Tag Archives: jam pie

Saturday 6th March 2021 – SOMETHING RATHER UNUSUAL …

… happened this morning. The alarms didn’t go off and I’ve no idea why.

Not that this is a surprise in itself, but the surprising thing was that despite something of a late night again, I was wide-awake at 06:08. And I don’t understand that at all.

After the medication I had a listen to the dictaphone. I was working the radio for someone last night. They couldn’t come. I was having my rock show but was doing it live. There was no power and everything was being generated by wind and solar. It was going OK but it was a shop at the same time and I was having to sell stuff and I didn’t know where half of the stuff was. Someone came in and asked for a certain brand of tobacco but I couldn’t see it and I couldn’t sell it to them. They were all lounging around the wrong side of the counter anyway. When the programme finished the Chinese Embassy just threw out a pile of cakes from their window into the ground. I sat down to do the cashing up but I couldn’t concentrate. There was a Peter Hammill album playing in the background, one that I hadn’t heard before. I just couldn’t get the maths and the additions right about the profits and loss of the day. In the end I decided that I’d unplug everything and go home and do the working out at home but I couldn’t get this record to stop. When I finally did manage to stop I couldn’t find the stuff that I’d set aside by the record turntable to bring home with me. This was all extremely frustrating.

Later I’d been in a pub in Crewe, the Duke of Bridgewater where I’d bumped into a well-known guitarist. We jammed together and and decided to do this again. For the next occasion I wanted to bring a drummer and I knew exactly who I wanted but try as I might I couldn’t get hold of him. The only drummer I could find was one who wasn’t as good and I was worried that if he came, the guitarist wouldn’t be interested in doing anything further but if I couldn’t find the one that I wanted, what else could I do?

This was the usual scenario of doubt that goes through my mind every so often during the night. We’re back here again, aren’t we?

Part of the day has been spent dealing with merging the old back-up disks and the like and at long last I have integrated everything into just one archives. Tons of stuff went into the bin although there wasn’t enough to free up the space that I need to move the back-up files from the main disk in the computer. But once I get to reviewing the directories and files in the archive, there will be much more room to be going on with.

There were several breaks in all of this.

Firstly there was a shower and a general clean-up, and then I went out to the shops. Nothing very special in Noz and nothing really special in LeClerc either. In fact I wasn’t really out there all that long

back here I carried on with what I was doing but unfortunately I crashed out yet again. Probably one of the longest spells that I’d had too – about 90 minutes or so. That was extremely depressing.

As a result, instead of having my lunch at 13:00 it was 14:30 or thereabouts when I finally went to make my butties.

people on beach place d'armes Granville Manche Normandy France Eric HallThere was the afternoon walk around the headland as usual.

The weather was really nice out there. It was quite cold – very cold in fact – but bright sunshine. This kind of weather had brought the crowds out and we could see plenty of people wandering around and playing about on the beach, even if the tide wasn’t that far out.

Once again, there was plenty of haze about out to sea so I couldn’t see as far as Jersey or down the Brittany coast, but in the other direction down past Donville les Bains and inland towards Cerences and that way it was reasonably clear.

people on path pointe du roc Granville Manche Normandy France Eric HallIt wasn’t just down on the beach that there were crowds.

The path along the headland was swarming with people too. There were crowds of them out and about swarming around on the path and on the lawn round by the Pointe du Roc in the beautiful weather that we were having. Not a cloud in the sky this afternoon.

And as you notice, the wearing of facemasks was definitely optional. I really don’t understand what goes through the minds of some people. This last week or two has shown a plateau of between 20,000 and 25,000 people with no sign of reducing. And it won’t ever reduce to anything like reasonable numbers if people don’t take this pandemic seriously

naabsa trawler port de Granville harbour Manche Normandy France Eric HallThere was no change in occupancy in the chantier navale today. Still the four boats that were there on Thursday.

But there’s yet another change in the boats that are grounded over by the Fish Processing Plant. The little old shellfish boat that was there yesterday is still there today, but she’s now been joined by another one that has been left to settle into the silt.

They aren’t quite aground just yet. When they overhauled the harbour a couple of years ago they dug out a channel alongside the wharf at the Fish Processing Plant in order to prolong the amount of thime that the Plant was accessible. It’s still holding water right now even though the surrounding harbour bed is drying out rapidly.

anakena la grande ancre le pearl port de Granville harbour Manche Normandy France Eric HallA few of the fishing boats were out at sea but several others are still moored in the harbour.

Amongst others, we can see La Grande Ancre and, on the right, what looks like Le Pearl. Also down there is Anakena, the boat that was on its way to Northern Europe but which was caught in the Covid lockdown and hasn’t moved since.

Back here I had a coffee and a slice of my cake and then made a start on the arrears of my journey to Central Europe. I’m just pulling in to Lech right now, where I spent two or three happy days relaxing after my long drive from France and my efforts back at my old house in Virlet.

There was football tonight on the internet – top-of-the-table TNS against Bala Town. Despite it finishing 0-0, it was an extremely exciting match. Bala had the best of the play at the start although TNS gradually took control of the match. But right at the end it was TNS with their backs to the wall as Bala Town pushed forward to grab a winner.

Exciting it was, but it would have been even more exciting had the referee given Bala Town a penalty for a handball by a defender. It’s all very well if the referee hadn’t seen the action but in this case he indicated “shoulder” when it was quite clearly the lower arm, well extended from the body.

And had he sent off the TNS player who deliberately elbowed the Bala Town winger Will Evans in the face, right in front of the linesman, it would have been more exciting still.

What with the sending off of Disney a few months ago for Connah’s Quay, it’s no surprise that many people in Welsh football are of the opinion that there are more than God and the Angels looking after TNS.

Tea was taco rolls, made with the left-over stuffing from Thursday, with jam pie for pudding.

Now that my notes are finished, I’m going to make my kefir for the next batch and then I’m off to bed. A nice lie-in on Sunday and then I need to catch up with the photos that I hven’t had time to do today.

Friday 5th March 2021 – I’VE HAD ONE …

… of those days where I seem to have been in great demand.

All of the afternoon has been spent talking to different people either on the telephone – first Terry, then Ingrid, then Rosemary and then Liz, one after the other from not long after lunch until all the way through to teatime and I even missed my guitar practice.

It all makes up for the night that I had last night where about 5 minutes after going to bed I had one of the worst attacks of cramp that I have ever had. I was out of bed four or five times trying to ease everything off, something that wasn’t easy for at one stage I had cramp in all four of my limbs at once.

Most of the night was spent not in sleep but in agony, although I must have gone off to sleep at one stage because I remember going on a voyage. We’d been to Dublin for a day out and we were on our way back on the train, a multiple-unit and there was a chance to get out and go to walk around a little village for an hour and then get back on the following train. Our train pulled into this station and we alighted, and I’m not sure what happened and I was ordering the configuration of it, but instead of ending up with 4 carriages I ended up with 45 so I went to delete some. I ended up back with 4 carriages but I’d lost the power car. We had to wait anyway for the next train to come and when that pulled up I explained to the driver what I’d done. He quite simply put his card into the slot and tapped out a couple of things and we ended up back with a power car so we could move off.

Despite everything I was up again quite smartly after the first alarm and after the medication I kneaded the two loads of dough that I had prepared before going to bed last night – one of the sourdough with fruit and the second with the wholemeal bread.

Most of the morning was spent going through the hard drive to remove another pile of duplicated files from the back-up drive. Another 19GB of rubbish bit the dust this morning. Of course, the further you go into this, the slower it becomes, but I’ll get there.

home made bread sourdough fruit loaf place d'armes Granville Manche Normandy France Eric HallSomewhere in the middle of all of this I broke off to put the bread in the oven and then again round about 10:30 when the oven had switched itself off

The wholemeal bread was cooked to perfection but the sourdough was another failure – a soggy mass of whatever without a trace of having risen at all. My sourdough doesn’t seem to be working at all.

But nevertheless, as a nice moist fruitcake it was something of a success from that point of view and with my hot chocolate it tasted quite nice and made a very good breakfast. But I really need to improve my sourdough technique if I’m to get anywhere with it.

Later on in the morning I crashed out for about an hour on the office chair. Not much of a surprise after the night that I’d had but it was still very annoying and I wasn’t very happy. Especially as it took much longer than usual to come round.

After lunch I fed the sourdough and the ginger beer mother solution and then I had my stream of phone conversations.

But one thing leads to another and these calls didn’t stop me working. While I’d been tidying up the other day I’d found a headset that must have come with a mobile telephone. While I was talking to Ingrid and Rosemary I plugged the headset into the telephone which meant that my hands were free and during the conversations I edited almost 60 photos and I wish that I’d thought about this before.

Now we’re on board a zodiac on our way back to THE GOOD SHIP VE … errr … OCEAN ENDEAVOUR after having visited Brattahlid.

beach rue du nord Granville donville les bains Manche Normandy France Eric HallIn between everything I went for my afternoon walk around the headland.

But first I went over to the sea wall to see what was going on. Later than usual but even so the tide was quite far in and there weren’t all that many people down there walking around. And that was something of a surprise because for once just recently there was very little wind and there was plenty of sun.

The view along the coast past Donville and into the area was extremely clear today but there was plenty of haze out at sea. The Ile de Chausey was clear enough today, but I couldn’t see as far as the island of Jersey.

There weren’t all that many people walking around today either so I had the path pretty much to myself today.

le loup baie de mont st michel kairon plage Granville Manche Normandy France Eric HallAs I walked round onto the lawn near the lighthouse I had a reall good view of Le Loup, the light that’s on top of the rocks just outside the harbour entrance.

You can see the usual high tide mark on the light – the line just below the lower of the two red rings. Of course at the Grande Marée the tide is higher than that.

In the background across the bay the town of Kairon-Plage is standing out quite nicely in the sunshine. And on the right-hand side of the photo just below the skyline is that mystery tower that we saw in a photo the other day and which one of these days I’ll take myself off out to see exactly what it is.

seafarers' monument pointe du roc Granville Manche Normandy France Eric HallYesterday, regular readers of this rubbish will recall that we saw the workman painting the lettering on the seafarers’ memorial at the Pointe du Roc

While I was out there this afternoon I went to have a look to see what kind of job he’s done. And it’s not turned out quite too badly at all and we can actually read what’s written on the memorial now without straining ourselves.

From there I walked along the path down to the viewpoint overlooking the harbour. There weren’t any more changed of inhabitant in the chantier navale. Still the four boats that were there yesterday and no others. No sign of spirit of Conrad as yet.

naabsa trawler refrigerated lorry fish processing plant port de Granville harbour Manche Normandy France Eric HallThere’s a change of boat at the Fish Processing Plant.

The big trawler that was moored there in a NAABSA position has now gone back out to sea but there’s one of the smaller shellfish boats now settled down in the silt.

And they seem to be expecting a bumper load of shellfish and aquatic life today. As I watched, one refrigerated lorry pulled away and another one was manoeuvring around ready to reverse into position. A third lorry as already there in the course of being loaded up.

Back here I had my coffee and cake and then carried on with my series of phone calls.

When I finished I went to tea. With plenty of potatoes around here I made some chips in the microwave along with some beans and a burger, followed by more jam tart.

Now I’ve finished my notes I’m off to bed. Despite my long sleep at lunchtime I’m exhausted and can’t wait to go to sleep. I’m surprised that i’ve kept going this long.

But shopping tomorrow, more football and then a day of rest on Sunday. And I think that after this week, i’ve earned it too.

Sunday 28th February 2021 – SPOT THE …

lys noir chantier navale port de Granville harbour Manche Normandy France Eric Hall… difference between this photo and any other photo that I’ve taken of the chantier navale over the last few months.

Yes, as you have probably noticed, the yacht that’s been over there at the far end for the last I don’t know how long has now disappeared, presumably having gone back into the water at long last. I was beginning to think that she was going to be there longer than I’m going to be here, but there you go.

What else didn’t go on as long as I was expecting was the amount of time that I stayed in bed last night. There are some days when I have an alarm to help me to be up and about and I still can’t be on my feet by 08:10 so the fact that I can do that on a Sunday when there’s no alarm is something quite surprising.

After the medication I had a listen to the dictaphone to see where I’d been. I’d had a very big row with the people for whom I drove coaches at one time. I’m not sure whether I ended up being sacked or resigned but they were sitting there calculating my wages and then ended up owing me 29 days pay for days in lieu of notice. They said that I’d get it in due course. That had all been arranged and they said “what about these Friday nights where we start to sort out the yard so you’d come down and do the office while we do it?”. I made a very non-committal reply to that and wandered off. I ended up playing cricket again, a girls’ cricket team and I was keeping wicket. The girl who was bowling was a pretty wild bowler but she took this long run-up and the ball in the air took this beautiful swerve and caught me on the left shoulder where my catheter is instead of in the gloves. I have the ball back to her and she started off on her run again so I asked “where are you off to? Nantwich?”. She stopped for a minute and burst out laughing. Another girl who was fielding at slip started to move back behind me. I said “no, don’t go behind me!”. I explained that these balls swerving around so much, she’s likely to get one in the face the further back she stands. Someone else turned up from the office where I was working and said to the girls’ captain – he gave her a form and said “just fill this in for Eric, will you? I want to see how he gets on now that he’s in a higher age group” so they started to fill it in before they took their next ball. He asked “what shall I put your occupation down as? Are you still a bus driver with (those people I mentioned earlier)?”.

So what’s this thing about me going back to playing cricket and keeping wicket doing reappearing just now? That’s what’s bewildering me at the moment.

But somewhere along the way I was watching a very large pair of aeroplane wings with four engines falling out of the sky on fire and hitting a tower block, destroying the block and there was debris and all kinds of things all around. Later I talked to a few of the passengers who had been seated in what remained of the fuselage.

There was quite some time left before my visitors arrived so I worked on the notes for my trip to Central Europe back in July and I edited a couple more days.

Liz and Terry turned up at 11:30 and they brought me a lovely present, a nice vegan coffee cake that I’ll be trying out with my afternoon coffee during the course of the coming week. And I have to provide feedback on the recipe and the cake itself as it’s a new recipe that she hasn’t tried before.

people on the beach rue du nord Granville Manche Normandy France Eric HallWhen we had drunk our coffee we went out for a walk in the beautiful sunny early afternoon.

There were plenty of people down on the beach which wasn’t any surprise at all given the weather. It was quite warm for February, rather like an early May afternoon. There was not a single cloud in the sky anywhere and, just for a change there wasn’t all that much wind.

Liz, Terry and I had a lot to talk about as we walked around the path. I think that we’ve only ever seen each other once since the autumn. I’ve been on the road to Belgium quite often since October and they were stranded in the UK for quite a while.

english channel Granville Manche Normandy France Eric HallOne of the things that we discussed was the colour of the sea.

It’s a beautiful emerald greeny-blue colour in this kind of light, the kind of colour that you don’t see very often. It was rather unfortunate though that there was such a haze. It would have been the kind of weather where you might have been expected to see for miles down the coast and miles out to see but today you couldn’t even see the Ile de Chausey, never mind the Channel Islands or the lighthouse at the Cap Frehel.

For a change, we went down the steps at the far end and right around the headland on the narrow path. It’s been quite a while since I’ve been that way.

people on beach rue du port Granville Manche Normandy France Eric HallThe crowds were out around there too, walking around the path making the place look rather busy.

The people sitting on the old concrete gun emplacement with their feet dangling into the void was quite interesting, and there were even people sitting on the rocks against the harbour wall. There were a few people picnicking higher up in the cliffs, perched like seabirds on their little nooks.

We ended up back at home and Liz prepared lunch. She’d brought with her some vegan sausage rolls and a salad followed by a sticky lemon cake. It’s nice having good friends who look after me when it’s my birthday.

As I’ve said before … “and on many occasions too” – ed … I don’t have many friends but those whom I do have are the best friends anyone could ever have in all of the world. Quality, not quantity.

We also had some of my ginger beer. And that was what I call “fiery” without any doubt.

After they had left I went and sat down in the bedroom and that was that for about an hour or so. I was well away with the fairies, right out of it and it took me quite a while to come round to my senses, which is quite a surprise seeing as these days I don’t have all of that many senses to come to.

Later on when I recovered I went off and started the weekend’s cooking, hours late.

First task was the pizza. I’d taken some dough out of the freezer earlier and that was now defrosted so I kneaded it again, rolled it and stuck it into the pizza tray to proof again.

And while that was doing, I made myself another batch of kefir, with the last of the mandarines from Christmas. I used those cheap mechanical bottles that I’d bought a while back but replaced the seals with some of the spare ones that I have which were more substantial.

While I was at it, I set another batch off on its way ready for next week.

Some pastry was next and I made myself a jam pie with some of the leftover strawberry jam. And with the pastry that was left I made a quick apple turnover.

home made vegan pizza jam pie apple turnover place d'armes Granville Manche Normandy France Eric HallBy now the pizza base was ready so while the pie and the turnover were baking I assembled my pizza. I had no fresh mushrooms so I drained a tin and dried them in the oven for 10 minutes. While the pizza was baking I fed the sourdough and the ginger mother solution.

Having had a big lunch, I wasn’t all that hungry so I only had a couple of slices of the pizza, and it was quite delicious. I’m going to have the rest with a baked potato one night this week. That should make quite a nice tea.

Tonight I’m going to bed early. There’s a radio programme to be prepared tomorrow of course and while I’ve already done some of it while I was away, it still needs a good deal of work.

And for some reason or other that I don’t quite understand, I’m feeling rather more optimistic about this coming week.

That’s a feeling that I can’t explain.

Monday 18th January 2021 – BACK AT …

… work today and for a change, I had a really good morning.

Admittedly I missed the 3rd alarm but it was only by about 10 minutes or so, do I don’t mind all that much. But after having the medication I sat down and made a start on the radio programme for this week.

And to my surprise, I was able to stick at it without a pause all the way through (except for a pause for my hot chocolate and sourdough fruit bread) to a rather late lunch at about 13:20 but having said that, in actual fact I finished the radio programme right the way through to completion.

And my home-made bread, the one that I made yesterday, is really good. It’s not risen as much as I would like, but nevertheless it’s nice, soft and tasty.

After lunch, while I was listening to the programme that I’d made, I made the arrangements for my next trip to Leuven next week.

And this is going to be pretty awful – the line from Granville to Paris is under repair and so I have to catch a train at, would you believe, 05:55. and I am not looking forward to this, especially as there’s a curfew until 06:00. Luckily, medical trips are exempted from the curfew but it still renders me liable to be controlled.

The way back home isn’t any easier either. Although I can have something like a lie-in, I have to go from Paris to Rennes and then catch a bus back to Granville from there. So instead of being home at 14:30, it’s a return at about 17:40.

trawler english channel Granville Manche Normandy France Eric HallThat took me up to my afternoon – rather, my only walk of the day.

There were one or two other people out there but even so the weather was pretty depressing. Cold and overcast but the view was quite clear. Right out there in the English Channel was a trawler, the pink one that we’ve seen before in the harbour. There were actually a few out there, but they do seem to be fishing close to the French shore.

It’s going to be interesting over the next few weeks to see how the French fishermen will react to the Government of Jersey trying to keep out the French fishermen from their waters in contravention of the Treaty of the Bay of Granville.

sun on sea cliffs ile des rimains brittany coast Granville Manche Normandy France Eric HallWith the rain that we have had just recently the path along the headland was quite flooded so I had to pick my way around the puddles.

Eventually I ended up at the end of the headland looking out across the Baie de Mont St Michel towards the Brittany coast. With the clear view today the coast was comparatively clear and the Ile de Rimians has come out really well.

The sun was reflecting off the sea too creating quite a nice effect, but with the advancing daylight, there is no longer the same kind of sunset that we were having two or three weeks ago

courrier des iles chantier navale port de Granville harbour Manche Normandy France Eric HallFrom there I carried on along the path on top of the cliffs on the southern side of the headland.

At the viewpoint overlooking the harbour I could see down into the Chantier Navale, and there’s a new tenant in there up on blocks. It’s the pleasure boat Courrier des Iles. Although she’s of comparatively modern construction, she’s been built to an older style and usually undertakes guided tours around the islands off the coast here.

Back here I had a look at the dictaphone to see where I had been during the night.

I’d been in my office in the EU. It was dark and I had the lights out but the computer was on in the background. I was half-asleep lying on my seat. Suddenly I looked up and there were dozens and dozens of people outside wearing Trump hats all loitering around by my window. About 10 minutes later my room was suddenly invaded by thousands of people who began to occupy it. I asked what was going on here and they replied “this is the Trump Convention. We’re all meeting here. There are thousands of us”. I had no intention whatever of staying so I gathered up a few of my possessions. Money had fallen out of my pocket so someone handed it over to me. I asked them what time they were leaving and they said that they were going to Port Glasgow dead drunk at 04:00 so I indicated a few things and said that I’ll be back for these some time this evening and gathered up my things making ready to leave.

whatever is that person now doing, featuring in my nocturnal rambles? That’s something that I don’t understand.

Unfortunately I dozed off for an hour of so which was a terrible shame, but at least I was awake enough to have my hour on the guitar.

Tea was a madras curry out of the freezer followed by the last slice of jam pie from last week. Tomorrow I can start on the jam roly-poly and see how that tastes.

Rosemary rang up later on to have a chat and we were on the phone for another 103 minutes. This is turning into quite a story. But now I’ve finished my notes I’m off to bed. I have my Welsh to prepare and then in the afternoon I have to visit the doctor.

And so for all of this, I have to be on form so I’m not going to hang about.

Thursday 14th January 2021 – JUST FOR A …

storm waves plat gousset Granville Manche Normandy France Eric Hall… change, I managed to beat the third alarm again this morning.

Well, to be honest, I didn’t. When it started up I was still in bed but I was on the point of hauling myself out of my stinking pit at that moment, and I was out of bed like a ferret up a trouser leg.

Mind you, to be perfectly honest I would have given all that I had to have been able to go back to bed and back to sleep because I didn’t feel like it at all today. It wasn’t a good start to the day at all.

storm waves plat gousset Granville Manche Normandy France Eric HallThe orange kefir has calmed down enough to drink now, so I took my medication with that this morning. And it is delicious, I do have to say that. It’s a good batch.

And then I came back in here to check the dictaphone. That was one of the things that I promised yesterday that I would do first thing. And indeed there were several files recorded on there so I sat down to have a listen and to transcribe them.

There was one for yesterday and one for the day before and they are now on-line where they ought to be. But don’t worry – there was nothing exciting which is a shame. And no interesting companions, which is even worse.

storm waves plat gousset Granville Manche Normandy France Eric Hall The ones from today weren’t any more exciting either.

We started off on a ferry – one of these boats with cabins. I’d designed a pile of furniture and fitted it into these rooms – cabins the previous year. Some kind of incident had taken place between me and a girl. This year I had to design the same cabins and a similar kind of furniture but the measurements were completely different. When everything was laid out in the room it looked fine, OK, but the measurements were different. People crowded in to see what was happening. The guy in charge asked me what I thought about it so I told him. He told me what he thought, that it was very good, that sort of thing but when I mentioned “of course the measurements aren’t the same, are they? I’d like to know why there is the difference. He made a remark about “all the youngsters of today, they aren’t the same as in the past”. I could see that that was some kind of barbed comment. We were making all kinds of barbed comments about this and he even had some kind of winch thing to compress the furniture to see if it would fit any better.

storm waves plat gousset Granville Manche Normandy France Eric HallHe then asked if I would be interested in taking the cabin. Of course I was going to hold out for the old measurements, the stuff that I had designed for last year but my partner said something about “we’ll take the bed It’s a lovely diesel-powered bed”, all of this but I was trying to get whoever it was to keep quiet about this because I wanted to solve this problem first but this was knowingly aiding this other guy in dealing with this year’s issues and not the issues that I wanted dealing with last year about this girl – that was it (what was? Which girl?). There had been a disco on board and he was posting all the photos of the New Year’s disco. For some reason I hadn’t gone – whether I hadn’t been invited I don’t know but I’d been scanning these photos to see whether this girl was on there but I couldn’t see her on there so I was wondering whether she had gone or not.

And I wish that I knew who she was.

storm waves plat gousset Granville Manche Normandy France Eric HallLater on, there was a question of winning an Audi car in a competition but I had undone the wrong tin and got the wrong food in this so I’d put the stuff somewhere like under the bed or under the pillow in the hope that no-one would notice it and we’d carry on that I might qualify to win this car. I’m not sure if anyone had noticed but a TV presenter had started to make all kinds of cracks about Covid as if he knew that I had some kind of guilty secret about it and he was grinding the axe in me, making me suffer instead of minding these Series 19 Brush locomotives which was what I wanted to do in the first place.

And I don’t know what all that was about either, to be honest.

trawler baie de mont st michel Granville Manche Normandy France Eric HallLater on, I had a shower and a general clean-up, then grabbing my shopping bag, I headed out into the street for my Thursday shop at LIDL.

And if you thought that the weather had been bad just recently, it had absolutely nothing on what was going on this morning. One glance at the rough seas engulfing that trawler out there would give you a clue as to what the weather was doing.

We’ve had winds, and we’ve had more winds, but this morning’s winds were more than we have had for quite a while.

trawler port de Granville harbour Manche Normandy France Eric HallAt first, I wasn’t sure what the ship was that I had seen, so I waited for it to pull into the harbour.

Now that I can see it closer up, I can recognise it as one that’s been in the harbour before, but I can’t think of her name right now. And in the background is the new trawler Le Pearl.

You’ll notice the red light illuminated at the harbour gate too. It started to flash just as our trawler came in and once it was safely in, the gates closed right behind it. Perfect timing, I would say.

Calling at the Post Office to post a letter, I pushed on along my way out of town.

There were a few things of interest that I bought in LIDL but I’m not going to say too much about them right now as it’s something for the future. But I bought my fruit and so on and then headed for home.

On the way back, I stopped off to try out their new cheque paying-in machine. All straightforward and easy once you know what to do.

bad parking rue des juifs Granville Manche Normandy France Eric HallRegular readers of this rubbish will recall that pathetic parking takes up a lot of room o these pages – so much so that you are probably as fed up of reading about it as I am of writing about it.

But sometimes, something happens that leaps out at you and you can’t pass it by – like this little incident here. On the left of where this delivery van is parked is a special parking bay reserved for deliveries and it happens to be empty right now. But our hero has parked alongside the loading bay, in the street, right next to a bollard, something that prevents anyone behind him from driving past

You really can’t make up things like this.

heavy industrial equipment place d'armes Granville Manche Normandy France Eric HallAnyway, I pushed on up the road, not feeling anything like it at all, until I reached my building.

And here, I had something of a surprise. We have visitors in the square. A few huge earth-moving machines are parked up in the car park of the building across the road. It looks as if we are going to be having some major work done somewhere in the vicinity in the very near future.

No doubt we shall find out more about this in the near future.

Back here, I didn’t even have time to unload the shopping before I sat down and promptly dozed off. These walks, loaded up with shopping, are killing me at the moment but I need to do it. But eventually I recovered and was able to drink my cold chocolate and eat my slice of fruit sourdough.

At lunch I used the last of my bread so I need to make another loaf pretty soon, and then I came in here to carry on with the arrears of work. I’m still at the Chateau Gaillard but we’ve reached the period of the Religious Wars right now, so not very much to do.

person in water in wet suit place d'armes Granville Manche Normandy France Eric HallThere was of course the afternoon walk. And even though by now it was raining, I was determined to go out and stretch my legs even more.

But not quite like this person is doing right now. In this wind you are not going to get me anywhere near the water’s edge, not even dressed in what appears to be a wetsuit. He’s a braver man than I am, Gunga Din.

Instead, I wandered off along the footpath on top of the cliffs, battling against the raging storm and the rain.

sunset baie de mont st michel brittany coast Granville Manche Normandy France Eric HallAcross the lawn and across the car park by the lighthouse and then down to the headland to catch the full force of the gale.

The weather was comparatively clear today, and for once you could see the Brittany coast and just about make out the church of Cancale on the cliffs across the bay. There was another nice sunset – although it’s not really a sunset right now – out there in the middle of the bay with the rays of sun shining through the gaps in the clouds and illuminating the water.

It’s a shame that the weather was so bad, but then again we wouldn’t have had the effect if the weather had been different.

peche a pied pointe du roc Granville Manche Normandy France Eric HallThe weather might indeed have been bad, but it wasn’t bad enough to put off these two people here down below where I’m standing.

As usual, there is always someone somewhere doing the peche à pied – the scavenging amongst the rocks for the shellfish. This are is quite famous for its shellfish, as you have probably gathered from the number of boats that go out from here and the number of people that we see on occasion when there’s a huge tidal coefficient.

There are always people going around armed with their gratter and bucket.

joker fishing boat trawler chantier navale port de Granville harbour Manche Normandy France Eric HallFrom there I wandered off along the path on top of the cliffs on the other side of the headland.

This path takes me to the viewpoint overlooking the chantier navale and I always like to look down to see what’s going on there. And we have a change of occupant as well today. The yacht that has been there for ever is still there, as are the trawler and Joker, the blue and white shellfish boat.

But there’s a nw visitor in there today – the little silver and grey shellfish boat that has come to join in the fun.

unloading heavy equipment place d'armes Granville Manche Normandy France Eric HallHaving admired the boats back at the chantier navale I headed off for home, to find myself confronted by yet more machinery.

This low-loader has just dropped off a little mini-digger. And seeing that there were a few guys hanging around I went to ask them what was going on.

There’s a street near here called the Rue St Michel and for the last 2 weeks it’s been covered with all kinds of multi-coloured hieroglyphics. It seems that some of those markings indicate a gas pipe, and these guys have come to dig it up and replace it.

Back here I carried on with my arrears and then broke off for my hour on the guitars, which I didn’t enjoy because I discovered that I seem to have lost my voice today, something that will please my neighbours mightily.

storm waves plat gousset Granville Manche Normandy France Eric HallBy the time that I went out for my evening walk the rain had stopped and we were treated to just the hurricane-force winds that made it difficult to run.

But at least the sea was enjoying the weather. You’ve already seen several photos that I’ve taken showing the waves coming crashing over the sea wall at the Plat Gousset with such incredible force. And I have to admit that I enjoyed the view as well – in fact I stayed there for a good few minutes watching them.

But I can’t stay there for ever. I ran off across the Square Maurice Marland in the direction of home.

gas pipe fitting repairing rue st michel Granville Manche Normandy France Eric HallOn my way home, I go past a little alley that leads down to the Rue t Michel, a dead-end street of old stone houses in the old Medieval town.

In the past I’ve wandered down it a couple of times but I’ve never taken a photo of what’s going on because it’s usually too dark. But tonight, taking my time, I managed to take a rather respectable photo of the end of the street. You can see all of the fencing that they are presumably going to put around the hole that they dig.

You can also see the crazy markings on the surface too but unfortunately, you can’t see the mini-digger, because that’s right behind where I’m standing.

trawler fish processing plant port de Granville harbour Manche Normandy France Eric HallThe little alleyway continues on to the old Medieval walls and so I went that way for a change.

From there I walked along the walls to the viewpoint overlooking the harbour where there is the really good view over the Fish Processing Plant. Quite a few of the fishing boats are still out fishing so the plant is open with people working there, a refrigerated lorry in the loading bay and a couple of vans on the car park.

And there’s a trawler moored up there too unloading even as we speak

trawler fishing boats port de Granville harbour Manche Normandy France Eric HallBut some of the trawlers are already in, moored up at the quayside. And I’m not really sure if they are parking up or preparing to go out, with their lights ablaze like that.

Braving the wind and rain, I ran on home for my tea. With the leftover stuffing from Tuesday, I added a small tin of kidney beans and made myself taco rolls with rice, followed by another wedge of jam pie with soya coconut sauce.

Tons of stuff to write out again today so t’s going to be another late night by the looks of things. And what with an early start, I’ll end up looking and feeling like death. At least I don’t have to go anywhere tomorrow.

Wednesday 13th January 2021 – IN NEWS THAT WILL …

storm waves plat gousset Granville Manche Normandy France Eric Hall … surprise almost everyone reading this rubbish right now – because it certainly surprised me – I managed to beat the third alarm to my feet this morning. And that’s not something that has been happening very often these days is it?

Mind you, it wasn’t actually a sprightly leap out of bed. More of a stagger to the edge of the bed and a sit there until the room stopped spinning sufficiently for me to try to stand up. I’ve had many better mornings that this. But then again I’ve had many worse too.

So while you admire more photos of the storm stirring up the waves to break down on the Plat Gousset I’ll recount the history of my day today.

storm waves plat gousset Granville Manche Normandy France Eric HallFirst of all, regular readers of this rubbish will recall that I usually start with details of last the previous night’s nocturnal rambles.

Last night’s voyage was a really long, rambling one. I’d been giving some kind of interview to someone or other and I’d dictated a few things about my brother about how he needs to work on his charm and all this kind of thing in order to get on much better with the opposite sex – just part of what I said. I’d said a lot of other things too. A couple of weeks later I was sitting on a wall outside a factory or something and my brother walked past. He saw me, stopped, took off his rings and handed them to me saying “if you think that these are no good, you can have them”. I said “that’s not what I said at all” but he carried on being argumentative and in the end left them to me and walked off. I took them thinking that it would get rid of him and he can calm down and have them back at a later date.

There was so much more to it than this but this is all that I remember, which is a shame.

storm waves plat gousset Granville Manche Normandy France Eric HallWhat I have been doing in a rather desultory fashion today is some of the arrears from my trip around Central Europe in the summer.

For several weeks now I’ve been bogged down in recounting the history of the siege of Chateau Gaillard on the River Seine between Paris and Rouen, but finally at some point this afternoon the trebuchet or mangonel (history does not recount which one it was but I suspect the former) finally succeeded in propelling its missile right through the front door of the keep allowing the forces of King Philip to swarm inside.

As an aside, we built trebuchets and mangonels as part of our “Historical Technology” degree, but I digress.

storm waves plat gousset Granville Manche Normandy France Eric HallAnother thing that I managed to accomplish today was to finally contact the local tax office about the payment that they wanted me to make before Friday.

She had to run off and do some hunting around but, much to my surprise, she did actually phone me back. And it’s good news too.

The issue was that I had received a request to make 2 Taxe d’Habitation payments, but of course that can’t be right as you can only live “officially” in one place. I had noticed that my registration number in the Registre Natioanal as quoted on the two documents was different so I suspected that that had something to do with it.

And I was right too. The Belgian Pensions Office has me down as Nationalité Belge and so as that’s different from my Nationalité Britannique the French authorities have assumed that it’s a different person and so created another entry in the register.

She confirmed that I didn’t need to make the 2nd payment, and I had to e-mail her a copy of my passport and ID Card so that she can update the registers and delete the duplicate entry.

peche a pied beach rue du nord Granville Manche Normandy France Eric HallWe had the usual pauses of course. Hot chocolate and sourdough fruit loaf at 10:30 and lunch at lunchtime. And there was of course the afternoon walk.

At least the weather was slightly better today. I could leave my guide dog and white stick behind, so just the NIKON 1 J5 and me went out this afternoon. There were some people out there doing the pèche à pied down on the beach but very few other people out there this afternoon.

And so I trudged off along the muddy path. What DID they actually do to it to churn it up like this?

fishing boats english channel Granville Manche Normandy France Eric HallDown the path I trotted towards the headland. And at least with the view being better this afternoon I could see right out to sea.

With the tide well on its way in by now, the fishing boats were on their way back home to unload their catch at the fish processing plant. When I noticed the pink trawler in this photo I took a photo of it or course, but I didn’t notice until I returned home and enlarged it that there were two others out there in the shot as well.

It looks as if I should have gone to Barnard Castle the last time that I was in the UK.

sunset baie de mont st michel brittany coast Granville Manche Normandy France Eric HallSo off I went across the lawn, across the car park and round by the bunker to look out from the headland across the Baie de Mont St Michel and the Brittany coast.

And we’re in luck this afternoon because, compared to the last couple of afternoons there’s actually something to see. It’s not the best sunset that we’ve had, and in any case with the changing season we are quite far from sunset right now anyway.

The Brittany coast is however still obscured in fog though – the weather can’t be that clear further out.

fishing boats le loup baie de mont st michel Granville Manche Normandy France Eric HallFrom there I pushed on around the headland and down the path along the top of the cliffs on the other side.

The tide is in some way and the smaller boats can make it up to the Fish Processing Plant but the larger ones look as if they have to wait a while for the harbour gates to open so that they can go into the inner harbour and unload there. These two are busy making a circle around Le Loup – the marker light on the rocks at the harbour entrance – while they wait for the tide.

While I was here I had a look in at the chantier navale to see what was happening there. And there’s no change – the same three boats as yesterday.

normandy trader port de Granville harbour Manche Normandy France Eric HallBut there’s a change in the inner harbour down by the loading bay.

Moored underneath the loading crane is our old friend Normandy Trader who presumably came in on the morning tide. She doesn’t seem to be in such a rush now as she was just before Christmas where she would be in and out on the same tide.

For my part, although I wasn’t in all that much of a rush, I still cleared off home. It’s not that warm outside (although it’s warmed up since the weekend) and a mug of hot coffee would do me some good.

Shame as it is to admit it, I crashed out at some point in the early evening and so missed most of my bass guitar practice. In fact, had Alison not messaged me and awoken me, I’d probably be still asleep now. But I did manage to find the time to run through a few scales before going for my half-hour on the acoustic guitar.

rue du nord Granville Manche Normandy France Eric HallFor the evening run tonight I was pretty much on my own. I don’t recall seeing anyone else at all.

At the moment I’m still stuck to doing 4 of my running legs instead of the previous 6 but I seem to be running a little freer than just now. However I did walk along the Rue du Nord instead of running down it as I might have done previously.

But I still managed to run down the path underneath the walls and even put 20 metres on my previous distance. I must be slowly recovering from whatever infection I had just now.

fish processing plant port de Granville harbour Manche Normandy France Eric HallEventually, having had a pause to watch the raging storm at the Plat Gousset, I arrived at the Fish Processing Plant again.

And while there are no boats there, the place is lit up and there’s a refrigerated lorry waiting at the loading bay. This must indicate that there are fishing boats still out at sea and they’ll be heading home very shortly to unload.

And it was time for me to head home too. I was hungry. For tea I had falafel and steamed vegetables with vegan cheese sauce followed by jam pie and coconut dessert.

And I have a cunning plan for my next attempt at a pudding.

Tomorrow (well today, because it’s after midnight) I’m off to the shops. I don’t need much but I need to keep going because it frees me up, this long walk up to LIDL. And I have a few things to do on the way too which I mustn’t forget.

So I won’t be having too much time in bed tonight so I’ll probably be like death tomorrow.

We shall see.

Tuesday 12th January 2021 – IT GOES WITHOUT …

storm waves plat gousset Granville Manche Normandy France Eric Hall… saying that I failed to beat the third alarm this morning, much to my chagrin.

So while you admire of the waves crashing down and over the sea wall down at the Plat Gousset in the storm that was raging this evening, I can tell you that I was lying in bed trying desperately to summon up the energy to leave the bed. And it was about 08:10 that I finally managed to haul myself out of my stinking pit.

And that’s a far cry from yesterday where, to my own amazement I actually managed to beat the third alarm to my feet. That was rather a flash in the pan, wasn’t it?

According to the dictaphone I’d been on my travels too. I was with a group of people on a train journey. We set out from a place on the Underground and reached the main station but had to change Metros and there wasn’t many minutes between the two trains. Then there was only about 8 minutes between our train arriving and the next one departing. We installed ourselves in the train and it took off. After a while a ticket collector appeared and asked for everyone’s tickets so I gave him mine. He said “no, this isn’t the correct ticket” so I had a look and it was the ticket around France so I had a look through my pile of tickets that I had but couldn’t see one. It suddenly occurred to me that in all of the confusion I hadn’t actually stopped and picked it up. I asked whoever I was with and they couldn’t remember me picking up the ticket either. I was about to explain it to this ticket collector when suddenly he had to dash off somewhere elsse I was wondering what was going to happen now. This drifted on for 5 or 10 minutes then a woman came back and said to me in one of these stage whispers “you are going to complain about the lack of time between the trains, aren’t you? You are going to say that you didn’t have time to do anything in between the arrival of one and the departure of the next, aren’t you?”, explaining to me what I ought to do.

storm waves plat gousset Granville Manche Normandy France Eric HallThe kefir that I made yesterday – that was rather far too volatile to use this morning with my medication. I ended up having to open a carton of soft drink that I had bought in NOZ a couple of weeks ago. I hope that it settle down by tomorrow.

After the medication I had to sit down and revise my Welsh. I’d been doing quite well with the revision over the Christmas period bu with the cancellation of last week’s lesson I’d somehow lost the thread.

And in fact it was pretty hard going because I’m finding it extremely difficult to concentrate these days, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall. And I’m not sure what I can do about that.

storm waves plat gousset Granville Manche Normandy France Eric HallAs for our Welsh class, it’s grown in size. One of the teachers of our course has left, and her students have been passed on to swell up our group.

What’s interesting about this course from a student point of view is that previously it’s run with about 100 students per year. But a combination of three factors, namely

  1. the current rise in Welsh nationalism
  2. the move of the courses to an on-line Zoom platform
  3. the start of lockdown, working from home and people having more free time with flexible working hours

there was a record total of 1038 students who enrolled for this course back in March. I’m in France and one of my classmates lives in Dubai. Even more interestingly, there’s a Polish girl living in Connah’s Quay who is in our class too.

So grabbing a slice of home-baked sourdough fruit bread and a mug of hot chocolate, I signed myself in to my course. It was painfully slow to start with as we all struggled to come up to speed but by the end we were doing OK.

We had a mock test paper at the end and I had 80% in the oral comprehension.

This afternoon I had a couple of ‘phone calls to make. For one of them, I was disappointed as the office wasn’t open this afternoon. I must get through tomorrow as there’s a time limit on this.

The second ‘phone call that I had to make was something of a speculative enquiry. And if it works out, it’ll be something of a rather silly thing to be doing at this stage in my life, but if there’s an opportunity going, I need to find out more about it.

sea fog english channel granville Manche Normandy France Eric HallBut that was enough about that for the moment. There will be more to say about this I imagine.

It was now time for me to go out for my afternoon walk. Braving the rain I set off to see what was happening. And the answer to that is that if anything was happening out there, I wouldn’t be able to see it in this weather. This is another one of these white stick / guide dog days, even worse than the weather yesterday.

But never mind. I have to make the most if it. It is the middle of January after all.

trawler in sea fog english channel Granville Manche Normandy France Eric HallIt’s no surprise to anyone to learn that there were very few people out there taking the air this afternoon.

As I picked my way around the puddles on the churned-up path at the top of the cliff I could hear the distant throbbing of a long-stroke diesel engine out there in the fog. And as I approached the end of the headland one of the trawlers from the port loomed out of the gloom and disappeared around the far side.

It was all extremely eerie, like something out of a horror film with ghost ships and all of that.

trawlers in sea fog english channel Granville Manche Normandy France Eric HallFrom the path I walked across the lawn and then across the car park down to the end of the headland to see what was happening out to sea.

While I was standing there, a couple more trawlers went happily sailing … “dieseling” – ed … past me where I was standing, and it’s a good job that they were close inshore because I would never have seen them had they been any further out.

Over the past couple of weeks we’ve stood in this spot and seen some really beautiful sunsets with the sun reflecting off the water but as you can see, in this wind and rain it would be a waste of time waiting to see it today.

storm waves over sea wall Granville Manche Normandy France Eric HallHaving waited there and watched a few of the trawlers and other fishing boats come back into port I moved away from my viewpoint, walking along the path on top of the cliffs on the other side of the headland.

Previously, I mentioned the rain that was falling down in a very fine mist, there was also a raging gale going on as you might have noticed from the photos of the boats out at sea. You can see it even better in the couple of photos here of the waves breaking over the sea wall.

It’s a good job that there wasn’t anyone walking around on the sea wall in all of this. They would have known all about the storm down there.

joker fishing boat yacht port de Granville harbour Manche Normandy France Eric HallFurther on along the clifftop there’s the viewpoint over the chantier navale from which we’ve seen dozens of boats in the past.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that yesterday we saw Joker, having unloaded her catch at the fish processing plant, perform an interesting nautical danse macabre in the harbour in the vicinity of the portable boat lift, and I speculated that she was indicating that she needed to be hauled out of the water.

And sure enough, there she is up on blocks down there, presumably about to have some kind of work undertaken on her. The other two boats that have been there for a while, the yacht and the trawler, are still there too.

storm waves over sea wall Granville Manche Normandy France Eric HallWhile you admire another photo of the waves crashing over the harbour wall, I came on home for a mug of hot coffee and a warm-up.

Later on, I had my hour on the guitars and I seemed to enjoy it a little more today. On the acoustic guitar I’ve been trying a new way to play the G chord and the Bminor chord and I seem to have managed to improve on that. But I have to keep it up and keep on improving.

For my evening walk tonight I ran off down the road and despite the weather and the rain and the wind I carried out my usual (for these days) course around the walls.

We’ve seen the photos of the storm and then I carried on for home and tea.

Tonight it was stuffed peppers followed by a slice of the delicious jam pie.

Now I’m off to bed, ready for a day on the arrears and hoping to bring at least some of them to a conclusion as quickly as I can.

Sunday 10th January 2021 – IT WILL BE …

… of no surprise to anyone that I slept right through until about 11:00 this morning. Furthermore, it was 11:30 when I finally fell out of bed.

But then again, I do have to say that because of the deep sleep that I’d had earlier during the day, it wasn’t until about 02:30 that I went to bed this morning. And so the sleep wasn’t as deep and as long as it might otherwise have been.

After the medication I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. We were off on another coach trip. We were leaving from some kind of stately home and there were 2 coaches there. Ours was pretty much full – there were only about 3 or 4 seats so we were all waiting around. One of the coaches pulled up. It happened to be ours so we all scrambled aboard and the driver set off. I had a look round and there were more empty seats on this coach than I remembered but I couldn’t see anyone running after the coach. We reached the end of the driveway and had to cross the traffic and turn – we had to wait for a gap. I looked around and there was still no-one running after the coach. Well, it must be right but there were more empty seats than I remembered. We set off but by now we were on foot, walking. We had a load of giant dolls with us, about 3 feet tall. They were walking. One doll was a female and another was a male. The male was about 40 and the female doll looked as if she was in her late 20s. Someone made a joke about what a good couple they would make and the female doll said “we’ve already had a kiss and he didn’t seem all that interested” and she started ordering him about, this doll, to give her another kiss. It was really funny, this doll giving these orders like this. We were walking up West Street and one of the girls with us was spotting golf balls so we were making jokes about her and her golf balls. There was one that we went past but she didn’t bother to pick it up so we had a few jokes about that. But while we’d been on the bus some people had lapel badges about something or other. Someone had done a deal but hadn’t let on – he’d passed an order around and people had ordered and paid him for these but instead of sending off to buy them he pocketed the money and had some cheap substitutes made. One of the people on the coach actually belonged to this organisation and he could tell straight away that these badges were false so he made the people buy the right ones and pay the money for it. I was keeping a low profile about this because although I wasn’t involved, I knew what had gone on and I was afraid that my name would be mentioned in this connection by someone or other.

That brought me all the way round to lunchtime and so I went off and had a bowl of porridge

After lunch, I went off on a cookery afternoon.

First task was to mix up a pile of dough for the next three pizza bases as I have now run out. That flour mix stuff that I found in Belgium when I was there in November is really good and did a great job. I’ll be sorry when it runs out.

Next stop was to deal with the next load of kefir as I’m running low.

orange kefir place d'armes Granville Manche Normandy France Eric HallWhen I was in LeClerc on Saturday I noticed that they had a pile of juice oranges so I bought a bag of a couple of kilos so I took four of them and whizzed them in my whizzer. I strained them through my filter stack into my large jug and then added most of the kefir that had been brewing for a few days.

Leaving an inch or so in the jar, I made up another batch for a few days later.

Having mixed the kefir and the orange juice in the large jug, I filtered it back through the filter stack into the bottles. And this will keep me going for the next 5 days.

yacht english channel Granville Manche Normandy France Eric HallBy now it was time to go off for my afternoon walk around the headland.

There were quite a few people walking around too because although it was cold and windy, it was quite nice and sunlight. The wind was such that there were several yachts out there on the water having a good sail around. This one here was out in the English Channel on its way back presumably from the Ile de Chausey.

For some reason that I didn’t understand, the path was al churned up and muddy so I had to pick my way around the mud on my way along the top of the cliffs.

sunset baie de mont st michel brittany coast Granville Manche Normandy France Eric HallAcross the lawn and down the path across the car park, I ended up at the end of the headland looking out to sea.

There was nothing going on out there to sea as far as boats go, but there was yet another example of a really nice sunset this afternoon. The rays of the sun was pouring through the gaps in the clouds and illuminating the sea right in the middle of the channel.

There were quite a few people out there admiring the sunset and this view this afternoon, and I left them to it as I walked on around the headland and down the path on the other side.

yacht chantier navale port de Granville harbour Manche Normandy France Eric HallAt the viewpoint overlooking the chantier navale, I had a look down to see how they were getting on.

The trawler was still there up on its blocks and the yacht was still there too. But there were some people on board in protective uniforms and it seemed to me that they were painting the boat. It certainly looks better than it has done from that point of view, although this isn’t really the weather to be out there painting.

There was nothing else going on in the harbour so I came on back home and made myself a nice hot mug of coffee and prepared to start work on some more cookery items.

First of all I fed the sourdough – mustn’t forget that. I need to keep that going even if I’m not having much success right now.

The pizza dough had risen nicely so I needed it again and split it into three. Two of them I rolled in oil, wrapped in baking paper, put in a plastic bag and bunged them in the freezer.

The third one I rolled out and put it into the pizza tray and put it on one side.

Next off I made some pastry and having rolled it, I lined a pie dish with it. There are plenty of half-open jars of strawberry jam around here so I tipped some into the pie dish and put a pastry lid on top and sealed it down and brushed it with milk and water.

With the pastry left over I made a jam turnover and then put the pie and turnover in the oven to bake.

While that was cooking, I prepared a vegan pizza and when the pie and turnover were cooked I took them out and put the pizza in.

rue paul poirier Granville Manche Normandy France Eric HallWhile the pizza was cooking I headed off for my evening walk around the medieval walls.

Once again, I was all on my own out there except for a couple walking their dog, so I could do my running bits quite happily. At the viewpoint overlooking the town I took a photo of the Rue Pau Poirier just to prove that I was out there and then I turned for home and ran across the Place Maurice Marland.

It was so quiet out there and there was so little going on that I don’t really remember anything about the trip home. However I did run the last length back home again just to keep going.br clear=”both”>

strawberry jam pie strawberry jam turnover vegan pizza place d'armes  Granville Manche Normandy France Eric HallBy now the pizza was cooked so I took it out of the oven. And here we are – doesn’t it look delicious? The jam pie and the turnover look really nice.

The pizza was delicious too, although the tomato sauce wasn’t as I would have liked because having forgotten to buy any tomato sauce I’d ended up with a jar of tomato and aubergine purée to use as a base. And as for the jam pie and turnover, I’ll tell you about that tomorrow as I wasn’t hungry after my pizza.

Now I’ve written my notes, I’m off to bed. I’ve had a short day but if I’m not too well I don’t want to push my luck. I need to take it easy until I’m feeling better, whenever that might be.

After all, I have to start back to work in the morning with a radio programme to do.

Friday 27th March 2020 – AND IF YOU THINK …

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

trawlers fishing boats english channel granville manche normandy france eric hallRegular readers of this rubbish will recall that yesterday I mentioned the Ile de Chausey, the folk who live there and the lack of facilities that they have, and I wondered how they would cope.

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

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

charles marie cap lihou joly france chausiais chantier navale port de granville harbour manche normandy france eric hallWhat’s even worse from my point of view is that all of the paths around the clifftops are closed off so I couldn’t take my usual long route around the Pointe du Roc.

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

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

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

fishing boat lobster pot buoy port de granville harbour manche normandy france eric hallThe port and the harbour are out of bounds too with this new legislation so I walked on down the rue du Port.

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

So that might well the answer.

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

square maurice marland closed to public granville manche normandy france eric hallOn the way back, I took a short diversion.

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

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

fishing boat english channel granville manche normandy france eric hallSomewhere on the internet in some social group or other I was reading that in some places the smaller fishing boats have been prevented from going out to sea.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

home made apple pear puree granville manche normandy france eric hallThe fruit was drained off and the liquid put in a bottle that was put in the fridge for juice in the morning. The actual fruit was put in the whizzer and given a really good whizz round to turn it into a nice purée.

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

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

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

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

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

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

cresent moon planet granville manche normandy france eric hallRegular readers of this rubbish will recall that last night I went out to photograph the new moon with a camera that had a flat battery.

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

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

chantier navale port de granville harbour manche normandy france eric hallWith all of my regular runnign spots and all of the clifftop paths closed off, I had a rather irregular walk tonight, although I still managed to fit in two runs of some description to the equation.

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

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

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

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

Thursday 26th March 2020 – TODAY HAS BEEN …

… a very bad day today. And for a variety of reasons too

  1. Having had a brief flurry of activity earlier in the week, I found my favourite boulangerie closed today and had to walk almost as far as the Proclaimers to find another one
  2. I spent most of the afternoon crashed out on the chair and I’ve no idea why
  3. It was a beautiful evening for photography with a beautiful clear sky and a thin sliver of crescent moon, so when I lined up the camera to take the first of what I hoped was many photographs, the battery went flat on me
  4. My evening routine is now completely disrupted as the terrain on which I perform my evening runs has now been placed out of bounds

And probably many more reasons that I can’t think of right now but I bet that I will as soon as I press “PUBLISH”.

The day started off so well too. I was awake for the first two alarms and out of bed dressing myself when the third one went off. Not something that happens every day.

The last of the ginger and orange this morning for my medication, so I need to deal with that a little later.

And then the dictaphone. In the first part of our adventure last night Castor went missing. It was somewhere round about Ottawa in October. There was a message posted about everyone search their gardens and yards, all this kind of thing. Of course everyone did that and there was still no trace of her so they announced that they were going to search people’s cabin trunks. I remember saying that that’s one way to encourage people to get rid of their travelling trunks. So we (whoever “we” were) unpacked ours, checked it and repacked everything and closed it up again, got it ready. There was still no trace of her and she had disappeared on the 10th and the panic started on the 12th so it then got to the stage of asking people to check her movements before then and to look for human remains in their gardens, all of this kind of gruesome stuff upon which I won’t elaborate.
A little later there was a group of us all going somewhere and we should be setting out because we were – it was getting late. But someone was there listening to some music – Yes as it happened – and we were all urging this person to get a move on. He was saying “yes, I want to listen to the music. We have plenty of time yet”. I said “you might have but I haven’t, I have a lot to do and I need to be getting myself organised”. I had an electric welding kit and aluminium welding rods in the back of my car that I was going to do something with but I can’t remember what, and I needed to have a shower as well and there we were, trying to urge this person to get going but he was just taking his time, taking his time, taking his time.

After breakfast (and the last of the muesli too) I made a start on the digital sound files. Again, no complete file so I had to hunt down probably about 50 individual tracks.

But not to worry – over the next few days there will be some really good stuff coming up and I’m quite looking forward to that. All kinds of classic albums that I haven’t listened to for years.

Once they were out of the way I had a few things of my own to attend to, and then I went out to La Mie Caline for my dejeunette.

chausiais joly france port de granville harbour manche normandy france eric hallAs usual, during the lockdown I took advantage of my permit in order to go the long way around, all the way around the headland of the Pointe du Roc.

Over at the ferry terminal were Chausiais and Joly France, the older one (the newer one has a step cut in the stern) and that got me thinking, which is a rare event these days, I know.

There are no facilities on the Ile de Chausey apart from a bar-hotel and a small grocery point, as far as I am aware. So I’m wondering just how they are managing at the moment – whether the ferries are still running and, more importantly, what happens if the virus hits the island when there are no medical facilities for them there

It’s probably something about which they aren’t going to think until it actually happens.

pontoon support pillats port de granville harbour manche normandy france eric hallThe tide was out so the harbour gates were closed so I could take the path over the top to the other side.

It’s no surprise that work on the pontoons has ceased for the duration, and the pillars that remain to be installed are still lying here waiting for something to happen.

But the off-cut is intriguing me. I’ve no idea what they intend to do with that but it wouldn’t be here if it isn’t going to be serving a useful purpose.

Being confounded at La Mie Caline, I went to the boulangerie up the road. But that one is closed on Thursday. I ended up at the one in the rue Couraye where we have seen them install the new shop front.

No dejeunettes of course so I bought a baguette instead. And I was inpressed with their security precautions – a strip of clingfilm posed vertically along the top of the counter to act as a germ barrier. And the people working there were wearing gloves and masks.

And there I was – I’d decided not to go to LIDL this morning because I didn’t really need anything important, and I ended up on a marathon hike just the same.

alleyway rue ernest lefrant granville manche normandy france eric hallOn the way back I took something of a roundabout route and found myself in the rue Ernest Lefrant looking at this little alleyway that I hadn’t ever noticed before.

That’s one thing that can be said about all of this – that i’m going places that are off my usual beaten track and seeing things that I never would usually see.

And in case anyone is wondering why I was taking something of a roundabout route in the present circumstances, it was to spy out the boulangerie that is nearest to my home to check that it’s still open during the crisis and to see what are its opening hours.

Having bought my bread from there in the past, I seem to recall that its baguettes were quite acceptable and if La Mie Caline is closed for the duration I’ll be going here.

After lunch I sliced up a lump of ginger into very small pieces and put them into a little water to boil. While they were simmering away quite nicely with some cumin and coriander, I made another batch of muesli so that there’s some fresh stuff for tomorrow.

When the ginger was boiling nicely I took a pile of oranges. One or two weren’t looking so goo so of those, I cut off what I didn’t want to use.

Then I peeled all of the oranges, removed as much of the pith as I could, and then put the oranges in the whizzer. I gave them a gentle whizz around, just enough to separate the juice, which I strained off and put into a glass bottle which I had sterilised in the microwave with a little water which I had then emptied out. The orange juice then went into the fridge.

The pulp was put back into the whizzer and whizzed around until it was as fine as I could reasonably make it and it was then added to the ginger and water.

With plenty of other things to do, I came back in here and started on the radio programme for the Grande Marée and edited a couple of the recordings that we had taken.

home made orange ginger cordial place d'armes granville manche normandy france eric hallAfter about 60 minutes I went to see how my stuff in the saucepan was going. All quite properly done to a turn, so I took it off the heat and added a couple of tablespoons of Manuka Honey, stirring it well in.

It all went into the whizzer again for a really good whizz around for a good few minutes to really break up everything, and then when it had cooled (I did the washing-up meantime) I added it to the orange juice and put it into the fridge. There’s my cordial for the next week or so.

Back here though, I couldn’t keep going. I crashed out I don’t know how many times and it really was a struggle. I did however manage to pull myself together and do some of the stuff though, but I was really disappointed with my lack of effort.

Rosemary rang me too, and I had a chat with Liz on the internet and as a result I missed 15 minutes of my guitar practice. But there were a couple of songs that I had digitalised just recently with which I wanted to have a play around, so I spent most of my time with those on both the bass and the six-string guitar.

For tea I added a small tin of kidney beans (good idea, those small tins) to the left-over stuffing and made myself taco rolls with rice and veg. Totally delicious. There’s some of that left too for tomorrow when I’ll be having an “everything curry” made with all of the leftovers.

Pudding was more jam pie with vegan ice cream and chocolate sauce and it really was a meal fit for a king. I’m eating so well these days and a lot of it is home-made.

And that got me thinking too – that if bread is going to be hard to obtain, then taco rolls and a supply thereof might be useful.

As for my evening outing, I mentioned it just now. I did manage to do two runs but not as I was hoping or where I was hoping, but we all have to make sacrifices too these days.

And no photos either. That’s depressing too.

But regardless of everything else, I’m so tired that I’m going to have an early night. Despite my reasonable sleep I’ve had a really bad day and I don’t want too many more like this. I have so much to do and so little time to do it.

Wednesday 25th March 2020 – ANOTHER DAY STUCK …

… here in quarantine, slowly getting on my own nerves. I’m not sure how people are coping with being quarantined together and not being able to get away from each other.

But for my part, I had a struggle to get away from my bed this morning. It wasn’t late when I went to bed, but later than I imagined. I slept right through (nothing on the dictaphone) until the morning, dozing through the first two alarms and sitting bolt-upright for some reason about 30 seconds before the third call.

Anyway, I was sitting with my feet on the floor and a tee-shirt in my hand when the alarm went off so I reckon that I had just about won that.

After the medication and with nothing on the dictaphone I made a start on the digitalising of my record collection. I wasn’t able to find any complete soundfiles so I had to work track by track and that took hours to do (with a break for breakfast of course).

Just for a change, there wasn’t anything of any great importance on anything that I recorded this morning. It’s just another 4 albums out of the way all done and finished. But I did have a sneak preview and in a couple of days there will be some really good stuff coming up.

One thing about having visitors is that it makes me get down to doing some tidying up. I know that Neitzsche said “out of chaos comes order” but Neitzche had never visited anywhere where I have ever lived.

It took me a good half hour to clean up, vacuum the floor and put stuff away. And now it sort-of looks as if someone lives here. It won’t last very long like that but at least when the nurse came round it was looking ok.

He took my blood sample – with much difficulty as regular readers of this rubbish will recall – and now I have little patches of white plaster all over the place.

He’ll send the blood to the laboratory for examination and they’ll send me a report. I know what figures to look out for and if there’s a problem I’ll contact my doctor.

buoy english channel brehal plage granville manche normandy france eric hallDespite the quarantine regulations I still need my daily bread so I went off into town.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that we’ve seen on several occasions these mysterious buoys that keep on appearing and then disappearing offshore.

Despite all of my enquiries I’ve never yet managed to find out to what they relate. My best guess is that it’s do do with fishing nets or lobster pots but I really have no idea.

charles marie port de granville harbour manche normandy france eric hallAnd it looks as if Charles Marie isn’t going to be around for much longer.

My route this morning went round the headland and down past the chantier navale. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that we have seen them tearing huge lumps out of her bulwarks but the last few days when I’ve not been out have seen them replace much of the wood that was removed.

With no distractions to worry them, they’ve been able to crack on with the work.

le soupape port de granville harbour manche normandy france eric hallOther people have been cracking on with work too, taking advantage the enforced hibernation.

With the tide being out, the harbour gates were closed so I could walk across the path on top and over to the other side.

And a couple of people were busy working. The trawler Soupape had had all of its winching gear dismantled and it has all been repainted just recently.

And one of the crew had the wire rope out on the quay and was oiling it and giving it a good servicing. I suppose that they need to keep busy and fixing the fishing gear is one good way to go about it.

There were only a handful of people out and about in town today. It didn’t take long to pick up my dejeunette and I came straight back here. One of my neighbours stuck his head out of his window for a quick chat and one of the women went past and joined in – at a distance.

After lunch I pressed on.

Despite a good crash-out which disrupted my flow, I finished Project 034 and also Project 029 – the live concert for May. They aren’t as I would like them to be because the times are somewhat awkward. I ended up running short on both of them so I had to dictate some more, edit it and merge it in.

Then it was too long so I had to edit some more out, so it was then too short, so I had to add some more back. I’m sure that you get the picture. I could have been there even now but I ended up settling for what I had because it was by now 18:00 and when I’m knocking off these days.

All I need now to catch up is a live concert for June but there’s always something in the pipeline.

There was the customary half-hour on the 6-string and then half an hour on the bass – the acoustic 4-string. And I spent some of the time working out a bass line to Green Day’s “Boulevard Of Broken Dreams” – a song that has a certain significance for me and for someone who, for a certain short moment, was very special to me and who still would be, given half a chance.

As Kris Kristofferson once wrote, “I’d give all my tomorrows for a single yesterday” and that’s a song that appeared on my playlist out of nowhere one evening back then and has remained there ever since.

Still, I mustn’t start to become all broody. What will be will be. I went and had tea instead.

Burger on a bap tonight with jacket potatoes and veg. Plenty of mustard on the bap and that gave it a certain je ne sais quoi. A slice of jam pie with vegan caramel ice cream and chocolate sauce for pudding and that was totally delicious too.

sunset english channel granville manche normandy france eric hallThis photo might not look like much but it’s extremely interesting nevertheless.

20:30 when I went out for my evening walk and away down the English Channel there was still a touch of light in the sky. The nights are getting shorter which is good news. Summer will soon be here.

But the question that needs to be asked is “will we?”.

There were my usual two runs this evening. along the north side of the city walls and then the second one across the square Maurice Marland and half a dozen steps up the second ramp

candle in window rue notre dame granville manche normandy france eric hallBut here’s a thing.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall Minette, the old long-haired black cat that sometimes waits for me to let me stroke her.

That’s the windowsill where she normally waits, but she’s not there tonight (which isn’t unusual) but the candle that’s burning there in her place doesn’t look very ppromising. I hope that she’s ok and that nothing has happened to her.

So I’ve had a slow evening listening to music and having to reconfigure my web server so that I could upload my images tonight. I seem to wasting time on such unimportant trivialities right now.

So tomorrow and Friday I’ll deal with the peche à pied radio programme that we recorded and which needs editing because on Friday evening I’m expecting a few audio diaries from various people and that’s my weekend task. They have to be edited and ready for Monday morning because our programme is going out on Tuesday late afternoon.

So I reckon that I’ll have another early night and get myself fighting fit. Fighting for breath and fit to drop, I reckon.

Tuesday 24th March 2020 – I WAS WRONG …

thora port de granville harbour manche normandy france eric hall… and that’s a habit that I need to abandon as quickly as possible because that’s twice now this year so far that I’ve been wrong and the French have a saying jamais deux sans trois

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that a few days ago I said that we wouldn’t be seeing the two little Channel Island freighters Thora and Normandy Trader around here for a good while now, but here’s Thora moored up at the quayside this morning.

And she can’t be in quarantine either because when I went out for my evening constitutional she had cleared off back to St Helier – or, at least, she had left harbour.

And excuse the photo. I’d forgotten about the focusing issues with the little NIKON 1 J5 and it’s managed to focus on a blade of grass in the foreground rather than on the ship in the background.

Another thing that I’ve been wrong about (I really must get out of this habit) is the question of memory sticks. I must be confusing myself with the old hi-fi back in the Auvergne because I tried a 16GB memory stick with 900 tunes in the hi-fi in the living room. I’ve managed to track down a supply of reasonably-priced 4GB memory sticks and I’ll be ordering a dozen of those.

Another thing that I need to be ordering is a new set of speakers for the big desktop computer. The set that I’m using is the set that I had back in Expo which I bought probably 18 years ago. They were stored in a damp corner for 6 years before I resurrected it for here. The bass boombox didn’t work but no worry, the two main speakers did.

That is, up until yesterday when the left speaker is on the point of giving up.

And you try to find a decent mains-powered hard-wired speaker system with pre-amp these days. Everything seems to be battery-powered bluetooth these days and that’s no use to me.

This morning I had quite a shock. Lying there dozing my way through the alarms and I suddenly sat bolt upright. Just a minute to go before the final alarm. I just about made it out of bed as well before it rang.

Due to my extraordinary late night last night, that was impressive.

After the medication I looked at the dictaphone. And I’d had another busy night too. But all that I remember of it was travelling from Paris to the South Of France on the train going via Brussels and I can’t remember why I went that way. And that’s my lot.

After breakfast I attacked the file-splitting. I found another complete sound-file which was good news but for a couple of albums you can tell that I’m getting down to the dregs because there are several albums that I found where there are no digital copies anywhere of any track. It looks as if I’ll have to make my own in the end – wow, flutter, crackle and scratch included. I’m not sure how that’s going to work.

But in the meantime there’s still 100 or so to work on. And as I said yesterday, then there are the cassettes.

Having eventually managed to finish that I had a shower (for once) and then headed into town, complete with my paperwork authorising me to travel.

There were more people out and about than I expected, although there weren’t exactly any hordes of people, but the good news is that my favourite bakery, La Mie Caline, is open again.

LIDL was weird. No more than 20 people allowed in at any one time. We had to wait outside and when 5 people left, another 5 would be admitted. The staff were all wearing masks and the checkout staff were behind plastic screens wearing masks and rubber gloves, and also some weird kind of headgear like a welder’s helmet but with a clear plastic face screen.

Clearly taking no chances.

As for me, I just bought the usual stuff plus 3kg of apples. One of my plans is to make a big apple puree sometime in the very near future and they had big bags on special offer today. My orange and ginger cordial is getting low but I have plenty of oranges so I’ll make another batch tomorrow afternoon.

At La Mie Caline I picked up my dejeunette. The manager was there and he was telling me his problems about his staff, having to pay them when he has his takings vastly reduced. It’s going to be a huge problem for all kinds of small businesses and the Government needs to step in to help these people otherwise we’ll have a huge economic catastrophe.

It was lunchtime by the time that I returned so I had my butty and then I came in here to do some work.

By the time I’d knocked off at 18:00 I’d written all of the notes for Project 034 and also for the live concert for the end of May, dictated them and uploaded them to the computer.

But if the truth is known, I could have done so much more. Not only was I easily distracted, I … errr … had a little relax on my chair. No surprise there, is it, after my late night.

Half an hour on the 6-string semi-acoustic and then half an hour on the five-string bass. This extra string is confusing me but if I don’t practise with it, I won’t improve, that’s for sure.

Tonight’s tea was delicious. I found a slice of lentil and bean pie in the freezer so I had that with potatoes, vegetables and a nice gravy. For pudding was another slice of this delicious jam pie with the last of the soya coconut dessert. I’ll start on the vegan ice cream tomorrow and that should be interesting.

night place cambernon granville manche normandy france eric hallDespite having been out this morning, I still went out for my evening walk. I heard a few people in town and met someone smoking a cigarette on their doorstep but that was the lot.

The Place Cambernon is deserted too. We saw yesterday that the bar La Rafale and the new restaurant La Contremarche are closed. Today, we can see that Mere Poulain’s creperie is closed too.

Not that any of this would deter me, so I managed both my runs, and over the slightly extended circuits too. So i’m pleased about that.

But I’m going to have an early night tonight. I deserve it. I have a nurse coming tomorrow to take a blood sample. The doctor has requested it so that he can see how I’m doing .

But a blood test? I won’t be doing any studying for it, that’s for sure.

Monday 23rd March 2020 – ANOTHER DAY …

… of quarantine. And the question that I’m now asking myself is “will I die of boredom before the virus gets me?”

Not that I ought to be bored because I have plenty to do. But I’m beginning to understand how a canary in a cage might be feeling right now.

Much to my own surprise, and to any other one of the regular readers of this rubbish (and hello to my new subscriber from the East End of London – why not say “hello”?) I was awake long before the first alarm went off, and well up and about before the third one started up.

After the medication I had a look at the dictaphone to see where I’d been. And what surprised me was that I’d been able to leave my bed refreshed so early, having travelled so far during the night.

I’d been out on a bike ride. It had started off by being in a car, a right-hand drive British car and I was driving somewhere near Macclesfield way. Suddenly as I was driving, this car and van were coming towards me but they were driving on my side of the road. This was in the UK so I was on the left but they were trying to pass me up my left side like you would do in Europe. I thought “this is wrong” so I moved over into the centre of the road and let them pass up the inside of me. Somehow I managed to transform myself onto a pushbike cycling away and the road petered out, the main road and I ended up on a dirt track that took me round a very sharp bend and back on myself. The end of the road was closed so I had to turn round and go back. There were these young boys fishing there by this river and all these net curtains hanging up on a hedge as if someone had been washing them in the river. I cycled round and found where I should have gone, up a really steep hill and it was so steep that I couldn’t cycke up it. I had to carry my bike up. It was a narrow dirt track thing underneath a modern bridge, fenced off with a very high fence. I’d gone underneath this modern bridge and up to the top and it was a modern bridge into Macclesfield. There was a kind of rest building on it. The coffee was free and this girl showed me how to make a coffee – well, showing everyone how to make a coffee and how I could get a really strong really full cup. She made one for this other person and told him to drink it very slowly as it was very strong and did the same for me. After that I went to find the bathroom and then went outside. I ended up sitting on the entrance to the driveway of a girl whom I knew (well, I don’t know here – she’s no-one whom I’ve ever met), a young teenage girl. She was playing outside and I was watching her for some reason or other. While I was there watching her on the corner of her driveway to her house a car pulled up. A Ford Escort caravanette type of thing, badly brush-painted white with the side window that I could see painted over, drove into the driveway. A youngish guy with a black beard was behind the wheel. I thought “that’s that girl’s father, isn’t it?”. I thought that I won’t hang around because he’s bound to be wondering why I’m here. I stood up to go but had this enormous attack of cramp so I couldn’t go very far. I had to stretch my legs to ease off this cramp. While I was doing this I found loads of Canadian money on the street that had fallen out of someone’s pocket and had been covered in weeds and so on. All cents and quarters, that kind of thing. But the silver money was huge, probably 3 or 4 inches in diameter really big. I thought “how the hell has someone managed to lose this? You’d know when this fell out of your pocket”. There were three or four of these so it was all cents and quarters. While I was doing this, I was thinking “this guy behind me is going to come over in a minute”. I heard this girl’s voice behind me saying “no, don’t! I don’t want you to!” and I wondered “what on earth is going on now?”

Of course, I’ll never know now how all of this ended, which was a shame because it was quite interesting. But one thing is certain – I might be in quarantine but my spirit isn’t. I just hope that it doesn’t catch the virus while it’s out. It’s having far more fun than I am right now.

After breakfast I attacked the digitalising of my record collection. I managed to find another complete digital soundfile which was just as well because it belonged to quite a rare album. So I downloaded that and split it up.

Interestingly, the times did not correspond at all (and by a significant amount too) to the published times on the album sleeve. And there was only one version of this album too, so that was a mystery.

Then I attacked three others. No complete sound file so I had to do them bit by bit and it took ages. And one of them was an album that I was keen to digitalise because if I had to pick a top-20 of albums, this particular one would be well in.

That one of course took so much longer to do because I just had to listen to it as it was going round – and it was a very long double-album too.

But now I’m just down to one shelf, so that means about 100 albums remain to be digitalised. And then there are the cassettes …

Once I’d done that, I had another go at sorting out the files.

But TRAGEDY! Because there’s a file size limit (999 files) on the hi-fi that I use in the living room, I’ve been working my way through a stock of 2GB memory sticks. And woe is me! I’ve reached the last one today. And I probably won’t be able to buy any more.

What I’ve done is to divide my music up arbitrarily into different lots but keeping albums by the same groups together. I have directories AA, BB, CC, DD and ZZ. ZZ is the directory into which the current downloads go and that’s on a continual playlist all day long.

Eventually, I weed out the earliest stuff from ZZ and merge it into the other four directories, having first copied it onto a memory stick that then goes into the hi-fi in the living room. And this is where I’ve run aground because I’ve now created a directory EE

And Why am I doing this?

It’s because for my radio shows I like to vary the artists so that there’s never a case of the same artists being played in consecutive shows. But even though I keep good records of what I play, I quite often forget where I am.

So one week, I’ll play artists from AA, the second week from BB, and so on. and then the cycle goes round again and again. Hopefully I can avoid any unnecessary duplication.

That took me up to lunchtime, so I had my butty and then came back to work.

This afternoon I made a start on the music for project 034 (from directory BB if you are really interested). It’s all been selected (apart from the final track which of course all depends on the length of time left over when the speech is edited in) and I’ve written half of the text. I was aiming to do so much more but my heart wasn’t really in it.

For tea, I had stuffed pepper followed by my jam pie with more of the coconut soya dessert stuff. And the jam pie has worked quite well too.

There’s plenty of stuffing left so I can see myself with taco rolls at some point later in the week.

night donville les bains granville manche normandy france eric hallIf things keep on like this, I’ll be going stir-crazy long before this quarantine thing is over.

But we are allowed out for exercise and so I make the most of it. late at night when there’s no-one else around.

And for two reasons too

  1. So that I don’t catch this virus thing
  2. So that no-one else can see the pathetic way in which I run


night plat gousset granville manche normandy france eric hallNo-one about at all so I was able to have my first run in comfort – all the way along the north side of the city walls.

My track is about 250 metres but I’ve been extending that little by little and I reckon that I’m another 25 metres further on from that though now.

This run took me to where there’s a good view across to Donville les Bains, which you saw in the previous photo, and also of the totally empty and deserted Plat Gousset that you see just here.

night escalier moulin a vent granville manche normandy france eric hallIt’s the same place where I stopped to take a photo of the Escalier Du Moulin a Vent last night.

With nothing else better to do, I had a play around with the settings and took another photo of it to see if I could have an improvement on yesterday’s photo. And the verdict?

“Not very much”. I’m going to ahve to work so much harder on my technique but as far as the lighting goes, there isn’t a great deal I can do here. Some of it is too bright and some of it is too dark and there’s no happy medium.

nuit eglise st paul granville manche normandy france eric hallAnother thing that I did was to play around with the settings again and retake the photo that I took twice last night of the Eglise St Paul.

Again, not much of an improvement, although I’m sure that with a tripod and a slow shutter speed I could do something quite nice with that.

My second run along the square Maurice Marland was good again. I made it all the way up the first ramp, along to the second one and then four or five paces up that one.

This is an improvement on how things were a few weeks ago and it’s a good sign of the times. It might be only 250 metres or so on this leg too, but at my age and in my state of health it’s pretty good.

A couple of years ago I met a woman in France who had family connections in A&R for a record company. She moved back to the UK and we occasionally said hello when we passed by on our social networks.

But tonight she must be lonely because we’ve been chatting about music and the like for a good 90 minutes just now. I’d no idea that I was so popular.

But all good things come to an end and I’m off to bed. I intend to see if I can keep up this “early rising” lark. And apart from that, I might have some exciting places to wisit during the night.

We can but hope.

Sunday 22nd march 2020 – AND JUST HOW …

… did I celebrate the first Sunday morning of my enforced confinement?

No idea at all. I slept right through it.

Well, almost. It was about 10:45 when I awoke and just after 11:00 when I finally arose. And seeing as I was in bed fairly early last night – like before midnight – that was a rather impressive lie-in.

So after the medication, I had a look at the dictaphone notes. I was in my van last night, a Transit the same as Caliburn but the bulkhead was one row further back so there was space behind the driver’s seat and passenger seat. While I was sitting in my van suddenly the back door opened and my brother and someone else came into the van and started to try to make themselves comfortable so I threw them out and told them to clear off. So they went out but didn’t shut the back door properly so I shouted at him to come and close the back door. he replied “no, that’s how it was before. I’m not closing that properly so I got so enraged so I put Caliburn – the van – into reverse and drove backwards, scattering all these pedestrians who were in the way until I caught up with him. As for the “what happened next”, well, I found myself back where I was on the final days of The Good Ship Ve … errr … Ocean Endeavour at the end of August and beginning of September in the same circumstances that alarmed me so much and which prevented me writing up my notes for those final three or four days. Things are clearly getting to me again.
But later on I was somewhere in South London at a railway station waiting for a train. There was a girl on this patform with me. She was a nice girl and we were waiting for a train. A train pulled in at the station, an old 1950s first-generation (… it was much older than that and like an early Southern Region Commuter Electric from the late 1930s …) multiple-unit thing painted red and cream. It pulled in on the platform across from where we were standing and we had to go down – a dark dingy corridor and set of steps to go down, not like anything modern. As we were going down this girl said to me “can you see where you are going?” I said yes and she said “oh” (scintillating dialogue, isn’t it?). As we got down to the level below there was another platform and she just wandered off onto this platform so this left me all on my own. I ended up walking out through the ticket barrier – you had to hold your ticket up to this reader thing. I did but I wasn’t sure if it had read it but the gate opened anyway so I walked out. As I walked out I was thinking that as I’m spending all this time in London why don’t I get a bike? A pushbike. It would be a lot cheaper than travelling on the train. Then I thought to myself “I wouldn’t get to meet all these nice girls will I, if I’m on a bike”. There was also something going on about being in a boat. The only thing that I remember about that is that we had a pile of stuffed penguins and two fell overboard so we had to do a U-turn to go back and pick them up, but I don’t remember anything else about that.

Breakfast at 12:15 is definitely the right way to go and then I came back to look at some file-splitting. I managed to track down another digital sound file which I could then split up at my leisure, but as for the three other albums that I chose today, I had to do that track by track by track.

But I managed to solve a little mystery as to why I could never find one album anywhere at all. The album that I have was picked up in a secondhand shop somewhere in Europe all those years ago and I’ve never been able to trace its provenance.

But searching more deeply into this and comparing track listings on a music-business site to which I have access, I discovered that the album that I bought was a German limited edition budget release of an album much more well-known.

So that resolved that issue and I was able to proceed.

Having dealt with these issues, I turned my attention to the photos from July for what was left of the afternoon (which wasn’t much).

By the time that I had finished I had finally managed to leave Reykjavik and it’s the next morning as I’m watching the sun rise over Snæfellsjökull in North-West Iceland. And I remember it well and just how pleasant it was too.

There was the customary hour on the guitar, all of which was spent on the bass. As it happened, “Old Admirals” by Al Stewart and “Tangled Up In Blue” by Bob Dylan came round on the playlist so I spent half of that time working out a bass line to each one.

But like anything else, I can always think of something better a little later on.

This evening I had a little bake-in.

The half-baguette that was left over from Belgium was beyond stale so I made myself some garlic butter and treated myself to some garlic bread, seeing as I hadn’t had any lunch today.

jam pie jam turnover place d'armes granville manche normandy france eric hallBut with it being Sunday evening and pizza night, I reckoned that I ought to make a dessert as well. I had rice pudding last week and I had no cooking apples left, but I did have a jar of jam that I had bought in Belgium and another one that was opened here.

That was the cur to make a jam tart but it ended up as being a jam pie – strawberry jam with desiccated coconut.

And the pastry that was left was rolled out flat and was used to make a jam and coconut turnover. No sense in wasting anything.

And I now know that the new 16cm pie dish that I bought needs just one roll of pastry to make a pie, and there will be a little pastry left over.

nuit eglise st paul granville manche normandy france eric hallThe pizza was delicious as usual and the jam turnover went down a treat with some of the coconut dessert stuff.

Despite the quarantine regulations, I went out for my evening run or two. I have to keep up my health and going out in the evening I’m not likely to encounter anyone else.

My first run was quite good except for the path which was rather waterlogged. It looked as if there had been some rain during the day that was responsible for all of that.

night escalier moulin a vent granville manche normandy france eric hallMy path brought me round to the lookout over the town round about where the escalier du moulin a vent – the Windmill Staircase – comes down onto the little flat piece of land at the landward end of the rocky outcrop.

Just there is a concrete bunker or two, part of the Atlantic Wall from World War II and the inner row of ramparts from the medieval town.

It’s really quite amusing in a way to see two relics of two different times and two completely different types of warfare so close to each other like this. And in the end, neither of them did the job that they were supposed to, being as they were, completely by-passed by events elsewhere.

night granville manche normandy france eric hallThe view across to the Eglise St Paul was very impressive tonight so I took a photo but I still have to work hard on my night-time technique to make any improvement.

So I turned my attention to my second run and made it all the way up to the second ramp and a good half-dozen paces up that slope. That’s something that I couldn’t have done a few weeks ago.

What’s important to me is that I can tell how my health is holding up by how far I can run and how I feel afterwards. And in the absence of any medical follow-up from the hospital, I have to self-check and this is the best way that I know how.

Hence my evening walks and runs.

Despite my long lie-in today, I’m feeling quite tired so I’m off to bed. And wondering what tomorrow is going to bring. Here in Granville we seem to have been lucky right now but of course that can change at any moment.