… was not as early as I hoped it would be.
By the time I’d finished out stripping the applause from that live concert and filing it away, it was long after midnight.
There were still a couple of other things to do too and by the time I made it to bed, it was … errr … 02:40 or thereabouts.
My fitbit tells me that I had 4.20 hours of sleep last night, of which just 3.26 was restful sleep. It’s no real surprise then that although I heard the alarms go off, it was more like 07:00, not 06:00 when I finally struggled out of bed.
After the medication and before breakfast, I attacked the dictaphone notes from last night. Always time to go off on a little ramble.
There are some people whose company I positively welcome to accompany me on my little voyages, and regular readers of this rubbish won’t be unaware of who these people might be.
There are others about whom I have well, I suppose, ambivalent sentiments. I can take them or leave them.
But there’s a third group in respect of whom I would cross over to the other side and turn my back rather than to go anywhere voluntarily with them, even if they were proposing going towards Kate Bush and Jenny Agutter. And it was one of those who I encountered last night.
He was there last night and for a change he was being quite friendly, which was quite a surprise considering how things were before I left the UK and on one legendary subsequent encounter. He was going through all of his diary notes from years and years and years ago, all like little blue paper sheets put in folders. We were talking about a Crewe Alex match and the name of a player came up. I can’t remember who he was playing for when we discussed it but he neded up playing for Bury and we did say his name but I can’t remember it. He got his sheets out and said “yes, I went to see that match. The Alex played them on such and such a date and there was a crowd of 3,000-odd there (… in those days 2,000 would have been a really good gate …) only 35 different from the crowd today (… they are now getting over 4,000 …)” he said. “Things haven’t changed much, have they?”. I talked about the prices, all that sort of thing, that it costs a lot more to go in than it did in those days. Then there was something about going to see a house that we were thinking of buying, in a cul-de-sac somewhere like Franklin Avenue. The house had been empty for years and we really didn’t want people to know that we had bought it but we had to go. He had arranged an appointment with an expert to be there, so we had to be there at about 10:00 which meant that Nerina would be late for work that day. We had to wait around for him to come to pick us up. I was doing stuff in one room of the barn and she was doing stuff on her Wolseley in another back in Virlet. It was the first time that we had been back in Virlet for quite some time. There was a strong wind blowing so I went to see what the wind turbine was doing because there was a little ventilator thing on the desk in the room where I was working and that was going round like the clappers with the current. I went outside to have a look and the wind turbine was actually broken. A couple of the blades were shattered in pieces and the through-rod thing had dismantled and it was looking really really sad. I remember thinking that I should have spent the money on more solar instead. I didn’t want to say anything to Nerina to point out about the wond turbine having failed but anyway I was surprised to see her working on her car so I just said some kind of non-commital thing and didn’t say very much.
After breakfast I made a start on Project 009 but I didn’t get far before I broke off for a shower and a general clean-up.
After all, it is Thursday and that is shopping day at LIDL.
So off I set but I didn’t get very far before I was waylaid. Out there in the bay there was something moving about, and I only had the Nikon 1 with the standard zoom lens. But I took a photo of it to see what it might be, with the aim of blowing it up (the photo, not the object of course) back at home.
And here you are. It’s one of the small fishing boats that goes out for the shellfish, heading off into the English Channel.
Talking of fishing boats, there was more action in the inner harbour.
The harbour gates had now opened and so the larger fishing boats were slowly stirring themselves into life. This one here, with a crew of two on the deck and presumably a third at the wheel, was now heading off out to sea.
In the background we have Granville, the newer of the two Channel Island ferry boats. behind it, pretty much obscured, is Victor Hugo, the older one and quite probably the more reliable of the two.
The walk up to LIDL was a little more painful than it has been recently and I’m not sure why. But I reached there without a great deal of effort and did a little shop.
For a change, there was nothing in the weekly sale that interested me so it was a relatively light shop. More than usual because I’m not going to be here on Saturday for my weekly shopping so I need to make sure that I have enough food on hand until I can visit the shops again.
Back here, I unpacked the shopping and put it away and then resumed my work on the project.
There was a break for lunch (I’d remembered to pick up my dejeunette) and then back to the grind. And by the time that I’d finished, it was time for my afternoon walk.
It wasn’t really cold out there, and it wasn’t as windy as it has been either.
Consequently there were hordes of people milling around outside making the most of what is really unseasonable weather. These were just a few of the people out there today.
No dogs in this shot, which is surprising because there were quite a few round about and at one point we were treated to a little scrap between a couple of them. It certainly livened up the proceedings.
Way out across the bay I’d noticed something unusual on the beach way past Donville les Bains so I took a photo of it to blow up back home.
My initial impression was that it might have been some oyster beds or something similar, but a closer examination of the photo reveals that it’s a large heap of rocks being used as a reinforcement or storm-breaker in front of the little holiday camp out there near the airfield.
With the winds and the storms that we’ve been having, I reckon that they are going to need it too.
Talking of storms and the like, you can’t see it clearly on this photo unfortunately but there was quite a storm brewing out over there off the Brittany coast.
There was a patch of sea about 2kms square that was receiving a right pasting from a torrential downpour. I took a photo of it with the hope of being able to digitally enhance it back in the apartment but it didn’t work out.
You’ll just have to take my word for it if you can’t see it.
Something else that has appeared at the Pointe du Roc just recently is this stele that resembles the headstone of a grave.
Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that over the past year they’ve gradually been trasforming the Pointe du Roc into a pilgimage site for the French Resistance and they’ve erected all kinds of monuments and flagpoles and the like.
This seems to have sprung up overnight too – I don’t recall having seen it before. It’s another memorial to the Resistants and I don’t know why they feel the need for another one without explaining why it differs from the big one just around the corner.
There seems to be signs of movement at the chantier navale too.
Spirit of Conrad is still there and there are a couple of people, one of whom may well be my neighbour, working on it. The smaller fishing boat is also still there.
Conspicuous by its absence though is the larger trawler-type of fishing boat. It looks as if that may have gone back into the water on the early morning tide.
And in the background Joly France and Chausiais are still over at the ferry terminal. They don’t seem to have moved for a good few days.
Back here, I had a little think. There’s a life-changing event taking place in Europe in four weeks time and it’s something that I ought to be commemorating, even if I’m not allowed under the terms of my contract to discuss it.
But Pete Seeger once famously said “Songs Are Weapons” and I have plenty of weapons, and even a launch pad to fire them off. Consequently I spent some time searching for suitable weapons and after about an hour or so I’d ended up with more than enough.
If I put my mind to it, I can come up with something quite formidable and that will be impressive.
For tea tonight I had the other half of the curry from the other night and then went for my walk.
There were a few people, mostly young kids, loitering around but I still managed my run. However I ended up just 10 feet from the top of the ramp before I ran out of steam.
So back here to write up my notes, and then off to bed.
But the good news relates once again to the fitbit. In December I walked 264.95 kms – almost 9 kms per day, and ran for 1 hour 48 minutes – about 3.5 minutes per day. There were only 9 days when I didn’t make the magical 100% and there was one day where I made 179%.
That’s not bad for an Old-Age Pensioner and I’ll go with that any day of the week. But I’m not going to rest on my laurels. I’m going to push on (or push off as the case may be) and see if I can do even better than that.
It’s never too late to try to achieve a satisfactory level of fitness and I do have to say that it seems to be working because I’m feeling better now than I have done over the last few years.
Onwards and upwards, hey?
