Tag Archives: neil danns

Tuesday 13th April 2021 – I HAVE JUST …

… seen a most extraordinary football match.

When you see a score something like Caernarfon 1 Connah’s Quay Nomads 6, you’ll be thinking that Caernarfon were the victims of a right spannering from a team that is, shall we say, not renowned for its goal-scoring record.

And when you find that then Nomads took off their two leading attackers after about 70 minutes you’ll be as bewildered as everyone else.

For the first half the match was quite level – although the Nomads were 2-1 up, Caernarfon were still well in touch. But in the second half, two things happened.

Playing in midfield for the Nomads was a player called Neil Danns. He’s had plenty of experience in the English pyramid, playing for a couple of seasons in the English Premiership and on the international stage for Guyana.

He’s been out of the game for a while and when I first saw him a few weeks ago he looked distinctly sluggish, out of form and out of fitness. But whatever it was that Andy Morrison put in his half-time cup of tea, I’ll have a drink of it too. In the second half we were treated to a Neil Danns masterclass.

The second thing was a player called Johnny Hunt. He’s played on a much higher stage than this too but he’s also been out of the game for a while. He came on as a substitute after about an hour or so playing at left-back and although for the first ten minutes he looked well off the pace, he picked up remarkably rapidly.

He covered so much ground that his fellow full-back Danny Davies could push up forward into the attack and he scored two of the goals, simply because Caernarfon ran out of players to mark him.

If Danns and Hunt continue to improve at this rate, we could be in for something quite impressive.

But going back to the half-time cuppa that they gave to Neil Danns, had I had some of that I would have had a much better day today because me rising out of the bed at the first alarm was something rather like Dracula raising himself from the Dead. It was something very much like an ungainly stagger to my feet when the alarm went off.

After the medication, with nothing on the dictaphone from the night, I had a bash at the photos from August 2019. By the time that I’d finished I’d left the deep ravine near Last Stand Hill and I’m now sheltering with the pack train at the far end of the Little Big Horn battlefield.

As I said a few days ago, I’m going to be here at Little Big Horn for quite a while.

Having done the photos I spent some time revising my Welsh and then, armed with my hot chocolate and sourdough fruit bread, I went for my lesson. And to my surprise, it all went very well. I wasn’t expecting that.

We have three new students who have joined our class for the new term. We’re now no longer beginners but intermediates and these three people have some previous experience in the language. I noticed particularly that one of the new students was speaking Archaic Welsh, the kind that I picked up from my grandmother and from the elderly coach driver with whom I worked at one time.

After lunch I came in here to carry on with my work but I … errr …. went to sleep. And a proper sleep too. It was rather embarrassing seeing as I have so much to do.

But this led me up to my afternoon walk.

people on beach rue du nord Granville Manche Normandy France Eric HallAs usual, the first thing that I did was to go over to the wall at the end of the car park here and look down on the beach to see what was going on down there.

The tide was quite a way out so there was plenty of room for people to be enjoying themselves and as the weather was reasonably warm and it was quite sunny, I was expecting to see the massed hordes of tourists down there sunning themselves.

But to my surprise I could have counted on the fingers of one hand the number of people down there this afternoon.

But anyway I pushed off along the path on my walk around the headland.

trawlers english channel Granville Manche Normandy France Eric HallWhile I’d been looking down on the beach I’d seen some movement in the water in the English Channel near Jersey so when I reached the high point of the path, I took a photo with the aim of cropping the photo and blowing it up (which I can do, despite modern anti-terrorist legislation) when I returned home.

What I was hoping to see was something like Normandy Trader or Thora, one of the little Jersey freighters coming over from the Channel Islands to take away the load of goods on the quayside on the loading bay. But instead I’ve captured a couple of they local trawlers heading for home.

And they are going to be having a long wait outside the harbour because the tide is well out and it will be a good while before it’s back in high enough for them to open the harbour gates.

roofing college malraux place d'armes Granville Manche Normandy France Eric HallWhile I was on my way around, I had a look at the roofing job that they are performing in the College Malraux.

As I was strolling along the path I’d heard all kinds of knocking as if people were hitting things with hammers and I reckoned that it was coming from the roof of the College. The workmen were up there this afternoon and with the two bays on the roof that they had stripped off, they were covering the roof with new laths ready for the new slates.

If they can finish the woodwork quite quickly, it shouldn’t take too long to put the slates on. And who knows? They might even finish the roof some time this year. They have taken long enough to reach this point.

buoys pointe du roc Granville Manche Normandy France Eric HallRegular readers of this rubbish will recall having seen this scene a couple of times just recently.

There’s been this buoy-type of thing that’s been bobbing up and down just off the Pointe du Roc every now and again, and today, it’s been joined by another one. Yesterday, we saw one of the little fishing boats doing something or other just off the headland with its lines out.

It surely can’t be a coincidence that this other buoy has appeared in the vicinity of where the boat was moored yesterday, and I imagine that it would confirm my suspicions that they are indeed markers for lobster pots or the like. But I still think that it’s a rather strange place to leave some lobster pots – on the rocks off the headland just there.

To my surprise, after all of the action that was going o out there yesterday, there was absolutely nothing happening today. And so I pushed off along the path on top of the cliffs.

And to my surprise I wasn’t almost run down on the zebra crossing by ay motor vehicle today either.

anakena hermes 1 notre dame de cap lihou pleasure craft chantier navale port de Granville harbour Manche Normandy France Eric HallThere was however some action going on in the chantier navale this afternoon.

Having seen Lys Noir go back into the water the other day, Anakena, Hermes 1 and Notre Dame de Cap Lihou have now been joined by some kind of expensive pleasure craft. Unfortunately I’m not able to see the name of the boat because of the two guys standing on the platform at the stern obscuring it, so I’ll have to have anothr look tomorrow.

As an aside, Aztec Lady is still here in the chantier navale, out of shot on the far side to the right. There I was thinking when she first came into the place that she would only be there for a short period. She seems to have put down roots.

joly france ferry port de Granville harbour Manche Normandy France Eric HallThere’s been some activity going on over at the ferry terminal too.

Yesterday we had two Joly France boats tied up over there as well as a fishing boat. But today, the fishing boat has gone off to somewhere that I don’t know and we have just one of the Joly France boats over there today, the other one being moored in the inner harbour this afternoon.

The pile of freight is still at the quayside in the inner harbour waiting for someone to take it away but I cleared off back to my apartment and a nice hot coffee.

And then I came in here to make a start (or a finish) on my Central Europe trip and although I managed to do something, I fell asleep again and even missed my guitar practice.

However I did manage to wake up in time to have a quick tea of burger and pasta followed by jam roly poly and dashed in here to watch the football.

Tomorrow I have no plans whatsoever so I’m hoping for a good day’s work. But it’s much later now than it usually is and I’m still not in bed. I can see that I’ll need a mug of Andy Morrison’s half-time drink tomorrow if I’m to do any good at all.

It’s been a difficult couple of days just now. I’ve gone for 4 years being careful about what I do but over the last couple of days I’ve smashed a storage jar, a mug and today, one of my plates.

What with the big computer’s USB3 port, Caliburn’s door handle, the big NIKON D500‘s SD memory card slot and a few other things that I could mention, every thing that I seem to be touching is falling apart right now. I’m at the stage where I’m afraid to go to the toilet.