… another miserable day today.

Not because I’ve been tired – in fact I’ve managed to go the whole day without even the slightest hint of crashing out – but more to the fact that I couldn’t summon up the energy to do anything productive whatever.

I’d had another bad night too, tossing and turning for most of it. And yet I’d managed to go on a few mazy, amazing voyages.

We had been on a ship, a big one, in the South China Sea somewhere and it sank. Three of us were washed overboard and we swam in this sea for quite some time – days, it seemed, – until we were washed ashore on this populated island. We had to climb over a fence and found ourselves in someone’s back garden. The woman had a big sprawly house that had started off as a small cabin and had been enlarged with additional rooms haphazardly as time had gone on. She fed us and said we could stay the night. Next morning I went for a walk around. The guy had this beautiful large yacht and it was clear that he spent a lot of time looking after it. he was talking about going around the Arctic on it and I agreed that this would be the right kind of craft to go up there and he wasn’t the ordinary run-of-the-mill Indonesian or Filipino fisherman, he cares about his boat and done his research etc. We ended up walking through a typical suburban English housing estate but a huge weird animal like a rhinoceros but with a weird head with all kinds of appendages stuck on it. I grabbed my camera and took a photo but the flash didn’t work so it didn’t come out and the animal disappeared before I could try another shot. I went back to the house to ask about staying another night but she said “no, it’s full”. So I asked if there was anywhere else I could stay. She replied that there was bound to be somewhere else in the town. She then cooked me a meal and they asked me questions “do you eat ‘x’, do you eat ‘y’? How long is it since you’ve eaten ‘z’? Did you eat it when you were a kid?” all this kind of thing. But now it was becoming dark and I needed to find a place to stay and, more importantly, a way to get off this island and back to wherever it is that I’m supposed to be
A little later I was with a woman and I can’t remember what it was that I was doing but we’d been detained by someone, a young smallish guy with black hair and a black beard. He said that he had been working for the CIA and should have been an agent but they said that with his perfect memory he ought to be a salesman. He showed a photo of this woman coming out of a department store. This immediately filled her with horror. She looked around and there was this young lad behind her smiling away. He said “do you remember this story?” and produced a newspaper article showing that she had been arrested in it for something or other. By now she was in tears, making some kind of totally incoherent statement. he then produced some kind of small light-blue patterned cushion and said “you always leave your calling card behind in places like this, don’t you?”, waving the cushion around and that put her into even more tears.

I awoke several times during all of this going on, and eventually went back to sleep to step right back into, not the one where I was with that woman, but right back to being on the island again, in exactly where I had stepped out a while before. I don’t recall ever doing quite that before. But anyway I did end up stopping the night at that place on the island and I remember undressing to go to bed. I had my wet-weather overtrousers on so took them off, got into bed and went to sleep. Next morning I was up early and started to dress. Everyone else was getting up and this young girl came in to say hello, and a few other people. The house was busy pretty quickly. I ended up sitting ona bed with a huge collection of cats sitting on me, first a black one and a ginger one, then a white one and all different ones taking it in turns to sit on my knee for a stroke. I heard the buzzer on my phone so I looked and saw a message “your breakfast ready at 09:15”. I thought that I’d better finish dressing. These two women came in and went to a cupboard fetching out little phials of stuff. They game one to me and said “this will do for you”. I worked out that it was shampoo and it hit me that they were “suggesting” that I take a shower. I wanted to finish dressing but I couldn’t find my trousers. the plastic overtrousers were there but not the normal ones.

The alarms went off at 06:00 and so on but I couldn’t care less. 08:25 was when I awoke. But that’s not at all the same as saying that that was the time that I left my stinking pit. Not at all.

So a rather late start to the day, and once I’d composed myself, I attacked a few of the dictaphone notes from just recently that had built up on the dictaphone. And that took me most of the morning too and I don’t know why.

Lunch was inside again, with the start of the last batch of home-made hummus out of the freezer. It’s just as delicious as it was the day that I made it too.

After lunch I made a start on the outstanding mountain of photos that need to be dealt with. And the more I deal with, the more there seems to be to deal with.

There was a brief stop of my walk around the Pointe du Roc in the wind. On the car park were a couple of people on those weird foot-first bicycles.

One of them was towing a trailer on which were two 110-watt solar panels, so I went to have a chat with the rider. It’s an electrically-assisted bike and the panels charge up the batteries while he’s cycling.

On a good day they can give about one and a half charges to the bank of batteries so that’s probably a range of about 30 miles.

But I don’t get the trailer idea though, unless it’s for the luggage. I would have been tempted to go for a roof over the bike and put the panels on that.

The Quebec flag on the front bike is of no significance. The people on board came from La Rochelle.

Back here I continued with the photos in a very desultory fashion until tea time. That was a really delicious steamed veg and falafel in a really tasty cheese sauce. One of the best that I’ve ever made.

My evening walk was interrupted by a collision with a neighbour. We had a lengthy chat about this and that.

And as I continued on my way I was interrupted yet again. Parked in the rue Notre Dame was one of the commercial lorry-type of Land Rovers but what caught my eye about it was this beautiful 12-volt winch.

I have a 12-volt electric winch that I was going to fit onto the Kubota tractor to winch logs and things like that around the farm, but I never actually managed to get round to fitting it.

In fact, there were a lot of things down there that I never got around to doing.

As a result of all these delays I almost missed the start of tonight’s football.

It’s the final round of matches in the Welsh Premier League tonight and Bala Town were playing Caernarfon Town live on the internet. Caernarfon played for the first 15 minutes as if they were asleep, and during that time Bala had scored a goal and missed two or three total sitters.

It took 33 minutes for Caernarfon to threaten the Bala goal, and then the match livened up.

The second half was a wonderful advert for Welsh Premier football, and for the final 15 minutes Caernarfon were camped in the Bala Town half and although they didn’t manage to equalise, they hit the woodwork and and a couple of other good chances too.

Down south in the manth between Barry and Newtown, Newtown didn’t do enough to overhaul Caernarfon so that gives Caernarfon home advantage in the playoffs for the vacant place in the Europa League next season. That’s not bad for a team that was only promoted to the Welsh Premier League this season, and it’s all down to the fact that while they might not be the most skilful players in the league they have a magnificent team spirit.

It’ll also be interesting to see how Noah Edwards plays next season. I didn’t think of him as anything extra-ordinary at the start of the season, but as the season has gone on, the better he’s become. If he continues this progression next season he might become another Henry Jones or Callum Morris or kayne McLaggon.

It’s shopping tomorrow so I’m off to bed right now. It won’t be an early night so I’ll probably crash out in the afternoon but that’s par for the course these days.

sea on rocks baie de mont st michel granville manche normandy france

waves sea wall baie de mont st michel port de granville harbour manche normandy france

yacht baie de mont st michel granville manche normandy france

mussel beds donville les bains manche normandy france