… very much mistaken, there’s been a change in the situation over at the chantier navale during the course of the morning.
On my way down into town to pick up my dejeunette this morning, I thought that something looked quite different in the distance. And so I took a speculative photo across the rooftops with the aim of blowing it up back in the apartment to check.
And sure enough. It looks as if Spirit of Conrad has grown a mast. It could well be that in a short space of time she might be going back into the water.
Which is more than you can say about me. Despite my best intentions, by the time that I had finished listening to a couple of really decent albums my plans for an early night had vanished into the ether. It was just after midnight when I crawled off into bed.
Still there was enough time to go on a ramble, but I don’t remember very much at all about it which is a shame, because I bet that it was interesting, especially as it actually concerned Castor’s parents. I don’t know now if I ever knew what had happened but they just decided to pack up and emigrate from the UK and go to Australia. So Mrs Castor left her employment and they sent a letter off to the Tax Office asking for a permanent refund on the grounds that she wouldn’t be taking up any further employment in the UK as they were leaving to go to Australia in the morning.
So whatever that might have been about, then your guess is as good as mine.
When the alarm went off I wasn’t all that keen. It was round about 06:30 when I finally raised my head and put my feet on the floor. Something of a disappointment but there you are.
After the medication I cut up a digital album into its component track and then transcribed the dictaphone notes to see where I had been.
After that, I’ve been a very busy boy and I’ll tell you something for nothing, and that is that the time has gone really slowly today even though I seem to have done tons of work.
Much of the morning was spent on dealing with something that have been wanting to do for ages – to sort out my hard drive. And without thinking, I seem to have the files all muddled up and moved the wrong ones. Now I’m having to go back and unpick the directories and start again. That was rather a waste of a morning.
But I have something else going on with regard to the radio station – a completely different project than normal, and that involved sending off a few enquiries.
Down into town for the bread as I mentioned earlier, and then back up here for lunch. I was running quite late.
After lunch I attacked the radio programme that I’d run aground on. And with a really good session it’s almost finished – except for the final track to close the broadcast.
That’s always the most difficult one because it has to be a certain length – namely 30 seconds shorter than the gap that it needs to fill. And once I’ve chosen it, it has to sound like a final track and not like a start track. There needs to be a long intro and/or outro so that if the 30-second speech overruns, I can overdub it onto the start or trim off the ending.
So it’s not easy but I’ll do that tomorrow.
There were a couple of interruptions to my afternoon though.
Firstly, there was of course my afternoon walk among the throngs of people outside enjoying the weather. Nice and sunny, but cool and very windy (although not as windy as it has been).
My route went by the chantier navale to check on Spirit of Conrad and sure enough, the mast is installed and my neighbour was on deck working away cleaning her up.
The fishing boat is still there, but do you remember that I said that they had laid out another row of blocks so I was wondering if they were expecting another boat in?
Sure enough, there’s one of the very small shellfish boats there now next to the fishing boat. So business down there must be picking up again which is always good news.
And Joly France and Chausiais
The second interruption was … errr … closing my eyes for 10 minutes or so. Three days on the run – this isn’t any good. I don’t want to relapse into my old habits again.
Tea was a leftovers curry – mushrooms, a leek, some potatoes, a small tin of lentil etc. Delicious indeed. Followed by Christmas cake.
On my evening walk I was all alone again. Cold and windy, so I didn’t hang around any. I did my run and made it halfway up the ramp, which isn’t good enough either.
Back here I had a bowl of that banana sorbet to celebrate the forthcoming New Year, and then wrote up my blog.
Later on I’ll be going out for a walk around the town to see what is happening at Midnight, and I’ll let you know tomorrow.
So in the meantime, I wish you all a pleasant evening and a Happy New Year. I hope that in the forthcoming year you will receive everything that you wished on everyone else in 2019.
