Tag Archives: laptop

Wednesday 6th January 2021 – I WON’T EVER SEE …

… my friendly neighbourhood ginger cat again.

Regular readers of this rubbish may recall that I mentioned a while ago that his mum, one of my neighbours, had been offered an apartment in sheltered accommodation due to her age and infirmity. This afternoon as I put my head outside the door of the building I saw a removal van outside the door to her block.

And when I went out later this evening, her apartment was totally empty and cleared out. There she was – she and her cat – gone, and never called me mother (next week, East Lynne).

As for me I was totally gone last night too. When I finally made it into bed, late as usual just recently, I was out like a light and didn’t move a muscle until the alarm went off. And while I didn’t actually beat the third alarm, I wasn’t many minutes behind it.

After the medication I had a few things to do and then I had to ring up the doctor’s and make an appointment. And you can tell that this isn’t the UK.
“Is it urgent?”
“no, not particularly”
“Is 9:30 tomorrow OK?”

Haven’t dealt with that I sat down to start to dictate the notes that I’d written but then almost immediately I was interrupted by a telephone call. Would I like to go for a coffee with the manager of the radio station?

So I managed to dictate all of the notes and then go and have a shower before I headed off across the car park to the Municipal offices at the back. Coffee was served and then we had a lengthy chat about Brexit and Scottish and Welsh independence.

Very little to do with the radio, and it seemed to me that I was being interrogated for something, although I don’t know what it might be. We shall see what transpires of this in due course, if anything.

There was no bass guitar practice tonight. Even though I seem to be a little better today, it’s not that much better and it took me an age to do what it would normally take a couple of hours to do. When it came to 18:00 and knocking-off time, I wasn’t far away from finishing so I pushed on and by 18:35 both of the outstanding radio programmes were now completed up and running.

Of course we had had a couple of interruptions. Lunch was taken of course and unfortunately the bread supplies are quite low. I need to look into this.

There was the afternoon walk and today this was a walk with a difference.

If I’m baking bread tomorrow morning, I may as well make a sourdough fruit loaf so having fed the sourdough and watched it rise like a lift, I headed off into town. I have no jellied fruit and I need to buy some. The Super U in the town is the place for that.

Outside it was cold and cloudy but with the sun poking through the clouds here and there.

But just for a change, instead of the sun lighting up the sea or the Brittany cliffs or whatever, today the sun was streaming down onto the water tower up near the Shopping Centre. It was all particularly impressive.

The Super U came up trumps with the jellied fruit but my new bank card wouldn’t work. having tried a couple of times I paid in cash and went round to the Bank to try it there. Once again, it didn’t work so I went to chat to a cashier.

It seems that Brain of Britain has struck again. Somehow I must have taken the old card out of my wallet, signed the new card and then put the old card back in the wallet.

With nothing else much going on in the town I headed back for home.

By now, with the sun having moved around on its cycle and with the clouds having been blown around by the wind the sun was now shining in a different direction. It was rather later than usual so we were having a gorgeous orange glow in the sky which was reflecting off the water in the bay.

This is without doubt one of the best sunsets that we’ve seen so far, even though the photo was being photobombed by a seagull flying through the shot and I stayed out there for a while to watch it – the sunset that is, not the seagull.

While I was out there I had a look down to see what was going on at the chantier navale

There was nothing special going on there this afternoon. The yacht is still there on its blocks and there are a couple of cars parked around it. It’s not clear though whether they have anything to do with the yacht or its owners. There certainly doesn’t seem to have been much progress on the yacht, whatever they might be doing, over the past few months.

The trawler is still there too, parked up on blocks at the back near the portable boat lift. There’s a van parked right by it so it might well be that there has been some kind of work being undertaken.

But that’s been there for a while too.

Rather than go straight home I went to have a look out to sea from the North side of the headland to see if there was anything exciting going on.

Nothing much at all though this afternoon. No boats out to sea or anything else. There were a few people out walking on the beach, presumably looking for shellfish or something similar lying around on the beach. I’m not sure what they have found.

For a couple of minutes I watched them and then came on back into the apartment for a hot coffee and a slice of Christmas cake. Having digested that I cracked on with the radio work that I had been doing until I finished it.

And I might have finished it earlier too had I not crashed out a couple of times.

After the practice with the 6-string guitar, I headed off out for my evening walk.

Seeing as I hadn’t been round the headland this afternoon I went that way this evening in the dark. The gymnasium of the College Malraux was all lit up and so there must have been something going in there. It’s actually called the Gymnase Jean Galfione.

And in case you are wondering who Jean Galfione was when he was at home, if he ever was, he is probably France’s most successful pole vaulter and won the gold medal at the Atlanta Olympic Games as well as winning several other championship events.

It’s a shame that this photo hasn’t worked out as I wanted, but it was taken in quite a hurry.

You can’t actually see clearly in this photo but there’s a woman there with a large dog, and also a laptop computer. And what she’s doing working on a laptop with a dog outside in the middle of winter I really do not know.

And regular readers of this rubbish will recall that a few months ago we also saw a couple of other people working on a laptop outside in the cold on the city walls. So I’ve no idea what that is all about.

From there, I ran home – my first run for a week or 10 days. I really wasn’t up to it and I was in agony when I finished but I can’t let this thing pass me by.

Tea was pasta with veg and some veggie balls followed by defrosted apple crumble; And then I made my sourdough loaf – or, at least, the first mix of it so that it can do what it might do overnight. It’s crammed full of goodies like

a pile of whizzed up brazil nuts
several dessert spoons of desiccated coconut
ditto sunflower seeds
a couple of handfuls of raisins
ditto jellied fruits

and I can’t wait to see how it comes out.

And now that I’ve finished my notes I’m going to make some dough for my main loaf and let that rise overnight too. It both loaves have their second kneading first thing tomorrow morning, they’ll be ready to bake as soon a I come back from the shops and I can have fresh bread for lunch.

Wednesday 28th October 2020 – IN WHAT MAY COME …

… as a surprise to most of the regular readers of this rubbish who might recall the difficulties that I might be having these days? I actually beat the third alarm yet again!

Well sort-of. I was sitting on the edge of the bed with both feet on the floor when it went off. Not exactly what I would call “lively” – you mustn’t go round expecting too much from me these days – but it was good enough to count.

So while you admire a few more photos of the tremendous waves that we have been having, smashing down on the promenade over by the Plat Gousset and making all of the kids squeal as they are drenched by a downpour as the spray falls to earth, I’ll tell you all about it.

Last night, I didn’t actually find anything additional to do after I’d finished my notes – except to make a start on downloading the data files from the old travelling laptop onto an external drive for safety.

And it can do most of that itself. It doesn’t really need all that much of my help to do that. Mind you, I was surprised to see it fire up without a hitch although it took its usual while to fire up, but that’s only to be expected.

Once I had started it off, I snuggled myself down the bedclothes to get warm in the hope that I could have another interesting night after last night’s lack of excitement. Like I have said … “on many occasions” – ed … my voyages during the night are much more interesting and exciting that what I get up to during the day these days, and I miss it when I don’t go anywhere.

But I wasn’t disappointed last night. There were voyages a-plenty.

Last night I started off baking bread and there was something about getting it all ready before the Army came which was in effect me getting it ready before I went off back to sleep again

Later on there was something about we were somewhere or other. I was with Marianne and there was a dog. This big bulldog appeared and it took a big lump out of this dog’s side. The dog yelped and wandered off but didn’t go far, and the bulldog came round and grabbed hold of him again and took another bite out as if he was intending to eat him. This gradually evolved as more and more animals were becoming involved, all up to no good, and then they started to chase after the humans. There was a guy there an I was with Marianne and another young girl as well.

Somewhere in the middle of all of this was something about car windows – the glass inside the windows but where that fitted in I really don’t know

We were next on the top of the hill looking out across the water. There was a fight going on in the harbour and my country was being overwhelmed quite easily. I remember thinking that I’m lucky that I’m no footballer, that type of thing, because I would hate to participate in the kind of game that I’d been talking about earlier this evening

This building that we started off in tonight, a round building that looked very much like the buildings involved in London’s domestic water supply or something designed by that architect Bazalgette (and I’m surprised that I could remember his name in the middle of a dream) or something who did all of those public works in the London area round about that time

Then I awoke and it was back to chasing these people around again back in the original harbour. For once I was in the pack of the hunters rather than the hunted but I fell asleep before I could see where this actually went towards.

There was far more than that too but some of it didn’t seem to be recorded and I’ve no idea why. Is my technique slipping or am I dictating to an empty hand again like I have done a few times just recently?

And then there is other more gruesome stuff that you wouldn’t thank me for repeating, especially if you are having your lunch or something right now. I’m back on the disturbing dreams again, so it seems.

After getting myself organised, I spent much or the morning working on one of the arrears AND THAT IS NOW FINALLY FINISHED although I’ve no idea why it took me so long to do it. Having a little … errr … relax in the middle of the morning didn’t help matters too much. Clearly beating the third alarm was not the advantage that it might seem.

And then the fun began. With all of the data files now copied onto an external disk, I could set about doing a reinstall of the operating system and files onto the old laptop. When I tried that on the Lenovo the other day it took well over a day to do it. On the little Acer it took 4 hours and as a result required my almost constant attention.

Much to my surprise, once everything had been done and installed and registered, it fired up a darn sight quicker than it ever did in all the years that I have owned it. I’ve now uploaded a few programs to it and I’m going to leave it running for a couple of days to see how stable it is before I decide whether to start reusing it.

Surprisingly, that took me most of the early afternoon.

Having decided on a break from work, I decided to take myself outside for my afternoon walk.

And I do have to say that I didn’t envy the roofers up there on the roof of the College Malraux. There was what the French call a ciel de plomb – a sky of lead – out there right now, there’s quite a strong wind and it’s threatening rain at any moment.

Yet there they are up there fixing that roof and I wouldn’t like to be up there with them in this kind of weather.

And if there is one group of people for whom I have even greater sympathy than roofers, it’s deep-sea fishermen.

My route today took me round to the viewpoint in the Rue du Nord and in the distance out in the English Channel near the Ile de Chausey I could make out a couple of trawlers heading out to sea for the day’s catch. My hat goes off to them in this weather, as I have said before … “on many, many occasions” – ed.

There were crowds of people about this afternoon so I couldn’t break into a run down the footpath. Instead I had a leisurely stroll that way to the viewpoint overlooking the Plat Gousset to watch the waves smashing down again on the promenade, photos of which you have already seen.

And it’s full house in the harbour this afternoon.

Last night I must have been mistaken … “What? You? Perish the thought!” – ed … when I mentioned that Thora had left port yesterday afternoon – either that or else she’s been and done an allez-retour in a remarkably quick time to be back in port right now, because here she is.

But all of the wood that was on the quayside when we had a look yesterday is still there so it’s quite possible that she hasn’t gone anywhere and is waiting for part of her load.

But she’s not alone out there today.

Of course Marité is moored there astern of her in her usual corner. Her tourist season, such as it was, is probably over. And there ahead of her is Normandy Trader, the other Jersey Freighter. She’s made a run in to port today and has had to moor somewhere else, which is rather confusing.

All we need now is Godzilla, or maybe the Loch Ness Monster. But ideally for me, I’d like to see one of the gravel boats come into port. And then we really would have a full house, wouldn’t we?

On the way back to my apartment I went to have a look at the roofing job on the house in the Rue St Jean to see how they were getting on.

And to my surprise, they seem to have finished, packed up and gone home. Nevertheless, they seem to have done a nice jon on it. It looks quite good from here. But I notice that a seagull is on its way to have a look, and probably to christen it too.

As for me, I didn’t want to hang around too long. I have plenty to do back at the apartment so I came home to carry on with my work.

There was my Welsh to revise, and I made a good start on that, but left off to have my hour on the guitars, which wasn’t helped by me having lost my notes on one of the tracks that I’ve been playing.

Tea was a burger on a bap – the last bap in the freezer. Must buy some more tomorrow. And then I came back in here to listen to the news from Our Glorious Leader that we’re all back in detention à domicile with effect from Friday. So where this leaves me with my trip to Castle Anthrax next week I really don’t know.

Just as I was about to go out for my evening run, Rosemary rang for a chat and by the time we had finished two hours (yes, two hours) later, it was far too late for me to go out.

So instead, I’ll go to bed. Tomorrow is shopping day of course and I’ll need to get some suplies in because I’ve no idea now what’s going to happen next with this virus and our confinement.

Whoever said that we are “living in interesting times” has got it perfectly right, especially after I’ve just gone to all this trouble to fire up the old laptop again.

Thursday 22 October 2020 – I WAS FEELING LIKE …

… the Man From Westphalia this morning. In fact, it really was a failure.

When the third alarm went off I just couldn’t drag myself out of bed. I was rather like the two merchant seamen swimming in the sea with an overturned lifeboat.
“Did you manage to drag yourselves up on the boat?” asked a rescuer
“Honestly” replied one of them. “We never even had the time to do our hair”

It was 08:20 when I finally left the bed and that’s way beyond depressing.

It wasn’t as if I’d gone far during the night either. I’d been in the office to work and we’d been in the basement. To climb back out was hundreds of steps and I was exhausted by the time that I got to the top. There were crowds of people milling past me so when I went down again and coming back, I came back up the wider part of the stairs so all these crowds of people came swarming up the narrow part, which was quite strange. They all started to go home. Someone had an Austin A90 Atlantic with a very large boot on the back and I’d never seen that before, much bigger than a standard type. I got to the counter and asked if they had some papers for me. I knew that they had because I’d dropped them off there when I arrived. They asked “what name?” so I told them and they gave them back to me with a smile. I said “I’m going to take a shower before I go”. They asked were and I replied “in my room”. Someone had noticed on my paper the name of my car. They asked “do you have a Vanden Plas?” (which ACTUALLY, I DO). I went to show them on the paper. But there was somewhere something about a situation in the shower where I’m going to take a shower at someone’s house at one point and there was a rubbish bin full to the brim of all kinds of rubbish, mostly lightweight, these polystyrene balls, bits of plastic, whatever. I’d switched on the fan in the bathroom and all these papers and this polystyrene balls had blown absolutely everywhere and made a complete and utter horrible mess of untidiness inside this bathroom. I thought “it’s going to take me ages to clean this up, and it’s in someone else’s house as well”.

Writing out all of that didn’t leave me too much time to do anything else. I had a quick shower and then hit the streets.

Off to the shops now, albeit rather later than usual.

This morning though, i managed to catch the roofers on the roof at the College Malraux. They seem to be hard at it today as well, ripping the slates off the building. And their cherry-picker will make light work of hauling up the material to the roof.

It’s a bit tough on the young kids. No apprentices and labouring jobs these days where the youth of today can watch and learn how it’s done.

having got that out of the way I continued on with my walk to the shops.

It looks as if I’d just that very minute missed the opening of the harbour gates. There was an endless stream of fishing boats, both large and small, engaged in a stampede out to sea . There were probably about 20 all told, I reckon.

The fishing season must now be in full swing again, I reckon, with all of this activity going on. It will be interesting to see the quayside at the Fish Processing Plant at high tide tonight.

It wasn’t just the fishing boats that were undergoing some activity this morning. Marité was having her fair share of attention too.

There were a couple of guys in a sky jack or a cherry picker or something of that ilk checking and repairing one of her sails this morning.

You can see the heaps of gravel piling up in the background too. It’s not going to be long, I reckon, before a gravel boat comes in to pick it all up. It’s been 6 months since we saw the last one so it’s about time.

Everyone was in facemasks in the town what with these new regulations and it looked quite bizarre. But obviously necessary with 40,000 new infections today.

At LIDL there was nothing exciting. Just the usual stuff. I wasn’t out there long. Heavily loaded (not as heavy as last week though) I headed back for town and home.

As I walked back up the Rue des Juifs I noticed an interesting spectacle.

It was something that puzzled me at first – two trawlers lashed together and sailing out og harbour. But just after there where I photographed them they did a hard left turn and the right-hand one came up against a pontoon. There, it was lashed to a support and the other trawler cut itself free.

Maybe it might have been an engine problem on the right-hand one that it couldn’t move under its own steam … “diesel” – ed … or something like that, I suppose

Back at the apartment I made myself a hot chocolate and then attacked the laptop. It has finished its reloading and all of the data files had now been copied back. What remained now was to add my suite of programs, something that took the rest of the morning.

More of my really delicious bread for lunch, and then this afternoon I started on the photos again. And this was extremely complicated because there were several photos that I took that, because of this failure of the DashCam to pick up my voice, I didn’t know where the photos were taken.

In the end I had to resort to watching the dashcam recordings to pick up any hints and with German road signs being so miserable, that wasn’t early and I ended up at one stage plotting my route by virtue of wayside advertisements.

However, I’ve now arrived at the Luxembourg border so from here on in, it should (hopefully) be pretty plain sailing for the remaining 46. Yes, I only managed to do 9 this afternoon, so complicated was it all.

After I’d done some of the photos it was time for me to go out for my afternoon walk.

First stop was to see just how they were getting on with the roofing job in the Rue St Jean. And, by the looks of things, there has been plenty of progress. Most of the laths are now on and they have almost covered one of the pitches of the roof with tiles. It’ll be fun watching them do the edging on the left.

And there was an ambulance in the area early this afternoon too. It made me wonder if someone had fallen off that flying scaffolding.

My walk continued on down and round the corner to the viewpoint in the Rue du Nord.

Actually, I was rather hoping to see a gravel boat so I had a good scan out to sea. But there was nothing doing. Only this zodiac racing past across the bay, with no indication of where it had come from and to where it was going.

However it was all loaded up with fishing gear so I imagine that they were going to have another go at the sea bass. And who knows? Some day someone might even manage to catch one too.

There was plenty of activity going on down on the beach and that caught my attention for a while.

Over the least couple of days we’ve had the beach artists down there doing there stuff but today it looks as if they have abandoned the place to the Civil Engineers. There are a couple of young guys building something substantial – a dyke with protective walls and sand castles. Good for them

The adults seem to be be preoccupied with something going on out to sea, but I couldn’t see what it was from up here.

My walk continued on along the Rue du Nord, mixing in with the hordes of people who were milling about.

You probably saw in the photo of the roofing that it was a beautiful, cloudless afternoon. Nice as it may have been, it wasn’t that nice. You wouldn’t get me into that water down there right now.

So instead I continued with my walk. No opportunity to break into a run unfortunately. There were far too many people about for that and I don’t want to show myself off.

When it reached 18:00 I called a halt and had my hour on the guitar. but I’ll need to find some enthusiasm from somewhere because I have lost it all right now and that’s not like me. Or maybe it is these days. I dunno. I can’t seem to summon up any enthusiasm for anything right now.

Tea was taco rolls with the left-over stuffing from the other night, followed by my delicious apple pie with chocolate sauce.

And then I went for my evening walk.

During one of my many pauses I’d read up on how to use the delayed timer, and it was a beautiful, clear night with no wind, so I took the tripod for a walk.

Many of the photos didn’t come out and were summarily deleted, and had I had the f1.8 50mm lens on the camera instead of the BIG NIKON ZOOM LENS I might have been able to salvage more. I have a lot to learn about photography in the pitch black

The tripod isn’t up to all that much either. Even on a level flat piece of concrete there’s still plenty of shaking in the joints. I didn’t have a weight with me to hold it down.

That’s pretty apparent in this photo of the street lights of Jersey. A 5-second exposure shows it up well enough. But had I had my night lens on I could have taken the same shot with just a one-second exposure and it would have been better.

And believe me – there were plenty more much worse than this that bit the dust.

But you’ll remember from earlier today when I photographed the stream of fishing boats heading out to sea on the tide, and I mentioned that i’d like to be there when they would all be coming back.

And sure enough, I was too. while I was setting up my tripod at the end of the headland to take some photos of the reflection of the moon in the sea, two of the blighters went chugging past me on their way back home.

They are the lights of Kairon Plage and Jullouville in the background by the way.

But this was what I was trying to photograph.

Over there in the background we have the Brittany coast round by Cancale. There’s the moon too, and some stars and planets, and the reflection of the moonlight in the sea. And there’s the traditional dilemma too – street lights just about right but the moon was far too bright.

Closing the aperture might reduce the light of the moon down to a proper proportion, but then you can’t see the stars or the street lights, and the reflection of the moon in the sea isn’t anything like impressive.

We’ve seen quite often the reflection of the street lights of St Malo bouncing around off the clouds in the distance.

One of the things that I wanted to do this evening was to take a better photograph of that, particularly as the clouds are now starting to close in. This was done with a 10-second delay, just long enough for a fishing boat to come into the shot, and a three-second exposure time, just long enough for the boat to become a nice blurred streak.

But at least the stars and the street lights aren’t blurred. I must have been out of the wind here, I suppose, and that prevented the tripod from being shaken about.

This one was taken looking further up the Bay to the Brittany coast round by St Benoit des Ondes.

And taking this photograph was not without its difficulties either. There were a couple of other people walking about around here this evening and they had the habit of walking in front of the camera just after I’d pressed the shutter and while the time delay was running

Someone else though saw what was happening and he stopped. We ended up having a good chat about the area. He was from the Paris region and was on holiday here. It was his first visit and he was enjoying it so far.

having stood here for a good half-hour taking loads of useless photos I ran on (because I was still running despite the equipment) round the headland to the viewpoint overlooking the harbour.

By now, the clouds had thickened up and the moon was being obscured. Nevertheless I tried for a 2-second exposure here and that seemed to come out reasonably well. At least the trawler that drifted into the image wasn’t quite as blurred as the previous one was.

And strangely enough, there were even more stars visible in this photo despite the shorter exposure time

Not being sure of how the previous photo would come out, because the tripod was far from level and the photo was askew (I straightened it in post-production) I rejigged the tripod and took another one.

This one has come out quite nicely too although there’s plenty of room for improvement.

What didn’t come out nicely though was the photo of the chantier navale. Only one boat in there tonight – the yacht that we have seen. The other two have cleared off.

For the record, I took several shots of the yacht in there but for some reason, not one of them came out as it should have done.

So instead I turned my attention to the Fish Processing Plant. We’d seen all of the fishing boats heading out to sea this morning and earlier this evening we’d seen them all come sailing back. It was now like a rugby scrimmage out there as all of the boats jostled for position at the quayside to unload.

All of the lights in the Fish Processing plant are ablaze, there’s plenty of movement with the fork-lift trucks and there’s a refrigerated lorry ready to take away the catch.

That photo was taken at 1/3rd of a second so I went to take the same one at a faster speed.

This one was taken at 1/5th second and it’s not come out anything like as well as the previous one. So I gave up and ran on home.

All in all, I’m pretty disappointed with all of this. Had I had the correct lens on the camera I might have done so much better, quite simply because of the shorter exposure times that would have compensated for a rather wobbly tripod.

Tomorrow morning I’ll have to check that and do some adjustment, I reckon. My technique might not be very good but it’s not going to be helped by relying on faulty equipment.

So now I’m off to bed. I can’t do with another night like last night. I have to put more of an effort into things. But only another week before I’m off to Leuven so there’s tons to do and I can’t hang around brooding.

Interestingly, my horoscope for this week reads “I’m missing my true love. I need to do everything that I can to meet up with her, see her, or simply show her the proof of all my love”.

Anyone remember Tuesday’s notes?

Tuesday 20th October 2020 – AFTER ALL …

… of the exertions over the last few days I failed miserably this morning.

Never mind the third alarm – it was 07:20 when I left the bed – more than an hour of the day wasted.

And when I listened to the dictaphone I recoiled somewhat too. All of these notes to transcribe. I was running the taxis and there was Doreen, Nerina and mme running the taxis on Saturday night. A job came in to go somewhere way up north and I Do mean way up north. In the end they decided that I should go, and go on a motorbike and that some other driver should come in. I went on my motorbike all the way up to the far north of Scotland to drop off this package and came all the way back. By now it was starting to get light next morning. I’d arranged to pick up Percy Penguin up after work so I guessed that she would still be asleep in her shop. I tried to ring her but my mobile phone wouldn’t work so I just went on round there anyway and she let me in. By now she had transformed into an old black woman who was going to come home with me to the taxi office. She had a couple of big bags of shopping and it ended up with me having to carry them. I was pretty much weighed down. When I got home Doreen was still there. She said that she was glad that she sent me on the motorbike because they’d been really busy throughout the night and had a really good night working non-stop. I had a quick glance through the sheets and saw that there was some ROF work there. I thought “did we have a contract with ROF these days? We used to”. She said “oh no, that’s some tuition that Nerina and I have been doing. We’ve been teaching some people from there”. Later on I was walking home through the streets of Brussels. There was a motorbike shop. It was pretty late at night/early in the morning type of going home but this place was open so I went in. I had a little sit on a Honda 50, a play-around and it transformed itself into a big motorbike. We ended up a group of us talking about motorbikes. Someone prepared some kind of soup and someone drank it. But someone warned “no, no, don’t drink that soup” but she drank it and transformed into soe kind of evil persona. We had to be very careful about what we’d do. But then a couple there said to another woman “come on, we have to go down to the Isle of Thanet to do something”. So they took her away. When she came back she was about 12 feet tall and her upper part was like a metal rod with a metallic design like a hollow shield for a head and also quite evil. It turned out that almost every one of these people had been transformed into some kind of evil thing through a drink or through a soup. So I started throwing the soup on the floor and drinks on the floor to break the bottles so they wouldn’t have to drink it but these people were laughing saying “Oh God it’s far too late now. You’re all going to be absorbed”. It led to a bit of a chase around this place. There was something too about a cake in an oven. I was eating a cake, the type of fruit loaf bread that I make. Meantime I was putting something else in the oven. People were wondering about that and having a laugh but someone else said “Eric? Ohh yes he really does bake and his baking is really quite good” which shut a few people up. But this battle thing with these weird people carried on until in the end there was only me and I couldn’t find anyone else who was sane. It was going to be a really stressful kind of situation. It’s no wonder that I awoke in a feverish sweat yet again.

But there was much more to it but I can’t remember any more now. And after all of that it’s probably just as well.

It left little time for any revision of my Welsh and as a result the lesson was something of a disaster. And I wasn’t the only one either. We were given part of a sample test paper for our exam and we all made a right mess of it. Mind you, we went 1 hour 50 minutes before we stopped for a break and my head had long-since turned to jelly by then.

Mind you, that’s not a surprise. There’s something – and someone – on my mind today. And it brings back memories of three late night evenings in, of all places, on the deck of a ship in the High Arctic where I changed the habits of a lifetime.

As Kris Kristofferson once wrote, “I’ll give all my tomorrows for a single yesterday”. And I will too!

But enough of my being all maudlin now of all moments. I won’t get anywhere dwelling on the past like this.

At lunch I finished off the last of the bread and the last of the hummus so it looks as it it’s going to be another food-making day too tomorrow morning. One thing that has also finished a long while ago is the ginger and lemon drink. That’ll have to be something else on the list too.

This afternoon I’ve had an exciting task.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that I bought a new computer in something of a hurry in North Dakota last August when the little travelling Acer gave up the ghost. It was a sale item from Walmart heavily reduced but it came with Walmart’s splash screen and everything else on it that annoyed me but which I didn’t have the time right them to fix.

As I went along, I patched it here and there but it still wasn’t satisfactory so being fed up and having nothing better to do I did a “system restore” to “factory settings” and that involved deleting everything off the hard drive and starting again to reinstall everything.

And when I say “reinstall”, I say that advisedly because after about 6 hours of work it’s done about 88% of the operating system, never mind anything else.

In the middle of all of this, while the computer was festering away, I went out for my afternoon walk.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that a few weeks ago in the Place du parvis Notre Dame we saw them set up a series of scaffolding in order to repair a roof on a house there. Today, they are attacking the side of the house that’s in the Rue St Jean.

And they aren’t using any scaffolding either apparently down the side of the house. All of the material seems to be being lifted up by the big machine there and that’s going to cause a few problems if something big comes down there.

Wednesday and Thursday we’ve been promised storm-force winds here (as seems to be usual these days). I don’t fancy being up there on a roof when they are lashing about. And I don’t fancy walking underneath where the guys are working either when there’s a wind blowing all of their stuff away.

There were crowds of people wandering around today taking in the air and I ended up chatting to one of my neighbours at the viewpoint in the Rue du Nord.

After he had gone I had a look down onto the beach to see what was going on. The peche à pied is still in full swing as far as the tourists go. There were several more out there in amongst the rocks scavenging for what they could find.

As well as that, we had people milling around, walking their dogs, playing sports or even just taking in the air. After all, although the weather was cold and windy, it wasn’t unpleasant.

The crowd had thinned out by the time that I reached the Square Maurice Marland so I had a good run across to the other side to rack up a bonus run.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that yesterday the harbour was empty – of water and of boats. Today though we have the water back, and also the boats. Marité has returned and is moored in her little corner again.

So I carried on along the walls and as there was no-one in the street I ran on home again. I may as well clock up some extra metres on my way around when I can.

Back here I carried on with the laptop and then had a break when Rosemary rang me up. While I was in the Auvergne in July I had set “certain steps” in motion and, much to my surprise, they had actually come to fruition . That means some more outlay and I have to do it because it involves several other people.

Tea tonight was veggie balls with steamed veg and vegan cheese sauce – thoroughly delicious. And the other half of my apple turnover was even better. It’s the best one that I have ever made and I’m really impressed with that.

My walk this evening was something of a surprise.

Well, not my walk, but my run. I was feeling much more like it tonight, much looser, and I ran on past my mark on my first leg with some comparative ease. Down to the clifftop and there was a trawler way out to sea with its bright lights blazing. Too good an opportunity to miss even though it won’t come out well.

It’s probably 5 miles out to sea as well so all in ill it’s not bad at all seeing as it was the f1.8 50mm lens. I’ll settle for that.

No-one around at all, except for a couple of kids on the car park so I could do my third leg in peace.

At the viewpoint over the harbour where I stop to recover my breath, I could see all of the activity going on at the Fish Processing Plant. The fishing boats are starting to come back into harbour and there were already two of them down there unloading, with a couple more on the way.

One had carried on into the harbour but I missed her. Presumably she’s going to unload at the other side. But never mind. This one has come out OK so I’m not disappointed.

If I turn my head to the right I can also see into the Chantier Navale.

And here we have a change of occupant yet again. The new little boat that arrived a couple of days ago has now gone but we have been joined instead by a large yacht that bears a striking similarity at this angle to Spirit of Conrad, the boat on which we went down the coast a few months ago.

Of course in this light, it’s not possible to say with any certainty. I’ll have to wait until it’s light and have another look.

And so I ran on the rest of the way home, doing it in two legs as usual but even did an additional lap of honour round the building to push up the total even more.

Now that my notes are written and I’m off to bed. But before I do, just a quick “hi” to someone who made a dramatic reappearance this morning. I’ll be in touch as soon as I can organise myself, whenever that might be.

Sunday 13th January 2019 – THIS WASN’T HOW …

… it was supposed to work, was it?

The big trouble with going to bed early is that I have a tendency to awaken early. And 05:35 is absurdly early, especially on a Sunday.

And I couldn’t go back to sleep either. I just lay in bed and vegetated until I had to go and walk the parapet round about 08:05.

Mind you, I had been on a little voyage during the night. Not only was I with Nerina but we had gone into Birmingham to look for something. And coming off the M6 at one of the raised levels we ended up at af all places a Workingman’s Club. There must still be one or two left somewhere, I imagine. We parked up and walked around an old road layout which had been abandoned due to a realignment. In there we found a quiet lounge where we ended up talking to some woman who had something to do with the running of the place. But she wasn’t much help for what we needed so we left and went back to our car. By now I was back driving a Shearings coach – an overnighter with people wearing red and yellow woollen hats fast asleep curled up against each other. I started to feel like going to sleep too which wouldn’t have done many people much good but just then a car came round the corner, crossed the white line onto the wrong side of the road and hit the front of the coach a glancing blow. That was that for the coach and we were all rescued, and I had to spend the night sharing the room of another driver. We were looking out of the window of this hotel at the snow and ice and thinking about all of the fun that was going on down there in the snow.

After breakfast, I had a lot to do and it took me quite a lot of the day to do it.

I’ve liberated all of the files from the old desktop computer but there was a whole series of algorithms that I had created back as long ago as 2008 when I could remember what I was doing, and all of these needed unravelling.

That took me until early afternoon and then I had a back-up to perform on the laptop to extract all of the files from there.

There was an interruption for lunch of course, and there might have been an interruption for going to watch the football at St Pair, but instead Rosemary phoned me. We ended up having another two-hour chat that took up most of the afternoon. As I have said before, it’s nice to talk to friends.

Tea was a pizza of course, and I forgot to put the garlic on it. But it still tasted very nice.

Later on, I finally managed to get outside for my walk. There was no-one about at all which was hardly a surprise. there was a hellish wind out there.

One thing that surprised me was that despite the fact that I’d had a depressing start to my day, I didn’t crash out at all. There was the odd wave of fatigue but I managed to fight it off.

So what will tomorrow bring? My new computer, I hope. And then I’ll have a few days of setting it all up. That will keep me out of mischief.

Monday 10th December 2018 – BACK IN THE 1960s …

… General De Gaulle famously said that “l’Angleterre n’est pas prêt” to join the European Union.

And 50 years or so further on down the line, the only way that things have changed is that they have changed for the worse.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that another recurring theme that runs through my writings is the failure of British companies to understand what the whole idea is of the European Union, and refuse to sell their products to the rest of the European Union.

Today, I’ve had it said to me not once but twice.

I spent much of the morning on the phone to the UK and I have now ordered my new desktop computer. It will have three hard drives, one of which will be a 256GB solid-state drive. A 3.9GhZ processor and a 8GB of RAM (upgradebale to as much as 32GB if ever I feel the need) complete the package.

And I learnt something new today too. Apparently the only option for an operating system for this set-up is Windows 10. I asked why that might be a problem, to which the salesman replied that most graphics people have abandoned Windows 10 and reverted to Windows 7, which apparently gives much better results.

We hd quite a good chat and he recommended a IPS panel screen. These are flat screens like most computer screens but the image looks the same from no matter what angle it’s viewed.

All I’ll need then is a keyboard, a mouse and a powered USB hub, and then I’ll have all I need.

But here’s the rub. Now that it’s ordered (and paid for) it needs to be delivered. And as soon as I entered my home address in the box, the screen greyed out.

After a considerable amount of trying, I eventually made contact again with the company, who told me that they don’t sell their products abroad. So in the end we inserted THEIR address in the delivery box. They’ll send me a mail when it’s built and I can send someone to collect it.

As it happens I have a friend who lives nearby. She works for a company down the road. She asked me what she should do with the parcel, to which I replied that she could send it over to me by a courier.
“Do you have a courier in mind?”
“No. Just use the one that you use. That should be okay”
“But we don’t sell our products abroad so our courier doesn’t go there”.

The UK has a population of about 65 million people. The rest of the EU has 450 million people and it’s a free, open market where anyone in the EU can sell any product anywhere else in the EU without any restriction whatsoever (not quite true of medicines and one or two other minor products).

And here are a whole pile of British companies refusing to trade with a market of that size!

I’ve never had any difficulty at all ordering stuff anywhere in the rest of the EU and having it delivered. And anyone in the UK has probably never had any difficulty in ordering stuff from the mainland. But for some reason, people in the UK just don’t “get it” and prefer to ignore this massive market.

No wonder there’s a recession and UK industry is collapsing. it really is unbelievable. 450 million people waiting for products and the UK won’t sell to them.

Last night was a late night because I was doing something and lost track of time. When I looked, it was after 02:00 and that’s not very good.

The alarm went off as usual but for once I couldn’t care less. 07:45 was when I plucked up the courage to crawl out from under the sheets.

I’d been away on my travels too during the night. You won’t be interested in the first part of it because you are probably eating your tea right now. But a little later I was in a room with a Muslim girl. She was fitting me out in a headscarf – a light green diaphanous one that when it was folded over double, became an impenetrable yellow. She went off somewhere and I had to get ready to go after her, but for some reason I was taking my time and I had some music playing loudly in the background. So loudly in fact that she came back to tell me to turn down the music and to ask why I hadn’t followed her.

After a late breakfast I sat down and made a list of what I wanted on this computer. It took quite a bit of thought, and once I’d made my list I phoned up and set the rigmarole in motion.

I’ve been using laptop computers since I moved to the Auvergne because of the issue about power. Laptops don’t consume much and of course they will work when the power is switched off. But now I’m installed properly here, it’s high time that I had the kind of set-up that I want.

After lunch I had another phone call to make. It’s only possible to call up on Mondays between 14:30 and 16:30 so I didn’t want to miss it; But each time that I phoned (five times in all) the line was engaged. Eventually I discovered that there was only one person dealing with this enquiry, she worked part-time, and had just one phone line with no queueing facilities.

Now that’s what I call efficiency.

I had both my walks today.

The wind had dropped dramatically this afternoon and it was much more pleasant outside.

And whoever was out there in his little boat towing a canoe somewhere out there between the Pointe du Roc and the Ile de Chausey was having a whale of a time out there

And there were some beautiful cloud effects out there today.

Here, around on the Pointe du Roc overlooking the Baie de Mont St Michel the sun was bursting really beautifully through the clouds and illuminating the sea over there by Cancale.

It’s come out quite well in this photo and I ought to have it framed and mounted.

Tea was a stuffed pepper again, and delicious it was too, with the stuffing having marinaded over a couple of days.

Out in the evening air tonight, the wind was almost still.

But there was that much energy stored in the sea that the waves were still crashing down on the Plat Gousset with an astonishing force.

There must be enough energy in the waves to power the whole of the world, I reckon. I don’t really understand why more effort isn’t being put into developing it so that we can continue our escape from a dependence upon fossil fuel.

Well, actually I can. But this isn’t the place to start talking politics.

Tomorrow I might go for pie and mash, especially as there is a leek to use. And that has got me thinking, which is quite a rare event these days. And I’ve decided that I’m going to add a handful of leeks to the shopping order every week in an effort to continue to improve my diet.

It’s probably far too late to do much about my health but there’s no harm in trying.

And did anyone notice the News this evening? Mrs Mayhem made a Statement to the House of Commons to the effect that because she feared that she would lose the vote on secession from the EU, she’s postponed the vote.

I’ve been trying to steer clear of political posts but no-one can ignore this. Mrs Mayhem’s remarks and actions – cancelling the vote because she won’t win it – is the kind of thing that Idi Amin or Robert Mugabe would do.

It’s not the kind of democracy of which any democrat would be proud and makes a total mockery of this idea about “our Parliament being sacrosanct”. It’s a Third-World dictatorship trick and it shows you
1 – just how low the UK has sunk
2 – Mrs Mayhem is running totally scared.

it makes the UK look just like a laughing stock and I really am ashamed to be British.

night trawlers ile de chausey granville manche normandy france

night storm plat gousset granville manche normandy france

Friday 7th December 2018 – JUST FOR A CHANGE …

… today, I have emulated my namesake the mathematician and done three-fifth of five-eights of … errr … nothing.

During the night I’d been on my travels, checking up on goalkeepers (and I’ve no idea why I have goalkeepers on my mind right now) , and I was fast asleep when the alarm went off.

There was no rush to leave the comfort and safety of my stinking pit either. 07:00 came and I was still trying to summon up the courage to raise myself from the dead. And so it was a late breakfast and a late start.

For much of the day I was working on the portable hard drive with some of the files off the desktop computer, tidying them up and moving them about. But I’m hardly scratching the surface right now. I did uncover some long-lost 3D files in several compressed *.rar files and so I transferred them over onto the laptop and opened them up. That led to something of a tidy-up of files there too.

While I was at it, I had a little play around with the 3D program. It’s been a while since I had a go at that. But this laptop isn’t powerful enough to run it correctly so it wasn’t as easy as it might have been. I really am going to have to sort out a new desktop computer, seeing as I’ll be staying here now for the duration.

Lunch was taken indoors again – I reckon that outdoor picnicking is finished now until the Spring.

The wind outside today was wicked and it was a struggle to take myself out of doors in the hurricane and drenching rain.

But the inclement weather wasn’t going to keep me indoors.

Around the Pointe du Roc this afternoon watching the storm raging in the Baie de Mont St Michel, but the tide was too far out for any spectacular wave-crashing scenes.

The inclement weather wasn’t going to keep the fishing boats indoors either.

They had all been out there fishing today, and it was quite interesting watching them struggling into the harbour from the Baie de Mont St Michel with their catches.

Chapeau to those in peril on the sea out there. I don’t mind doing it in that kind of weather once in a while but it would get on my wick on a regular basis

And much to my surprise, one of the students from the College Malraux decided to engage me in conversation. I’ve no idea why.

This evening though, the tide was in and the waves were crashing down on the Plat Gousset like nobody’s business.

It really was wild out there and I was windswept and soaked in the conditions that we were having but I had no intention of giving up and going in while I was enjoying the free entertainment down there.

By the time that I staggered in, I was like a drowned rat.

In between the walks I had tea. There were the rest of the potatoes, some carrots, peas and leeks, and while I had been rummaging through the freezer the other day I’d found frozen curries going back over a year, so tonight I had a lentil and pepper curry with them – a curry that was dated 17th October 2017.

And it was still just as delicious as it was when I made it too. And I’ll be going through the freezer on a regular basis from now on to empty out some of the oldest frozen meals.

Tomorrow is shopping day so I’ll be out looking for supplies. That calls for an early night but we shall see about that. I’ve not been doing as well with my early nights as I would like to.

storm port de granville harbour baie de mont st michel manche normandy france

fishing boats storm port de granville harbour baie de mont st michel manche normandy france

night storm plat gousset granville manche normandy france

Monday 23rd October 2017 – I ACTUALLY MANAGED …

… to go out for a walk this evening.

There was a reason for that – in that I hadn’t set foot out of the apartment all day.

With being in bed at a (relatively) early time, I was up shortly after the alarm went off. I’d been on my travels during the night too. In some city in Eastern Europe that bore more than a passing resemblance to the Delamere Street – Chester Street – Greenfield Street area of Crewe with all of the traffic filtering out of half a dozen lanes into just one heading down towards Flag Lane. And I was driving rapidly through the countryside and totally missed a bend that was obscured by overhanging bushes and ended up going through someone’s gate and onto their property. Some girl, who bore more than just a passing resemblance to Cecile, came out to see what was going on. She saw me in my car in the bushes and said that I’d been extremely lucky. There had been a house just there and I’d missed driving into the old cellar by inches. And she was right too!

So with an early start and an early breakfast, you might be expecting an early trip to pick up the baguette. But I’d bought a large loaf from LIDL on Saturday, I’d not touched it, and it was in good shape. So need to go out for bread.

And not only that, the weather was quite foul too. High winds and torrential rainstorms, so that was that. Instead, I stayed in all day and started to tidy up the various hard drives and external drives that I’ve been using just recently.

Not only that, I’ve rearranged the hi-fi system that I invented” the other day. It won’t work with the big speakers unfortunately, but at least I’ve managed to make space in the book cases to fit it all in, so at least it’s tidier.

All of that took me until teatime. And so I finished off the beans, had some more sausages and some baked potatoes. Nice it was too.

And having been for a walk (the wind and rain quietened down this evening), I’m pretty tired. I might even have an early night tonight. And just as well too, because I have a half-day out planned for tomorrow.

Tuesday 17th October 2017 – REGULAR READERS OF THIS RUBBISH …

… will recall that I’ve been having certain issues about music and entertainment here in my little apartment. But today I’ve made a great deal of progress which has gone a long way towards dealing with the issue on a temporary basis.

And as we know, there is nothing more permanent than a temporary solution.

You may recall that a couple of years ago I bought an “old, new laptop”. They were on sale at give-away prices because although they were new and in working order, they had various defects and were sold “as seen”.

I have one of these data readers for modern vehicles that you plug into the vehicle’s data port to read off the fault codes. It works with a CD-ROM, which I didn’t have on my notebook (it uses an external DVD reader that runs off the mains) and that’s no good for out in the yard, and so a laptop with a working DVD reader was an essential.

The rest of the laptop wasn’t important, so when I ended up with one in which the mouse didn’t work, I wasn’t all that bothered. But then, of course, my plans all changed.

Many years ago, when I lived in Belgium, I rigged up an office with an in-house entertainment system that had a really good speaker system – a huge deep-bass speaker with a couple of all-round stereo treble speakers. And the sound was excellent.

And so today, I rigged up the “old, new laptop” with the speaker system, and it works a treat. I can play all of the music, whether CD or *.mp3, and DVDs, And with the USB Cassette machine that I bought a few years ago, I can even play cassettes through it.

There’s also a USB record deck here, so I can play my LPs on it too.

I’ve dug out an old desktop monitor too – quite a large one, and when I obtain an HDM1 cable, I’ll have large-screen film facilities too.

So having had an early night last night, I managed to raise myself from my stinking pit at about 06:10. It’s my aim to be up and about in between the two alarms as you know.

I’d been on my travels too. Back in Brussels, I was selling my final apartment somewhere on the north side of the city. It was laid out somehow like the place at Hankelow but, obviously, in much better condition. I’d bought it a few years ago but never done too much with it. With me was a girl, something like Cecile, and my solicitor. I was far too ill to take part in the proceedings, being confined to bed, so the solicitor and this girl did everything. After the sale had been completed, the solicitor came in quietly laughing. He told me that the woman had been lamenting about her son, and how she’s just saddled him with a mortgage at the age of 36. I was meantime adding up th cash on hand after selling all of my three places, and how it came to something like half a million pounds, and how I was too ill to spend it all.

I went down for a baguette a little later on. There is still the depot de pain in the newsagents here and the owner remembered me, which was nice.

Back here, I pottered around for a while, and … errr … had a little relax too – which led to a somewhat late lunch. And did some of the unpacking too. But only “some”. I need to gather up my strength to do the rest because it really did take a lot out of me, going around North America like I did.

Tea though was another one of my aubergine and kidney bean whatsits – with no olives because I seem to have run out and I forgot to buy any yesterday. There’s enough left over for three more meals.

So now, despite my early start, my little repose during the morning means that I don’t actually feel tired right now. It will take me a while to readjust to my habitual way of life.

Wednesday 11th October 2017 – SO HERE I ALL AM …

… not sitting in a rainbow, but sitting in the Departure Lounge of Dorval – or the Aeroport Pierre-E Trudeau waiting for my flight back to Paris.

And I have a feeling that it’s going to be an uncomfortable flight too. I’ve asked for an aisle seat because I’m still having problems with my right leg, And the girl in the check-in has given me my boarding pass, with the luggage label stuck over one of the places where the seat number is printed, and another sticky label stuck over the other place. So I can’t read it.

And so I bet that it isn’t an aisle seat. That’s just the kind of trick that they play on passengers instead of being honest and up-front about it. And so I’ll be crammed in somewhere extremely uncomfortably in the middle of a row.

Just as well that it’s a decent Air Canada flight and not an Air Transat sardine tin. But I’m still not happy.

I slept the sleep of the dead last night. Flat out all night and didn’t feel a thing until the alarm went off at 05:00. Mind you, it was … errr … somewhat later that I actually crawled out of bed. I wasn’t in much of a rush.

I spent a while doing some stuff on the laptop and then I went for a shower. Once I’d done that, I sorted out all of my affairs and repacked all of my possessions. That took me up until about 09:30 – meaning that I missed out on breakfast. But I didn’t really worry too much about that.

There’s a cupboard here at the hotel where you can dump your suitcase and so I left mine there and went for a walk around the city. First stop was the Dollar Store to pick up some stuff for the aeroplane. A couple of bags of sweets and the like.

Next stop was the Scotia Bank to take out some more money.I like to have a little stock on hand when I’m in Europe. I’ve been caught out with an expired bank card before, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall.

From there I went down to the Old Town. I needed a few things to take home with me and there was a place that had what I needed.

One last thing was to leap aboard the 55 bus with the driver listening to Focus III at full volume, and head off to the north side of the city.

Bang on midday I was at Josée’s place of work. I’d missed her yesterday as you know so we had agreed to meet for lunch. We ended up at a place not too far away where I had a vegan salad. I handed back the telephone, with grateful thanks to her for letting me borrow it.

Back down into town after that, and despite the grey overcast weather I couldn’t resist the opportunity to visit the vegan ice-cream bar in the rue St Catherine. The coconut milk was delicious as usual but I declined the chocolate – you remember from last year that it left something to be desired. Instead they had some kind of Vietnamese fruit.

I had a snooze too, having made sure that it wasn’t an auto-flush toilet. I seem to be making that some kind of habit these days again. But at least for the last couple of days I’ve been doing well over 100% of my daily activity so that’s something. and it will probably be something like that tomorrow too.

Having had my little relax I hobbled back (because I’m feeling the strain now) to the hotel to pick up my suitcase. the owners were there and they recognised me from when I was there before. We had a little chat and I had a little rest before wandering round the corner for the 747 bus to the airport.

We had one of these bus drivers who was a stickler for the rules. Everyone had to put their luggage in the racks and once the racks were full he refused to take on board any more passengers. But the motorway was open at last and it didn’t take too long to drive there.

Interestingly, some of the worst parts of the flyovers seem to have been demolished – they had concrete-cutters busily chopping up all of the rubble as we drove past.

At the airport I remembered to hand in my green card at the Immigration desk, and then went to check in. The automatic check-in didn’t recognise me, which is hardly a surprise – after all, who would want to admit to recognising me? And so we had the performance at the check-in desk.

And my suitcase for the flight back? A mere 16.7kgs. I’m clearly losing my touch.

Food is the next thing. I know that I won’t be having my special meal on the flight, but there’s a “Subway” in the airport, which is a good thing. A 12-inch vegetarian without cheese accompanied me through the security gate.

While we’re on the subject of security … “well, one of us is” – ed … apart from the queues it was relatively painless. They discovered my small bottle of water that I was hoping to keep, and also one of these juice pack things which I had forgotten all about.

They didn’t think much of my laptop either – but then I’m not exactly crazy about it. They spent quite a long time giving it a close-up befoe they were able to agree that it was relatively harmless.

At the boarding gate I had a word with the girls there. They confirmed that I didn’t have an aisle seat and so I explained my problem. They doubted that they could do anything for me seeing as the aeroplane was full.

But much to my surprise, 10 minutes later one of them – a young red-headed girl called Roxanne – came running over to me waving a new ticket. Somehow they had managed to find an aisle seat. It was a left-hand one, not a right-hand one, but that is far better than nothing.

So in a minute we’ll be boarding. Didn’t that 8 weeks go quickly? I managed to pack an enormous amount into it – like 12,000 kilometres in the 5 weeks or so that I was on the road. I don’t want to leave but I don’t really have much choice.

But then I’m always like this when I leave Canada.

Tuesday 11th July 2017 – LAST NIGHT …

… the computer told me that it wanted to perform a major update.

It’s been telling me that for a while actually, but last night it blocked the screen and wouldn’t let me proceed until I agreed.

And so I set it to perform at 23:59 and left the machine running when I went to bed. When I came round this morning to look at it, it was showing … errr … 21% completed.

As a result, today has been rather a difficult day.

It didn’t start off too well either. I was wide awake at 06:40 and when the alarm went off at 07:00 I was already preparing another mix of muesli, seeing as how I’d forgotten to do that yesterday.

With no laptop, I went and had a shower and sorted out a few other bits and pieces that needed attention, and while I was at it, I came across an 8GB memory card from the summer of 2015 that I hadn’t backed up. I made a mental note …

Round about 11:00 the laptop finished what it was doing, and so I launched myself into a programme of backing up the memory card. I wrote a couple of DVDs with the contents, and then found the 750gb external hard drive that I use to keep the (millions of) photos that I’ve accumulated over the years.

The ones off the SD card went onto there too, only for me to discover that I seem to have backed up this card on there some time in the past.

But while I had the external hard drive coupled up, I went about and did a major backup of the contents of my data folders.

I do a major back-up like this once every year or so – usually just before I’m taking my laptop with me on a major journey. In between times, I back up to a dedicated 64gb memory stick.

And how times have changed – I remember when USB ports became the thing with Windows 98 Series 2, and my back-up memory stick then was all of 256kb – with plenty of room on there for everything too.

And that’s where I am right now – this back-up is still going on some 10 hours later, and it probably won’t be until 11:00 tomorrow morning that it will be finished either.

It hasn’t meant that I’ve not been updating the blog though – in fact I’ve had another good day and I’ve almost finished October 2012. Just 104 “uncategorised” entries to rewrite, which might make you think that it will all be over soon.

But far from it, and for two reasons too –

Many pages are “conjoined” pages – when I haven’t had internet access for one reason or another I’ve made a multiple entry as soon as I could. Since late 2013, when I started the new version of the blog, whenever I’ve not had internet access I’ve been writing up a page faithfully every night nevertheless and storing them up for a multiple-publication later. I’m going back over the conjoined entries and breaking them up into daily pages
It seems that round about August 2012 the blog-host that I used back then (before I brought my blog in-house) started to make up tags and categories that my current set-up recognises. And they show up on a few of the pages from then. So these pages aren’t included in the number of “uncategorised” pages but they need updating nevertheless to meet my new, exacting … "and modest" – ed … standards.
.

But what is exciting is to look at some of these old entries and what was going through our minds, and see how things turned out. A good example of this is the entry for 17th October 2012.

Here, Krys and I (whatever happened to Krys?) were discussing that we were having all the signs of an early winter. Krys remarked that she was “forecasting a bad and long winter this year”.

Well, the first snows fell just 10 days later – which is astonishingly early, and the last snowfall of the winter was on … errr … 25th of MAY. How about that for a prediction?

Tea was the second instalment of the aubergine and kidney bean whatsit, and now I’m sitting at the window watching the teeming rain and the storm, with the waves crashing down on the rocks across the bay.

It’s a phenomenal wind that we are having – just the weather to be out there on board a three-masted schooner. I’d really fancy a run-out in this weather.

And I forgot to mention that some blasted English grockles, complete with thermos flask of hot tea, pinched my spec on the wall overlooking the harbour at lunchtime. I had to go and sit somewhere else.

And talking of comments, don’t be shy. If you would like to comment on the entries on this blog, please feel free to do so. Because of all of the spam that seems to be back on the internet these days, they will be “held” until I manually approve them, and then you’ll see your name in lights!

Wednesday 24th May 2017 – NOW HERE’S A SURPRISE!

Yes – I spent a pleasant hour or so having a coffee with neighbours here in the building.

And no-one whom I have previously met either. And had I been a little quicker, I might even have acquired a washing machine and I’m a little dismayed about that!

Coming back from buying my baguette this morning, a couple of men were struggling out of the building with a washing machine – so I held the door open for them and watched (with dismay) as they threw it into the back of a lorry. There was a couple half-way up the stairs and we ended up having a chat. It appears that they had just bought a new washing machine, it had been delivered, and they had given away the old one which was taken away by the suppliers.

Drat! And double-drat!

But anyway, to cut a long story short …“hooray!” – ed … we ended up having quite a chat and they invited me in for a coffee. They are my age, inveterate travellers and Monsieur likes Led Zeppelin. And they also told me quite a bit about the other people who live in the building. We have quite a few musicians in here, apparently, and that can only be good news.

Last night was another difficult night for me – took me ages to go off to sleep and then I awoke quite early this morning. And after breakfast I had a good relax before going off to buy the baguette and to come back fro coffee.

And apart from that, I’ve not done very much else. Quietly sitting in here and doing some work on the laptop and some tidying up too. Isn’t that a change?

Tea was more potatoes, peas, carrots and vegan burger, all cooked in the microwave. That was a good purchase, I reckon, and I’m quite pleased with it. When I pick up my oven I’ll be in my element and I can’t wait for that either.

So I’ll be having another early night, another session of Saint episodes, and (hopefully) an early night. Tomorrow is a Bank Holiday so I’m having a day off – always assuming that I can find a baguette.

Friday 19th May 2015 – I FINALLY MANAGED …

… to go out for a walk this afternoon. Mind you, it was a bit touch-and-go.

Last night was another difficult night as far as sleep went, but I was still asleep when the alarm went off so it must have done some good. And it was a nicer morning too – I enjoyed my walk down for my baguette. And I did come back via the scenic route too seeing as how the weather was so nice.

I treated myself to another coffee when I returned, and then spent most of the morning sorting out the confusion on this old laptop. So far, I’ve cleaned out about 30GB of duplicate or unnecessary files and I’m sure that there’s more to come.

Once it’s tidied up, I’ll be moving most of them onto a portable drive and then I can “retire” this laptop. It has a smashed screen (I’m using an external screen off Marianne’s old desktop computer) and a keyboard that has some keys stuck and some other keys missing (I’ve plugged in an old keyboard) and it dates from 2011 yet it still soldiers along, which is more than can be said for the two that I have bought to replace it. One of them ground to a halt in Germany two years ago, and the current one hasn’t ever worked right since the first day that I bought it.

In fact, I’m half-tempted to salvage the keyboard and the screen from the one that failed and use it to rebuild the smashed one. Shame that I’ve left all of my tools and equipment back in the Auvergne.

After lunch, I carried on with what I was doing, as well as doing a little tidying up around here. Strangely enough, the place doesn’t look any tidier no matter how much time I spend on it.

I don’t know what it is about doing nothing much but it makes me more tired than when I’m working hard. I was away with the fairies for a good half an hour this afternoon. But I awoke round about 17:00 and decided that with the sun shining and the sky nice and blue, I really ought to go out and about.

From up on the city walls at the back of my apartment, there’s a beautiful view of the building where I live these days.

If you look at the tree in the centre of the photograph, the window directly above it is my bedroom window. The two windows – one of which is partly obscured by the tree – round the corner are the windows in my living room.

And if you look carefully, you can see Caliburn parked round the front of the building.

I’d taken the big telephoto lens with me up onto the walls, because it was another one of these marvellous days, ideal for photography.

And with the telephoto lens there was an excellent view of Jersey out there in the English Channel. It’s very difficult to believe that it’s at least 59 kilometres – 36 miles – away out there.

From this position, there’s an even better view of Jersey, and you can even see some of the superstructure and buildings on the island. I’m quite determined that one day in the not-too-distant future I’ll be out there on a day trip.

Especially if it means negotiating the buoy and the seagull that the telephoto lens has picked up.

And that reminds me. Michael Jackson had once applied to join the navy, but withdrew his application after he was told that no matter how it was pronounced, the objects that you find in each port are called B-O-U-Y-S.

While we are on the subject of going out to the Channel Islands, there in the harbour this afternoon was the ferry that I would take when I go there. It’s not a vehicular ferry and you can tell by looking at it that it won’t take long to go there.

And that’s the reason why I’m here in Granville. Being a Pisces I always feel the call of the sea and here,
I can pop on a boat whenever I feel like it.

But it’s really a bad idea, because it doesn’t do my humour very much good. Every time I see a ferry, it makes me cross.

Meanwhile, back at the ran… err … on the city walls, there’s an excellent view right out along the coast. Right out there in the background on the horizon is the coast around Barneville-Carteret where I went to see those apartments a while ago, and that’s over 80 kilometres – 50 miles – away.

On the left-hand edge of the photograph is the lighthouse that warns of the rocks that are out there half-way between the coast and the Channel Islands. I do know it’s name, but it’s temporarily slipped my mind.

And on the right of the photograph is the big buoy that marks the entrance to the shipping channel into one of the rivers up there. This telephoto lens is magnificent, isn’t it?

That’s the main road into and out of the town. Right at the top of the hill is a roundabout – straight on is the road that leads eventually to Caen. The football stadium, the big shops and the hotel where I stayed the first night that I was here are along there.

To the right is the road that heads south along the coast to Avranches and eventually to Rennes and it’s how we would arrive here from the South.

Half-way up the hill at the roundabout that you can see there is where the railway station is – just to the left.

That down there is the road that leads from the harbour to the centre of the town.

The yellow building in the centre is the tourist information Office, and the light-coloured building next to it is the Mairie.

On the street corner to the right is the street where you find all of the normal town shops, and to the left is that nice little studio where I stayed for 12 days
.

I showed you a photo of this the other day, but that was taken with the standard lens. Seeing as I had the telephoto lens with me, I reckoned that I’d retake the photo.

It is of course the headland out at Carolles-Plage and you’ll remember that we walked out there a few weeks ago.

In the background is the coast of Brittany on the other side of the Baie de Mont St Michel

Here’s another view of a photo that I took a few days ago but I’ve retaken it with the telephoto lens.

It’s Jullouville of course. That’s another place of the many that has had my company for for a couple of days, and it’s where I had that strange encounter with that weird estate agent.

The hotel where I stayed is behind the big building that you can see to the right of centre.

Just across there is the Eglise St Paul – St Paul’s Church. Despite it looking like a typical Byzantine basilica, it’s actually reasonably-modern, construction having started in 1891 and it’s still unfinished (and it’s very unlikely that it ever will be).

The dome by the way is not made of stone as you might expect, but is one of the early examples of the use of reinforced concrete. And because salty sea-sand was used in the construction, it’s quickly crumbling away and demolition of the entire building has not been ruled out.

And in the background, you can see the floodlights of the football stadium.

Turning round a little more, my lens now focuses on my nice little building – the one with the turrets that we saw from down below the walls the other day when we were walking about.

I still reckon that the turret would be an interesting place to live, if ever it were to come on the market – not that it would be likely I suppose. The view across the harbour and the bay would be tremendous.

In fact, that’s the view that you would have from the front window of the turret. We have the fishing port just there, with the mechanical grab for speedy unloading and the storage sheds right behind.

And then a little further back we have the town beach with that nice apartment block behind it.

In between the two, to the left, you can see the masts of the yachts parked up on the quayside

Meanwhile, behind me, there’s the end of the headland around which we walked the other day and where we took some photographs.

Our pirate friend is over there on his plinth, to the left of the mobile home that you can see disappearing into the distance towards the car and coach park.

In the background on the horizon to the right you can see the Ile de Chausey

You’ve seen several photographs showing bits of the church that is here in the old walled city, but this is the first decent view that you have had of all of it.

It’s the Eglise de Notre Dame de Cap Lihou and its claim to fame is that it’s built on the site of a chapel that was constructed by the English when they occupied the site during the Hundred Years War.

The church here today though dates from 1628 and took almost 50 years to construct. It was registered as a Historic Monument in 1930.

The medieval aspect of the old city is apparent in photographs like this. While the buildings themselves might not be the originals, it’s very likely that the street layout has been preserved.

There are little alleys like that one down there all over the town and it gives the place quite a mystical air. The kind of place where it would be nice and quiet to live, but not very practical if you are the owner of a motor vehicle.

If we continue our walk around the city walls we’ll come to an area where they are undertaking some renovation work.

Part of the walls is fenced off while they repair it, and they are taking the opportunity to transform some of the vacant land at the foot into a public garden.

It’s not finished yet, and won’t be for a while, but it will be nice when it’s all done.

And so we end up at the eastern end of town where there’s a car park and an orientation table. The pyramid shape that you can see in the photo is the roof of the tower of the casino, and then we have the Casino Beach and the promenade, with Donville-les-Bains in the background.

There’s the tidal swimming pool too. The idea is that it fills when the tide is in, and when the tide goes out, the water is retained. But these days there must be a leak in it

The final photograph, for now anyway, shows you a little more of the fortifications of the old city.

If you can clamber up the rock – which is not all that easy – then you have a ditch to negotiate before you arrive at the fortifications proper.

You can see how the shape of the fortifications permits the ditch to be overlooked from all points, so any attacking army trying to scale the walls would be trapped like rats in a barrel.

So from here, I headed off slowly back to the flat. That’s enough walking for today and it’s almost tea-time. And I have another helping of last night’s curry to attend to.

And then it’s an early night. I’ve done quite enough today, and I’ll leave you with another 1950 words to read. That will keep you lot out of mischief too.

Wednesday 17th May 2017 – TODAY HAS BEEN ONE …

… of those days where, rather like the mathematician named Hall, I accomplished three-fifths of five-eights of … errr … nothing.

It all started to go wrong during the night – I kept on waking up, tossing and turning. And I’ve no idea why because the bed is quite comfortable and I’m very warm in there – or else that’s it and I’m too warm, but that’s not very likely now.

It was disturbed to such an extent that I was up and about by 06:30 and having breakfast when the alarm went off at 07:00. This is happening more and more often and it’s not like me at all in the past.

Apart from going down to the old town for my baguette (and coming back via the city walls) I’ve spent most of the day on the sofa. I can allow myself the odd day here and there to do this – after all, I am retired.

Liz and I had a chat on the internet, and I made a phone call. And I also did some tidying up. But most of the day was spent checking over the contents of an old computer that I’ve managed to fire up. 12.3GB of duplicate files on there, so I’ve been weeding them out. And the program that I use, although noted for its efficacy, is not noted for its rapidity. It also has a tendency to eat up all of the processing capacity of the machine so it very slowly grinds to a halt. So you have to switch off and start again.

In fact, I had such an exciting, stressful, exhausting day that I crashed out for half an hour too. Just for a change.

Not a day for going outside, because it started to pour down with rain this afternoon and it’s kept it up ever since. So it’s a good job that I had things indoors to amuse me. There haven’t been too many wet days since I’ve been here, have there?

Tea was more stuff out of the European Tinned Food Mountain. I’ve been slowly demolishing it for a couple of weeks and it doesn’t look any different. But one day it will all be gone – whenever that might be. If I had an oven, or some different pans that would work on the induction hob, I could perhaps be more adventurous. But that will come, one day or another.

And so will tomorrow, because I’m done for today. If the weather is better I might even go for a walk, but I’m not holding my breath.

Monday 13th February 2017 – IT GOES FROM ONE EXTREME …

… to another, doesn’t it?

Saturday night, I had one of the best nights’ sleeps that I have had for ages. Last night was one of the worst. Still awake at 03:00 and a long way from sleep. All of this was very sad.

But go to sleep I did, and I remember nothing of any travels, except the usual 06:00 awakening, the 06:30 awakening and then my 07:00 alarm going off. And they had forgotten to bring the breakfast around this morning so it was very short commons.

Back down here, I went back to sleep and that was where I stayed until 09:30. And having sorted out an issue that I was having with the laptop and some kind of bug that it had picked up, I got down to work. I did some tidying up, a pile of paperwork was sorted, some of which was thrown out and the rest neatly filed away in the binder that I had remembered to bring with me.

For a change, I didn’t have lunch either. I wasn’t feeling hungry. I just ate some fruit as well. And seeing as the cleaner was in here today, I wanted to vacuum the laptops here to clean out the keyboards. He wouldn’t let me use it but did it himself, including the screen which now has four scratches and I’m really disappointed about that.

A little later I went for a walk in the sunshine down to Caliburn. I took a few of the black plastic boxes down there, started him up and ran him for 15 minutes while I sorted out another pile of stuff down there that needs to be dealt with here.

And I found two bank cards for which I had had been searching. That has got me back up and running now, as I have a few things that need to be dealt with.

Another crashing-out was called for afterwards, and then I made tea. Potatoes, carrots, green beans, gravy and the last of my vegan pies. And just for a change it was all cooked to perfection. I still had one of those fresh fruit packs left over from the weekend so that did me for pudding. I’ll be starting on the ice cream and pineapples tomorrow.

So now we’ll have another early night. Hopefully I can do better than last night as I have paperwork to deal with and issues to resolve.

I hope that it works for me.

EPIC HALL

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

Tag Archives: laptop

Wednesday 6th January 2021 – I WON’T EVER SEE …

Wednesday 28th October 2020 – IN WHAT MAY COME …

Thursday 22 October 2020 – I WAS FEELING LIKE …

Tuesday 20th October 2020 – AFTER ALL …

Sunday 13th January 2019 – THIS WASN’T HOW …

Monday 10th December 2018 – BACK IN THE 1960s …

Friday 7th December 2018 – JUST FOR A CHANGE …

Monday 23rd October 2017 – I ACTUALLY MANAGED …

Tuesday 17th October 2017 – REGULAR READERS OF THIS RUBBISH …

Wednesday 11th October 2017 – SO HERE I ALL AM …

Tuesday 11th July 2017 – LAST NIGHT …

Wednesday 24th May 2017 – NOW HERE’S A SURPRISE!

Friday 19th May 2015 – I FINALLY MANAGED …

Wednesday 17th May 2017 – TODAY HAS BEEN ONE …

Monday 13th February 2017 – IT GOES FROM ONE EXTREME …

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