Tag Archives: jackie marshall

Tuesday 10th February 2026 – I’VE HAD ANOTHER …

… horrible afternoon today. And it was going quite well at first, too.

However, the scene was well and truly set last night because, once more, with not too much food preparation needed, I whizzed through everything quite rapidly, and I was in bed by 22:00, feeling much better than I might have been.

But with having been in bed early, and with it having been a dialysis day, I shall let you lot imagine how the night went. I shan’t bore you by repeating it.

So there I was, at 02:00, tossing and turning, trying to go back to sleep for hours and being totally unsuccessful for quite some considerable time. At one stage, I was even toying seriously with the idea of leaving the bed.

Eventually, though, I must have gone off to sleep because I awoke again. And then back to sleep, to be awoken by the alarm.

It was even more of a struggle than usual to leave the bed this morning but I eventually managed to struggle into the bathroom. But by the time that I’d made it into the kitchen, I was running later than I would have liked.

First this was to make the hot lemon, ginger and honey drink, and the second thing was to take my medication.

While I was at dialysis yesterday, the doctor examined my chest and said that I ought to go back onto the antibiotics because the cough is coming back. So having some left over from last time, I took a couple.

And do you know what? About five minutes later, I began to cough and sneeze, and the streaming nose was back. You couldn’t make up a story like that.

Back in here, I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night.

There was some kind of dream about some archaeologist or someone talking about a hoard of pottery that they had discovered somewhere. The guy was coming out with a story that it was obviously a gift by someone to someone else whom he loved back in the eleventh century BC. For that reason, it was quite a unique and exciting find. But there was more to it than this and I can’t remember it now.

No prizes for guessing to what this dream relates. But the idea of giving gifts to lovers back in the eleventh century BC is certainly a novel idea and seems to have come from out of nowhere.

I had a girlfriend who lived in Audlem and she rang me up saying that she’d like me to go round. So round I went in the van and arrived at her house. For some unknown reason, I knocked on the fence instead of the front door. I’ve no idea why. She came rushing to the door with a great big smile on her face, really pleased to see me. I’m not used to being greeted like this by anyone particularly but at that point I awoke so I don’t know what happened

As it happens, I had a couple of girlfriends who lived in Audlem, but that’s yet another story that the World is not yet ready to hear. As for the girl in the dream, though, she was a girl whom I met in Brussels who moved to Croydon and then to Swindon. We saw each other once or twice but then she decided that she wanted marriage and a family.

But it’s true – no one is usually as pleased to see me as that girl was last night during the dream.

There was also something about me going away, so I was packing food into the back of the van but I could never get it to how I wanted it to be so I kept on taking it out and putting it back in a different way, but that just seemed to make it worse and worse. In the meantime, while I was doing this, someone shouted something about a black car, saying that it was being wrapped up etc, but someone was climbing into it to drive it away. It turned out that it was a taxi and this guy jumped into it to drive it away. A policeman was there, who tried to stop him but the guy leaped back out again with a huge piece of wood and attacked the policeman, then jumped back into the car and drove off

This is another dream that relates to absolutely nothing at all.

The nurse turned up after his week away, and he was rather impatient today. I imagine that he has a lot of patients waiting for him back at his office.

After he left, I made breakfast and read some more of Mortimer Wheeler’s MAIDEN CASTLE .

We finally managed to finish pottery, and we’re now on metal objects, such as rings, brooches and weapons.

Considering that many of his critics claim that there’s no evidence to support his claim that there ever was heavy fighting at Maiden Castle, the collection of arrowheads and spearheads clustered around the entrance to the fort is impressive

But surprisingly, he identifies a brooch and some matching pottery of a type that was common in Dorset and Somerset during the period 400 BC – 250 BC and notes that a sample of an identical type of brooch and pottery was found at a vitrified fort from the same period at Dunagoil on the Isle of Bute in Scotland guarding a seaway. And Dunagoil means, in yr Hen Ogledd, “fort of the foreigners”.

So I wonder what the connection might have been.

Back in here, I revised for my Welsh and then went for the lesson. It was another lesson that passed very well due to all of the preparation that I did. And I wish that I could be able to remember it all because it gets on my nerves that I can never ever remember anything half an hour later. I really do have a memory problem.

My cleaner turned up after the lesson and shooed me into the shower where I had a good wash and a change of clothes, and I feel so much better now.

Or, at least I did, because not long after I started to choose the music for the next radio programme (and that’s becoming more and more complicated as the music becomes more and more obscure), I felt the wave of fatigue arrive.

By about 16:00 I was slumped over the desk, flat out asleep, and by about 16:45, I was in bed, fully clothed, even down to the slippers. I just couldn’t carry on.

While I was asleep, Id been off on a ramble, as I found out next morning. And no-one was more surprised than me.

I had an E-type Jaguar, a hardtop. A group of us had gone to some kind of bar in the countryside. I remember running over the pebbles to this bar with no shoes on and it was killing my feet. We stayed there for a while, and then it was about 23:40 so we decided that we’d go into a club. A group of us, we all set out and left the pub and again, I had to run over these pebbles in my bare feet. I reached the car, and one of the doors was open and the toolbox was at the side of the car. There was only one wheel on the car. Then I remembered that my brother had been messing about with it before we went into the bar. I couldn’t understand why he hadn’t put anything back nor why he’d taken the wheels off. I had to find the jack and jack up one side of the car, which was not quite so easy because the jack wouldn’t balance correctly – it was one of these peg jacks on a leg. Eventually, I could raise the car off the ground and one of the guys coming behind me slammed the wheel on quick. I could drop the car down on that side then. He asked if I needed wheel nuts, but I had some, but as I was trying to set these wheel nuts going, one of them wouldn’t start. It took me ages to fiddle around with this wheelnut to try to make it start, but it still wouldn’t start

Not that I’m ever likely to own an E-type or go into a bar. But running over pebbles is probably some reference to the pain that I have in my right foot.

As for my brother, you can bet that somewhere along the line, someone from my family would turn up.

It was about 19:45 when I awoke, and had it not been for the fact that the ‘phone rang at that moment, I would probably still be asleep even now. Instead, though, I headed off into the kitchen for tea. Pasta, vegan burger and ratatouille followed by fruitcake and soya dessert. And for some reason, I didn’t enjoy it as much as usual.

But right now, if the stabbing pain in my foot allows me, I’m off to bed. I’ve had some of the cough mixture that I’ve been prescribed and apparently you aren’t allowed to drive while taking it because it sends you to …

… zzzzzzzzzzz.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about the strange after-effects of the antibiotics this morning … "well, one of us has" – ed … it reminds me of when I once went to Prestatyn years ago.
"Come to Prestatyn" said the adverts. "It’s good for the rheumatism."
"And was it?" asked my friend.
"Absolutely" I replied. "I’d only been there a couple of hours before I caught it too".

Thursday 6th April 2023 – MY CURRIED FRIED RICE …

… was delicious tonight.

The other day I mentioned that due to the success of my Chinese fried rice with soy sauce, I’d try some curried fried rice one of these nights. And as I was rummaging around in the fridge I came across some outdated millet burgers that were rather bland but obviously needed eating.

And so having cooked my rice and veg, I fried it in some vegan margarine and olive oil with cumin and coriander. And that reminds me – when I go back to Leuven on the 11th of May I need to stock up on spices like that because I can’t buy them around here

Well, I can, but have you seen the price? Amazon has fennel at €8:50 for 250 grammes and I can buy it at the Asian warehouse in Leuven at €1:29 for 150 grammes. Fenugreek seeds are at €5:00 per 100 grammes and exactly the same packet will cost me €1:49.

Better news than the prices of spices on Amazon was the fact that when the alarm went off at 07:30 I was already up and about. Last night was still something quite depressing but when I awoke quite dramatically at 07:15 this morning I thought that I’d push myself onwards and upwards.

After the medication and checking the mails and messages I carried on with writing the notes for the radio programme that I’d started yesterday and now they are finished.

Next stop was to go outside to Caliburn to look for the strong black tape, but no luck there. I don’t know where that has gone.

But the good news from that point of view is that I can come back up the stairs without holding on to the hand rail. There’s not sufficient force in my right leg to push myself up the steps with it but the left leg seems to be working. I had the crutches with me of course but I didn’t really need them and it was the quickest that I’ve been up and down the stairs for quite a while.

Despite the lack of strong sticky tape I took out the two freezer drawers that needed repair and just superglued them, hoping that the glue will hold them together. I had a good sort through and found a couple of interesting things that will need eating quite soon. I might even make a start on Saturday seeing as there are a couple of those small breaded quornburgers that I bought a while ago.

But I managed to make some room in there, not the least reason being that I took out three of the stock of hot cross buns ready to defrost and eat over the Easter period. What would Easter be without hot cross buns?

Armed with a coffee and some cheese on toast (I found half a baguette in the freezer) I transcribed the dictaphone notes, of which there were plenty. There was a rock concert on somewhere or other. I’d invited one of my little friends to go with me. It was a Thursday night. At first she wasn’t very keen but we went anyway. We really enjoyed the concert, a Southern Rock band so of course I really enjoyed it. What was interesting was that for their lead guitar solos, they flashed the music up on the projector so that everyone could see it. It didn’t occur to me until much later in the concert that “why don’t you take a photo of it and go home and learn to play it?”. Then they announced that there would be a pause. Everyone was quite exhausted. I looked at my watch – it was 02:15. I asked her “have you seen the time?”. She was doing some kind of work for a coach or bus company for school holidays. She wasn’t really all that interested. Everyone was feeling tired so everyone including us lay down on the floor and went to sleep. I had a disturbed sleep tossing around there because what was going through my mind was first of all what would her parents say when they go into her room to awaken her in a couple of hours and she’s not there but with me, and what’s she going to say her work etc. I could see a whole mass of trouble ahead with this. She wasn’t bothered about it by the looks of things so I wasn’t either any more than that. Anyway she awoke after about half an hour and I gently probed her to see how she was feeling, whether she should go home now or whatever like that but she didn’t seem to want to bring the matter into discussion. She was just quite happy being there. I thought “well, it’s not for me to say anything is it really if that’s what she wants”.

She was a lovely girl. While she was at school she worked in the library at Nantwich on a Saturday and she’d go through the new records that the library would purchase, and smuggle out the ones that she knew would interest me so that I could tape them, and then she’d smuggle them back in the next Saturday and repeat the cycle.

Her parents hated me though and I think that they were glad when we split up.

What went wrong was Christmas 1976. I was flat broke, living in a squat and in an effort to liven up our Christmas we spent the last of our money buying card and glitter and the like to make some nice Christmas cards.

Audlem was a funny village. It really was a village of two halves, one half being the farm labourers and the other half being the rich, dazzling suburbanites. We went around the latter with our cards. “Ohh how nice and thoughtful. Do come in. have a mince pie. Have a glass of sherry”. We were wasted by the end of the evening and her parents took a very dim view of it all.

A few years later I was driving a coach for Salopia and stopped in Whitchurch to go to the bank. Guess who was serving behind the counter?

Unfortunately I couldn’t stay long enough for a chat but the at the next opportunity I went back. However she wasn’t there.

Instead I buttonholed another cashier and asked about her. At first no-one remembered her but then someone said that she was in fact a new recruit who was there in that branch simply to gain some experience, and no-one knew where she had gone from there.

And that was that then.

Later on I stepped back into that dream. I was with her again driving around somewhere. We went past the house of an ex-girlfriend of mine. I had 2 headlights for the car there. as the headlights on this one were fading and pretty bad I thought that I’d go and pick up these. I parked at the side of the road. She said that she’d stay in the car which was probably a good thing as I didn’t want any confrontation and secondly I wanted someone to look after the car. The pavement wasn’t wide enough to be completely clear of the road. There was a garage across the road where we’d just been. I thought that we’d park at the back of the garage and fix these headlights but there was very little space. Next to it was a public car park. I thought that we’d go on the public car park, aprk there, fetch the headlights and change them over on there. It’s a pay one but at this time of night no-one will bother too much. When we pulled on there every single space was a disabled persons space. There were quite a few people lounging around on the lawns there. The saw me drive slowly around and asked me what was happening. I said “apparently I’m not disabled enough to park here”. They replied jokingly “step out of your car and we can arrange that”. I drove around. There were even holes being dug for graves here on the lawn and I still couldn’t find a place to park the car

Anyway, it really was nice to be among charming company again for an evening. It’s a shame that I can’t do it more often, and in my waking hours too.

The rest of the day has been spent working on a cunning plan. The 14th of July is a Bank Holiday to celebrate the Fall of the Bastille, and it’s also a Friday.

Consequently, I’ve been working on a special radio programme. The Beatles have called for a Revolution to overthrow Curved Air’s Marie Antoinette. So as Alvin Lee and Ten Years After Want To Change The World, Hawkwind’s Urban Guerillas are going to the Bastille with Simple Minds to Kick It In.

With a little effort I can run this thing on for an hour, if you get the picture.

Ironically, the following Friday is the anniversary of the Moon Landings and that’s when Elton John’s Rocket Man is going on board the Hooter’s Satellite with Guns and Roses’s Rocket Queen for Bebop Deluxe’s Honeymoon on Mars from where, with REM’s Man In The Moon, they can Look Into The Sun with Jethro Tull to see Hawkwind’s Children of The Sun. I’m sure Steve Hillside-Village and Khan can write a Space Shanty about that.

Now what other interesting dates are there that fall on a Friday? We had an Armistice Day special last year.

Yes, I’m hoping to be much more imaginative and inventive for my radio programmes in the future instead of playing music haphazardly. I didn’t put too much thought into them at first because to be honest I never expected to be still here. But I seem to be fighting back right now.

Tea was, as I mentioned, quite delicious and now that I’ve finished my notes I’m off to bed. No lie-in for me despite it being a Bank Holiday because the physiotherapist is coming round. What with the nurse to inject me on Monday morning, it’s going to be a pretty miserable Easter break for me.

Thank Heaven I have my hot cross buns.

Friday 12th August 2022 – GONE!

And never called me “mother”!

When I went out this afternoon for my walk, I noticed that Victor Hugo, the Channel Islands ferry boat, has disappeared again. Gone on its travels, probably.

According to the fleet radar, she left at 08:12 and arrived in St Helier at 10:20, which is pretty quick going. And there she sits even as we speak. She doesn’t seem to be in any rush to come back home again.

Here’s hoping that the ferry service starts up again soon.

Something else that is gone! And never called me “mother” either is a certain letter.

This afternoon I have just heaved a rather large shark into the swimming pool by sending a letter of 1573 words to the Hospital’s Director of Medical Services.

Both Liz and Alison, to whom I showed it before I sent it, told me that they reckoned that it was too long. But you know me – never write 100 words when 1000 will do the job just as well.

If the past is anything to go by, which it usually is, the net result of my letter will be “nothing at all” but one can live in hope, even if I end up dying in despair. Some things need to be said, some points need to be underlined and (more importantly) the hospital needs to know in precise detail exactly how I feel.

What they do then is their own affair of course, but at least I’ve done all that I can and I can’t really do any more, much as I would like to. We’ll just sit back and see what happens now. It’s in the lap of the Gods.

But it goes to show the value of keeping a blog, and an indexable, searchable one too because although it took up a lot of time, I could come up with dates, places and resumés of conversations. And it’s that kind of thing that can kill any argument stone-dead before it even starts.

So retournons à nos moutons as they say around here, the alarm going off found me dictating into the dictaphone. So yes, I must have gone off on some travels at some point. And that’s despite a night that was later than it ought to have been.

After the medication I went and had a shower and, because I’m feeling under par due no doubt to having had the ‘flu for Christmas, I cut my hair.

Having dealt wit that I came back in here and, managing to avoid falling asleep, I transcribed the dictaphone notes from last night. I’d gone to the library to look at a book. The Reference Library was extremely untidy. I was searching through the shelves looking for this particular book and laying down one or two others that I might need when one of the workers came past. It was one of the bad-tempered ones and she was saying that the place looked so untidy. She said “get it tidied” to me and presumably one or two other people, members of the public, so I said a few words to her and she said a few words to me and wandered off. In the end what we did was to start to pick up the loose books lying around and stuffing them in the shelves any old how. Of course in libraries there’s a certain order and a certain position to respect, particularly with reference books so we thought that that would give then ten times more work to do when they come to sort it out. A group of us began to talk about this and said how bad it was here. One of them asked me if I’d like to go to the library at Rennes, a young girl, quite nice. I wasn’t sure at first. One of the other people there had been to the library at Rennes with her. She said that she had some spare tickets still so in the end I agreed that I’d go with her. I don’t know why I needed too much persuading to do something with a young girl. The subject came round to religion. I said that I didn’t have a religion which scandalised them so I told them the joke about me walking by a church and God sending down a thunderbolt which they thought was extremely funny.

Telling jokes again in a dream again?

Later on I’d been for a weekend away. I was already in the middle of a holiday. I was in New York somewhere and something had happened and I had to change hotel and had to change the style of the way that I look and the clothes that I was wearing so that I had a completely different look about me. For a couple of days I had to go away to Southport. I found myself standing outside the station and I had all mu luggage – my huge suitcase and my little suitcase, my 2 sacks with all my bedding. I thought “why on earth do I need all of this just for a weekend?” but it was too late. I was there now. I had to be careful about the trains and was wondering how I was going to manage to manhandle all this luggage. I’d gone over there to the station and borrowed a trolley. I put my bags on it and found that it would go up the steps quite comfortably and quite easily. That looked fine. As I reached the top I came to the steps to go down to the other side. These steps were totally different and I thought that this would be totally agonising going down here with all of this. I reached the bottom and found that the 2 bags with my bedding had gone. I don’t remember seeing them fall off. I wondered if someone had taken them. I couldn’t hang around because the train was coming so I took my 2 suitcases and boarded the train. It was crowded and people were moving my suitcases around as they came in and went out. Someone in the end squeezed them in a corner that upset a guy with a musical instrument. His musical instrument was there. The train gradually thinned out so I could rescue my suitcases. He made some kind of gesture to me which I thought might have been friendly but I didn’t know and this train continued rattling on its way to Southend.

Later on it was the graduation of my little girlfriend who worked on Saturdays in the library about whom I’ve talked quite often and I’d been invited which was a surprise. She obviously thought highly of me. Because of the Covid restrictions she could only invite 3 different households and then only 2 people from each household so I felt extremely honoured. We were at the University making all kinds of arrangements. Someone was asking for details about the graduation so I told them basically that there were only 3 households and 2 people from each one. They had a hard time trying to understand it which I didn’t understand. It seemed straightforward to me but I had to tell them probably a dozen times and they still hadn’t understood what was happening. They wanted to know why but it was quite obvious with Covid. We were back in the hall talking about things, talking about computing. Someone asked me if I’d ever used Flash. I replied “God yes I’ve used Flash on games and everything 15 years ago. I’ve certainly used it but I’ve never actually been inside it to see how it works or programmed anything with it”. Then we were talking about 15 years ago and how that was the heyday of the internet when all kinds of private people were making the internet work and it was a really exciting place to be before Corporate took over the internet.

It’s actually quite amazing that I could come out with something like that in a dream. Back 15 years ago the internet was a fun and exciting place to be. In those days small groups of talented individuals were leading the tech revolution. But now they’ve all either sold out, been suckered in or submerged into the Corporate internet world and these days the onlu small groups of individuals remaining are down in the depths of the dark web spending their time waging war on Corporate tech. There doesn’t seem to be the same “Internet Warriors” that we had back then and it’s made the internet a dreary place.

At least I’m still shining the torch for the lost generation of 15-20 years ago of blogs and personal websites and newsgroups. But I won’t be around for long. We need to turn the clock back and reclaim the internet.

Having had a lengthy pause to gather up my thoughts, I sat down and composed my masterpiece. And rather unlike Beethoven who spent 44 years composing and then the next 195 years decomposing, I spent just several hours on writing out my pièce de résistance.

As a result I ended up with a considerably late lunchtime fruit session while Alison and Liz were reviewing “War and Peace”.

Having fixed the typos I printed it out and put it in an envelope, putting the bill from May in an envelope to send back too, and eventually, later than usual, headed out for the town.

As usual, I stopped at the viewpoint on the corner of the Boulevard Vaufleury and the Boulevard des 2E et 202E de Ligne to check the camera.

There’s a good view down onto the Fish Processing Plant from here and strangely, there were no boats tied up playing “musical ships” today. They must all be out and about somewhere offshore earning a living.

But they are certainly expected back sometime soon. If you look down onto the lover level down the ramp underneath the car park you’ll see the tractor and presumably the trailer that it pulls.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that we’ve seen that wandering through the town quite often loaded to the gunwhales with boxes of bouchots.

Yesterday we saw the signs of a fire over the back of the church here in Granville.

Here, it’s the turn of St Pair sur Mer to catch fire. Even though it’s quite a distance away we can see the smoke billowing up from somewhere across the bay there at the back of the town.

And that reminds me. I did have a quick look through the local newspaper this morning but there was nothing at all in it about the fire yesterday. So that’s quite a mystery to me. It’s the kind of thing that you would expect to be reported.

Anyway, I wandered off down towards town.

While we’re on the subject of fire … “well, one of us” – ed … we mustn’t forget what happened here in the old town one Saturday evening a few months ago.

That was when the house in the middle here caught fire and went up like a Roman candle, taking the houses on either side with it.

We saw them weatherproof the houses (not that they needed to have bothered given the weather that we have been having) shortly afterwards and that’s how I found them today on my first trip to town after so many weeks.

It looks as if any talk about repairing them has been put on the … errr … back burner for a while, presumably while the insurance details are finalised.

So while Victor Hugo has sailed off into the sunset – or, rather, sunrise – Marité is back in town.

She’s been absent for the last couple of days having a sail around the bay, usually coming back at the end of the evening long after I’ve been tucked up in bed with my glass of hot Wincarnis.

When I was younger I would go for the Phyllosan that fortifies the over-forties but they haven’t invented anything yet that will sixtify the over-sixties. But never mind. Sony has a product launch in mind for my generation. Soon they’ll be bringing out the Sony Walkframe.

That is something I could use as well as I staggered into town. I made it to the Post Office and posted my letters, having to remind someone in front of me who clearly has more problems then I do that when you’ve bought your price label for your letter, you need to take your letter off the scales, stick the label onto it and stick it in the post box instead of simply walking out of the building.

And you thought that I had problems.

So I dealt with the necessary, exchanging a few pleasantries with the woman in the queue behind me, and then headed for home.

One of the things that I wanted to do was to check the kiddies roundabout.

With that article having been in the paper a couple of weeks ago even though the roundabout has been here for several weeks longer than that, I wanted to make sure that we were talking about the same machine.

So yes, by comparing photos this is indeed the one that came here a while back so I’m at a loss to explain why the local newspaper has only recently picked this up.

It must have been a quiet news day.

The climb up the hill was better than I was expecting – in that I actually did manage to make it home.

It was necessary for me to pause a couple of times to catch my breath and at one of those places I was overlooking Chez Maguie, the Bar Ephemère on the Place Pelley.

It’s still here, despite the best efforts of the residents in the new block of flats in the background to drive out of town everything that disturbs their peace regardless of how popular it might be with the people who were living in the town a long time before they moved in.

It’s quite popular too, with loads of people enjoying a drink. No-one on the boulodrome though. It was far too hot for that.

Round about here I fell in with a neighbour and we had a good chat. Then I pushed on for my final leg.

Before going in for my nice cold chocolate drink I went to look at the beach to see what was happening.

Being later than usual, the tide was well out so there weren’t too many people down there this afternoon. They must have called it a day. A few people here and there in the water which sounded like a good idea.

Back here I had an ice-cold glass of chocolate drink and then had a play around with some photos for a while.

Tea was pie and veg with gravy, in the hope of making yet more room in the freezer. I need beans and peas tomorrow and I’ve no idea where I’m going to put them

Right now, having had a mammoth diet all day of “Eloy” and “Ten Years After”, I’m going to bed ready for shopping tomorrow. And then a nice restful day followed by football on the internet later. The Welsh Premier League starts back up tomorrow afternoon.

And what will my letter to the hospital bring me? I imagine that it will be several weeks before I hear anything, if I hear anything at all. And I don’t think that anything will change. But there’s not much else that I can do. As I have said before … “and on many occasions too” – ed … I can’t keep going on like this.

Thursday 14th July 2022 – WHILE I WAS …

… writing up my notes for yesterday I was still talking to Liz.

She was telling me that tonight’s full moon was going to be excellent so I decided that before I nipped off to bed I would go off and have a quick look.

There had been a firework display over at Sp Pair sur Mer and there were still crowds of people milling around who had been watching from the clifftop here, including one of my neighbours and we had an intersting chat for quite a while.

And then I wandered off to take a few photos of the moon.

There was quite a lot of cloud out there so I took a comfortable seat on the wall overlooking the harbour and waited for it to rise up through the clouds.

So while I’m waiting for the moon to rise, I can tell you about the rest of my night last night once I’d gone to bed.

I had a really long dream but when I awoke I forgot most of it immediately. I was with Nerina last night at some kind of wedding. There were lots of people around there and gradually they started to go. Most of them were going by some means and I don’t know what it was but there were still people there and all the children were dancing etc. It was really sad to see the people disappearing one by one and even Nerina was quite disappointed when some people whom she knew started to leave. In the end someoe came over to me and said “there are all these cars here. You can take whichever one you like”. I thought “I have all my stuff in Caliburn so I don’t want to start taking it out at this time of night and changing it over so I reckon that we’ll go in Caliburn anyway”. There was much more to it than this but I really can’t remember any more.

Later on there was another dream as well involving a few kids being totally obnoxious. We had a lot of things to do and not much time to do it so we were doing things on the sly like when we were trying to deal with this party of people even though we weren’t allowed to use the kitchen we were still doing it all the same so everyone had to keep really quiet but that was absolutely impossible. Everyone was coming and going. There was no control whatsoever over anything. I had some food to make for a little boy. In the end I made him a sausage sandwich. Cooking the sausages was exciting. Half the bread fell into a wash bucket so I had to use a different kind of bread for half of it. All in all it was just absolute total chaos. It ended by some young boy in his early teens having to ring his girlfriend to tell her something important and all he got was her on an answerphone message so that didn’t work out particularly well. Again, there was much more than this that I can’t remember.

I was having a really happy time with my little girlfriend who worked on Saturdays at the library in Nantwich. I was round at her house with her parents talking about all kinds of things including alarm clocks. Of course I have the alarm on the phone that wakes me. Then we went out for a walk around the village laughing and joking. There had been some kind of story where a family who were extremely religious had gone for a pizza on Sunday which of course is not the done thing in religion so we all laughed about that “if we aren’t careful we’ll end up with a pizza”. We ended up looking around in a shop full of surplus clothing, catalogue returns etc. I don’t know what she was looking for but she had a really good look round. Then she saw some radios of the type that she had to awaken her so she wanted me to go to look at them. I did out of politeness. I was looking at the range of Mhz that the radios covered and the bands. If I could find a short-wave one with a decent coverage I might think about it but there wasn’t anything. I couldn’t even pick up my niece’s husband’s private radio station on medium wave on it, his was set so low. The salesman was extremely pushy etc. In the end we walked away hand-in-hand and skipped off down the road again. It was all very nice and very pleasant.

The idea that I would be talking to her parents is unfortunately rather amusing.

They hated me with a passion which is not a surprise because I was a different person as a teenager or a young adult … “not THAT much different” – ed.

But she was lovely. She worked in the library on Saturdays and she would go through the new arrival LPs. Any that she knew that I would like she would smuggle out and I would tape them, for her to return the following Saturday.

Christmas 1977 when we were totally broke and had no money, we devised a cunning plan. Audlem, the village where she lived, was a strange village of two halves, the rustics and the well-to-dos. We made up a pile of expensive-looking Christmas cards out of bits and pieces and then took them round to deliver to the well-to-dos.
“Oh, how nice. Thank you very much. Do come in and have a drink and a mince pie”
We were totally gone with the wind by the end of the evening and it didn’t cost us a penny. That was a really good night.

However, her parents took an extremely dim view of the proceedings and that was the final nail in the coffin of our relationship.

We did go out (as friends) to a few rock concerts later but that didn’t reignite our relationship.

A few years later I was driving a coach through Shropshire and stopped to go to the bank for some cash.

And who should be serving behind the counter?

We had a brief exchange of pleasantries because I was in a rush but I went back a few months later only to find that she wasn’t there. She was training at that branch when I met her and no-one would tell me where she had gone.

Yes, she’s another one who had a lucky escape from my evil clutches and I’ll give all that I own to speak to her again if she ever were to surface. She had rather an unusual name but it never came up on the internet. I tried.

She’s not the only one to have been on the end of a broken relationship due to alcohol.

When I was 17 and my girlfriend at the time was almost 14 (and that’s a long story too) Lindisfarne were playing at a private members’ club in Crewe. Too young to be a member myself, I borrowed the membership cards of my older sister and her husband and we both went to see them.

She hadn’t ever drunk alcohol before, as I found out far too late to do any good, and you can’t take it out once it’s gone in.

So that, dear reader, was that once her mother came to pick her up.

I was round at my niece and her husband’s house last night. It was somewhere nothing like their place at all. A whole group of us was on holiday. I was talking about work again saying that I’m over the retirement age now so if they annoy me which they had done during that week I’d turn round and not go in at all on Monday. I was outside the shop working. What I’d done was to draw a picture of what I had seen outside their shop and was busy trying to paint it. Things weren’t going too well and I’d made a big mess of the rear of a car. I was in all kinds of messes with that. Just then a couple of girls came over and started to ask me questions about myself and to chat to me. I had a little chat with them. Suddenly I looked at my watch and saw that it was 08:55. I thought “God! I have to be at work shortly!” so I had to get myself ready, grab my things and go. This picture only undeleted part of the mess that I’d done. I hoped that the rest of the undelete etc would still be in there when I came back this evening otherwise this picture is totally ruined and I’d have to start again

So when I’d finished photographong the moon, I came back home.

On the way I looked behind me and saw the moonlight reflecting on the water in the harbour. It looked quite picturesque so I took a photo, although it’s rather a shame that it’s over-exposed.

Back here I finally went to bed and ended up in the arms of Morpheus and wandered off into the dark recesses of my mind. It was quite a mobile night as you can tell, and I was quite exhausted when the alarm went off.

It was a struggle to leave my bed when the alarm went off but nevertheless I managed to go for my medication without too much trouble, even working out that I was a medication short in my pile.

Back here I transcribed the notes for my nocturnal voyages and then rather regrettably I fell asleep. And not just for five minutes either.

When I finally recovered I’ve been bashing out the rest of the photos from June. It took much longer than I expected too because I had to research one or two locations as I had written them incorrectly in my notes.

Soon enough, it was time for me to go off for my afternoon walk. Not that I went very far though at first.

As regular readers of this rubbish will recall, I have commented in the past that I won’t go on quite so much about bad parking but sometimes it just can’t be helped.

It’s not actually the fact that this person has taken up two parking spaces that is so annoying. It’s the fact that this is a private car park and whoever is the driver of this vehicle isn’t a resident of the block.

This is just plain ignorant.

But as an aside, just WHEN are they going to come and repair our entrance barrier?

In rather a foul mood after that, I wandered off towards the wall at the end of the car park.

Down below, there was plenty of beach this afternoon. The tide was quite far out today.

Surprisingly there weren’t all that many people down there enjoying it. Despite the wind, which was quite strong this afternoon as you can tell from the whitecaps, it really was a nice afternoon and I’d expected to see many more people down there.

No-one in the water as far as I can see either. In fact, I’m surprised that surfing hasn’t become a major pastime here.

Despite the high winds and rough seas, there were several trawlers out there this afternoon.

This one looks as if it might be fishing because although it was too far out for me to see if it had its nets out, it was travelling quite slowly with its stern to the French shore.

As I’ve said before … “and on many occasions too” – ed … since the recent fishing disputes flared up, they seem to be trying new fishing grounds much closer to home.

There were quite a few people wandering around on the path today. They were making the most of the warm weather. I joined them on their trek down to the lighthouse.

There was nothing going on down at the end of the headland this afternoon.

No-one on the bench at the cabanon vauban but there were several people down there on the rocks. We have a fisherman with rod and line and also a couple of dozen people at the pèche à pied.

From here I wandered off down the path on the other side of the headland and, surprisingly, there was nothing going on at the port.

Just Monaco du Nord II in the chantier naval and no-one at the ferry terminal or playing “Musical Ships” at the Fish Processing Plant.

In the inner harbour we saw Victor Hugo moored at the quayside.

We saw her yesterday out at sea off the Pointe du Roc but she has eventually made it into port. And it doesn’t look as if she’s going back out this afternoon.

Back here I had the last of my banana drink and then spent a couple of hours with the guitar that would take me up to teatime. And the timing of “Born to Run” is very difficult to grasp.

Tea tonight was veggie balls with pasta and vegetables, mixed with a nice spicy tomato sauce. That was really nice.

It’s cloudy tonight, otherwise I might have been tempted to go out and look at the moon. Instead I’ll have an early night ready for tomorrow.

It was a Bank Holiday today of course, Bastille Day. And we all know why the French stormed the Bastille on the 14th July. That ws because with it being a Bank Holiday all of the shops were closed and they had nothing else to do.

Thursday 14th April 2022 – WE’VE HAD ANOTHER …

… nautical afternoon this afternoon while I was out on my patrol around the headland.

So while you lot admire the photos of various water craft out there at sea this afternoon, I’ll tell you all about my pretty miserable day today.

And “miserable” is hardly the word for what I’ve been up to today. It all went horribly wrong.

And it started to go wrong when I awoke this morning – or, rather, when I didn’t awaken. Because when the alarms went off at 07:30 and again at 08:00 I simply turned them off and rolled over.

What beats me though is that I can do it when I really try, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, but today I just couldn’t, for some reason, haul myself out of bed

No matter how much I tried and how much I was telling myself to move, I just lay there. It was actually – would you believe – 12:25 when I finally fell out of bed and that would be a tragedy for a Sunday, never mind a weekday when I’m supposed to be working.

It isn’t as if I’d had a late night either. I was in bed before 23:30 and 8 hours and more is plenty of sleep. It’s not so long ago that I was functioning quite happily on 4 hours sleep every night and I still can when I have to when the trains are messed about and I have to be on the 05:55 to Paris so I need to be up and about at 04:00.

What I might put it down to is the distance that I travelled during the night. I wasn’t hanging around at all here in bed, despite what you might think.

We had a football match last night. I can’t remember who was playing against who but it wasn’t any football clubs. I dunno – maybe it was a class from night school against another class from night school or something. We were pretty accomplished though. I don’t know how we made up the teams now but I was playing in central defence which is a surprise because it’s about the only position on a football pitch where I can’t play and I still have nightmares about a game where I played in central defence in my early 20s for all of 45 minutes before I was ignominiously – but quite rightly – subbed at half-time but I was having a good game as well. We were doing quite well defending and there was a big crowd watching us, including a little girl who was obviously some connection to me because I was shouting messages to her during the match. On one occasion she asked how long to go. I replied “15 minutes and then we can stop to have a cup of tea”. She shouted back “yes, we can have 4 cups of tea afterwards” in the pauses of the game. We could pause the game and have 4 cups of tea afterwards or something like that.

We were playing another football match where we had a big centre-forward and a striker who played alongside him, something like that, I don’t really know. We’d won 9-0 or was it 7-0. One forward scored 3, I’d scored 2 and this striker guy had scored 2. In the next match we’d played, we played against the league leaders and won 2-0.

There was then a group of us in a house and we wandered off. Suddenly there was a noise and shouting and shots being fired. Those of us downstairs were being pinned down by shots from upstairs on the stairs. There was a woman screaming and we thought that we were being robbed or something at first but something didn’t quite add up. In the end I looked through the railings, almost being shot, and all that I could see were these women so I assumed that these women were trying to rob us. That was exactly the case so we fired back. They fired but we ended up killing 2 and capturing one. It was another one of these violent dreams where I dragged her out of my house by he hair down to the guard and through the fence and I was dragging her off down the street by her hair.

These days I’m having far too many of these violent dreams

And then I’d been to see that Steve Bell rehearse. We’d been having a really good chat while his group was rehearsing. He had dispensed with a couple of players and was down to just a basic four-piece band. He asked if I would go to see them tomorrow or Sunday. I asked where they were and he said that they hadn’t anything lined up on Saturday but they would play anywhere that was reasonable. On Sunday they were playing at a pub in Crewe. It was rather rough, the pub, but it sounded reasonable. He was also saying that he was doing a disco for the college where they had Paul Simon lined up to appear and they were looking for a 80s backing band to support him. My ears immediately pricked up but he was planning to do that himself. In the meantime I thought about this gig, that a certain girl who had once been a girlfriend of mine would be back home. I could contact her to see what she’s doing and hopefully be able to persuade her to come. I must have contacted her and picked her up because we were in the car driving out of Crewe back towards Audlem. We reached Mornflake Oats was. There was a bakery at the back of it. Some woman was reversing an articulated lorry with a loaf of bread on it out of the yard into the road. Thinking that she was going to turn left down the other way, I stopped but she stopped as well so I reversed up a bit more, she reversed a bit more and then dropped this huge loaf of bread off right in the middle of the road. Then she prepared to drive away. I went to ask her what was going on. She refused to answer so this led to an enormous row. Other motorists who had found the road blocked by this huge loaf of bread also joined it. It led to something of a slanging match but this woman didn’t care at all. She was just going to drop the bread there and go off. She was working the early morning shift and that was all she cared about. We all said that we were working night shifts and remembered the days when people were polite but she was stil being quite insistent. In the end, when she drove away and left this loaf of bread here we all cut up this loaf of bread and stole it. We then went back to the route that she had taken with her lorry and started to rig up a system of trip wires across that would stop a lorry and cause her to have an accident, all that kind of thing. We were all quite incensed about this.

And more bread again? What on earth is happening here?

My brother contacted me. He was updating his accounts and had something for me so could I go over to see him. I had 15 minutes between finishing work ay 17:00 and my bus at 17:15 so I could call in. He was making all of the arrangements, saying about his savings account that needed splitting between us. He wanted to do it then and there. I explained that I had my bus to catch and I didn’t really have the time. My mother and one of my sisters walked in. My sister said something like “there are people looking for you” about something or other. I said that I didn’t have the time to deal with it at the moment. “Would it be OK if they had a word with me tomorrow maybe or some other time?”.

Later on I’d gone round to my house in Virlet and it was all overgrown. We couldn’t get in through the door. One or two of the neighbours were upset about the state of it. I can’t remember who I was with now but there was a third person there too. She took me to see some more neighbours. They were American soldiers, a man and wife. This 3rd person was telling me stories about them, discussing the conflicts that I was having with the other set of neighbours. She said that the conflict isn’t with me but the house which I didn’t really understand but I let it go. We were doing some stuff outside and I suddenly said to the person with me that we have to go round the front. She wondered why. I went round the front and noticed that all the windows and the doors weren’t my windows and doors. I suddenly realised that I’d actually been messing around and doing all kinds of strange things at the wrong house. It wasn’t my house at all but a 3-bedroomed semi somewhere in the suburbs and not my house stuck out in the wilderness at all.

The sleep that I had had after the alarms went off must have been quite deep because according to the times on the dictaphone I’d even managed to wander off during that sleep. There was a group of us at a seaside holiday resort somewhere. For some unknown reason we had jacked up a car that was parked in a car park. There was one of us underneath it with an angle grinder cutting something out of this car. We had a generator going to power the angle grinder. Of course there were people going past. In the distance I saw what looked like a harbour official complete with peaked cap wandering down the boardwalk. I told whoever it was underneath it that I was going to lower the car down and switch off the generator. I made a gesture to the generator operator to switch it off. He did and we lowered down the car. We had to wait for him to come past. He was taking so much time to do it that right by where all these cars were parked was a café. It was lunchtime and people were bringing their lunch. Someone came and I thought that they were going to get into this car but in fact they sat at a table right next to it and took out all their sandwiches. I thought to myself that this job is going to take a week to do this what should have been a simple 5-minute job whatever it was, with all of these disturbances etc going on. We couldn’t jack up the car and start cutting again while these people were there eating their sandwiches.

But the girl whom I mentioned just now, she was lovely. She was quite a bit younger than me and at one time I’d had a fling with her elder sister. She worked at the library in Nantwich on Saturdays while she was at school and when they had new LPs and cassettes in that she knew I would like, she would smuggled them out when she finished for me to tape and then she would smuggle them back the next Saturday morning.

One Christmas when we had no money (the usual state of affairs in the mid 70s when I was guitaring), we made up some pretty cards out of bits and pieces and then took them round on Christmas Eve to all of the local important bigwigs in Audlem. “Ohh … Merry Christmas. Do come in. Have a sherry, have a mince pie”.

We were both totally smashed by midnight. And it didn’t cost us a penny either.

Her parents hated me with a passion and I do have to say “not without reason” but she was lovely and we would have made a really good couple.

A few years later when I was coach-driving I popped into a bank to draw some cash and guess who was serving behind the counter? We “exchanged pleasantries” but it was all that we had time to do because I was on a 20-minute break.

Some time later I did go back when I had more time but she wasn’t there. Apparently she had only been doing a placement there.

Story of my life, I suppose.

That, believe it or not, took up most of the early afternoon right up until the time that I go out for my afternoon walk.

As usual the first port of call was the wall at the end of the car park to see what was happening down on the beach.

As you might expect, with it being such a beautiful day this afternoon, there were crowds down there enjoying themselves.

There wasn’t anyone actually in the water but there were a few people manoeuvring … “PERSONoeuvring” – ed … an inflatable dinghy around down there so I imagine that it won’t be long before someone falls in or they puncture the boat and have to swim for it.

One of my neighbours was also there leaning on the wall looking at the excitement so we exchanged pleasantries too. I’m not the sociable type, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, but living where I do, I have to do my best to make an effort.

It wasn’t just on the beach and in the sea that things were quite busy. There were lots of things going on in the air too.

Most of it was too high for me to be able to see exactly but there was no missing this as it passed by overhead.

There are several bizarre machines that fly around out of the airfield up the coast and one of them is this red powered hang glider. He burst out from behind the College as I walked down the path towards the lighthouse.

By the way, I’ve not forgotten my promise to blag a flight in one of these machines. I’m rather pushed for time right now – even more so if I lie stinking in bed until stupid hours of the afternoon.

There are also several light aircraft whose serial numbers aren’t recorded on any database that I can access that fly out of the airfield too.

One of them was coming the other way, having just taken off, and it passed the powered hang glider as I watched. This one is 55-QJ and we’ve seen this several times in the past.

No point in looking for a flight plan because it doesn’t file one and these planes don’t fly high enough to be picked up on civilian radar so we can’t track them in real time either as we can do with the others.

Surprisingly, there weren’t too many people on the path this afternoon. They must all have been either out at sea or on the beach or in the air this afternoon so I had the path practically to myself.

Amongst the boats that were out there this afternoon was Les Epiettes, the little boat that belongs to the Ponts et Chaussées, the “Roads and Bridges” department.

The tide isn’t far enough in to allow the harbour gates to be opened so she’s hanging around outside the harbour with all of the others waiting for the tide to come in further

And as you have already seen in a few of the earlier photos, there were plenty of other boats waiting around too. It’s been busy this afternoon out there.

And there were plenty of spectators observing the maritime activity too, even if they weren’t up here with me.

Down on the bench by the cabanon vauban we had a young couple soaking up the sun this afternoon.

But I wasn’t hanging around though. I’d just remembered that I’d forgotten to set the coffee on the go before I set out so I need to head for home.

No change in the chantier naval, I noticed as I went past, but Le Roc A La Mauve III now has her signwriting done so it won’t be long before she’s back in the water.

Having seen all of the trawlers either unloading at the fish processing plant or waiting for the harbour gates to open, there’s going to be a dispute or two very shortly.

Chausiaise, the little Ile de Chausey freighter, is tied up where all of the trawlers usually tie up so I imagine that they will all want her to move to her own little spec down at the bottom corner as soon as they come in.

She usually ties up down there at the bottom with ehr friends next to Marité so I’ve no idea what she’s doing there today unless she’s loading up by hand ready to sail on the tide.

Back here I made a coffee and then there was another job that needed my attention.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that I said that I would have a potato and mushroom curry for tea tonight, but in fact I’ve ended up with pie, veg and gravy.

That’s because with not being up in time, I didn’t make any bread this morning. Lunch was therefore porridge and toast with what was left of the bread, and when I returned from my walk I made a loaf of bread.

With the oven being on, it’s a shame to waste the heat output so I bunged a few potatoes in as well and then added a slice of pie to warm up. The veg was cooked on the hob and the water was used to make a gravy.

Tea was delicious and by the looks of things, so will the bread. Plenty of sunflower seeds in it and also a Vitamin C tablet seeing as I remembered to buy some the other day when I was at LeClerc.

So having now finished everything I’ll have another play on the guitar and then go to bed. There’s no alarm tomorrow with it being a Bank Holiday and I have remembered to take the hot cross buns out of the freezer ready for tomorrow, but whether I’ll be eating them is something else completely.

Either I’ll be awake at 06:00 and can’t sleep or else it will be another dismal 12:30 start. If only I could find a happy medium I would strike her, but that’s not likely around here, is it?

Friday 11th March 2022 – I’VE JUST HAD …

… a lovely meal with Alison at the Greenway restaurant.

She finished work today early so she came into Leuven on the bus and we went off for an evening out. A vegan burger followed by a nice coffee in the Grote Markt and then I walked her back to the bus station.

Now that I’m back in my little room I’m writing out my notes and then I’m off to bed for I have an early start in the morning. My train to Brussels is at 06:33.

And if my night was anything last night, I won’t be having much sleep anyway because it was another highly mobile night with tons of stuff on the dictaphone. I started off in the USA last night. I can’t remember whom I was with but it was a guy. We’d gone to this kind-of students’ bar and there had been some kind of incident between me, this guy and the guy who was running the place. It started out as a kind-of light-hearted thing to which no-one took any offence. There were some people getting up some teams for football and we went to join them. We sat around in this room for over an hour and a half waiting for this particular game to start. Just before it was due to start someone came over to us and said that they were sorry that they couldn’t fit us into a team and we’d have to go, which annoyed me intensely for I’d been sitting around here for an hour and a half as had the guy with me and seeing as there were 2 of us they could have fitted us into a team quite easily, one on each side but for some reason they didn’t want us. We went back into another bar and someone from the administration of this club came in and saw us, and made some kind of comment so I made a few comments back. The situation quickly escalated. Some other woman who had the air of being a manager came over to try to give us a lecture I gave her a lecture back instead. She really wasn’t impressed with what I had to say which was hardly a surprise. In the end my friend and I decided that we would leave as we weren’t going to hand around with this kind of people and this woman who was some kind of student said that she was worth $400,000 to which I replied “that’s pretty small beer alongside my $3,000,000, isn’t it?”. That didn’t go down very well. It all finished with her saying that she was going to be taking her A Levels here starting in the summer. I said “let me give you a word of advice. Don’t take them in this place”. We moved outside and the guy asked “what do you mean by your $3,000,000?” so I explained. We passed some kind of marina full of all of these abandoned and burnt-out boats that looked as if they had belonged to a fairground at one time and had all been laid up, derelict and so on

A young boy had been killed and a young girl had gone missing from her school in the USA. They were going to write some kind of letter to this boy’s family and it was an extremely complicated affair and they were having to hunt for envelopes and paper and so on to write this letter. It took an age to do this and before they had even finished it there was a fight between two small children who were something to do with this disappearance. That was broken up but then there was a third fight between two similar children. This was all getting completely out of hand. Then a hurricane came to the area and everyone had to shelter in some kind of hurricane shelter at the school This missing girl turned up, accompanied by a boy called Darcy, someone who had had some kind of issue with his motorbike earlier in the school year and another boy who was there who was the leader of the gang who supposedly this boy and girl were with. Everyone was saying things like “how brave she is to come out of hiding because she’s bound to be questioned about the death of this boy”. It carried on a bit like this, I suppose.

There had been a huge civil engineering disaster and this whole building site had collapsed. There were all kinds of people on this site, not rescuing because no-one had been killed or lost but investigating it. I was involved because I’d been on there doing some kind of work and I had to re-excavate a trench that had collapsed with a pipe in it. It turned out that the person in charge was a young girl whom I knew very well. Basically she’d been surrounded by lots of friends but most of them had been there to ee how much money they could make out of her and out of this particular contract and they had all almost exclusively let her down with this particular work. She was called up before this inquisition/tribunal to investigate what was the final straw on this site. I unfortunately had to give evidence about what I had been doing, which was basically trying to put right a lot of this stuff that had been going wrong. This girl was practically in tears about everyone who had let her down. I was having to tell her the bitter truth about what was going on and about how one or two other people and I had been covering up as best we could to make sure that this project went ahead And even as this tribunal was taking place a cement mixer on another site overturned and on the site somewhere else overturned There were all kinds of incidents like this. Basically all this girl’s friends had come along to offer help to get this building off the ground but they had all taken out of it as much as they could and disappeared one by one until she was on her own to carry the can for the consequences

I was with a few people from school last night but we were probably in our 20s, something like that. One was a girl whom I knew quite well and she had a sister. Her sister (although it wasn’t her sister in real life) was another girl whom I knew from school and whom I’d actually dated at one time and whom I liked very much but her parents hated me. We’d been a group of us doing something and we’d finished it. It had been an extremely emotional thing, something to do with the war and something to do with the military, all this kind of thing and civilians caught up with it and fighting it, very disjointed, and included this woman driving this really old ERF or Foden articulated tanker about. When it finished and it was all over and we were walking back, I caught up with her. She was on her own now. Slowly this group of people reassembled and I managed to get her on her own and told her “I’m going to write a book about all of this”. She asked me what it was going to be called. “Oh I’m carrying a heavy load” I replied, from the song by “Free”. As we walked back to the village where she lived I asked about her sister. I said that I felt like asking her if she wanted to come to the cinema”. The girl said “yes, why don’t you?”. We went into the office where she was working. She was on her own so I said “do you fancy coming to the cinem0 at some time over the weekend?”. She replied that she had to do something on some night but she was free and asked “what did you want to see?”. I mentioned this spy thriller but she pulled a face so I asked “is there anything that you want to see? We’ll go and see that. I’m not bothered”. Just then a crowd of people burst into the office. Her parents, and a couple of people who ran the office where she was working. She was trying to hold a conversation with me. She asked me where I was working but before I could reply she was swept up in all of this commotion. I ended up sitting here talking to a guy about football. He asked if I was watching the football that night. The World Cup was on. I said “no. They never came to see me when I was bad”. I mentioned that if my team were playing in it I would watch it but he couldn’t work out what I was trying to say. He asked “do you watch any football around here?”. I replied “no. I go over the border to Wales to watch it. I go over the border to watch it but he still didn’t twig In the meantime I was trying to work out which car I was going to take. Jackie had asked me what I was doing for work . I told her that I’d sold the taxis but she said that she knew. There was all this commotion going on that no sensible conversation could take place and I felt that this was going to be another one of those occasions where I was going to have victory snatched from my grasp at the last minute.

But the opening part was extremely emotional and powerful about this war thing and I don’t know why this song fitted in but it seemed to be so apt – so appropriate.

After breakfast I made a start on collecting together the music for the next batch of radio programmes.

You will recall from just now that I mentioned a song by “Free” that contained the lyrics “Oh I’m carrying a heavy load”. And GUESS WHICH SONG came round first on the playlist to be featured on my next series of radio programmes?

After lunch I finished off the music and then wandered off to the shops.

As usual, I walked across the Herbert Hooverplein. It’s where the big market is held every Friday morning but being somewhat later today, almost everyone had gone. There was just the one guy here folding up his stall “like the Arabs and as silently steal away”, as Longfellow would have said.

There was nothing of any interest whatever in FNAC yet again. I’m beginning to despair of ever finding anything useful in there these days.

For a change I didn’t go and look in the cheap shops. I headed across town to the Origin’O or whatever it’s called to see if the low stocks that they had yesterday had been replenished.

And the answer to that is “no” – so it looks as if that’s the end of that shop from my point of view too.

Something else that I need is a big bag of cumin. They don’t sell it in the size that I would like in Granville.

And so on my way down to the big “Exotic World” ethnic supermarket I nipped down the Zongang to have a look at the house that I mentioned yesterday.

It’s not actually as dark as I was thinking right now. But it’s mid-afternoon and I imagine that it’s a completely different proposition in the morning and evening when the sun is low in the sky.

Clutching my big bag of cumin (and also a small bag of cumin seeds) I headed back towards town.

Another place that I wanted to see today was the demolition site at the old Sint Pieter’s Hospital.

Although there seems to be a lot of traffic around there just now, nothing much seems to have changed. The old medieval tower is still standing, which is just as well, still sheathed in its protective coat of scaffolding and net.

They have some floodlights there, I notice, which seems to indicate that they work here after dark. I wonder what it is that they do because there isn’t anything evident, even if the pile of rubble on the left seems to be larger than last time.

But the old block of buildings on the right that they started to knock down a few months ago – that’s still standing too.

It looks as if they have demolished all that they intend to demolish of that right now and they are going to leave it at that.

And so, as I have said before … “and on many occasions too” – ed … if they are going to be building luxury apartments here, they are going to have to improve the view that the people will have from their windows. It’s not what I would call “very inspiring”.

The site at the back of the little velodrome looks quite clear now.

Last month, I mentioned that it’s possible to pass through now into the Oude Lievevrouwstraat and they seem to have done some more tidying up at the back of where they erect the marquee when they have a function here.

That’s progress of a sort anyway.

On the way back to my little room I popped into Delhaize. Now I have more banana drink, vegan garlic mayonnaise and also a few vegan sausages.

But no grated vegan cheese anywhere, so I hope that the cheese that I bought from LIDL the other day will melt over my pizza.

Back here I tidied up the place for a while ready to leave early tomorrow and then wandered off to meet Alison when she told me that she was on her way.

We met as usual at the “Tiger” although as she was early, she came some way in my direction to meet me. We went to the “Greenway” vegan restaurant for a burger, and then for a coffee and a good chat in the Grote Markt.

late in the evening the buses for Alison to return home are quite irregular so she stands more chance of catching a bus at a more convenient time at the bus station.

It’s “sort-of” on my way back home I suppose so I accompanied her. The Diestsestraat was for a change quite deserted but the lights of the shops gave some kind of weird, eerie effect as we walked back.

Only 10 minutes to wait for a bus at the bus station so I hung around with her until it came. And it was just as well that I waited because it was running late.

Had it not turned up, there would have been quite a long wait for the next one and a cold draughty bus station is not the place to be hanging around.

The other day I posted a photo of the shiny new Martelarenplein with most of its fencing removed.

It hasn’t taken long for it to be reoccupied, has it? It must be fairground time right now and all of the attractions have now moved in and occupied the square. That should keep the town busy for a while.

The walk back home was quiet and uneventful. I wrote my notes, finished off the tidying up and crawled into bed.

An early night and an early start tomorrow.

Monday 25th October 2021 – JUST AS I FEARED …

… and how sad is this?

Last week when I walked down alongside where the old railway like to the port used to go I noticed that they were laying out what looked like some concrete shuttering, and I remember expressing my dismay.

It seems that I’m living in a town that has a total lack of imagination and no understanding of artistic endeavour either. Almost everywhere you go these days in Normandy, you see some nice pavement, something interesting and eye-catching.

But not here in Granville. I’ve been moaning incessantly in the past about the pan of black asphalt that is the new car park by the port, without even a bush or a shrub to break the dreary monotony. And now there’s this ugly concrete pan to deal with.

And that isn’t the worst of it either.

At the foot of the steps that lead down to the Parc du Val Es Fleurs there seems to be several acres of matting for reinforced concrete floor pans stacked up one on top of another waiting to be used.

What this signifies is that somewhere else there’s going to be another mass of concrete being laid down somewhere and I’m not looking forward to seeing that at all. The town can do much better than this if it really tries.

What I wasn’t looking forward to today was seeing the heart specialist. I know that there’s something wrong with my heart because it’s either my heart or lungs and it isn’t my lungs.

When the alarm went off at 06:00 I fell out of bed and went to take my medicine. And when I’d done that I went off for a shower and a general scrub up to make sure that I was fit to be seen.

Outside it was pitch-black so I didn’t take any photos. And trying to enter the medical centre was exciting because the door was locked and the doctor, being new, wasn’t listed on the bell pushes.

The nurse gave me a good going-over, and examined me thoroughly too, and then sent me to see the doctor.

He gave me a complete workout and has identified the problem. And it wasn’t what I wanted to hear. The vascular evacuation of the heart should be about 60% but mine is just about 47%.

In other words, with my heart already beating 60% faster because of my lack of red blood cells, it now has to work 30% harder yet again (and 30% of 160% is 50% approximately which totals 210%) to maintain the blood supply, and it can’t keep on going like that for ever.

He’s writtten about 3 feet of notes for me to take to Leuven to show my Professor because he feels that there will be a follow-up to this. and to be honest, I don’t really want to know what it ie.

But I’ll telephone my professor tomorrow, have a chat to him and maybe send him the notes so that he can start to organise something.

The cardiologist had given me a prescription for something that might ease my discomfort so I went to the chemist’s.

By the time that I was ready to come home, it was quite light as I walked up the hill towards home.

From one of my rest stops I could see that the harbour gates were open and there was a trawler heading out to sea.

It was surrounded by seagulls too, which was surprising. They are usually much more interested in a trawler full of fish heading home rather than an empty one heading out to sea.

There were plenty of other fishermen about though. You can see them in the background standing on the harbour wall, rods in hand.

Here’s an interesting photograph though.

We can see the two Channel Islands ferries still moored up at the quayside – Granville against the quayside and the blue and white Victor Hugo moored alongside. And to the right is Belle France, the newest of the three Ile de Chausey ferries.

But what we can’t see is the Irish trawler Buddy M. She’s slipped out on the tide when I wasn’t looking and is now well on her way back to Ireland.

“Gone! And never called me Mother!”

By the time that I returned it was almost breakfast time so I made myself more coffee and tried one of my fruit buns. And they really are delicious. I’ll be enjoying these for the next week or so with my breakfast coffee.

And then I turned my attention to the radio programme. It takes me about 3.5 hours to do one so starting at 10:15 meant that I wouldn’t be finished by lunchtime. However, I wasn’t all that short of finishing.

The home-made bread is delicious as usual and went down really well with my salad, followed of course by a pile of fruit.

After I finished the radio programme, I had a letter to write. Another incendiary one to deal with yet another problem that has arisen, although I don’t really know what the problem is all about.

The nurse called to visit me a little later. There needs to be a few days before I can have my third Covid injection so it looks as if it it will be on Friday. There has to be 10 days after the Covid injection before I can have my next injection of Aranesp.

After he had gone, I made ready to leave for my appointment at the physiotherapist’s.

As I left the building I was overflown by a light aeroplane. It’s one that I haven’t seen before, and is carrying the registration number 65PX. That’s a number that is outside the range of registration numbers to which I have access so I can’t tell you any more than that.

The town was packed, with it being the school holidays but I managed to fight my way through the crowds to post my letter at the Post Office. That will set the cat amongst the pigeons when it arrives.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that a couple of weeks ago we saw a crane by the Eglise St Paul reaching over towards the Rue Couraye.

As I walked up one of the side streets towards the Rue Couraye, I could see that the rear part of one of the buildings in the street is swathed in scaffolding, so it’s not surprising that I couldn’t see it from the street.

At the physiotherapists, I had a go on the cross trainer for 5 minutes and then had to perform several exercises. They were quite strenuous and I was quite glad to finish them and leave the place, aching in places that I didn’t even know that I had places.

On the way back home I came back the pretty way via the Parc du Val Es Fleurs.

Last week we had seen the digger digging a trench and dropping the soil into the back of the lorry. They aren’t there now but we can see what else has been going on around here.

We now have a border up some of the way, made with concrete blocks. This is turning into a major construction effort and they are going to be here for a while until it’s all finished and the builders have left the site. I assume that they will be laying a border on the far side.

When we saw the digger and the lorry last week, it looked as if they were digging a trench for drainage pipes.

Further down the hill, there is another pile of pipes dumped at the side of the work. I suppose that the next task with the digger will be to dig the trench on down the hill and lay the pipes in it.

And there’s plenty of pipe to go at as well. That’s something else that will take a while to sort out.

There wasn’t anything else going on down at this end of the work this afternoon. Nothing was moving at all so I carried on towards home.

We’ve already seen what was going on in the Rue du Boscq but looking the other way, I could see what was happening in the Place des Docteurs Lanos.

Each time that I look at this Place it seems to be going from worse to worse. It’s now a total and complete mess and this isn’t something that’s going to be restored in a hurry either.

Apart from the concrete mixer and the men in attendance, there wasn’t anything else at all going on down there. The concrete goes all the way down to the far end so they have done that in something of a hurry.

The walk up the hill towards home was rather more painful than it has been just recently and I don’t know why. I seem to be having a slight relapse. But with the harbour gates being closed, there wasn’t anything exciting to see when I stopped for my breath.

At the top of the hill though, there was something to see.

Or rather, there was something not to see. For the past couple of days we’ve been seeing the trawler Yann Frederic in the chantier naval. But today, it’s empty. It looks as if she’s gone back into the water on the morning tide.

It now remains to be seen who will be coming in next. It’s a far cry from how it was a month or two ago where for a considerable period we had as many as 7 boats in there at one time and you couldn’t find room to swing a cat.

When I returned home I didn’t go straight inside.

Even though it’s considerable later than usual I went to have a look down on the beach to see if there was another feeding frenzy going on in one of the tidal pools, but I was to be disappointed this afternoon.

The tide has made a few nice patterns on the beach as you can see. I’ve never seen it looking as good as this. There were some seagulls admiring it, and also several pedestrians doing the same. But not as many as I was expecting to see. We’d had a thunderstorm while I was in the physiotherapy but it had turned out into a nice, sunny afternoon.

With the naked eye I couldn’t see anything out at sea but a glint of sun on glass had caught my eye.

As a result I took a photo and came back here to examine it. And I could see that right out in the Bay beyond the Ile de Chausey the trawlers were on their way home after their day’s fishing.

Back in the apartment I made a coffee and had a few things to do that took me up to tea time. Stuff on the dictaphone needed transcribing. I was with a girl last night but I can’t remember who she was now. We’d been definitely dating and we’d been round at her mother’s house. It was someone like Mrs Marshall but I don’t think it was Ann, Liz or Jackie. It was a Sunday evening round about 19:00 and time for me to go so she came out with me, went to my car. I unlocked the back door, not the front door. She asked what I was doing so then I went to open the passenger door for her. At that moment the next-door neighbour turned up. We were in Wardle at the bottom of Wardle Avenue although it wasn’t there either. There were some houses across the bottom, all very tight and the girl who lived next door had to manoeuvre her car into her drive between a couple of parked cars. She had only just learnt to drive. The girl with me said something about how well she did it considering she was a learner. That’s all that I remember about that.

Later on there was one of these minor German princesses. I had to write a letter and I needed to know a word in a foreign language so I went to ask a boy I knew about it. When I got to his house Zero was there. She was having some problem about a certain item of her clothing that needed adjusting and it goes without saying that there was one very willing volunteer not a million miles away from here keen to help.

And why do things like that only ever happen during the night and not during my waking hours?

There was more stuff on the dictaphone but as you are eating your meal right now I’ll spare you the gory details.

Tea was a stuffed pepper tonight, with rice and vegetables, and it was delicious as usual.

But now I’ve finished my journal I’m going to bed. I’m hoping to have a good night’s sleep for once. Last night’s was another disappointment and I can’t keep on going like this. If it carries on, I’m going to take a sleeping pill. I know that it’s a last resort but that’s the place in which I find myself right now.

Monday 16th September 2019 – STRIDER HAS BEEN …

… a busy boy today.

Back at the house after the school run, Zoe gathered up all of the glass, aluminium and plastic that she could find and we loaded it up into the back of Strider.

Then down at the bottom of the field by the lean-to we dragged the trailer out of the undergrowth. That was already loaded with a huge mound of stuff so we coupled it up to Strider’s tow hitch. Not for nothing did we fit a decent tow bar on him last year.

And that wasn’t the work of five minutes either. A trailer that hasn’t moved for a year or so and there’s quite a weight in it too. And, of course, the electric connections needed to be cleaned off so that I would have lights.

On the way down the road we hit a bump and the back door of the trailer opened up. As I have said before, I seem to be leaving a trail of possessions all around the world these days. But this time we were quick off the mark and we had it all back on the trailer and the door closed before anyone noticed.

At the garage we loaded more stuff up and then went on a tour of a few places to collect more. Off then to the recycling centre at Bath to weigh in the whole lot of it.

On the way back (for by now it was almost lunchtime after all of that) we went to Tim Horton’s where Zoe bought me a coffee and where I left my bag behind and had to run back and pick it up. It had taken ages to unload it all and separate it, and I question the wisdom of putting heavy glass into cardboard boxes and leaving it on a trailer for a year in the rain.

And inside the back of Strider now smells like a Babylonian boozer’s bedroom.0

The trailer door came open again on the way back (luckily there was nothing in it) and I stopped to pick up a sandwich. By now I was thoroughly exhausted.

And that’s no surprise either. I’d had another miserable night where I didn’t go to sleep until about 03:00 and then a fitful night of tossing and turning.

I don’t remember much of where I went but I remember three different segments. Segment 1, and then Segment 2 which was completely different and bore no resemblance to the previous, and Segment 3 where I stepped right back into where I was at the end of Segment 1. And if you think that that is confusing, imagine how I’m feeling.

And I do recall at some point the welcome return of a young girl who accompanied me on several voyages three or four years ago, and I wonder what has suddenly brought her back into the picture.

We had the school run of course and then the recycling, and then this afternoon I was hauling animal feed for a while, and then we replaced the rear brake caliper on the big Chevy truck that somehow manages to feature quite regularly on these pages just now.

As well as all of that, I’ve ordered my fuel economy chip and also made enquiries about my jacket at the hotel in Calgary.

Back at home I put back the trailer – and I do have to say that despite being out of practice I was totally impressed with my reversing skills – putting the trailer exactly where I wanted it (and in some tight corners too) every time, right on the button.

Not many of us here tonight so I made my usual vegan standby – stuffed peppers – for the two of us. And then I downloaded some more music. Two albums, both of which are vastly underrated.

Nektar’s album Down To Earth is a very interesting curiosity – am album by a British rock band that was totally ignored in the UK but became something of a phenomenon in Germany and eventually the musicians relocated there.

It’s one of these “take it or leave it” albums that I like to play every now and again but I can really live without it.

On the other hand, House On The Hill is a magnificent album. I’ve heard quite a few albums by Audience and was never particularly inspired but House On The Hill is another one of those that comes out of nowhere and stops you dead in your tracks.

It was one of the “Jackie Marshall cassette recordings” from the mid-70s and I bought a vinyl version in the mid-80s, probably the last vinyl album that I ever bought. And somehow I overlooked to purchase a CD version when I was modernising my collection.

As an aside, I’m only hunting down album tracks for albums that I already own and not for anything that isn’t already in my collection.

Now it’s bed-time and I’m hoping for better luck tonight when it comes to sleeping. I really can’t carry on like this and I’m back on the road on Wednesday.

Sunday 15th September 2019 – I MISSED …

… an exciting day today up in Grand Falls. Apparently they were having a drag racing afternoon.

Nothing more exciting than watching a bunch of men dash round a town while dressed in women’s clothes, but I had other fish to fry unfortunately and I was quite disappointed to have let the opportunity pass me by.

In fact I was out near Meductic moving furniture. Zoe has, as I mentioned earlier, bought herself a little house and she doesn’t have much furniture, but someone was disposing of a clean two-seater bed settee that transforms into a double bed and that will be just the thing.

And so having emptied out Strider, we set off for Zoe’s where she and a friend clambered aboard and then we all shot off southwards towards Fredericton.

Putting the bed in the back of Strider was the work of a moment and it was soon strapped in place. Back at Zoe’s, we unloaded the sofa and then I came home. Totally whacked. I just can’t do things like this any more.

Mind you, I don’t know why, because it’s not as if I had much of a difficult night. In bed comparatively early and apart from a brief foray down the corridor to ride the porcelain horse, disturbing our overnighters on the way, and a few interruptions to record things on the dictaphone (and I wonder what they are?) I had the kind of lie-in about which I have only been able to dream just recently.

09:00 when I finally surfaced, and just loitered around until it was time to go and deal with Zoe.

This afternoon, I’ve had a shower and, would you believe, a haircut, and I look almost human. As well as that, Rachel was having a marathon clothes-washing session and I’m now up to date with all clean clothes ready to leave here Wednesday morning for Montreal to clean out my storage locker and hopefully to go for a meal with Josee.

But having seen the fuel in Strider evaporate before my very eyes, I’ve been searching on the internet with Darren and we have finally found a performance chip which claims inter alia to offer an 8mpg fuel improvement.

And I tell you what – that if I could get an extra 8mpg out of Strider I will really be impressed. So tomorrow I shall be on the case.

For tea tonight we had baked potato – the carnivores with salmon and we vegans with a bean medley. Quite delicious and prepared with my own fair hands. And if I can find the time tomorrow, I’m going to make a curry.

But I’ve been a busy boy this evening. I’ve tracked down the complete digital tracks to two more albums that I own. The first one is Taking Tiger Mountain By Strategy by Brian Eno. That was his second solo album after Roxy Music and was such a surprising album that it left me speechless when I first heard it, and that’s not something that happens every day, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall.

But it’s one of those albums that grow on you quite quickly and it’s always been in my top 100 albums out of the couple of thousand that I own.

The second one though is an album that means a great deal to me and for many reasons too.Warrior On The Edge Of Time features work that probably represents Michael Moorcock’s apogee as a science fiction writer, and several of the lyrics, adapted from works by Shelley and Wordsworth and set to Hawkwind’s space-rock music will penetrate deep into your bones.
“The golden void will speak to me
“Denying my reality
“lose my body, lose my mind
“blow like wind, I flow like wine
“Down a corridor of flame
“Will I fly so high again?”
Yes, what wouldn’t I give to be able to write meaningful lyrics like that after some of the things that I have done?

The album was thoroughly panned by the critics in the same was that A Passion Play was, and for the same reason too – that the critics didn’t understand what the musicians were trying to achieve.

The Melody maker wrote that Moorcroft’s poetry was delivered “with all the emotion of Davros being exterminated by renegade Daleks”, totally overlooking the fact that this was precisely the effect that Moorcroft and Brock wanted.

And when Lemmy wrote that ” ‘Opa-Loka’ was a lot of f***ing rubbish”, what he really meant to say that he didn’t play the bass line on it. It transpired much later that with Lemmy off on one of his little jaunts playing Hell’s Angels, Dave Brock refused to hang around and wait but played the bass line himself.

It’s quite true that Hawkwind has never ever recorded an album on which I have liked every track from start to finish, but “Warrior On The Edge Of Time” will be up there with the best of them.

But it has much more of a personal significance to me too. When the album was released I was dating Jackie Marshall. She worked at the Nantwich Library on Saturdays and used to scan the new rock albums that arrived, secrete them in a drawer, smuggle them out for me to record and then take them back next week. This particular album, she bought me for my birthday and inscribed a beautiful little message on the album cover which meant quite a lot to me – and still does.

But her parents hated me with a passion (like I said, I was a different person in those days) and so our fate was destined to unwind.

Strangely enough, I was driving a coach around North Shropshire a few years later and needed some cash, so on my lunch break I called in at Barclay’s Bank in Whitchurch. Who should be working there behind the counter as cashier but the aforementioned?

I had the briefest of moments to exchange pleasantries like you do, but not enough time to chat, so I determined that at the next opportunity I would go back.

And so I did – and on a couple of occasions too – but I never saw her again. We’ve often talked about TOTGA – The One That Got Away – but that particular girl was from a very different time and a very different era. Jackie was TOTGA from quite another epoch in my life and is probably the original one from which all standards are made.

Sometimes I wonder whatever happened to her.

Having had a play around on the bass, I’m ready for bed. The house is as quiet as the grave with everyone having retired and I suppose that I should really badger off to. But I’ve found the digital track to another album and I’ve made a start to re-record it.

But I’ll tell you all about that in the morning.

Wednesday 24th February 2010 – Happy birthday to me!

Yes but at my age you don’t count the years you’ve had you count those that you have left. Liz and Terry kindly invited me around for tea and Liz made me a vegan chocolate cake. There were candles on it too and I went to blow them out but I was driven back by the heat.

Best present though was from Amazon. Many of you know about the Amazon waiting lists where you add your name and your offer of a price to a list of any out-of-stock item you want and then some retailer does his best to match the stock. Now back in 1976 Hawkwind did an album entitled “Astounding Sounds, Amazing Music” and Jackie Marshall liberated a copy from Nantwich Library for me to tape. It’s totally worn out now as it’s had plenty of airtime due primarily to “Reefer Madness” and “Steppenwolf” – the latter of which was my “theme tune” for a number of years and still is I suppose. Unfortunately Dave Brock didn’t like the album (and I really can’t think why) and so when it was released on CD back in 1986 he quickly suppressed it. It’s as rare as hens’ teeth and second-hand copies have changed hands for over a hundred quid. But yesterday morning a copy appeared in my mailbox for just £12:50. I’m ever so impressed.

The neighbour was at work again down the lane and so I’ve been reflecting about the situation. And what I’ve decided to do is to enlist Terry and Liz to help me clear some of the waste land around here one day early next week and put the Passat and the Escort onto it so that they are out of the way. And then enlist Bernard from the football club with his digger to dig out the patch I was always going to dig out, put some stones onto it and use that to park Caliburn and the trailers.

Sometimes you need something of an incentive to get you motivated.

-6

Wednesday 16th September 2009 – WE ARE GOING TO …

… have a major change of plan.

This morning despite the torrential downpour and Novemberish weather I finished off the plasterboarding as far as I could on the walls. I’ve done exactly one half of it – one complete end (save for 2 places around the window that just require small offcuts from somewhere else) and half of each of the side walls.

I can’t do the rest of the side walls until I lay the flooring there and I can’t do that until I reposition the floor beams.

But you will notice that the ceiling has grown some battens and some of the chevrons have now been covered in white stuff.

What on earth is going on?<

After doing the walls, I cut the first piece of plasterboard to do the ceiling. Not too big – not too heavy. But it was too heavy to hold with one hand while nailing it to the chevrons.

And when I finally managed to attach it (after much manoeuvering and bad language) the weight of the plasterboard pulled it out through the nails. I even invented a kind-of tracking to run it along so that I could glue it in place and then nail it and I was struggling along with that.

90 minutes passed and I still hadn’t done it and then I have another 30 or so to do afterwards. I could clearly see that I would have a major sense of humour failure long before I finished. So it was time for a coffee and a pause for thought

This has led to a major change in direction which will be greeted with hoots of derision from many lurkers to this blog but ask me if I care.

I have a theory in life that I learnt from a very early age due to the family that I had at the time, and that is that if you can’t do a job on your own then you do something else that you can do on your own.

And that is why the idea of plasterboarding the ceiling has now been consigned to the dustbin of history (good job I only bought half the load) and the ceiling is going to be tongue-and-grooved whether I like it or not.

So I spent the remainder of the afternoon fitting battens on the ceiling and putting up between the chevrons the rest of the polystyrene that I didn’t use.

On Saturday I’ll be buying another 35 square metres of insulation and 40 square metres of tongue-and-groove. I can fit that quite easily on my own … “famous last words” – ed.

I also had a very bad attack of nostalgia too. Playing all of these ancient cassette tapes at random, suddenly Camel appeared on the scene with Rain Dances and Mirage.

I was immediately transported back to 1975, the lagoon-blue Ford Cortina PMB270D and Jackie Marshall.

She was still at school but worked on Saturdays in Nantwich library and each weekshe would surf through the new records that they obtained. “Eric would like that” – and smuggle it out for me to tape and then smuggle back in afterwards.

And it looks like I’ve now hit 1975 and so there will be heaps of Caravan, Hawkwind and all other exciting stuff from Nantwich library hitting the airwaves in the attic in the next few days – all groups that she and I used to go and see back in those days.

I wonder whatever happened to her? She was quite cute and sweet but her parents hated me with a vengeance and our relationship was destined not to last.

One day while I was driving for Shearings I stopped off in Whitchurch (Shropshire) to get some cash out of Barclay’s Bank and who should be working behind the counter? We had a brief chat but you can’t spend too much time with a queue of people behind you and I never saw her again after that.

I dunno. What with piles of Marillion and the ghost of Jackie Marshall up there in the attic, it’s a good job there isn’t any Leonard Cohen. If I don’t blog any more after this entry, it’s because I will have found a copy of Ralph McTell’s “Streets of London” and strung myself up in the beichstuhl.

-6

EPIC HALL

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

Tag Archives: jackie marshall

Tuesday 10th February 2026 – I’VE HAD ANOTHER …

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Wednesday 16th September 2009 – WE ARE GOING TO …

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