Tag Archives: mardi gras

Wednesday 6th March 2019 – I’VE ONLY BEEN …

… out once today, and that was this evening.

I did intend to go out mid-afternoon as usual, but I only made half-way down the stairs before I saw the rainstorm raging outside. Not the kind of weather to put a dog out – never mind me.

I tuned round and went back.

We had the usual alarms this morning, and the usual lie-in until 07:25 before I crawled out from under the covers.

Plenty of time to go off on a nocturnal ramble. Last night I was in my house – which could have been anywhere, and a group of us was discussing the floor in the place. We ended up coming to the conclusion that what was needed was a layer of self-levelling cement. This involved moving absolutely everything off the floor so that we could lay the cement, but while everyone was in agreement with the decision, no-one wanted to do the work and it was a very dispirited crew that set to work in there.
Some time later I was in Crewe, wanting to go to the Aldi supermarket. And this was somewhere over at the back of Mill Street in the old terraced houses that had been demolished in the late 1960s. There was a big ruined brick building overgrown with branches and trees. Someone was throwing into the tree a kind of boomerang with a knife blade edge in order to try to cut off a few branches for firewood, but the resounding thud was shaking him up and he was retreating, in a style reminiscent of someone with St Vitus’s Dance. Behind there, amongst all of the weeds and rubble and wild trees was the Aldi Supermarket, all swathed in ivy. It all looked pretty desolate until you were very close to it. Outside was a kind of wire display basket with bananas in there. And what a price they were too. Brexit is beginning to bite.

Most of the day I’ve spent working on three web pages for Carnaval and Mardi Gras for this year. One page for each day.

Some of the photos have come out really well and I’m pleased with them, although others aren’t quite as good as I was hoping.

Whenever I fancied a break, I shredded a few papers and now there’s a huge mound of the aforementioned waiting for me to take them to the container.

If I keep on at this rate, they should be all gone in a few days and that will be a weight off my mind.

And, unfortunately, round about 13:00 I dozed off on my chair for half an hour.

With having made progress on the tracks that I’ve been playing on the bass (I can even play on the bass the guitar riff from Tom Petty’s track “Makin’ Some Noise” off Into The Great Wideopen – probably the best album Tom Petty ever made), I downloaded a few more tracks to work on.

These are going to be much more complicated to work out but I need to push onwards.

Tea tonight was a lentilburger with pasta and tomato sauce followed by more apple pie and coconut-flavoured soya cream. Delicious it was too.

night ferry ile de chausey port de granville harbour manche normandy franceThe rain had stopped this evening so I went out. Windy it was though, so I was all alone except for a jogger with a LED headlight thing.

The sky was quite clear and there was a nice view across the tidal harbour over to the quay where the ferries to the Ile de Chausey and Jersey tie up.

In the background are the lights of the southern part of the town.

So tonight I’ll have an early night and try to have a decent sleep. Thursday tomorrow so I’m going to try to go for a walk to LIOL and do my shopping.

There’s a few things that I need.

Tuesday 13th February 2018 – THE BEST-LAID SCHEMES O’ MICE AN’ MEN …

… gang aft agley, as the old saying goes.

And that’s certainly true of many people, particularly of me, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall only too well.

I’d had yet another decent sleep, and been to Brussels to see my old friend Enzo, who proudly told me that he had a job of work to do at 16:00. And that was a shame, as I also had a jo for him to do at 16:00. But never mind. With a smiling grace, he cheerfully accepted both jobs, so I left it to him as to how he was going to work it out. My next port of call was to wander around Nantwich to a small marquee where several expensive cars were on display. One of them was a Rolls-Royce – or maybe a Bentley – and the salesman was showing a surprising disinterest in his product. When I queried it with him, he told me that he has just been sacked for having made, in what he thought was a secure confidence, some kind of derogatory comment about the product that he was selling. It had reached the ears of his employers and they had told him that when he goes home at the end of the day, not to bother coming back. He was complaining that he now had no work to do, and so I told him that my friend Enzo had two jobs to do at the same time, and he wasn’t complaining.

I just about beat the second alarm, organised the medication and then had my breakfast. I put the heater on in the bathroom and was settling down waiting for the bathroom to warm up, and the telephone rang. Terry was once more having vehicle issues.

He’d been taken to a garage down in Avranches but had no way of returning home. So I quickly had a shower, set up the washing machine and then headed off down there.

Finding the garage was not easy, and then we had to wait ages while they sorted out all of the paperwork. As a result it wasn’t until midday that we arrived at Roncey. Luckily Liz was back from work so she made coffee and lunch and we had a good chat.

After that I headed home, only to find that all of the post offices are closed for Mardi Gras. So all of the letters that I had written yesterday – they’ll have to wait for a few days now.

Up to that point the weather had been absolutely gruesome – one of the worst days of the year. And that didn’t bode very well for the Carnaval procession. But dramatically, the clouds cleared and we even had a little sun.

Consequently I nipped down to the town to watch it all go by yet again, was once more pasted in confetti and had a couple of dances with a couple of female performers. That’s not like me, is it?

But I couldn’t keep it up for the rest of the afternoon and came back here, for a … errr … little relax.

For tea I finished off the tortillas and stuffing, with spicy rice, and then had my usual walk.

Tonnes more photos to edit and upload, something that I was planning to do this morning. But that will all have to wait now. I’m not sure when I’ll find the time now to get around to it.

But now it’s bed-time. I have an early start in the morning as you know. With it being Shrove Tuesday today, it must be Sheffield Wednesday tomorrow.

And as I’m writing this, I realise that, in the confusion, I have forgotten to do my urine sample for the hospital. So I won’t be taking the p155, which is a shame.