still half an hour or so before high tide, and if you compare the two photos you’ll see how high the tide comes in.

And look how clear the air is this evening. You can see for miles down there.

As I ran on down on top of the cliff I noticed hordes of people standing on top of the harbour wall.

For quite a while I stood and watched them, thinking that they might be going to jump in. We’ve seen them do that before. But as long as I looked, no-one moved and I came to the conclusion that they were fishermen or something.

There were a couple of parties of girls as well loitering around where I was standing, presumably likewise waiting for things over there to happen.

As I stood there watching them, something came a put-putting around the headland.

At first I wasn’t sure what it was, but I suppose that it’s another one of these very small fishing boats. It’s a working boat, judging by the radio aerial.

And those things in the foreground. I wasn’t sure whether they were marker buoys or seagulls. And having had a closer look I have to say that i’m still none-the-wiser.

And that reminds me of a story I heard about a barrister, FE Smith, giving a lengthy explanation of something to a crowded courtroom.
“I’ve listened to you for half an hour” said the judge “and I’m still none-the-wiser”
“Maybe not, My Lord” replied Smith. “But you’re certainly better-informed”.

My run took me all the way down the Boulevard Vaufleury and as there was a lot going on at the fish processing plant I went to see.

This equipment that they were using was quite interesting and it took me a minute or two to work out what it was. And I came to the conclusion that it’s a kind of vacuum-cleaner that was being used to suck the shellfish out of the hold of the trawler and into the fish processing plant.

And if that’s what it is (and that was what it sounded like) it’s a pretty ingenious device.

My run tok me round to the viewpoint at the Rue du Nord.

Nothing exciting going on there and still a while before sunset so I took a quick photo and ran on home to write up my notes..

Tomorrow is a busy day. I have my Welsh class so I need to prepare, I have my book-keeping class that has now started, I have my music course.

Then there are the photos from Sunday to deal with, the current radio project and another live concert for the end of next month too.

That’s before I even think about the ongoing projects like the websites and the July 2019 photos, and then all of the other stuff that’s built up from projects before that were never finished.

It’s a mystery to me how I’m ever going to find the time to do it all.

Tuesday 12th May 2020 – HAVE YOU EVER …

… had one of those days when you’ve been trying to do something straightforward and simple and it just doesn’t work?

Right now I’m having one of those. I’m making a new template for one of my websites – a task that I’ve done on countless occasions – and for some unknown reason it just won’t work out.

For three hours now I’ve been at it, and I’ve spent a similar amout of time on this template too, but I’m getting nowhere fast. I’ve even gone right back to basics and started from the beginning but that’s not working either.

What has happened, I reckon, is that I’ve made a spelling mistake with one of the *.div boxes, or forgotten a quotation mark or something, but I’m badgered if I can see where.

After all this time I’ve abandoned the quest for the evening because my eyes have turned to mush and I can’t see straight.

The day started off so well too. I actually beat the third alarm to my feet, which is something to celebrate these days. And I’d been off on my travels, as I discovered when I listened to the dictaphone later after the medication.

Last night I was coming back from Shavington into Crewe and down by Gresty Brook was a row of lock-up garages. Something had happened and there was a black Lamborghini-type of sports car with all of its front end stoved in and some of these garages were open and there were motorbikes everywhere. It looked as if this Lamborghini had lost control and smashed into these garages. As I walked past I could see that there had been some work doing but there was more to do. Anyway, all of the traffic coming out of Crewe had stopped so I was able to negotiate my way through. Then it came to updating my website so I moved some information around and wrote in a bit about this accident to fit in with a few of the images. Roxanne came to talk to me about something and we ended up talking about hot air balloons that she had seen as a very small child and where they fitted in to the story of Montgolfière, these balloons
We were all on The Good Ship Ve … errr … Ocean Endeavour, a huge mob of us. I was interested in a woman or girl or somebody. I was doing what I could to become friendly with her. At the same time there was another guy trying to do something to be friendly with another girl and everyone kept on butting in on him like they usually do with me. So one one occasion someone said something about this girl – that Stephen from Brooklyn, so I explained to him that the other guy had first dibs and he was quite put out by that. One evening we were having a meal and it was a huge refectory kind of place, not like the dining room. I grabbed my evening meal and went to sit down and I couldn’t see this girl whom I wanted to sit next to. I thought “she can’t be here yet” so I chose a place a bit away from everyone else but there was no cutlery or anything for anyone else so i started to assemble some cutlery to make a place for her. Just then I was overwhelmed by half a dozen people who appeared at once and all sat down at this table all around me and left no space for this girl. One of them was this Stephen and he explained to me that ‘I was having a nice friendly chat with so-and-so and this girl and thank you for putting me right to the situation”, things like that, and i was thinking “God I wish that someone would put these people right about my situation”,
A hot, sweaty, sticky night again, which I have to note, and I ended up somewhere in all of this in a big 1960s American estate car, a beige one, right-hand drive. For some unknown reason whenever I left a standing start I had to push it to make the car roll forward and then leap in. It was really heavy too but one in started to roll it was fine. I remember having to do this at a certain traffic light where opposite, the road narrowed and made it an interesting procedure. So I bought a different, smaller and lighter American estate car and at the same junction I had to do the same thing and that was for some reason even heavier to push.

After breakfast I had a good go at cleaning up the kitchen and dining area. And then configure a laptop so that it would work “Zoom” – this on-line meeting thing. It had to be done on the laptop because there’s no microphone or webcam on this big machine here.

Promptly at 11:00 we had our first lesson. There was the initial teething trouble with the programme as you might expect as no-one (not even the tutor) knew how to do it, but we were soon organised and the two hours passed quite quickly.

One of the attendees had her daughter of about 6 with her, and she had brought a dolly with her. So it goes without saying that at some point Strawberry Moose joined in the Welsh lesson.

Apparently the Welsh Government body that is sponsoring these courses expected about 100 attendees and made the appropriate provision. However there are a total of 1039 people who enrolled. It seems that the events of the last four years are swinging the pendulum over towards the side of Nationalism.

It did not escape my notice that one of the choices for “reasons for studying this course” was “to establish my national identity” or something very similar.

That took me right up to lunch where I finished off the last of the bread that I had made 10 days ago. I’m surprised that it had lasted so well.

This afternoon, as I said yesterday, has been a cookery afternoon. And you cans ee the finished products here.

We have a loaf of bread, one and a half jars of apple and apricot purée for breakfast, and some apple and apricot cordial. And once again, I forgot the cinnamon and nutmeg.

The loaf was made with 400 grammes of flour.

We started off with 250 ml of water had a teaspoon of sugar and a sachet of yeast added to it. It was all stirred together and put in the microwave until it was lukewarm.

Meanwhile, 400 grammes of flour had a dessert spoon of salt added to it, and it was all mixed togather.
The lukewarm water was slowly added, every so often stopping to give the mixture a really good mix. make sure that your hands are well-floured so that the bread mix doesn’t stick to them so badly.

Eventually, you’ll end up with something rather like plasticene, nice and elastic. Then, you have to really knead it with your hands to make sure that the water and yeast are really well circulated throughout the mix. This can take 10 minutes or so and it’s quite an art.

Then put a towel over the bowl and put the bowl in a warm place for 45 minutes or so, to give the yeast a good start.

Meanwhile, peel, slice, core and dice 10 apples and but them in a saucepan with just a dash of water and plenty of lemon juice, stirring them well round as you add them to make sure that the lemon juice and water soaks the outside to stop them browning.

Then bring them to the boil and once it’s boiling, turn the heat right down to simmer gently until the apples are really soft (this could take 45 minutes even), giving it all a really good stir around every ten minutes or so.

Once the apples are simmering away, go back to the bread. It should already have started to rise now. So turn your oven on and while it is warming up, you need to knead the bread again for a while to make sure that the nitrogen being released by the yeast it distributed evenly through the bread.

Then put the mix in your bread mould and put in a hot oven 230°C for 10 minutes and then 210°C until it’s done.

When the apples are cooked, open a cheap tin of time-expired apricots from NOZ, drain off the syrup into a sterilised jar and add the fruit to the apples.

After about 5 minutes when the fruit is all thoroughly heated through, strain off all of the liquid into the jar with the syrup and whizz the fruit up in your whizzer.

Sterilise a couple of large jars (I put a small amount of water in them and run them for a minute in the microwave on medium-high and use boiling water on the caps) and put the purée in the jars and seal the lids.

Then check the bread by poking a large skewer into it. When it’s ready, it should sound good and the skewer should be clean when it comes out

Rather later than usual, I went out for my afternoon walk with the madding crowds – although nothing like as many people as I was expecting.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that we saw them yesterday digging out the sand from the old tidal swimming pool. They’re not there now … “the ground’s all flat” – ed … but whether it’s because they have finished or simply knocked off for the day I really couldn’t say.

What i’ll have to do is to go that way tomorrow too but somewhat earlier so that I can see how they are doing.

I carried on walking around the walls, past more people than I have seen for quite a while, until I came to the Square Maurice Marland.

Between the chimneys I noticed some movement in the harbour so I took a speculative photo to see what it might be.

It’s beautifully focused on the chimneys, which means that it’s out of focus deeper in the image, but I could see that it’s one of our floating pontoons for the new walkway being pushed across the harbour by a motor boat.

A little further on there was a better view of what it was doing. It looks quite impressive too.

But we can see that whatever was keeping Marité out of her berth seems to have been resolved because she’s now back in her little corner.

The two Channel Islands ferries, Granville and Victor Hugo, are moored up over there, and today there’s just one Joly France boat, the ferries that go over to the Ile de Chausey, moored up. The other must be out on a run.

Back here I had another bash at this web site problem and then had my usual hour on the guitars.

Tea was steamed veg in vegan cheese sauce with falafel, followed by some of my apple pie and soya coconut dessert stuff.

There were a few people out there this evening but that didn’t prevent me from going running.

It was yet another struggle up the hill in the wind but I made it all the way up there. There was nothign much going on offshore tonight so I wandered around the corner to watch the fishing boats unloading at the fish processing plant.

It was really busy there tonight. There was a queue of boats there waiting for a berth to unload their catch.

But there seems to be plenty of activity down in the chantier navale

We’ve had five boats in there for the last couple of days but today it seems that one of them has gone back into the water. I wonder if we are going to be having another visitor any day soon.

Despite the strong headwind I ran on down the Boulevard Vaufleury and was almost bursting by the time that I reached my marker.

having seen them pushing the pontoons over this afternoon I went down to the viewpoint overlooking the harbour to see if I could see what they had been doing.

It’s not evident at all but I think that they might be adding a third layer to the bit that’s perpendicular to the harbour wall. That’s all that I can think of that might be different.

My next run took me up to the viewpoint at the rue do Nord but there was nothing at all happening out there so I ran on back home.

Bed now, not as early as I had hoped. But there’s a lot to be done tomorrow. I want to finish off this radio project, sort out this perishing web template and do the chores like photos and rewriting other web pages

And I need to find time for another play around as my new hi-fi has finally arrived today. I’m looking forward to that.

Thursday 30th April 2020 – I WAS RIGHT …

… last night when I predicted the arrival of either Thora or Normandy Trader here in the harbour today.

On my way out to the shops I had a glance over the wall down to the harbour, and there was Normandy Trader down in the harbour.

Another thing that I was right about was the quick turn-round time these days too. She must have crept in on the overnight tide and is leaving right now – right at the moment that the harbour gates are opening.

And the harbour gates are indeed just opening right at this very minutes, and you can tell that just by looking at the colour of the water coming in on the tide.

You can see that it’s a brown colour – heavily loaded with silt, and that contrasts with the blue of the water that’s inside the harbour.

Whether that’s because the silt that might have been in the water has settled out while the gates were closed, or whether there’s a fresh-water sources from somewhere feeding into the harbour is anyone’s guess.

And I wasn’t just right – I was right in spades too!

Because as I came back from the shops Normandy Trader had long since departed and in her place Thora was now there loading up. That was quick.

Another quick turnround too because when I went out this evening to take the air she had already long-since departed. So when I say at timed that I haven’t seen them for a while, that doesn’t mean to say that they haven’t been here.

The least said about this morning, the better. Not one of my more successful starts to the day, I’m afraid.

But I did make it to my feet and after the meds had a listen to the dictaphone. I was working for the French Government last night on an employment reinsertion project and one of my clients was some young guy I know in back in Pionsat. I had to give him advice and tips about getting back into work, all this kind of thing. Of course it’s pretty evident that he doesn’t need any tips with the amount of work he does on the side but it’s the kind of thing that had to be done. There were all kinds of questions about me, a foreigner advising people on French law. It went on like that for quite some time. At one point I was actually travelling somewhere and I’d come to a strange town that I knew. I tried to buy some fuel but one or two of the petrol stations were closed and there were queues at the other stations so I had a walk around the town for something to eat but I couldn’t find anything to eat. Everywhere was closed as well in this town
And during the night I was getting my carrots ready for freezing, chopping them up and dicing them. At one point I had to measure them but it was a bit late by them because I’d already chopped them up and you couldn’t really assemble them back together again to measure them so that was something as well.

After breakfast I had a go at some music-file digitalising. The first one that I attempted was a nightmare and I had to search everywhere. But I still ended up one track short no matter where I went.

And I was right about one of my assumptions because it was there in black and white in the artist’s catalogue – “this artist is known to be one whose work was lost in the Universal Studios fire” and because he’s a pretty obscure artist, that would appear to be that.

What I’ll have to do is to digitalise the album myself instead of hunting down master tapes, and then upload my versions.

As an aside, I should mention, so that there’s no mistake or misunderstanding, that I’m only digitalising albums that I already own.

Because of all of this, I was late having my shower and late going out to the shops.

And even later than I would have been too. There was so much going on out there this morning and of course it’s been a wek since I’ve seen any of it.

For a start, what is this? Some kind of heavy machinery, that’s for sure, and I imagine that the artic at the side has just delivered it.

But whatever it is, it’s an interesting replacement for the large crane that was parked on there for a couple of days after thay had taken it off the floating pontoon.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that a few days ago I was mulling over how they were going to get down to the new floating pontoons.

It’s all very well having the pontoons but it’s no use if you cant get up or down from or to them.

But I found out the answer to this conundrum this morning. We can see the new gangway over there that goes down to the pontoon. I imagine that it’s secured at the quayside but unsecured at the bottom so that it can slide about as the pontoon rises and falls with the tide.

And if we can avert our eyes from Normandy Trader for a while we can see yet more goings-on just here.

Our big mobile crane is back again, and here she is just about to wrestle with a gangway for the floating pontoons here. I imagine that the gangway will be dropped into position during the course of the morning.

And on the other side of the harbour you can see the big floating pontoon that was being used as a workstation. It’s now been dismantled and is ready to be taken away in early course.

A couple of days ago, regular readers of this rubbish will recall that they set up the flags on the Resistance War Kemorial at the Pointe du Roc.

Here this morning down in the Place Godal the local Council had the cherry-picker out playing with the flags here too.

But what they were actually doing was taking down the British flag. I’m not sure why and I wasn’t quick enough to ask them, but it was probably a symbolic post-Brexit gesture or something like that.

We’ll have to see next week whether it goes back up.

So I pushed on … “pushed off” – ed … to LIDL for my shopping, through the madding crowds.

On the first day of detention à domicile I remember wandering the streets looking for bread and there wasn’t a soul about at all. Today, apart from the few people wearing masks you would never have thought that these were lockdown times, with the crowds that were out and about.

But it seems to be working. Only 758 new cases today, which contrasts with the sad state off affairs in the UK where there were 6032. At a 15% death-rate 15 days hence, which seems to be the norm, France will soon be reaching Germany’s low totals whereas the UK will be out of control. Even more so when an order of “vital supplies” of ventilators ordered in an emergency turn out to be totally useless

There was a security guy on the door at LIDL too controlling ingress and egress. Older, bigger and more out-of-condition than me, he was too. He wouldn’t have been any use running after shoplifters. But then, he’s not there for that.

In LIDL I spent a lot of money, but I needed quite a lot of stuff as stocks were well down. And so much stuff did I buy that it was a struggle to carry it home. But it’ll keep me fit, I suppose.

But fit for what, I really have no idea.

On the way back I stopped off at La Mie Caline for my dejeunette for lunch and then back here I had a coffee.

Having almost run out of hummus I made another batch. And it’s really easy to do.
Drain a tin of chick peas.
Add to the chick peas half the weight of sesame seed paste (400 grammes of chick peas means 200 grammes of paste).
Add some of the chick pea juice, some olive oil, sea salt, ground black pepper and garlic – usually in total about half of the weight of chick peas again
Chuck the lot in your whizzer and give it a really good whizz around – adding a little more oil or chick pea juice until you have the consistency you like.
In the meantime, dice up your flavouring. I’ve used roast peppers, all kinds of things in the past but today it was sun-dried tomatoes and olives with tarragon.
Add them into the mix in the whizzer and just blip the whizzer so that the flavouring is dispersed throughout the mix – you don’t want to purée it, which is what will happen if you whizz it too long.
Put it in small pots, freeze some of it and put a pot in the fridge for immediate use.

And it was totally wicked on my dejeunette with tomato, cucumber lettuce and vegan mayonnaise.

After lunch I had a look at a second album to digitalise. And this was a loooooooong one too and it took an age. And the disappointment was that for some reason or other, two of the tracks on the master tape where, had this been an LP there would have been a change of side, the one seems to have lost its end and the other its beginning.

So that’s a task for tomorrow – to see if I can track them down.

But one track on the album was one that I used to play in a rock group in the 1970s so I couldn’t resist the opportunity to have an extra go on the bass. That brought back some very happy memories.

And I ended up having to dismantle the computer at one point. The mouse has been playing up just recently but this afternoon it handed in its hat so I had to find another one and untangle a mass of cables to do that.

And it wasn’t easy either.

After another session on the guitars I knocked off and went to make my apple and pear purée, now that I had some apples and pears to make it with.

10 apples peeled, cored and diced, added to a small amount of water with a lot of lemon juice (to stop the apples browning) with desiccated coconut, cinnamon and nutmeg.

3 pears followed suit into the water which was them all put on a low heat, given a really good stir and left to its own devices for about an hour.

In the meantime seeing as I’d had the oven on to sterilise the bottles I stick a couple of potatoes in to bake along with some baked beans and vegan cheese.

A simple tea of course but it was delicious, as was my blackberry pie and almond soya dessert.

By now the fruit was ready so I drained off the liquid and bottled it to use as a cordial for breakfast.

The fruit went into the whizzer and was whizzed round into a purée and then put into the other two jars that i’d sterilised in the oven.

They were left to cool, and you can see the finished results right here. It looks really good and, having tried a sample off the end of the spatula, I can say that it tastes good too.

So at this point, about an hour or so later than usual, I went for my evening walk.

And I was glad that I’d done something during the day too because by the looks of things, it wasn’t going to be the right kind of evening to be out there.

There was a famous storm raging out there in the English Channel somewhere round by Jersey and I wished now that i’d put on my rain jacket – or maybe gone out a little earlier.

Despite the howling headwind, which wasn’t quite as strong as yesterday but nevertheless … I managed to run up to my marker point at the top of the hill.

It was something like a struggle – well, a lot like a struggle actually, but I was given the impetus to move on quickly when I saw the storm heading my way from the Ile de Chausey.

As I watched, I could see it getting closer and closer and I didn’t like the look of it at all, so I cleared off.

And even despite the raging weather, there was another fishing boat out there in the Baie de Mont St Michel.

This kind of weather, rough though it is, won’t stop them at all. But as I have said before … “on numerous occasions” – ed … they seem to be fishing in areas that I hadn’t noticed before.

No change in the chantier navale this evening which was just as well because I didn’t feel like stopping. Still the same four boats from yesterday. They are keeping quite busy in there despite the restrictions.

But while I’d stopped for my breath, I had a look at the flagpoles here in the car park in the boulevard Vaufleury.

They’ve been busy with the cherry-picker because they have put these flags up too. We have the EU, then France, then the province of Normandy and then the flag of the town of Granville.

But on that note the rain started to fall. The storm had caught me up. So I ran off down the street and back home, missing off my two final runs due to the inclement weather.

But I was over 100% on the fitbit so I wasn’t too disappointed.

It’s horribly late now and I’m nowhere near finished. Tomorrow is a Bank Holiday here and that’s usually the signal for a lie-in bit I’m going to defy convention, get up early (if I can, of course) and finish off the outstanding stuff before breakfast.

See you in the morning.

Sunday 19th April 2020 – I’VE HAD A …

… cookery day today.

From left to right we have a bottle containing peach syrup and the liquid from a pile of cooking aples with coconut cinnamon and nutmeg. That will be the breakfast drink for the next few days.

The two – or, rather, one and a half – jars are apple and peach purée, with desiccated coconut, cinnamon and nutmeg. After the success of my apple purée with a tin of apricots a few weeks ago, I reckoned that I’d try it with a cheap tin of peaches to see how that works out.

At the front is another apple crumble. Not a great success, the crumble topping unfortunately, but that’s a matter of aesthetics really – personal taste more than anything else. I must put more oats in it.

There’s also a tub of muesli about somewhere. I made a load of that too.

No, one thing that needs to be understood. When I say “today” – that is being … errr … somewhat economical with the truth. It’s probably more accurate to say “this afternoon”.

And when i tell you that breakfast was at 13:30, you’ll understand why.

No alarm today of course, so I can stay in bed as long as I feel like it (staying in bed, that is). So awakening at … errr … 11:30 after a night that wasn’t all that late at all is rather comforting, even if it does mean that I’ve missed half of the day.

After the medication I had a listen to the dictaphone. I was with a group of people on the The Good Ship Ve … errr … Ocean Endeavour last night and a whole pile of gunmetal grey cabinets and I’d bought the lot. I had them in a storage hold there and people were wondering what i was going to be doing with them but I didn’t say anything. I had one of my mkIII Cortinas, a saloon, and I had it up on some ramps at the back – jacks, axle stands, things like that and I’d made a rear number plate – no, someone brought a number plate to me and asked me how it worked. So I told them how to fit it, where it goes, where the number plate light went and how the wires connected up, how it was fitted on with tivets, this kind of thing, and this girl said something like “I’m glad that I came and asked you because of all the other people I could have asked”. So I started to fix this number plate to the back of this mk III Cortina. Other people came by and started looking and could see it going on. We were talking about them. Someone asked “what was I going to do with all of these cabinets once I left the ship?” I told them about this big warehouse, 280 ft², not a lot of course (did I mean metres?) and I used to be a taxi proprietor and I had 5 Cortinas in there. I carried on fitting this number plate. I fitted it in a different place than usual and it actually looked quite good although the number plate light was off-centre. Some people came by and these Americans were chatting about rear number plates and the legal requirements, all of this kind of thing.

There was much more to it than that but you won’t want to know about it, seeing as you are probably eating a meal right now.

After breaKfast, or lunch, or whatever, I made a start on a couple of compilation albums. And i was perfectly correct yesterday when I said that I probably wouldn’t find all of the tracks for them. I did what I could but they have gone onto one side for me to deal with in due course.

And then the cooking and the muesli-making. Now I’m set up for another couple of weeks, although at some point I’ll need to make some more orange and ginger drink

After the crumble had finished cooking I made my pizza. Now, of course, the oven is stinking hot and the pizza cooked to perfection. I’ve come to the conclusion that even when the thermostat trips out, that doesn’t mean that the oven is warm enough. It needs much more time than that to reach the proper kind of warmth.

And then out for my walk – or, rather, my runs. Much, much later than usual

Here’s the rue du Roc again. I ran all the way up to there from beyond the last lamp-post that you see in the photo, right down at the bottom. My apartment building is the one to the left where you can see the three lights.

That’s really quite a steep climb and I’m impressed that I can get as high up the hill as I do.

Having recovered my breath, I run down from here to the clifftop for a good look out to sea to see what is going on.

With me being late, it’s going quite dark and all of the lights are on. Brehal-Plage is looking quite nice in the evening light and you can even see the lights on the wind turbines away in the distance.

From here I walk on up to the lighthouse, across the lawn and the car park and then down by the side of one of the bunkers of the Atlantic Wall for the view across the baie de Mont St Michel to Brittany

Nothing much doing there either so I carried on with my run along the top of the clifftop.

No change in the chantier navale so I had a look to see what was happening in the tidal habour. Chausiais and Joly France were still tied up to the ferry terminal, but there wasn’t a lot of anything else happening around there.

And so I carried on with my runs back to the apartment.

With having set out late, it’s later than usual so I’m not going to hang around. I’ll be off to bed in a minute.

Back to work tomorrow and another two radio shows and then I’ll have to turn my attention to some live concerts. I need to organise a few of those.

Tuesday 7th April 2020 – BRAIN OF BRITAIN …

… strikes again!

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that for the last few weeks I’ve been complaining about the stereo hi-fi system that’s attached to the big desktop computer and how the right-hand channel has given up the ghost?

Having tried this afternoon to assemble a series of tracks that were heavily dependent upon the right channel and impossible to synchronise otherwise, I set about dismantling the computer to see what I could do.

So I disconnected a pile of cables from the back of the computer and pulled the machine out of its cupboard to check the connections to the amplifier and …. “where’s the output cable from the sound card?”

All I’d been pulling out had been USB cables and the like – no hi-fi cable at all.

So I went to the amp and traced the cable backwards, to find that it is actually plugged into the input socket on the screen. And, furthermore, the socket is loose in the mounting panel.

So, doing what I should have done in the first place, because there’s nothing as permanent as a temporary solution, I threaded the cable through the little holes here and there and plugged it into the sound card.

AND I HAVE A STEREO!!! And even the bass box on the floor that houses the amp is working now too, and all of the horrible buzzing that was driving me to distraction has gone.

But the system is still going to be replaced. The left speaker (I swapped them round) is still bouncing as if the speaker has blown. And I’ve seen an amp that will do a good job, as well as a pair of decent speakers.

The amount of time that I spend in my little office in the bedroom means that I ought to be able to treat myself to a little luxury.

And I’m spending more time in my bedroom than you might imagine, because I missed the alarm yet again. 07:15 when I finally arose from the dead.

My own fault too. I was listening to music yet again and engrossed in a non-productive task, when I noticed the time. 01:35. Yes, I was rather carried away, what with one thing and another. And once you make a start, you’d be surprised at just how many other things there are.

After the medication, I had a look at the dictaphone.

Last night it was back to school again and it was lunchtime. We were all sitting on different tables having our lunch. I was talking to a few people on a different table about music. They were in a different rock group to me and there was some kind of competition taking place and all the groups at school were going to appear in it. So we kept on talking to each other about things like this during this meal. Then the competition started. I was talking to these other guys and they said something like “well where are you sitting?” I said something like “I was sitting on the front …” but they said “well where were you?” and I replied “well I was here”. So they said “well where was your group?” “On a table on the next row over to the left”. “No you aren’t” they replied. “You’re here”. It was a really strange conversation like that. They called for votes like ‘if you’re this group sitting from here to here then you want to vote for this”. Of course I wasn’t there. I was sitting round at this other table or standing at this other table and this was getting all confused about the groups because there was no-one in the right place where they were supposed to be
And if you can make any sense out of that, then you are welcome.
A little later, we were busy trying to make a cherry pie but it was all going wrong. Someone had made a start and then left it, and we had to start to do it all over again, roll it out for it had lost all of its shape so we had to mould it and sieve the flower and so on. We could have done a really fine job but we were really stuck for time because we were supposed to be going out as well. In the end we just put the pastry in the pie mould and whoever it was who had put it in, they hadn’t wet it enough and it wouldn’t stick to the mould, wouldn’t fold round the mould all this kind of thing and I ended up having to dab it with water and a brush to get it to stick better. Someone else was having a go. In the end an alarm went off somewhere and brought this to a sudden end.

After breakfast I had a go at the digital file splitting. For yet another album, there was absolutely nothing at all. I must have one of the most exclusive record collections in the world. All of these albums that I own and there isn’t even a trace of them anywhere. The fire at Universal Studios must have been more devastating than anyone could have imagined, and more devastating that anyone ever admitted, with so many albums with no other master tapes held anywhere else.

Nevertheless, I ended up with another four albums split and the pile is decreasing. But before I start on the complicated stuff (because, believe me, there is going to be a lot of that when I arrive near the end) I’ll do the cassettes.

A shower was next, and I also weighed myself. This new fitness regime that I’m doing seems to be doing the work because that weight that I put on just now, that has gone and more besides.

Off next to LIDL now.

As I was going past the quayside I stuck my head over the wall to see what was going on. There seems to be a load of builders’ material lined up there on the quayside.

That can mean only one thing – or, maybe, two things – that we are about to have a visit from either Thora or Normandy Trader, or maybe even both.

We’ll find out soon enough.

At LIDL I bought my apples and lettuce, as well as a few other things. And forgot the bananas, orange juice and soya milk for good measure.

Still no pizza bases, and they seem to have stopped carrying the taco rolls which is a shame. I’ll have to buy the rolls from LeClerc and have a go at making my own pizza bases.

There weren’t too many people in there, but it was one of those days where there were people with enough shopping to last Dr Barnado’s for a month or else someone who couldn’t find his wallet or so on. It took ages to leave the shop.

There was a nice young black and white cat sunning itself on a car roof on the way home, so I stopped for a while and we had a chat, and I gave him a good stroke.

After lunch I had a go at the apples that I had bought and the old pears from last week, and made another pile of apple and pear purée.

9 apples and four pears in that lot, as well as some cinnamon, nutmeg and desiccated coconut. All boiled up nicely (so well boiled in fact because I forgot about it for a hour or so) and the liquid drained off to make a breakfast cordial.

The solids bunged into the whizzer and then put into the sterilised jars ready fir use as of tomorrow morning.

Following that, I started to deal with the music for the next radio project, but that was where I ended up being distracted by dismantling the computer.

Eventually I was able to make a proper start on the radio project, but not for long as my bad night caught up with me for half an hour or so. But at least the music is all assembled and I’ve made some kind of start on writing the text.

Music was next of course an I ended up playing “Moonage Daydream” on the bass in a completely different way to how I was playing it yesterday. That’s the kind of thing that comes with practice.

And instead of on the acoustic bass, I had the 5-string fretless out with the VOX AMPLUG and headphones.

It’s confusing having more than four strings, and even more confusing having no frets. But it will improve with practice.

Having mistakenly eaten my nice vegan burger in error on Saturday and fancying a burger on a bap today, I had a rummage around in the freezer and found one that would do.

So burger on a bap with potatoes and veg followed by rice pudding. Yes, I’m really eating well.

When I went outside for my evening exercise I found that I had ended up with a flat battery in the NIKON D500, so I had to go back for the NIKON D3000.

And as you can see, I was right about the builders’ equipment lined up on the quayside this morning. Thora has sneaked in this afternoon, on the tide just now, I imagine, and she’ll be taking all of that stuff back to Jersey in exchange for whatever it is that she’s brought in.

The quarantine regulations and Brexit don’t seem to have done too much harm to Thora and Normandy Trader. They still seem to be coming here quite frequently.

It was trying to rain too – the first that we’ve had for a while. That storm cloud over there on the Brittany coast looks as if it means business.

So I didn’t hang around. I managed my five runs although I really didn’t feel much like it. But I have to keep it up no matter what if I want to look after myself.

Once I’d finished, I came in to write up my notes, and to look at just how disappointing another day has been.

Tomorrow is of course another day, and I have cordial to make and digital files to dissect. But I want to push on … “or push off” – ed … and finish these radio projects before I’m much older. For one reason or other, for which I don’t know the answer, they are taking me much longer than they ought to.

So I’ll clear off and go to bed. Not as early as I would like, but it’ll do for now. Here’s hoping that I’m feeling better tomorrow.

Friday 27th March 2020 – AND IF YOU THINK …

… that yesterday was a bad day, you should have seen today.

We started off this morning where we finished last night – in total chaos. It wasn’t as early a night as I was hoping because just as I was about to go to bed, onto the playlist came Al Stewart and his song “Modern Times” from THE ALBUM OF THE SAME NAME.

In the late 1960s and early 1970s Al Stewart was pretty much dismissed in the same terms that were reserved for Chris De Burgh several years – “the work of a queasy adolescent scratching his pimples” or some such quote.

And while his early output was considered by many to be mushy, maudlin, sentimental and egoistic, it was something that many of us, brought up in similar circumstances, cast adrift as teenagers in squalid and sordid bedsits, could readily identify.

His later work evolved as he himself evolved, but there was still this underlying nostalgia deep in there somewhere and in the song “Modern Times” he brought out every memory that I ever had of the painful pangs of growing up, coupled with, right at the end, two minutes or so of one of the most magnificent, underrated guitar solos that I have heard for quite some considerable time.

So on that note, rather later than usual having listened to it three or four times and shared it with some of my friends, I went off to bed feeling about as depressed as I could be.

When the alarms went off in the morning, I quite simply missed it. All three calls. it was 07:50 when I finally arose from the dead, feeling completely disappointed about the whole affair. I don’t know what’s getting to me right now.

After the medication, I had a listen to the dictaphone. And no wonder I was so tired. You would be had you gone off on the voyages that I had.

I’m not too sure about much of this first part because in the panic that I had when I couldn’t find my dictaphone and had to wake up and get out of bed to look for it, I forgot all of it. But it was to do with me being in a kitchen, a caravan-type of kitchen although it might not have been in a caravan and I had to get some things out of the cupboard that’s above the sink. So I opened it up but couldn’t find anything at all that I knew was in there. It suddenly occurred to me that what was happening was that for some unknown reason the stuff there in the cupboard was the wrong way round, as if you were trying to get in from the back rather than from the front. That’s why I couldn’t find anything that I knew was i there because it would now be at the back instead of at the front. There were things like little test tubes full of a kind of oily liquid of all different kinds of stuff in there and I was trying to work out what these were that I was pulling out – lots of different stuff like that!

Later on during the night I dreamt that I was arrested for a debt but because it was a debt that related to something weird to do with some kind of Act of 1742 I was arrested and sent to a debtors’ prison, the kind of place we had that still exists today. We were all herded into one great big cell, men women, children. We were all basically put in there and the key was locked upon us. Meals were cooked but there was no organisation or anything. We grabbed a seat where you could and lay down where you could, all of this kind of thing. The Salvation Army would come amongst the prisoners to talk to them, that kind of thing. Surprisingly, I counted quite a lot of solidarity between the prisoners, something that you wouldn’t really expect in those conditions. Certainly an interesting place to be. There was a book passed round with a list of all the prisoners in it. It had me in it, and showed my address and an extract of the roll of my premises and it said “car scrapping and recovery” and something else there that was all quite interesting too.

Finally I was on an aeroplane to Chicago but it was Canada and I’ve no idea why Chicago might be in Canada. It was only the previous day that I had made up my mind that I was going – I had a couple of weeks between hospital appointments so I thought that I would go. I got onto this plane and it was pretty crowded. I was sitting next to a young boy, a college student, something like that, and I had to explain to him that the UK was fighting a war and while there was a surfeit of Canadian students until 2021, that was going to disappear so I said that any Canadian student of which there is a surfeit to get them over to the Mother Country – tell them that the UK is fighting a war and needs their bodies. We were discussing things on board the ‘plane and talking about headphones. he asked “what happens when the staff plug in a headphone for you and you don’t use it – does that count?” I explained that you get a basic radio service that’s free, included in the price of the ticket and you only pay if you go for an enhanced service. There was a problem with my seat – it wouldn’t stay upright and kept on reclining backwards. I thought “God I hope that they don’t make me move prior to take-off because there didn’t seem to be anywhere to move to and I was settled where I was in a nice aisle seat.

Thinking about it later on, it was the whole kind of emotional environment last night going to bed where, had this been another time, I would have expected Castor or Zero to have put in an appearance. But as far as I’m aware, neither of them showed up, which was probably a good thing.

After a rather late breakfast I had a crack at the digital sound files. It wasn’t as good as it might have been because for one album, there was absolutely no trace whatsoever of anything relating to it.

Not that it surprises me because I must have the only copy in existence, so I’ll have to make a digital copy myself along with the others that I’m collecting for which there is no trace.

Two more, all that I could find are *.mkv files. And while I can convert them to *.mp3 just as easily as I can convert almost anything else, it’s disposing of them afterwards. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that I’ve identified a fault that makes them almost impossible to remove without a great deal of effort and if you have too many on your computer, they all try to open automatically at once and it slows your machine right down.

As a result I’m trying to hold off downloading *.mkv files until either Yours Truly or Microsoft can find a fix.

Having eventually finished the albums I went out to see if I could find my bread.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that yesterday I mentioned the Ile de Chausey, the folk who live there and the lack of facilities that they have, and I wondered how they would cope.

So when I saw a couple of boats heading out that way in the mist I took a rather speculative shot to see whether it might be either Joly France or Chausiais doing out with supplies.

But it actually appears to be two fishing boats going out that way, presumably for the purpose of fishing. So I’ve no idea what is going to happen over there if they can’t receive any help.

What’s even worse from my point of view is that all of the paths around the clifftops are closed off so I couldn’t take my usual long route around the Pointe du Roc.

Instead I had to walk around the edge of the park in the boulevard Vaufleury. There’s a good view down into the chantier navale and from there I could see that Charles Marie has found a friend.

The fishing boat Cap Lihou has come to join her, but keeping her social distance as she can see. There was someone there with a pressure washer hosing off her barnacles.

That reminds me of the time that I was talking to a ship about barnacles. I was saying that I didn’t like them very much.
The ship replied “neither did I at first, but after a while I found that they grew on me”.

The port and the harbour are out of bounds too with this new legislation so I walked on down the rue du Port.

There was one of the smaller fishing boats moored there, and there in the stern was a lobster pot (however do they train baby lobsters to go on one of those?) and, would you believe, some buoys with red flags like we’ve seen floating in the sea every now and again.

So that might well the answer.

As I expected, La Mie Caline was all closed up again with no sign of life. Luckily I had done my research yesterday as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, and the boulangerie at the foot of the hill was open, so I picked up a baguette from there.

On the way back, I took a short diversion.

As I mentioned above, all of the walks around the clifftops are now out of bounds and that includes my running track across the Square Maurice Marland, as I discovered last night.

And so i went that way to have a look at the notice and to take a photograph of the situation so as to record it for posterity. We are living in unusual times and it’s important that we document as much as possible of what is going on so that history will have something to remember.

Somewhere on the internet in some social group or other I was reading that in some places the smaller fishing boats have been prevented from going out to sea.

We saw a couple from here earlier heading out towards the Ile de Chausey, and here’s another one heading into the English Channel towards Bréhal-Plage.

We’ve seen buoys out there where the boat is – in fact, there was one the other day – but I haven’t seen who is out there placing them in the water. But if you look closely at this photo, you’ll see some kind of disturbance in the water between the boat and the photograph.

After lunch, I turned my attention to the purée because I had used the last of that this morning.

Firstly, I peeled, cored and diced 9 eating apples (I prefer them to cooking apples as they need no extra sweetening) and put them as I diced them into a large saucepan that has a small amount of water, lemon juice, nutmeg and cinnamon in there. there was also a large amount of desiccated coconut, for a reason that I will explain.

As I added the diced apple each time I had finished one, I stirred it round in the liquid so that it would remain white and not start to go brown. The desiccated coconut adhering to the bits of apple showed me that they had been treated.

Then I peeled, cored and diced three pears (and I would have added more had I had them) and added them to the mixture, stirring them round as above.

The saucepan then went on the heat and was brought to boil. Then I left it to simmer for an hour.

In the meantime, I made a start on the radio programme about the Grande Marée. There was an interview of almost 8 minutes that needed editing and that took me quite a while to deal with it too – but now it’s down to about 4:30 of quite interesting stuff.

Halfway through the proceedings I broke off to look at the fruit to see how it was doing.

It looked pretty good to me so I washed and cleaned the two jars and put them in the microwave with a small amount of water so as to heat and sterilise them.

The fruit was drained off and the liquid put in a bottle that was put in the fridge for juice in the morning. The actual fruit was put in the whizzer and given a really good whizz round to turn it into a nice purée.

Once it was whizzed up, I put it into the sterilised jars and put on the lids, that I had carefully cleaned. So that’s the apple and pear purée for the next 10 days or so, I reckon. And it’s pretty good stuff, I promise you.

Once it had cooled down, I put it in the fridge. And I carried on with my radio programme. And as I was beginning to assemble it, I found another one of the interviews that I hadn’t actually edited, so i had to turn my hand to that as well.

Unfortunately, I ran out of time. It was 18:00 and time for my hour with the guitars. I won’t get any better if I don’t practise, even if I won’t get any better if I do, but that’s hardly the point.

At 19:00 I broke off and made tea. There was the rest of the stuffing left over so I added the rest of the mushrooms, some more onion and some spinach and tomato sauce, and boiled up some pasta and vegetables.

Pudding was, of course, jam pie and vegan ice cream with chocolate sauce. Totally delicious. And it’s a shame that there’s just one more slice left, because for an ad-hoc improvised arrangement, this was a real success.

And so simple too. There will be many more of these in the future, that’s for sure. With all different kinds of jam. Blackcurrant might be nice.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that last night I went out to photograph the new moon with a camera that had a flat battery.

No such mistake tonight because I had it on charge overnight. So we can see the beautiful moon tonight, with a planet shining quite brightly close by.

Not being an astronomer, I’ve no idea what planet it might be but I understand that Venus is quite visible at the moment. I wouldn’t like to speculate, particularly after the last time when I said to a passer-by “I can see Uranus from here” and the dirty look that he gave me in response.

With all of my regular runnign spots and all of the clifftop paths closed off, I had a rather irregular walk tonight, although I still managed to fit in two runs of some description to the equation.

There was another nice view across the harbour and the town, so I took another evening photograph of the tranquil scene. We’ll be seeing many more shots like this as this lock-down takes hold.

And if it’s anything like any other plague or epidemic in history, it will flare up again for a couple of years until they can either find a vaccine, everyone becomes immune or everyone is wiped out.

So now I’ve finished my notes and I’m off to bed, as long as nothing in the way of nostalgic music appears on the playlist.

Saturday tomorrow, and shopping day. So we’ll see what that brings us. I’m expecting thigs to be much more busy than last week with people having been cooped up and thus short of supplies. I can see me eventually changing my time of visit to a less popular time as this affair carries on.

Monday 16th March 2020 – I WAS STROKING …

… the big ginger cat Gribouille outside the building this afternoon when a woman approached.

She saw me, wrapped a scarf around her face and gently skirted around me, keeping a good two metres distance all the time.

And the thought going through my head was “couldn’t she have picked a more polite way to remind me that I didn’t have a shower this morning?”.

And indeed I didn’t have a shower this morning. I’ve forgotten that I’m heading to Belgium on Wednesday (Government legislation permitting) so I don’t really need anything. So much for the big rice pudding that I made on Sunday.

But yes, Belgium. That hotbed of disease where everyone is in a panic, yet you have about three times as much chance of becoming a multi-millionaire by winning the lottery than you do of catching this disease.

Of course, the situation could change at any moment but that’s something to worry about when it happens. I’m under no illusions. I’m elderly, I’m in poor health and I have no immune system. And so if I do happen to catch it, I’ll be the first to go under. But there’s no point in worrying about it.

Mind you, I did worry about last night when I crashed out writing out my notes. It’s only half-finished and I did reckon that I’d finish it today but that wasn’t possible. That’s for another time, I reckon.

Just for a change these days, I beat the alarm this morning and I was up and about having my medication long before the third alarm went off. It shows the benefit of an early night.

And back here, I had a look at the dictaphone. And I’m not at all sure what was going on here. There was a building that was probably Hankelow Hall where I squatted for a certain time. There was some kind of football match going to take place between two ad-hoc teams and I was on one of these. We assembled to play our match. It was in the harbour of a town, something like the harbour where this abandoned building was. So we met and again I realised that I didn’t have all of my things. I needed some more before the match would start. I needed to go home and pick them up but would I have time before the kick-off of our match? Yes so the house was plunged into darkness again and we were going to have to have another search around to find ourselves, find our boots and find the people with whom we were supposed to be playing.
later on I was in Montreal last night with someone but I don’t know who. The two of us were on a STM bus and something was happening. The passengers weren’t very happy with the driver and they were having a go at him and he was having a go at them. At a bus stop, “Denbigh” in the rue Denbigh (which doesn’t exist, by the way), the driver stopped the bus at the bus stop, got out from behind his seat and came down the bus to try to attack one of the passengers. The passenger hid amongst the crowd of people so the bus driver couldn’t get him, so the driver took out a bayonet-type of thing, went outside and started to unscrew the window of the bus so that he could get at the passenger. At that moment I called the police and the police started to take all the details ready to send an emergency vehicle I imagine, but the driver just disappeared. So he was gone.

For breakfast, I tried some of that apple-and-apricot purée that I made yesterday, followed by some of the apple and apricot cordial. And it wasn’t at all bad. I’ll remember this because every now and again they do have tins of fruit in at NOZ where the labels are torn, something like that. And this is a good way to use them up.

Having done that, I had a look at the digital sound files that needed splitting. Another four have disappeared today. Much to my surprise, they were all reasonably straightforward and it’s been a long time since that has happened

Today’s project was to send off a radio project for this weekend and then to do another one to replace it. And by the time that I’d finished I’d chosen all of the music (except the last track), written the notes, dictated them and was half-way through editing them.

No supermarket today of course, but that didn’t stop me from going out for my three walks today.

having chosen the music, I went out for the bread and for a look to see what was around. There wasn’t anyone walking around but there was plenty of excitement out to sea, like this yacht threading its way through the archipelago that is the Ile de Chausey.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that the number of islands out there varies between 365 and 52 depending on the state of the tides at the time.

Plenty of other stuff out there too.

Apart from the fishing boats, there’s a cabin cruiser too floating around in the Baie de Mont St Michel and that wouldn’t have been a sight you would have seen a week or so ago when we were having all of those storms and high winds.

But it does go to show you the liberty that exists on the open sea and it’s making me quite envious. I wish that I had a boat right now.

And how are you spending your enforced absence away from work?

These two guys have the right approach. They’ve gone fishing. And I can’t blame them because as the virus starts to bite and more and more people become sick, hunting and gathering might be the only solution so you may as well start early.

What I did like was the size of the bucket in which they were intending to store their catch. I was never one to dampen the spirit of optimism at all.

My wanderings took me down past the chantier navale to see how they were getting on with .

No change there – she’s still sitting up on her blocks with half of her sides torn out. But there was no-one working on her at all. They’ve probably all been struck down by the Bubonic Plague or the Black Death or whatever it is.

And that fishing boat there at her side – that’s a different one to that which was there on Saturday. We seem to have had a tactical substitution of fishing boats.

The harbour gates were open so I couldn’t cross. Instead I continued down the rue du Port.

One thing that I have mentioned in the past is the mechanism by which the floating pontoons are attached to the supports, and I promised that one of these days I would have a closer look.

There seems to be two sets of rollers, an outer set and an inner rollar that ride up abd down depending upon the state of the tide. It’s a very clever arrangement and I hope that it works.

The town was deserted today. I counted no more than a dozen people scurrying around, most of whom were carrying bread. Only the bakeries seemed to be open – after all, people have to eat and bread is an important part of life here in France.

La Mie Caline came up with a dejeunette – at least the boulanger hasn’t succumbed to the plague as yet – and I came back home. I was tempted to go and take my butties and sit on the wall outside, so nice was the weather, but as usual I was sidetracked by something else.

My afternoon was even quieter. I counted two people out walking and another couple waiting at the bus stop.

My aim was to wander around to the chantier navale because on looking at my photos, I appear to have overlooked that there was actually a third boat in there this morning – and it was still there today.

No idea why it’s in there, and even less of an idea why it isn’t next to the other two, but that’s something else to keep my eye on. Although if I do go to Belgium on Wednesday I’ll miss all of the excitement in here.

Back in the apartment I dozed off for ten minutes or so but I still carried on with things until 19:00 and knocking-off time.

First thing was to deal with the carrots. They were peeled, sliced and diced and then par-boiled with bay leaves and left to drain.

While they were draining I made myself some of my patent stuffing and had stuffed pepper with rice. Tomorrow night I’ll finish off the left-over stuffing and whatever else is lying around in an Anything Curry ready for my departure on Wednesday morning.

This rice pudding will be a problem though. What am I going to do with all of that? A man can only eat so much, no matter how delicious it is.

My walk tonight was even more lonely. I was the only one out there except for a couple of people putting something into a car boot I managed my two runs though. The first one, I put about 20-25 metres onto my usual distance and the second one, I actually made it all the way up a couple of metres onto the second ramp. Yes, I seem to be improving in that respect and that’s good news.

Rosemary rang later on for a chat. She’s feeling the pressure and being so far from home, it’s not easy for her. But there’s not much that she can do about it right now.

So I’ve finished this entry and it’s already late. Yesterday’s entry will have to wait for another time while I go to bed.

But these days, imagine going to bed and wondering if you’ll wake up in the morning. It’s like something out of the Dark Ages, isn’t it?

Sunday 8th March 2020 – I DON’T KNOW …

… whose idea it is to ring that cacophony of church bells at 11:00 on a Sunday morning but it’s almost as if they don’t want you to have a decent lie-in on a Sunday morning when they go around awakening the dead like that.

It certainly put paid to my morning reverie and I was obliged to leave the comfort and warmth of my beautiful bed.

It wasn’t the first time that I had had to leave the bed either. Round about … errr … 04:00 or something like that, I had to go for a ride on the porcelain horse. I thought that I had passed beyond that, but apparently not.

So I went off and had my medication.

While you admire the high winds that we were having and the storm that was raging somewhere out in the Atlantic Ocean, let me tell you about my morning.

First thing that I did of course was to check on the dictaphone. And sure enough, I’d been on a little voyage. I was with someone last night who resembled a girl with whom I had worked for a while although it wasn’t her I’m sure, someone like that. We were discussing languages. Something weird had come up and we had a reply to do which we had done in French or Flemish or something. This led to some kind of discussion about languages and what do we do, how did we behave, all this kind of thing. I made the point sometime during this discussion that what we did is that we’d have the radio on if we were at home and just listen to a French programme or a Flemish programme. It didn’t really make any difference to the two of us what we were listening to. Any of the languages were usually pretty good for us.

After that, I carried on with the project that I’m undertaking – of digitalising my collection of LPs.

On thing that I’ve been able to do is to find about 120 digitalised sound files of albums that I own, and I downloaded them all. I’ve then had to split them into individual tracks.

It isn’t easy because many of them are studio master tapes where the tracks are recorded in “recorded order” of course which is quite often very different than the order in which they are published on CDs and LPs

Another issue is that some of the tapes include tracks that were never ever published – rejected for one reason or another – and which I don’t have a clue what they are.

And sure enough, one of the sound files on which I was working was one of the latter.

Eventually, after a great deal of effort, I tracked it down. It seems that I have somehow managed to lay my hands on a rare Swedish-only version of a master-tape with one additional track that was only available in a couple of countries and a second additional track that was only available in Sweden.

That should be quite a curio when it comes to playing it on the radio programmes.

13:30. That’s a very civilised time to have breakfast, I reckon. And the last of the home-made apple juice from when I made the apple and pear purée. It’s certainly quite interesting when I am responsible for the making (within certain limits of course) of almost every product that I eat for breakfast.

After breakfast I didn’t really do all that much. After all, it is Sunday and I’m entitled to a break one day a week when I don’t do much.

Nevertheless, round about 15:30 or thereabouts I decided that I would have lunch. I wasn’t all that hungry, and there was an end of a baguette from yesterday hanging around in the kitchen.

Luckily, I had remembered to fetch some hummus out of the freezer yesterday. Roasted pepper hummus too, made with my own fair hands.

So I had a hummus, tomato, cucumber and lettuce butty for lunch, followed by the usual apple, pear and banana for afters.

And that reminded me (although I’ve no idea why it would) that the lemon and ginger syrup that I make for my medication is running low. Sometime later this week I’ll have to make some more. I’ve plenty of ginger but I bought some juice oranges so I’ll go for orange syrup this time.

Whatever happens, I mustn’t forget my afternoon walk. I’m only on 3% wandering around the apartment.

Mind you, sticking my head out of the door, I wasn’t too impressed about the idea of going out.

By the looks of things, there was a huge storm brewing away across the baie de Mont St Michel over there on the Brittany coast. And knowing my usual luck, I would probably end up finding myself right in the middle of it before I’d gone too far.

But anyway, in for a penny, in for a pound. I set off out.

And I wasn’t alone either. Despite the wind there were crowds of people milling around enjoying the weather and I was determined to join them.

My route took me right around the headland and down the steps at the end. And the farther on my travels I advanced, the more I didn’t like the look of the weather. It was just looking worse and worse

Mind you, my luck was in, for once.

The storm was advancing quite quickly but as I rounded the headland at the Pointe du Roc I could see that it was going to miss me by a good few miles.

It had found shore down by the Pointe du Carolles and places like Carolles-Plage and Jullouville were taking something of a pounding. I’m glad that it wasn’t here, because it did look particularly nasty over there.

My perambulations brought me further around the headland and here I was greeted with a sight that made the walk all worthwhile.

As I have said before … “many times” – ed … there’s nothing between that harbour wall and the eastern seaboard of the USA and here we have the highest tides in Europe.

Consequently the power that can build up in the water whenever there is a major storm anywhere in the North Atlantic is really impressive and the sea walls here catch the lot of it full force.

regular readers of this rubbish will recall that we’ve seen some really impressive seas come roaring in just here.

And today is no exception to that. I stoop and watched it all for a good 10 minites even though I had other things to do, just because it was so impressive.

Strangely enough, there were several people passing by here, but no-one else seemed to be interested in staying to watch the free show.

So instead, I had a wander down to the port. The harbour gates were closed as, believe it or not, the tide is well out (although you might not think so) so I could cross over to the other side of the harbour.

One thing that has been interesting me is the story of the new pontoons that they have been installing in the harbour. We’ve seen the pontoons on the north side of the harbour alongside the rue du Port but I wanted to look at the new ones on this side

That is, assuming that I can get close enough to them, because they are crowded out with fishing boats right now. There can’t be too many out at sea today.

Another thing that we’ve been looking at as we have been on our way around is the scaffolding that is bolted to the side of the harbour wall here.

Being a Sunday and with no-one around, I took the opportunity to have a closer look, trying not to fall into the harbour while I was doing it.

And the result is that I’m still not too sure of its purpose and the OSB boards here fixed to the wall don’t seem to be able to throw any light upon the subject.

All that I can think of, as a wild guess, is that it’s a set of steps for the crew of the floating pontoon to descend to their little boat.

We’ve also seen them installing steel pillars in the harbour in order to extend the row of pontoons out perpendicularly from the harbour walls.

Three have already been installed in the harbour and I was sure that there were others although I couldn’t remember how many. Consequently I went to have a good look aroud and eventually came across them.

And I was correct. I had seen them and here they are – five of them by my reckoning. That seems to indicate two lines of four each and that’s not going to be good news for the commercial boats that come here and need the open space to manoeuvre.

And that’s going to be interesting even sooner than we imagined, because Neptune, one of the gravel boats, has just left Shoreham Harbour – “next stop Granville”. I was right about the heaps of gravel.

As you probably saw in the previous photograph, the storm has passed, the clouds are now all gone and the sun is now out.

That made me decide to push on and have a marathon walk all the way along the Quai Hérel all the way down to the new block of flats (and how I would love to live here!) and the Pointe du Roche Gauthier.

That’s as far as you can do around here. The path comes to a sudden stop and you have to retrace your steps 100 metres or so until you come to a flight of steps that go back up to the road.

So, retracing my steps, I can show you the big modern building over there on the left.

That’s the CRNG, the Centre Regional de Nautisme de Granville, and it’s also where the Youth Hostel and the Salle Hérel are.

The Salle Hérel was quite interesting today – or should have been – because they were having a “Free Market” where everyone takes the stuff that they no longer want so that others may help themselves.

However I was too late because anything that might have been of interest had probably long-since gone.

My walk brought me up past the Tax Office and it was round about here that I had an exciting encounter.

It’s not so much the car, but what the owner was using as a bulkhead to stop whatever was in the back sliding forward into the passenger seat.

It’s an old freight pallet cut down to size and trimmed to be an exact fit. I was well-impressed by this and wished that I had thought of it in the past when I had the Passat.

My walk took me onwards down little alleys that I had only glimpsed in the past.

My aim was to do down past the station and down into the Park de Val es Fleurs to see what was going on around there but in the distance I noticed a flight of steps that I hadn’t seen before.

That made up my mind to go and follow my star wherever it was going to lead me and see what was at the other end – stopping for a glance backwards at the railway engineering depot in the background where the trains are stored and repaired.

My little climb brought me out into a little housing estate where a small path led to the main Avenue de la Liberation.

This path in turn led me past a nice modern block of flats in the chemin de Choisel. And nice though the flats might have seemed, it wasn’t my cup of tea because someone was playing some music full-blast with the windows in one of the apartments.

Where I live, I have solid stone walls 1.2 metres thick so I can play music as loud as I like without disturbing the neighbours. That wouldn’t work here at all.

Out on the avenue de la Liberation and here’s a thing.

Ever since I’ve been in Granville, and probably for many years prior to that, there were some old, abandoned houses that were fenced off from the road.

It’s been a good while since I’ve been past here on foot and to my surprise something seems to be happening to them right now. We have a crane, a new roof and all other kinds of exciting things.

That will be a nice place to live when it’s all finished.

While I was here, I could have carried on down the road into town, gone down another footpath and the steps to the Park de Val es Fleurs, or else through the gardens of the Musée Christian Dior and down the steps to the Plat Gousset.

Obviously the latter will bring me closer to the sea and with me being a Pisces, being close to water is one of my aims, so I made my way down the side of the tennis club.

Last time I was out here, I saw a big cruise ship out to sea, so I had a look to see if I was going to be lucky again.

Not quite. No shipping out there today but we did have one of these mysterious buoys bobbing around in the sea down there. I still haven’t worked out what they are four but my suspicion is that they are something to do with fishing gear – nets or lobster pots, that kind of thing I reckon.

There were crowds of people out there today and a long, continuous line of people coming up the steps.

The steps are quite narrow and there isn’t much room to pass anyone so I had to wait for a while while they came up. That gave me an opportunity to take a photo of the nice archway down there that leads to the final flight of steps down to the promenade.

And the sea was looking pretty rough down there too. This could be very interesting.

And i wasn’t wrong either.

It’s now 17:40 which means that there’s still an hour or so to high tide, and the sea is totally wicked out there, smacking into the sea wall here with an incredible force and sending spray everywhere.

It’s lucky that the promenade s quite wide otherwise I could easily end up marooned down here and that wouldn’t be very pleasant, having to climb all the way back up the steps again..

And I wasn’t alone here either.

This was a show that you would have to pay a fortune to watch in some places, but we were having it for free. There were probably a couple of hundred people down here this afternoon making the most of the entertainment and we were all having more than our money’s worth.

So impressive was it that I stayed down here for half an hour taking photos when one of the very big waves came in

We’ve had quite a few storms down here so far this year, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, and we’ve seen plenty of areas that have been fenced off due to the damage that the wild seas have caused.

There’s some more over there and apparently this needs to be fixed before the Grand Marée, the very high tide, comes in on Wednesday. They’ve engaged some workmen to do the job and they have erected some scaffolding to work from, but I don’t fancy their chances out there today.

It’s a good job that it’s a Sunday – a Day Of Rest – today when they can have a day off.

While you admire a few more photos of the storm on the Plat Gousset, I climbed back up all of the steps and walked home via the square Maurice Marland.

There was still about 40 minutes or so before teatime, so I busied myself with another pile of photos from July 2019 and my trip to Iceland. I really need to press on with that before i’m much older.

The trouble is, though, that with having no internet out there, I wasn’t able to do any research into the photos. Consequently every one that I am editing, I need to research to find out where it is and what’s in the image.

Sunday is vegan pizza night of course, but it’s also pudding time seeing as I have the oven on already.

It’s usually rice pudding or some such, but last week we had a delicious apple crumble. Apple pie has been on the menu too in the past and that was what I intended to try today, using the new pie dish that I bought.

These pastry rolls are the business. The cheap ones from LeClerc are vegan of course so I always have a stock of those on hand. And I’d picked up some backing apples too on Sunday.

So, grease the pie dish and unroll one of the pastry rolls and put that in, gently pressing down so that it’s in at the seam at the bottom.

Thinly slice a couple of the apples and lie the slices in on top of the pastry, making as many layers as you can fit in, so that the pastry is completely covered.

On every layer, a think coating of desiccated coconut, brown sugar and lemon juice (and some cinnamon and nutmeg, which I completely forgot, for some reason or other that I can’t explain).

Unroll another pastry roll, cut out a top for the pie, with an overhang of about 2 cms.

Wet with some mile the part of the pastry that is on the lip of the pie dish, then put the top on and press it down really hard with a fork to the pastry underneath on the lip. Then trim off the excess pastry.

Put a few slits in the top of the pie to let out the steam, brush with milk and sprinkle with brown sugar. Then bung in the oven.

With the excess pastry, coast it on both sides – and your rolling pin – with flour to stop it sticking, and roll it out with your rolling pin. It won’t be square, so keep on trimming it off and adding the trimmings into appropriate places so that it’s as square as you can make it

Grease a flat oven tray and gently with a couple of spatulas, pick up your flat pastry and put on the tray. Add the leftover apple slices into the centre, with desiccated coconut, brown sugar, cinnamon and nutmeg (which I remembered this time) then fold over all of the pastry and press it together to seal it.

Prick it with a fork to let the steam out, brush with milk and sprinkle with brown sugar, and bung that in the oven too.

And here’s the end result. It all looks pretty impressive and I bet it tastes even better even without the spices in the pie. I won’t be trying it this evening though because there’s still some apple crumble left.

Instead, the turnover was cut into 2 and put in the freezer, and the pie went in the fridge ready to start on tomorrow.

Rather like the time that I made a meat and potato pie when I was younger. I left the eyes in the potatoes so that it would see me through the week.

I’ll get my coat.

One thing that I mustn’t forget is my evening walk. I’m already up to 95% so i don’t intend to go far.

The NIKON 1 J5 and f1.8 18.5mm lens came with me so that I could have a little play around. I reset the ISO to “MAX 3200” rather than “MAX 6400” as the graining is too much, and stopped down a couple of stops to see what I could produce with that.

And f1.74 at 1/50 second and ISO3200 gave me this image. And for a hand-held shot, it’s quite reasonable. Joly France looks quite nice out there at the ferry terminal.

There have been much worse shots than this.

I’m wondering what else I can produce with this camera if I show some patience. Some good might come out of the enforced deprivation of the big NIKON D500

While you admire the rest of the photos of the storm there is something else that I mustn’t forget – and that is to go running.

And it’s a good job that I did those two-and-a-half runs yesterday because I only managed one and a half today. Not because of lack of willingness or lack of fitness, but because my first run down the rue du Roc was right into the teeth of a howling gale.

When I hit the slope of the hill about half-way or so along my course, it stopped me dead in my tracks and that was that. Luckily the return run along to boulevard Vaufleury was with the wind so that was a lot easier and I managed an extra 20 metres or so.

So now I’m back home and in the warmth.

There are tons of photos to edit and lots to write, so i doubt that I’ll be able to finish it tonight. But I’ll do what I can before I go to sleep and whatever remains to be done, I can finish it all off tomorrow.

Not that I’m complaining of course. This was a good day out and a really good walk around – more than enough to tire myself out. If I do fall asleep while writing out my notes, it will be for a very good …

ZZZZZZZ

Wednesday 5th March 2020 – YOU’RE PROBABLY SITTING …

… there wondering why on earth I’m posting a dreadful photo like this in my journal tonight – and giving it pride of place as well.

The fact is that I’m totally surprised by this too.

This evening I went out with just the NIKON 1 J5 to see what damage I could do with it in the dark.

Adn dark it was too – about one-third moon and you could hardly see anything at all out there. Mind you the howling gale was telling us a story all of its own with the sound of the waves pounding down into the surf.

So, I tried to focus. Nothing whatever enough light for it to find a focal point so I set it to “automatic exposure”, focused on a street light an equivalent distance away, swivelled round in the direction that I wanted to face, and pressed the shutter more in hope than expectation.

And frankly I wasn’t expecting anything at all, so no-one was more surprised than me to produce an image as bright as this one.

The automatic settings were f1.74, ISO6400 at 3 seconds exposure, and it’s produced an image as bright as this. That’s impressive.

Of course, I’m going to need a tripod if ever I do it again, and then I’ll have the issue of focusing on a dummy point and then swivelling the camera around.

But I could use the exposure compensation mechanism to darken the image somewhat and speed up the exposure time. But it isn’t half interesting nevertheless.

While you admire the storm that has been raging all day and the waves that it’s been producing, let me tell you something about my day, because it’s been another disappointment.

Once more, I failed to beat the alarms and it was 06:30 when I finally pulled myself together and left the bed.

After the medication, I had a look on the dictaphone to see where I’d been. As well as the notes from yesterday afternoon, which I’ll add in in early course, there were a couple of files from during the night that needed attention.

There was something going on in the street like a gardening club meeting. A couple of people were turning up and going again. I was there with a young girl who might have been Percy Penguin, I dunno but she didn’t hang around long. I was waiting for something and there was another guy there. A girl came up and she got out of a car and started to kick this medicine ball around. I ended up playing football with her and this medicine ball. She was kicking it up the hill towards me and of course the ball was rolling back down the hill again. I was running after it to kick it back to her but I couldn’t get a kick on it at all because it was rolling back down the hill quicker than I could catch up with it. This went on for a while and then gradually people started to turn up. There was a young girl there who was with another man. apparently she’d been someone’s servant or maid before she’d settled down with this guy. They were handing out these old clothes that had been really tatty but someone had sewn up so they weren’t as tatty as they were before. They were passing these around to whoever they belonged to but I always seemed to be in the way, standing in the wrong place when someone was passing round an item of clothing

After breakfast I had a look at some more digital sound files.

Just for a change they were quite straightforward and, more to the point, quite long. One of them ended up with no fewer than 17 tracks, several of which I had no idea existed.

Such it was that I had to break off near the end and go for my shower..

Once I’d had a good clean-up, I braved the hurricane and went out to do the shopping.

Not that I managed to go very far though before I came to a grinding halt. One of the issues about living in a medieval walled city with really narrow streets is that heavy vehicles like this cement mixer can’t go in.

You have to invent a work-around, or Système D as they say in France, like a little fork-lift truck type of thing and a cement hopper.

And you’ll notice the plastic sheet on the floor to prevent cement or concrete sticking to the road surface.

Yesterday, we noticed the pile of gravel that had appeared in the port near the conveyors.

This morning, the big digger was out there and he seemed to be moving more gravel across from the bins to the centre of the port apron. The pile is certainly growing.

This can surely mean that we are at long last about to have a gravel boat coming in some time in the near future – the first one that I will have seen in 9 months.

Here’s hoping that i’m not going to be disappointed.

But here’s a surprise. The big floating pontoon is in a different position.

Does this mean that they will be installing a new walkway pontoon there as well? That’s going to restrict the movement of the boats like Marité that congregate down there in that corner.

For a change I went to the new Bio shop, La Vie Claire, near the Stade Louis Dior in the avenue des Matignon. Josée had bought me a book on making drinks from a product called Kefir so I went there to see if they had any.

They had both lots, the fruit Kefir for making soft drinks and also a pseudo-dairy Kefir for making yoghurt from vegetable milk like soya milk or almond milk. I bought one of each and I’ll be having a play with them in early course.

At LIDL I didn’t spent all that much, except that I did buy a pair of wellingtons. I don’t have a pair and there have been a couple of occasions when I wished that I had.

Not only that, in a week or so I’ll be scampering about in a pile of rock pools so a pair of wellingtons will come in handy.

On the way back I was interrupted by a noise coming from above.

Someone has had his chopper out again and I was wondering if it is the same red and yellow and one that we see wandering around. But it’s a different one that I haven’t noticed previously.

By the way, if you are wondering about the images, the fact is that Brain of Britain forgot to change the lens over this morning and on the little NIKON 1 J5 there’s still the f1.8 50mm lens that I’ve been using at night. It doesn’t “do” distance of course.

Having picked up my dejeunette at La Mie Caline, I headed for home. But we’d had a moment’s amusement in there. Some young woman in front of me was complaining that her colleagues had left her alone in her office for the day. Boththe guy behind the counter and I said at the same moment that we’d go round and give her a hand, to which she laughed.

Ohh yes, I can still chase after the women at my age. I just can’t remember why.

Back here, I had a major disappointment to deal with. I have a project in mind, an important one, and I have set my heart on doing it. I’ve already set steps in motion in this respect but the disappointing news is that due to this stupid virus thing going around, it’s been put on hold and may be cancelled.

That will be devastating news for me.

After lunch (some more of that delicious soup) I started off another batch of purée and then made a start on finishing off the notes that I’d begun to write yesterday.

There was the usual break for my afternoon walk of course.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that I mentioned yesterday about the path that they spent a couple of weeks laying and then dug up to replace with a different path. Today I had another closer look at the new patch and you can see that they’ll be having to dig this one up and replacing it very soon.

As you can see, it’s cracking already, due to insufficient foundations, I reckon. I don’t suppose that, given the record of this Council, that they expected it to be down this long before there was a change of plan.

But the winds were thoroughly and totally wicked. I was being blown about all over the place and even had to chase after my hat on one occasion.

The fishing boat out there in the Baie de Mont St Michel was making really heavy weather of trying to get into port and I’m not at all surprised.

It’s been a really long time since I’ve been buffeted about so much in a wind like this. At times it was impossible to advance and I really was being blown backwards as I tried to advance.

And I’m sure that you have been wondering, just as I have been, how the big floating pontoon has been moving across the harbour.

This afternoon I was lucky enough to catch it in motion. And it’s being pushed, so it seems, by that boat with the outboard motor.

It’s certainly one of the strangest sights that I’ve ever seen – and, believe me, I’ve seen quite a few strange sights in my lifetime. There’s not as much friction in water as there is on land, but it still must take a lot of effort to move the pontoon.

Back at the apartment I organised the purée.

8 small apples and four small pears, peeled, cored and diced into small cubes. Put into a large pan with some desiccated coconut and cinnamon, with a very small amount of water and lemon juice. All stirred up and stirred well in.

It had been brought to the boil and left to simmer on a very low heat. All in all it had been on there for an hour or so.

The liquid was drained off and put in a glass jar to drink at breakfast, diluted as necessary. The solids were put into the whizzer and whizzed around until they made a purée.

Two large glass jars were steamed in the microwave (a little water put in them and they were heated for a minute) and the tops boiled in water. The purée was then ladled into them, the lids put on and they were left to cool.

Once they have cooled and created a vacuum they can go in the fridge. I’ll start on the first jar tomorrow and see how it is. But the sampling was delicious.

At long last I could dictate the notes that I’d written – but first I had to fight off a wave of sleep, not very successfully I’m afraid. But at least it’s all dictated and I’ve even started to edit it and clean it up.

For tea tonight there was a pile of mushrooms to be finished off that hadn’t found their way into the soup the other day. And so I cut a potato into squares and cooked it with spiced in the microwave while I organised some onion, garlic and the mushrooms with half a stock cube and more spices in the frying pan.

It ended up all being mixed together and stuck in the microwave on a low heat while I cooked some rice and veg. And wasn’t it all delicious, especially when chased down by apple crumble and soya coconut dessert stuff

Out for my walk tonight, and I’ve already shown you the astonishing photo of the waves.

The wind was wicked and at my favourite running spot it was totally impossible to move. I ended up having to run on another stretch that was well sheltered.

That took me to the cliffs overlooking the Place Marechal Foch and the Plat Gousset where I decided to have a little fun with the settings with the camera.

It wasn’t easy to work out what I was supposed to be doing, but I did notice that I hadn’t set the exposure compensation correctly.

Back here I had to edit out some red and blue colour and darken the image three stops, but even so, they haven’t come out too badly. Of course, now that the tide’s not in, they’ve left the lights on along the promenade. They couldn’t do that when it’s needed, when the tide is in and the waves are crashing down along the prom.

Anyway, I carried on with my walk and managed my second run too.

So now it’s bedtime. I’m having (I hope) an uninterrupted day tomorrow – except that the blasted bank has phoned me and I have to go to pick up my document after lunch

One thing that I want to do is to finish off this radio project. I should have done it by Wednesday night but I’m just falling behind.

I must organise myself better.

Saturday 29th February 2020 – THERE HAS BEEN …

… a change in my kitchen.

Only a small one but a very significant one at that.

On the floor underneath the shelves are two large plastic storage boxes. One has all of the spare food like packets of spices, packets of rice, all that kind of thing. The other has all of the cookery stuff.

Because of the way that things are arranged, one box has to go at the back and the other one at the front and it’s been the cookery one at the back.

But today I swapped them over. The cookery one is now at the front and easier to access, and the spare food is now in the more difficult position at the back. It’s quite clear that these days I’m using the cooker stuff much more than I’m needing to access the spare food, and that’s Progress with a capital P.

Not much progress this morning though. I couldn’t heave myself out of bed with the alarms and it was more like 06:30 when I finally made it to my feet. That’s disappointing.

After the medication I had a look at the dictaphone. And we started off at the football too. Yes, a mid-table 12th finish in the Football League I ended up with last night. I’d swapped my managerial job at Oldham Athletic with a manager from somewhere else whose team had been right down near the bottom and over the remainder of the season I’d slowly managed to drag this other team up and into 12th position. But there was a lot more to it, much more to it but I can’t remember anything now. As soon as I awoke it all completely disappeared from out of my mind. I do remember that involved me having to do something that was a disagreeable task yet I managed to do it. I just can’t remember now what it was.
A little later, it was the Carnival procession all the way out past the rue Couraye, down the rue Paul Poirier and out to the harbour. As things were drying up it was a rival across the musicians so I managed to force my way into the airwaves and I broadcast them instead. It was rather difficult broadcasting the musicians because they were of course more interested in the music than any other surroundings but it was a broadcast that had to be made. But again there was a lot more to it than this but I just can’t remember now.

After breakfast I set about cutting up a couple of digital sound files into their component tasks and, for once, that was fairly straightforward. And doesn’t that make a change?

A shower was next, and then I was ready to hit the streets.

These days, now that I’m walking to LIDL twice a week (although that will change starting from next week), I start my little Saturday shopping adventure at NOZ.

And NOZ is always good for a laugh, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall because the parking here is totally ridiculous. Here I am, 5 minutes before the shop is due to open, just one car on the front car park (where there are eight spaces) and just four cars on the rear car park, where there are as many spaces as you would like to have.

But despite the signs all over the place warning people of the penalties for parking in the street, and the empty car park right in front of the shop, Madame (and it was a madame) in the black car on the extreme left of the image decides to park in the street with two wheels on the pavement.

You wouldn’t believe it unless you were to see it for yourself.

Today was a rather expensive day for shopping. For a start, at NOZ they had a big round pyrex casserole bowl with lid, twice the size of the one that I have.

I have to make my rice puddings in a meat tin and cover them over with aluminium foil so I’ve been on the look-out for one of these large casserole dishes for some time.

And then there were loads of other things, including the last container of that delicious Alpro vegan nut ice-cream that I bought, as well as some coconut milk.

At LeClerc, there was €50:00 spent on diesel for Caliburn and then another hefty load in the shop. But a good of that went on coffee. There’s a brand of ground coffee that I like that is sold in three-packs for €8:95 and so I usually buy something cheaper, but today they had on offer some 6-packs for just e11:95. That’s much more like my price.

They also had some big 3-kg bags of juice oranges on special offer. As my orange and ginger syrup worked quite well, I’ll make some more of that and so the juice oranges will come in handy.

Some cooking apples and a pile of pastry rolls too. An apple pie is on the agenda, and there’s also some tofu left over so I recon I ought to have a go at a bean-and-tofu pie. Monday sounds like a good baking day to me because I’m out tomorrow.

Back at the apartment I organised myself a coffee while I dealt with a few more digital sound files and did some general tidying up on the computer.

But one track that I worked on today brought back all kinds of memories – nights on board ships in the frozen North, mornings on desolate windswept airports in the High Arctic. I thought that I’d put all of that behind me but clearly I haven’t.

After lunch I set to work. I’m right down on apple purée and I really should have bought some more apples today (I did buy cooking apples but they are for the apple pie). Only four eaters that I could spare so I peeled them, diced them and boiled them up with some cinnamon. When they were starting to go mushy, I drained off the liquid (and drank it – it was delicious), stuck it in the whizzer, added two bananas and whizzed it all up.

It’s made about half a jar so that’s about four days, I reckon, and it’s now in the fridge cooling off. The first batch of banana-flavoured purée didn’t work too well but I have better hopes for this one.

The afternoon’s walk was a really long one seeing that I didn’t have any plans to go anywhere special this evening.

All the way around the headland and down the old path into town. It gave me an opportunity to have a good look at Joly France sitting on her bottom in a NAABSA position at the ferry terminal.

There are two boats called Joly France – the original which is here and a newer one, Joly France I. To tell them apart, the newer one has larger windows and a cut-out at the back, which this one doesn’t have.

Onwards and upwards, across the harbour gates and around the port.

And then across to the funfair – the fete foraine to see what was going on. There weren’t too many people around and there wasn’t all that much going on. But at least the little kiddies were having a really good time.

As for me, I walked down the rue St Sauveur, round the back of the Mairie, across the car park and through the maze of narrow streets to make my way back to my apartment

By now, the weather had eased somewhat and the sun was now out.

The view across town over to the Chateau Gautier and the Pointe Gautier was really pleasant with the town of St Pair sur Mer in the background.

And how I would have liked an apartment in the new block down there to the left. But I’ve never seen one at all available, whether to let or to buy.

And I’m not surprised either.

Back here, I edited another pile of photos from July 2019 s well as, rather unfortunately, crashing out for some time. That wasn’t part of the plan and it was rather dismaying.

With not going anywhere tonight, I had a proper tea. One of the pile of vegan burgers that I bought the other day, in a bap with potatoes and veg. Followed by pineapple chunks with the Alpro vegan ice cream and chocolate sauce.

There is absolutely no doubt, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall that I have said before … “and you’ll say again” – ed … that while I might eat simply, I don’t half eat well. My diet is healthy, quite varied and it’s absolutely delicious.

later on I went for my evening walk. And run!

There were quite a few people about and my first running track was flooded out so I had to run on one of my reserve tracks.

The second part of my run was dry but that was something of a struggle – not as easy as it has been – because I was running into the teeth of a gale and that’s no good for me.

But as I was heading back, I was nearly squidged by an emergency ambulance, blue lights flashing, roaring through the narrow streets.

97% on the fitbit now so I extended my walk and even managed part of another one of my running tracks. This time though, it was more exposed to the wind and I had to abandon after only half of the track as I couldn’t catch my breath.

Back here now just finishing my notes with some good music playing in the background. No alarm tomorrow so, for a change, I’m in no rush to go to bed. And a lie-in will do me good.

Tuesday 18th February 2020 – I CAN NOW ADD …

… to my list of accomplishments that of “tying up a trawler”.

I arrived at the harbour at exactly the moment that the harbour gates opened, and I actually do mean that because I was walking across the path on top when they started to close and I had to scramble underneath the barrier.

There must have been eight or nine fishing boats of various sizes sitting in the queue outside the gates waiting for the off.

Anyway, as soon as the gates opened, they shot in like greyhounds out of a trap and headed for their berths.

One of the later arrivals pulled up right by me as I was walking down the quayside. The skipper shouted “tie us up, will you?” and hurled me a rope. I missed the first time but the second time I caught it and looped it over a bollard and wound it round.

he seemed quite satisfied that I’d done it correctly so I cleared off. I had no idea that passers-by – civilians like me – were expected to know how to do things like this and be roped (if you’ll excuse the pun) into participating in the antics of the fishing fleet.

You learn something new every day.

Nothing new though in this morning’s antics. I missed the alarms again and it was about 06:45 when I finally arose.

But I’d been awake a couple of times during the night and on both occasions found myself dictating the account of a nocturnal voyage … into my hand. Dictaphone still on the chest of drawers.

It’s enough to make me wonder how many times I’ve done that in the past and what I might have missed.

After the medication I had a look at the dictaphone and … GULP there’s enough on here to keep me busy for a week or so, enver mind half an hour.

There was a group of kids, 7 or 8 or 9 and it was some kind of adventure quest. They had to travel to France for some reason or other, all dressed up, even two of them dressed as a pantomime horse with a girl dressed as a princess sitting on top, all dashing off down to Dover docks. I was one of the monitors – I had to follow them around and make sure that they weren’t getting up to any good. They had challenges that they had to meet on the way, like one where it was the task of this pantomime horse to actually involve itself in the encounter, this kind of thing. I pile of them made it down to Dover so I said “what happens now? Do you have to get your tickets?”. One said “ohh no. They said we could get our tickets at the other side” which sounded strange to me but they all seemed to agree that that was what was supposed to be happening. They were all jostling around for a place to sit. One of the girls was Helena who was probably a little older, 10 or 11 I dunno so i got talking to her. “What have you been doing?” “Well apart from having to drive my car to the Isle of Man, not a great deal” so I asked her to tell me about her kind of adventure in this particular thing but she didn’t have the chance to before I awoke
And I’ve done it again, haven’t I? Dictating a dream in my sleep without the Dictaphone. Strange. I was up on the Elm Drive estate in what should have been a council house but it was a big private house of mine. I was doing it up but I’d been taken ill as you know and couldn’t work so the work had really slowed down on this place. But Castor and Pollux were there and Jerry Kobalenko (welcome into my nocturnal rambles, Jerry) too. We were preparing for an expedition and it had started and we had lost a lot of equipment and I’d fallen through the ice. We’d had to arrange this kind of thing and ended up with no clothes so we were back at my house again drying off. I started to lend Jerry some clothes and stuff like that and get myself organised. Jerry borrowed my car which was a Mark IV Cortina RHD but with the gear lever on the right up against the door. He went off and did something and then I came back and took the car for a drive. Went down West Avenue and Richard Moon Street and out to Nantwich. Round Nantwich and back again all the way up Middlewich Road. I can’t remember where I ended up then, some town or other and had to do a U-turn. I pulled out of a side road and nearly knocked a lorry off over into the centre of the road. There was a huge power station where I did my U-turn and came back. Castor and Pollux were talking to me. They asked me what I intended to do about the house. I said that I was going to finish it off and live here. They were surprised and asked if I ought to be taking more care of my health. I gave them the usual story about wanting to enjoy what life I had left rather than being afraid and not doing anything. They were a bit surprised by this but I told them that was how it was. They asked what I was going to do for money. I wasn’t going to say anything but yes I’m OK for money, plenty of it. I said “you don’t need a job”. Castor said to Pollux “but everyone needs a job, you know” and Pollux was still wondering how you manage to live, all this kind of thing. I was trying my best to explain to her. I’d forgotten that bit about taxis when I was out in the car. I wasn’t supposed to be taxiing and I had to stop thinking about being a taxi driver. So this discussion went on and then was when I awoke to find myself dictating this dream out loud into my hand not the dictaphone so I’ve no idea what has happened there – and how many other times I might have dictated into my hand during my sleep and never been aware of it.
Interestingly, it proves the point that dreams are connected with memories and not out-of-body experiences – at least this one was. The area of West Street around West Avenue, Richard Moon Street and Middlewich Road has undergone all kinds of changes since the demolition of the railway works after I left the town. But not one of these changes appeared in my voyage around that area.
Somewhat later I was doing exactly the same thing again – dictating my dream into my hand while asleep. It was a cowboy situation – the James Brothers. One of them was an outlaw, fed up of them being on the run and wanted to go straight. He was talking to me about it. I went outside and there was the other brother trying to break in a horse. That was when I awoke to find myself dictating my dream in my sleep again
Later on I was with Nerina and we’d been working on a taxi. We’d had to have some letraset done to make some stickers and Karen Brierley had done it. The job was absolutely perfect and I wouldn’t have had the patience to do this, as I told her, but this was really good. In fact we’d been talking about business cards prior to this. Someone had taken us to a place and the guy had opened up a set of drawers that he rented out, right by the doorway. “You’ll know what’s in here” he said and opened the top drawer but there was nothing in it. he opened the next one and it was full of business cards and that’s how we got talking about stickers. We much preferred stickers for the taxis because you could stick them everywhere. Anyway then people then were going on about this taxi, painted white and letraset it but it was really late. My family were all up and Nerina was really tired, and I needed her to do some more work. In the end I smiled and said “yes, go on Nerina, go to bed”. I said to my mother that I won’t be up very long either. Even though they were planning to be up all night I’d go to bed and do this first thing in the morning. She went off to bed and I went out to work on this car. But I came back because I was in a suit. I took off the jacket and shirt and went to get an old tee-shirt. And as for jeans I’d but on a pair of overalls to protect the trousers.

As you can imagine, it took me much more than half an hour to type out all of that. I had a break for breakfast at some point and then came back to carry on and it was right into mid-morning by the time that I’d finished all of that.

That meant that finally I could start on the notes for the radio project on which I’m working, but I wasn’t at it for long because I needed to go for my bread.

First task was to leave the house of course. And it was a bright sunny day so i’d planned a nice long walk.

Not that i would get very far though before I had to stop. regular readers of this rubbish will recall that I’m quite interested in the plant life around here – this kind of plant of course, not the other kind. So when I saw this mobile crane pull up on the other side of the harbour I stopped to photograph it.

No idea what it might be doing there. There’s already enough plant and machinery over there as it is.

As I walked down the boulevard des Terreneuviers I noticed that the fishing boats were now jostling for position at the entrance to the inner harbour even though the “traffic light” was showing red.

That could only mean one thing – that the harbour gates were closed but would be opening very shortly. I had a brief look at the chantier navale but there was nothing there any different from the last time I looked.

And so I pushed on rather rapidly, not even stopping to take a photo of the shellfish that they were hauling up from a boat at the fish-processing plant.

Just as I set foot on the footpath across the top of the gates the siren sounded. I moved rapidly but the barrier came down and the gates started to open before I could cross over.

Luckily I was on the far gate so I didn’t have to jump for it, but I still had to scramble under the barrier at the far side. But I’m glad I did because it gave me an opportunity to inspect the fishing tackle on one of the fishing boats.

So now I know where everything goes and what it’s for. I’ll have to get myself out there on a fishing boat one of these days and have a first-hand look at it.

So as all of the fishing boats cleared off into the harbour, I cleared off after them. And that was when I had my encounter with the other fishing boat that I had to tie up.

The guys were there with the pontoon and the large mobile crane. Having been rebuffed the other day I decided not to waste my time asking them anything but to wait and use my own eyes to see what was going on.

And I wasn’t to be disappointed at all, as you will see in due course.

Another one of the things that I’m doing right now is to go round by where the fête foraine – the funfair – will be for the carnival and see how they are getting on with arranging everything.

In the Place Godal, where some of the caravans of the entertainers are parked, there was this popcorn, toffee apple and ice cream stall.

Not that i reckon that it’s supposed to be set up there (although it wouldn’t come as any surprise) but my thinking was that they are waiting for the funfair to erect itself and then these stalls will fit in around the amusements.

So down to the Parking Hérel to see how they were doing.

And the big machinery is going up together quite nicely – and quickly. In fact the apparatus on the left was actually working, swinging back and forth. It made me wonder whether the inspectors were actually there today checking it over.

These machines are impressive but they are quite dangerous and can’t ply for hire until they have been inspected and have a permit to operate.

The Palais de Rire – the Palace of Laughter – looks impressive and they must have worked impressively to have it done this quickly. They had barely started on it yesterday.

But I learnt something today too, and I’m always in the market for learning new things.

There was a lorry there that was towing a couple of trailers – the typical “showman’s goods” lorry. So I asked someone with it what licence yuo needed to drive with more than one trailer.

The answer was (the Fench equivalent of) “a HGV Class one licence – nothing else”. In other words, any ordinary Heavy Artic licence. And I have one of those, don’t I?

But don’t worry. My days of driving all this heavy stuff are over.

From there I walked into town and La Mie Caline to pick up my dejeunette

And here across the road is something that wasn’t here this time yesterday. Clutching my bread quite tightly, I went for a closer look.

They are pushing along quite rapidly with the features for Carnaval as we can see. This is the stage from which they will make all of the announcements I reckon and where there might be some kind of entertainment during the evening – I dunno.

Yesterday I’d been past the car park in the Cours Jonville and seen them laying out the edges of the chapiteau – the big marquee where the Friday night Ball will take place.

And so I went that way today to see how they were getting on with it. And “getting on with it” they certainly are. It’s quite impressive the speed with which they are putting up these things and the marquee is certainly one of the more exciting things

So Friday night we’re going to ba having a Ball. Well, they are. I shall be tucked up in my warm little bed ready for the onslaught the following day.

The roadworks in the place des Corsaires have gone now and the street is open. Me though, I pushed on up the rue des Juifs until I was interrupted.

Excuse the dreadful shot but the sun was right in my eyes and in the camera lens. But here’s our mobile crane, now on this side of the harbour in the rue du Port and the big pontoon has sailed over here too.

And between the pair of them they are manoeuvring one of the pontoon supports into place ready for fixing against the harbour wall. I was lucky to catch this photo today.

Back here I had a late lunch and then set about my afternoon project.

Peel some ginger, dice it into some very tiny squares and then put it in a small amount of water to boil, then leave to simmer.

Meanwhile, peel four good juicy oranges and put them in the whizzer. Whizz them round and then filter out the orange juice which goes in the fridge in a bottle.

The left-over pulp goes into the pan with the ginger and it’s all left to simmer.

While that’s doing, put about 5mm of water in the bottom of your nice new big saucepan and add plenty of lemon juice to it.

hen peel, core and dice seven apples and three pears. When they are finely cut, add them to the water and lemon juice as you go along, swirling them around so that there’s some lemony liquid covering all of them to stop them browning.

Then add desiccated coconut and some cinnamon to the apples and pears, take off the orange and ginger and put the apples and pears etc onto the heat and bring to the boil and leave to simmer.

With the orange pulp and ginger add a couple of dessert spoons of honey and stir well in. Then add to the whizzer and give it a really good whizzing around to liquidise almost everything. Then when it’s cooled down, add to the orange juice and give it all a really good shake.

There’s a nice orange and ginger syrup to add to filtered water.

That was the cue to go for my afternoon walk.

There were crowds of people out there today because it was so nice, and I’m glad that I went out when I did because I saw a most unexpected sight. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall seeing the new pontoons stacked up on the quayside the other day, but here’s one in the water heading across to the cranes that we saw earlier.

But how are them moving? They aren’t rowing them so maybe there’s an outboard motor somewhere, I suppose.

There had been a heavy rainstorm briefly a short while earlier but it had passed and was gone.

Not too far though because we had this gorgeous rainbow. We’ve certainly seen some impressive rainbows since we’ve been living here but this one is one of the best.

Back here I checked to see that the apples were done, and then strained off the liquid. That’s in a bottle ready to be diluted in early course.

As for the solids, they went into the whizzer and turned into purée for me to bottle. That’ll keep me going for a week or so.

Now I could finish off writing the texts and dictate them, just interrupted by a little 10-minute crash out. Unfortunately I didn’t have enough time to finish editing them before it was tea-time which was a shame.

For tea I had a stuffed pepper with rice followed by apple turnover and Alpro soya almond with chocolate sauce. And I’ll tell you something for nothing, and that is that now that i’m much better-organised my diet is improving 100%

Cutting out these shop-bought sugary drinks and their plastic bottles was really a good New Year resolution.

For my walk I managed my two runs and then headed back here to write up my notes.

And now bed-time. After my marathon adventures during the night last night I’m ready for a good sleep. I just hope that I remember to use the dictaphone if i want to dictate any notes.

EPIC HALL

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

Tag Archives: home made apple puree

Sunday 23rd March 2025 – MY ORANGE, GINGER …

Saturday 22nd March 2025 – IT WAS ANOTHER …

Sunday 16th March 2025 – I HAVE BEEN …

Tuesday 2nd June 2020 – I’VE NOT BEEN …

Monday 25th May 2020 – A FEW MORE …

Tuesday 12th May 2020 – HAVE YOU EVER …

Thursday 30th April 2020 – I WAS RIGHT …

Sunday 19th April 2020 – I’VE HAD A …

Tuesday 7th April 2020 – BRAIN OF BRITAIN …

Friday 27th March 2020 – AND IF YOU THINK …

Monday 16th March 2020 – I WAS STROKING …

Sunday 8th March 2020 – I DON’T KNOW …

Wednesday 5th March 2020 – YOU’RE PROBABLY SITTING …

Saturday 29th February 2020 – THERE HAS BEEN …

Tuesday 18th February 2020 – I CAN NOW ADD …

Your reactions

Excellent

Useful

Interesting

Weird

Surprising

Boring