… when I said that I was likely to have a bad day today.
So while you admire a few photos of the various water craft that was out and about offshore this afternoon while I was out on my afternoon walk, I’ll tell you all about it.
It actually all went wrong late last night because having crashed out so definitively yesterday late afternoon, I wasn’t in the least bit tired and it was long after 02:00 when I finally crawled into bed.
Strangely enough, that was round about the same time that I went to bed last Saturday night too but how I wish that it was for the same reason.
Even though it was really nice to be back in my own bed, I was awake at 10:00 and couldn’t go back to sleep again. Nevertheless it was 11:00 when I finally crawled out of bed.
After the medication I did some work on the radio programmes, pairing off some music for a radio programme that I’ll be preparing in the future.
At the moment I’m almost a whole year ahead which is good news. I have to concentrate on building up a stock ready for if ever I get to go away again and, of course, for another eventuality which you all know.
That took me up to lunchtime – or, rather, brunchtime, because I haven’t had anything to eat yet. Porridge and toast and plenty of strong black coffee to keep me going for the afternoon because, surprisingly, I was starting to flag already.
As I said yesterday, I had a feeling that it was going to be something of a bad day.
But not quite yet because there were still things to do.
The first thing was to write a rather difficult message. I’m not very good at expressing my thoughts and emotions, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, and I always end up making a total mess of what I’m trying to write.
But when someone who has known me long enough to know better calls me “sweet”, then that’s the kind of message that deserves something of a rather special reply of the type that I’m really no good at all at writing.
Why does life have to be so full of complications? It would be so much better if I could simply rely on the power of thought transmission.
Having finally sent something (and that took much longer than it ought to have done) that I still didn’t think was good enough but was the best that I could do, I attacked the dictaphone.
I was having a dream about having to write letters to people (something of a premonition, I reckon). Someone was writing them on my behalf but something had happened. The situation had changed unexpectedly and the person writing these letters no longer felt comfortable doing it. The situation was not as she imagined it and she didn’t think that it was as I expressed it so she refused to write any more. I had to collect all the pens and papers and make a list of the people who have already had their letter, then sit down and write the letter again myself to every one who had been missed.
And then I was round at someone’s house doing some tidying up for them (as if that’s ever likely to happen. I can’t even tidy up for myself!). They decided that they would go out and I was still there, not making a great deal of progress. I was busy making myself something to eat when one of them came back, the first to come back and started setting out some food on the table. There were some cakes that he was laying out. I noticed that one of them was a plain scone and I wondered if that was for me. If so, that was quite nice of them. Then someone else came in with a strange-looking object that was like a glass globe that the top came off. They said “here, cook your food in that”. I can’t remember if it was porridge or something like that that I was making but I cooked it in this glass globe thing. It swelled up really nicely and when you coupled up a Land Rover to it at the back it looked absolutely perfect. Whatever it was that I was cooking had the look of like a cake or something like that but when I took it out of the microwave it went flat again which was a shame because it really looked so nice in this glass globe thing in the microwave.
As I expected, I fell asleep in the middle of dictating all of this. And then I fell asleep as soon as I had finished. And on the latter occasion, it was a really deep, intense sleep that wiped me out completely. Right the way up to time to go walkies.
And when I set out I was really in no fit state to go.
The first port of call once I was outside was to go down to the wall at the end of the car park to look down onto the beach to see what was going on down there.
The tide was on its way out so more and more of the beach was being uncovered. And there were more and more people uncovered too, to such an extent that several of them had actually taken to the water.
And that wasn’t a surprise because it was a gorgeous sunny late Spring day and there wasn’t much wind to cool things down.
even Rover was having a good time too, down at the water’s edge having a good bark at the passing seagulls, trying to chase them away.
Plenty of boats out at sea this afternoon as we have already seen, and plenty of fishermen too.
It seemed as if every rock had its own fisherman perched thereupon this afternoon. I counted a couple of dozen out there casting their lines into the water.
Not that we actually saw anyone catch anything. That’s been a regular theme running through these pages that we have seen hundred upon hundred of fishermen fishing from the rocks and not once have we ever seen anyone pull anything out.
There were crowds of people on the path too. It looked as if the whole town had turned out today for a walk around. After all, it is a Bank Holiday today – VE Day – and that’s quite an important date in the French calendar.
While I was out there looking at the sea I was overflown by a light aeroplane heading towards the airfield.
It’s one whom we know quite well – F-GORN, one of the Robin DR400-120 Dauphin 2+2 aeroplanes that they have.
When I returned home later I had a look at the flight database. The only flight that was recorded for her today was one where she took off at 15:07, flew briefly around the bay and landed again at 15:17.
But my photo was taken at 16:03 (adjusted) so she’s obviously been out again later and kept below radar level.
Incidentally, when I say “adjusted”, all of my appliances like cameras, dictaphones etc aren’t adjusted for Summer Time.
Crowds of people out on the paths, as I said earlier, and also a few people sitting on the bench down by the cabanon vauban.
There was plenty of activity going on out at sea and there’s little doubt that these people were enjoying the spectacle, both maritime and pescatorial. And with plenty of sun and very little wind, why not?
But I can’t stand here all afternoon watching them. I’ve forgotten to put the coffe on before setting out so I need to go home and make it. I headed off down the path on the other side of the headland towards the port to see what was happening there.
One of the things that I had wanted to do was to check the chantier naval to see what was happening there.
And I was right yesterday when I said that I thought that the trawler there might be a Jersey trawler. Indeed it is, and it’s one whom we have met before. J-158 happens to be the registration number of L’Ecume II and she’s been in the harbour here a couple of times.
Her claim to fame is that a couple of years ago her watch fell asleep at the helm and she ran aground on a sandbank. And by the looks of her hull, she looks as if she’s been having a few more issues as well.
Also in the photo are La Roc A La Mauve III, Valesque and an unidentified inshore fisheries boat.
Yesterday, we saw L’Omerta and another inshore fishing boat over there at the fish processing plant.
They are still here today, and from this viewpoint I can identify the second one. At first I thought that she was Lysandre but on checking her registration number I find that she is actually Petite Laura and she’s a new ship to us. We haven’t seen her before.
You can see in her stern all of the buoys and flags and so on of the type that we see dotted around in the sea just offshore. I’m convinced that they relate to things like lobster pots, indicating where the crew has dropped the pots over the side.
Having noticed the dredger in port yesterday I was interested in having a closer look at her today.
And I was right. She certainly is St-Gilles Croix-de Vie, she who comes into port quite often.
But I was more interested in looking at the water level in the inner harbour because that looks a lot lower than it usually is. So what’s happening there?
Back here I had a nice surprise. Rosemary has been tidying up at home and she told me that she had sent me a little gift. So in my mailbox was a little parcel containing a little book on identifying ships. That was really nice of her.
Armed with a mug of coffee I came in here and promptly fell asleep again and that’s how I spent most of the late afternoon. I’m not doing too well right now with all of this. The first couple of days after my transfusion always seem to knock me out.
After lunch I’d taken the last ball of dough out of the freezer.
Now that it had defrosted I rolled it out and left it to proof and then made myself a pizza.
This is the fourth out of this load of dough and I have to say that it was something of a failure becuase 600grams of flour divided into 4 leaves the base too thin. I’ll have to go back to 500 grammes into 3 for the next batch of dough.
So now I’ve written my notes I’m off to bed. I’m having an early start tomorrow to prepare a radio programme so I have to be on form. But where I’m going to find the energy to do it I really don’t know.
. A whole group of truckers was on the run again. What they were actually doing was that they had something to do with buffaloes, a ranch or something where they were rearing buffaloes from eggs. It was a whole really complicated scenario there about these eggs, how they were recuperated, how they were hatched artificially into more buffaloes etc. This was a real technological marvel and the IRS was involved in it. It was such a complicated system of rearing these eggs that the whole world’s attention was focused on what was going on here insofar as it affected these truckers who were in dispute with their Government. It was easy to see how they were being prejudiced against when they even saw churches that were totally ruined still doing things to support the Government by opposing the lorry drivers’ movement. We saw one new church where all the members had been arrested even though they were no danger to anyone about anything. It was only the power of these truck drivers that was keeping them out and their interest that this project with these buffalo eggs had created.
