Tag Archives: place charles de gaulle

Sunday 7th August 2022 – IT WAS JUST AS WELL …

… that I decided not to go out today on this trip to see the high tides.

While you admire a few photos of Marité coming into port this afternoon after a trip around the bay, I was still awake at 03:00 this morning not even in the least bit tired. Nowhere near going to bed at all, despite all of the efforts that I expended in coming home yesterday.

That is what comes of crashing out like I did late yesterday afternoon. It was about 03:30 when I finally crawled into bed last night – or rather, this morning – and I still wasn’t all that tired.

Mind you, I must have gone to sleep quite quickly because there was plenty of stuff on the dictaphone from last night and it started quite early.

There was something rather indecent written on a wall about something that I’d been up to in the days of my youth with a young lady. Someone had appended some notes to it that attracted a lot of attention. When I went to see it, none of these allegations were actually true (which they aren’t of course – they related to a friend of mine in real life) but that didn’t alter the fact that these allegations are there so I just simply left them there and ignored them but they seemed to be gathering rather a lot of momentum and people were asking me what I was going to do about it. It was very difficult for me to give an answer because I didn’t know how I was going to silence these rumours even though there was no truth whatever in them because you can’t really counteract an anonymous posting in this respect. I’d actually gone there to do something else involving a bucket of water and I had my hands full with this bucket of water at the time as well which meant that I was even less able to do anything about it.

Later on I was dismantling equipment. I had a little workshop set up that was slowly getting itself organised. My brother had one the same but there had been a load of trouble at his workshop and needed some people to go in to refit it. The floors needed re-doing, everything like that. I went in and there was a group of us there. We did what we could but there were a few things that didn’t work. One was some kind of machine where the carburettor needed dismantling so I was working out how to dismantle this carburettor. I wasn’t easy – it wasn’t like a normal one. It was more like one of these Victorian tube ignition things. I was dismantling it and I had a pile of screws and nuts in my hand. There was a little girl helping me so I asked her to fetch a drawer out of one of these little tiny drawer unit things that you use for keeping nuts and screws. She did but it had stuff in it so I tipped them into something else and put these screws and everything into this drawer and told her to find a little piece of paper and write “carb” on it so we know that it’s where the carburettor goes. Someone said “you like working in this workshop, don’t you?”. I replied “I like working in mine much better”. Then someone came by and tried to hold everyone up, wielding a hammer around. He wanted money. I leapt of the top of this workbench at him but I missed. He had some kind of foam spray that he sprayed on me. He added water and it expanded but the aerosol can was still stuck to my jacket so I was able to beat him to death with this can attached to my jacket just by flailing my jacket around and that was that.

It’s been a while since I’ve had a violent dream like this.

So while you admire the folk on the diving platform, I was back at home, talking to my Scottish friend. She rang me back later and said that due to a change of plan she’d actually finish work Friday evening. I said that if she could grab a bus, to come down for the weekend. “I can find you a bed” but I added quite quickly something like “don’t worry, your principles won’t be compromised” because of course she’s extremely religious. There was something about a really idle young boy who wouldn’t do anything. We’d installed an air vent with a metal grille in a wall somewhere. The grille was just vertical slats. They were before a judge somewhere trying to talk about him over things that he’d done or not done. I asked the judge if he could paint these metal slats in this ventilation grille for me. They all couldn’t see why not but it was up to him whether he wanted to do the job

Then another dispute arose about the arrival of camp beds. We wanted 4 camp beds for something but it took us a while to convince some distant member of the family that that was what we needed. In the end they agreed to bring them so I went to change into winter clothes including a pair of winter tights so that I could work outside in the winter when they turned up. They had only brought these beds and not a few other bits and pieces that had been asked, and no car batteries. With no car batteries we couldn’t finish the cupboard that we were building inside the corner of one of the rooms. We found out that it was someone else who was supposed to be bringing the batteries but they had gone out so I had to lift these 4 bunk beds with all the noise and everything in the cold. The only one who would help me was some woman, 50, who had driven this car round who looked as if she was dressed like a scout patrol leader or something

And while you admire a couple of photos of the crowds on the beach, I’d also had a chat with some kind of accommodation director at an army barracks about some double flats. His basic response was that if I don’t like the way that things are run I can jump into the fire alongside the flats which I thought wasn’t very polite.

Going back to this military dream again there was some issue about a couple of yachts that were in a basin but then in the middle of dictating this I fell into a deep sleep and I was then treated to 18 minutes of snoring and I’m sorry, Percy Penguin (who doesn’t feature in these pages as often as she deserves) for doubting your word when you told me that I snored in my sleep.

Despite not having gone to bed until 03:30 I was awake by 09:30.

That’s not the same thing as saying that I was out of bed though.

You’ll have to wait until 10:40 or thereabouts before I finally saw the light of day and then I went off for my medication.

That was followed by working on the music for the radio programme on which I’ll be working on Monday. It’s another good batch of music and the joins have turned out really well.

There’s even a good speech that I managed to track down for my guest and that should bring a smile to the face of everyone who understands it.

After lunch I went and had a wade through all of the … GULP! … 42 photos that I took when I was on my travels. I’ll have to transcribe all of the dictaphone notes at some point and then update the blog entries, along with the entries for when I was in Central Europe that I still haven’t updated yet.

Yes, I’ve let things slide rather a lot just recently and I need to pull myself together.

Anyway, I trotted out for my afternoon walk around the medieval walls, but I was detained by having seen Marité coming into port on the tide.

Other things were coming into port as well from out in the bay, including the trawler Cap Pilar.

But what caught my eye about her was her rather strange “bow down” position as she came around the headland, almost as if her for’rard hold was flooded. There can’t be that much fish in her to make her trim like that.

So having seem Marité come safely into port, I wandered off for my walk around the walls.

You’ve already seen several photos of the crowded beaches and the sea this afternoon.

No surprise there because it really was a nice if somewhat windy day today. But I’m not sure why you would need to bring a tent down to the beach today.

For all of the people around there wondering what was going on after the owners had erected it, they must have thought that the excitement was … errr … intense.

Far too intense for me of course, in my state of health. I wandered off down the Rue du Nord on top of the medieval city walls.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that for the last God-knows how long, the wall around here has been sheathed in scaffolding.

But today, I noticed that it had all gone. So much for the workman telling me a few months ago that they will be here for a year.

What with the way that my health is right now, I wasn’t up to going down to the foot of the steps to see the finished results so instead I pointed the camera over the top and had a play with the exposure time.

And I do have to say that I am really quite impressed with the job that they have done. It really does look well and I hope that they can do the rest of the wall to make it look like this.

Another thing that regular readers of this rubbish will recall is that here a little further along in the Place du Marché aux Chevaux they completely dismantled … “disPERSONtled” – ed … it all the way down almost to ground level.

They rebuilt it right up afterwards and you really can’t tell that it was completely taken apart.

There was a flying scaffolding here too weighed down with 5 tonnes of water in those pallet tanks. The scaffolding turned up overnight last Summer and it did really well to survive all of the storms that we had in the meantime.

There’s an arch a little further on where I can pass outside the walls and walk along the path underneath the walls. In the days of my youth I used to run down there but these days it’s more of an undignified totter.

The path goes past the viewpoints overlooking the diving platform and the beach at the Plat Gousset where I took a few photos, and then I pushed off further along the path.

There’s quite a lot of entertainment going on in the town today and I’d been hearing music. And what caught my eye as I peered down the Rue Paul Poirier was a group of musicians marching up and down the Rue Lecampion into the Place Charles de Gaulle and back again.

Some of the streets are blocked off too for pedestrians only so it looks as if it’s the braderie today, when the shops have a sale to dispose of all of their surplus stock to make more room for the new fashions.

They’ll be setting their stalls out, both literally and figuratively, outside their shops in the street and on the pavements.

While I was at it I wandered off down through the Square Maurice Marland.

All of the roofs in the Rue Des Juifs have been covered with seagull nests and many proud mothers have been rearing their chicks through the early summer. Many of them are now pretty autonomous and are hanging around on their own, just like this one.

But as for the Square itself, it’s looking like a very sad and sorry shadow of itself with the burnt grass and dust-bowl conditions. But you can tell which are the native plants and which are the cultivated ones because it’s the former who seem to be doing better in these drought conditions.

This weekend it has been the Fête des Soudeurs, a festival where all of the local blacksmiths set up their smithies around the town perform in public, with a few musical performances here and there as accompaniment.

It’s all quietening down now but there is still some music and according to one of my neighbours they are auctioning off some of the artefacts.

These days I seems to be having quite a few interactions with my neighbours. This afternoon I was walking around on top of the cliffs looking down into the sea when I fell in with the young guy from the top floor and we had quite a chat.

Back here I transcribed the dictaphone notes from last night and then rolled out the pizza dough that I’d taken out of the freezer a few hours earlier and put on one side to thaw.

The pizza dough was put into the pizza tray to proof and then when it was ready I assembled the pizza and put it on the oven to bake.

It was another delicious one but I reckon that I need a new sharp knife to cut the base because the one that I’m using is struggling to fight its way through the base. Maybe I ought to slice it in future and then eat it with my fingers.

So having now finished my notes, I’m ready for bed. It’s a 06:00 start in the morning to make a start on the radio programme that I’ll be preparing and the way that things are right now, it’s not going to be easy.

So here’s hoping for a better night than those that I’ve been having just recently.

Saturday 5th March 2022 – WHILE YOU ADMIRE …

… a few photos of the 120-odd people who turned up spontaneously outside the Mairie in Granville at midday for an impromptu show of support for Ukraine, I’ll tell you about my really miserable night last night.

And when I say “miserable” I really DO mean “miserable” because last night, in a sleep that went on theoretically for just a little over 8 hours, there were no fewer than 14 entries on the dictaphone and that must be something of a record in anyone’s language.

And so it will be no surprise to anyone to learn that when I awoke this morning with the alarm I was thoroughly, completely and absolutely overwhelmed with fatigue.

Although it wasn’t until very much later that I transcribed the dicatphone notes, it’s probably a good idea if I insert them here so that we can keep things in order.

Last night I was standing up but suddenly I fell forward and knocked over this tripod that had some kind of equipment on it like camera equipment or dictaphone equipment. Then I realised that I was wearing a soldier’s uniform and I’d been arrested or captured, something like that

And then there was something about a cucumber rolling around in the bed and I’ve no idea at all what that was all about.

And then later on I was out with a friend of mine from Brussels. We’d started off at work – we were working together – and then we decided that we would go for a walk. There’s a bride being married in a couple of days and she was having an exhibition so off we went. We had a lengthy heart-to-heart chat about all kinds of things that had happened between us 20 years ago. It was an extremely intimate discussion. She ended up saying “if only you hadn’t been married, if only you hadn’t been middle-aged” etc. It was a really deep discussion. The bride had settled herself down so we decided that we would go and look. I knew that there was a phrase that you had to use but I couldn’t remember what it was. We walked past this tent and a little head popped out – a little girl. I said “cuckoo, are you getting married?” and she blushed and went back, stuck her head back inside. I could see inside that the bride was asleep in the corner of the tent and there were 3 goats in there as well. I was trying to work out the ritual nature of all of this.

I actually missed out a few things in that story about my friend in Brussels. I can’t remember who I was with at first but we were coming in late for work and we heard people talking about the “Naz” department store. I arrived at work and asked someone what had happened about the department store. They replied that it had fallen down. I asked if it was any relation to the fire a few days ago somewhere. They said “no”. This guy was very interested in telling me so much more about so many different things but I wasn’t interested in hearing them. On my way back to my desk with whoever it was I said that we really need to be in work earlier because we are pushing the boundaries and we need to do better than this and make every effort to arrive at work earlier. When I was walking with my friend we could see in the distance a load of white smoke that might either have been from the collapse of “Naz” or whatever it was called or else the remains of this big fire

. Back at home later I was talking to my mother and one of my sisters. I said where I’d been and that many years ago when my blog was in hiatus I used to read books and I’d underline or highlight phrases in books that actually meant something. When I’d been writing my blog subsequently and re-read one of these books and came to a phrase that I’d noted, I’d mentioned it in relation to her. She’s read my blog and seen these references etc but was still interested in coming out with me for a chat. I thought “well, there’s hope yet, isn’t there?”

So there were pirates who stopped a boat and they put everyone ashore. There was a flag that they were flying that had five rings on it like the Olympic flag. I had no idea to engage in this fight so I didn’t go but they swarmed onto this other boat and started hacking the other defenders about to see whether it was going to take them

And here I am doing it again – dictating a dream when I have no dictaphone with me. I was on a boat somewhere in the Indian or South Pacific Ocean and I was talking about the time that I’d been on a voyage of discovery with my Belgian friend – and fell asleep again in the middle of it – but basically what this was about was something about me being there and maybe taking a boat to Japan and back to the USA. There was a lot more to it than this but unfortunately I can’t remember anything and that’s really disappointing.

And later again I was out on the Pacific on yet another ocean liner with someone else when the subject of this girl in Belgium came up again but I don’t know where it went from here. But how many times last night was it that she put in an appearance?

Next time I was in the American cavalry in a dark-blue uniform. There was a person of colour in the troop. We came across this girl and noticed her bounty of seventeen dollars which we thought was quite a lot for her seeing as she was an Indian so we resolved to kill her. She was killed in the struggle but handed her jacket all the same to create an entry to receive this money

And yet again dictating in my sleep but it was one on those things where the ones I was with would go and sort out some enemy checks or something like that so we set off in a car and drove. As we drove around the headland we saw the ruins of a castle across a bay that looked very close. We suddenly realised that we had gone within earshot of these particular people and so we’d better not say any more in case they overheard us.

I was at University last night waiting for morning classes to start and I’d been talking to Rosemary on the ‘phone and I said something like “why don’t you come up?”. When I finished I went back into the classroom and took my seat but suddenly Rosemary turned up. I had to go out to see her and talk to her. I sent her off to the cafeteria because our lecture was about to begin. Back in there the cat was on the windowsill so I went to stroke it. Someone said “that’s my cat” but I said that anyone could stroke it as far as I’m concerned. I found that someone else had taken my seat so I had to look for another empty one. Then I had to go through my timetable to find out what lessons I had for the rest of the week so I could go down when this one finished and talk to Rosemary. There were a couple of conversation lessons I couldn’t miss and one or two other things but there was still a fair amount of time so I had to sit down and think about making a plan that I could take to Rosemary in 40 minutes when this lecture finished.

After the medication and checking my mails and messages (and having a little relax too) I set off to go into town to do a little shopping. I need some mushrooms for the pizza tomorrow and also a baguette for my Saturday treat.

As usual, I went off to have a look at the beach to see what might have been going on down there today. And one look at what is supposed to be the beach will tell you that there wasn’t anything whatever going on down there right now.

And for an obvious reason too. The tide is right in today at probably its fullest extent and that’s put a stop to everything. You can see now how it’s possible for people to be cut off from the steps.

As usual, I was also looking out to sea to see what I could see.

Right out on the horizon in the Baie de Granville are a couple of yachts. At least, one of them is a yacht and I’m not quite sure what the other one is.

As you can see, it’s a beautiful day out there this morning but there’s plenty of haze around farther out and the Channel Islands are obscured which is a shame. I was hoping that we might have had a really good view of St Helier today.

And that reminds me – the ferry service is supposed to be starting up some time soon. I must make further enquiries.

One thing that regular readers of this rubbish might recall is that a few days ago we say the marker on the rocks just off the headland here right out of the water.

Today of course, it’s a completely different story. You can see that it’s almost submerged and that will give you a really good idea of how high the tide is. As I have said before … “and on many occasions too” – ed … we have some of the highest tides in Europe just here.

Of course, with the tide being as it is, the harbour gates will have been open for quite a while and that will account for the yachts, and also for the cabin cruiser that’s out there. At first I thought that it might be fishing but judging by its wake it’s in rather a hurry and presumably heading out to the Ile de Chausey.

The view out to sea might have been obscured by haze this morning but the view along the coast was one of the best that we have ever had.

Although I had to enhance this photograph quite considerably, it shows a really good view of the lighthouse at the Pointe de Grouin on the headland at the entrance to the bay on the Brittany side.

That’s of course where we spent our first night when we were out and about on the Spirit of Conrad in summer 2020.

It was here that I had a ‘phone call about the Demonstration at lunchtime so I abandoned my shopping trip and headed home for a shower and clean-up and to find some blue and yellow clothes.

On leaving the apartment I’m grabbed my ZOOM H8 to record whatever might be happening.

There wasn’t enough time to check the batteries – I use it on the mains here – and so it goes without saying that the batteries were flat. And so were the spare ones too.

But anyway the talk that we were given only lasted for a couple of minutes and that was that. I wandered around taking a few photos until everyone dispersed.

A couple of friends from the radio were here so we all went for a coffee and a chat.

On the way home I popped into Carrefour for the mushrooms and baguette and then crawled slowly (and it was slowly too because I wasn’t feeling too good after my bad night) back home where I had lunch.

This afternoon was pretty slow. Transcribing all of the dictaphone notes took an enormous amount of time and there was also at least an hour and a half when I crashed out completely, absolutely and definitely.

There was football too on the internet – Penybont v Caernarfon. Penybont hit the woodwork twice, had a stonewall penalty appeal turned down, had about 75% of the play and somehow managed to lose 3-0 in a match that they should have won at a canter.

Tea tonight was a couple of those small breaded quorn fillets with potatoes and veg and it was delicious.

This evening, something surprising has happened. Someone from Ottawa has contacted me and asked to be my “friend” on my social network.

As regular readers of this rubbish will recall, I have plenty of family and friends in Ottawa. There are also plenty of people who have been with me on board THE GOOD SHIP VE … errr … OCEAN ENDEAVOUR and of course a certain young lady who has accompanied me on several of my nocturnal voyages in the past.

Consequently I was intrigued to see who it might be and how I might know them.

It turns out that it’s someone who has found me “by accident” and wants me ” to always be open, honest and having free speech about everything, share your worries, your children and everything be that support group for me as I will for you, plan together, play together and treat me like I mean something to you, you don’t have to sugar coat anything, as adults, we can handle things. I expect you to treat me right, be truthful, and honest with me because I do believe in gospel truth and that is what I want. I want to feel true love and happiness with you and share everything with you based on love and understanding.”

She will apparently “climb the highest mountains just to be with the one i love”.

So while you are all reading this, I’ll be waiting for the message when she will ask me to send her the air fare so that she can come to join me.

Monday 21st February 2022 – THIS WINDY WEATHER …

… is really getting on my wick these days.

The other day we had a storm warning for Storm Useless and it wasn’t anything at all to write home about compared to what I have experienced in the past. And yet subsequently we have been battered by winds that would have knocked Storm Useless into a cocked hat.

The high winds that met me this afternoon and which were churning up the sea in the Baie de Mont St Michel were better than anything that we have experienced over the last few days.

In fact the last six months or so have seen nothing but wind and I for one am becoming really fed up of it.

Another thing about which I’m thoroughly fed up are these bad nights that I’ve been having.

Last night, despite going to bed at a reasonable time and falling asleep fairly rapidly I awoke shortly after and it was as if my right leg and both my elbows were on fire.

One of the side-effects of one of the medication tha I take makes me itch and with having really thin blood, every time I scratch myself I bleed. And having made a right mess of my right leg a few months ago and then spent several months doing everything that I could to help it to heal, then it’s now back to even worse than it was back then.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall one of my habitual partners in crime (was it Zero?) seeing my leg during one of our nocturnal rambles and bursting into tears. Well, that was exactly how I felt when I saw the mess.

At some point towards the morning I must have fallen asleep because I went off on a ramble. There was something strange last night that involved a girl whom I knew although it took place in French. It concerned some kind of confusion between a couple of people who were having marital problems. I knew someone called Michael and she knew a different person called Michael. I knew the one who was having marital problems and it turned out that the one that she knew was also. When we were discussing them we were confused about who was the one about whom we were talking. But the alarm went off at that moment and I can’t remember any more.

Hauling myself out of bed at 06:00 was pretty miserable but once I’d checked my messages and everything I had a go at my radio programme. And by 10:45 it was all up and running and I was listening to it.

In fact I could have finished it earlier but I had a ‘phone call. The nurse was in the building giving someone a blood test so he wondered if he could come round to give me my fortnightly injection then instead of coming back at lunchtime.

No point in inconveniencing him so he came round and inconvenienced me. Not that it really matters, I suppose

While I was listening to the output, and also to the radio programme that will be broadcast this coming weekend, I had something of a tidy up and did a few other things here and there that needed doing.

After lunch I had some correspondence to deal with and then I headed off into town.

You’ve already seen the effects of the wind that was whipping up the sea in the bay, but something else down there had caught my eye.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that Carnaval has been cancelled this year but it looks as if the Fête Foraine – the funfair – is still going ahead.

Down there are all the living quarters of the showmen who will be setting up their amusements on the car park down by the Salle Hérel.

That’s not very many compared with what we have seen in the past so it will be interesting to see how things develop over the next few days if more and more of them come into town.

Someone else who has come into town today is Les Epiettes.

She’s painted in the colours of the French Government and the sign on her rails saying “do not tie up to me” would seem to bear that out.

Further research tells me that she’s owned by the Département des Ponts et Chausssées – the Department of Roads and Bridges – and she must be based reasonably locally because Les Epiettes is the name of a buoy somewhere off the coast of the Ile de Chausey.

And that was where I encountered her for the first time when we were out there on Spirit of Conrad two years ago.

Someone else who is in port today is Chausiaise.

But she isn’t moored up where she has been for the last couple of weeks. She’s now moved and is underneath the crane in the loading bay.

That would seem to indicate that she’s off on another voyage somewhere very soon. She usually goes out to the Ile de Chausey although just recently we’ve noticed her coming back from St Helier in Jersey.

With important things to do, I had to leave her there and wander off into town. I’ll go and have a walk around the harbour at some other time. I need to go to see the doctor some time soon.

Meanwhile down at the Post Office I posted off my letter and then made ready to come back home. I wasn’t going to hang around.

In the street outside the post office the people associated with the fête foraine were setting up a couple of stalls.

It seems that they are making the most of the absence of the Carnaval to take over some of the ground that the Carnaval would otherwise occupy.

Incidentally, despite the fact that the half-term holiday is over, the kiddies’ roundabout is still in the square so it looks by the nature of the stalls here that they are going to have a kiddies’ corner in the town centre.

Presumably, the activities in the car park will be reserved for the adults and take place during the hours of darkness.

The walk back up the hill towards home was rather more difficult than I was expecting it to be, seeing as I had only myself and the NIKON D500 to worry about.

Halfway up the hill I stopped because there was something that I was keen to see. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that a few weeks ago they had replaced some of the crumbling brickwork with some new stuff but they hadn’t actually pointed them.

And when I had a close look today, I saw that they still hadn’t pointed between them. Once the frost and the rain get in there the new brickwork won’t be staying there for very long.

Before I went back to my apartment I braved the gale-force wind and went to see what was happening down on the beach.

Down below on the beach, regardless of the wind, there were several people wandering about. Mind you, it was quite sunny so I suppose that if you could tolerate the wind it was quite a nice day.

Back in the apartment I had my coffee and came back in here where, regrettably, I fell asleep again for half an hour or so. Mind you, after the night that I had, it was hardly any surrpise.

And then I went for tea. A stuffed pepper with rice and I do have to say that the stuffing in the pepper was the best that I have ever made. The way in which I make it is rather hit-and-miss but this evening’s efforts were definitely a hit.

Having written up my notes and having transcribed the massive amount of dictaphone notes from yesterday I’m off to bed. I’ve soaked my leg and elbows in some cold cream and I hope that it will work and I won’t set myself on fire tonight.

Thursday 25th November 2021 – I MIGHT HAVE BEEN …

… rather hasty when I posted my rather vituperative comments the other day about the state of the road surface in the Rue St Michel.

As I walked past this afternoon on my way to the Post Office I can see that the workmen have come back.

While I watched, they were digging up the surface of the road down to a depth of about 30 centimetres, and they had some rather heavy professional equipment to move the soil, as you can see.

It’ll be interesting to see what happens next down there

However I can tell you what is happening next on the public car park outside my building.

Aapart from the equipment and material parked down at the far end, there’s a lorry with a skip and the dumper that you saw in the previous photo is bringing the soil to dump into it.

In fact it was the rather frequent passage of the dumper and its load up and down the street here this afternoon that actually drew my attention to the fact that there was work going on somewhere in the vicinity and I ought to be tracking it down.

At least it will give me something to do rather than to wade through mountains of sleep yet again because I had another miserable night. You can tell that my the amount and distance of the voyages on which I travelled.

We were living in London last night and a lad there was living in a house as a lodger. We suddenly found out that his landlady was someone really evil, in the style of Dracula or something so we rushed round there, made our way into his or her room. All of a sudden the woman appeared at the window and was making all kinds of uncomfortable gestures. The guy with me shooed her away and we played cards or something. Later, she came back and started to assemble a scaffolding at the front of the house. We chased her away again. The 3rd time we sent the dog out but it really didn’t do much so this guy went out with the dog, and the dog put an end to this woman. We carried on playing our game, a board game with this person although we were all very reluctant to sit by the window again in case this woman appeared even though the dog had finished her off

Later on there was something about trains being converted from diesel to electric power and running on electric lines in rural locations but I can’t remember that now. It’s all gone right out of my head.

There was a spaceship that landed on some ice. We went to see this spaceship and went on board. We were just about to go to bed when we heard a noise outside. We saw one of the people who had originally been on this boat and had somehow managed to escape. They were busy putting the leg of their boat or whatever back into position after they had moved it out of the way so that they could leave. We anticipated that there was going to be some kind of concert and right as this concert started under way I can’t remember any more about this
They had to start by untangling these jeeps and air passengers and so on, making a place on the stage for me to sing and where I could record but my voice seems to have gone down an octave and I couldn’t sing the parole as high as I used to
Later on I was on some kind of seaplane and it put us down somewhere in the far North of Canada on the sea. As we started to try to clamber off I looked out of the window and saw one girl whom I knew redirecting traffic and so on
… “I fell asleep here” – ed …
So I didn’t know then what was happening because I fell asleep again. Stopped wondering about what was going on, and then there was the missing one about being on board that seaplane that I added at a later date – and that really makes sense, doesn’t it?
There was a big party taking place and loads of people whom I knew where there. They were all doing exciting things. My German friend, for example, was cycling up a wall. Everyone was going around trying to find a friend, partner or something like that. I knew that nothing was ever going to happen to me. Who should turn up but a long-departed friend of mine. We had a little chat but because of my health issues the idea that I would have a partner was out of the window. We started talking, a couple of us there, and suddenly she burst into tears. I asked her what was the matter and eventually it was when we said that we can’t go on like this. I said “I can’t remember saying it”. She replied “you did, several weeks ago”. I thought that she meant that I’d said it today. Anyway, I tried to explain to her about my health problems, that I had other preoccupations at the moment but it was quite difficult for me to talk as she was in such a condition

Finally, Castor and Pollux put in a brief cameo appearance and it’s been a long time since they’ve done that, isn’t it? There was something about a major airport, it might have been Luton, that was having to close down because two big budget flight companies had collapsed so now the airport wasn’t having the custom that it had. Of course, whatever business we has was going to affect that very much. I said that Travel Agency was going to be the thing to get into because people like Castor and Pollux who were growing up are not going to be very happy sitting on a coach now for 10 days. They’ll be much more interested in sitting on a beach. Whoever it was with me was saying “that will change in the future”. I mentioned “we aren’t talking about the future at the moment, we’re talking about the way things are right now.

Once more I was wide-awake long before the alarm went off, although you might not think so reading all these notes, but even so it took me an age to tear myself out of bed.

After the medication and checking my mails and messages I transcribed my masses of dictaphone notes and then set about dealing with these interview sound files. I ended up with two distinct interviews, and two for the price of one is always good value, even if it did take me until tea time, although with plenty of interruptions.

Not the least of the interruptions today was for the bread.

And isn’t this a magnificent-looking loaf? It’s certainly one of the best that I have ever made and when I tried it for lunch with my salad it tasted just as good as it looked.

This one was definitely a success and if I can produce loaves like this all the time I’ll be really happy.

It probably has something to do with the amount of time that I spent kneading it and shaping it. That probably contributed quite a lot to the success.

Something else that has taken up a lot of my time just recently has been a pile of correspondence that I have received today. An enormous box of papers has come to light relating to my maternal grandfather (who died in 1951) and his side of the family. No-one knew that they existed until recently.

Someone is currently scanning everything and sending them out in dribs and drabs. I’ve jhad a few loads just recently and another batch turned up today.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that my maternal grandmother was a well-known Vaudeville and Music-Hall singer in Canada in the early post-World-War I era.

It turns out that my maternal grandfather was an accomplished piano player and singer, and taught at a private boarding school, Denstone College, near Rocester (and that, incidentally, explains why my grandmother died in the hospital in Stafford). Later on, he had a road haulage business in Wisbech.

The letters are fascinating stuff, in particular his castigation of his younger brother for having abandoned his own business when he became ill, totally and utterly ignoring the fact that he himself had abandoned his own two children to strangers when his wife was taken ill.

In fact, when the south-east of England was evacuated in World-War II he wouldn’t even take his own children into his safe house in Wisbech and they were cared for instead by his younger brother.

But anyway, I digress. But at least I now know why the members of my mother’s side of the family are nothing but a bunch of thespians.

There was tile this afternoon to write the two incendiary (not that it will do me much good but it makes me feel better) letters that I should have written and posted yesterday.

On the way down to the Post Office I had a call to make. We have several projects on the go for the radio right now, one of which concerns the Carnaval here, and not too far away from here lives a woman who is a costumier who makes the outfits for the carnivalers.

My task for today was to persuade her to be interviewed for the radio and after a chat of about 15 minutes she agreed. We’ll have to organise a date in the near future.

On the way down into town, passing the Rue St Michel, I ended up at the viewpoint overlooking the port.

We have a trawler – Jade III – over there parked stern-on to the quayside. There’s a van parked next to it and a couple of guts working on untangling a fishing net. They are going to have hours of fun playing around with all of that.

Also over there are the two sad, sorry-looking Channel Island ferries, the blue and white Victor Hugo and behind her, the newer Granville. I wonder if we’ll ever see them resuming their sailings. It’s not looking very optimistic right now.

Down in the town centre I posted off the two letters that I had written and then looked across at the Christmas decorations on the Place Général de Gaulle

There’s a cherry-picker down there this afternoon so it looks as if they are installing the Christmas lights. And I hope that they will be different from last year’s. I couldn’t ever understand why towns don’t meet up and swap decorations every year so that we have different ones all the time.

As for what’s going on round by Santa, we can’t see anything because of all the forest. It looks as if Birnam Wood has finally made it to Dunsinane after all.

On the way back home I stopped for a gander at the inner harbour.

It looks as if one of the Jersey freighters has slipped in without me knowing it because a lot of the freight that was on there last time we looked has now disappeared

But not to worry. There’s still a large pile of stuff accumulating on the quayside. It looks as if it’s all going non-stop at the moment and that will keep the little freighters busy. It’s good news for the port too as we are struggling somewhat now that the big gravel boats have stopped coming.

On the way back home I remembered to go and have a look at the beach this afternoon.

Only one person down there this afternoon. he looked as if he was a fisherman but I couldn’t see whether or not he had a rod with him. He was however striding out into the water with some great purpose.

Back here I made myself a coffee and carried on with my reading 70 and 80-year old letters and editing the sound files for my radio intervals.

Tea was veggie balls and pasta tonight. I have mountains of those and they need to be eaten so I’m doing my best to polish them off. At this rate, I reckon that they’ll finish me off before I finish them.

Bedtime now, and tomorrow I have yet more work to do – not for me either but someone’s bunged a translating job on me at the last moment.

There are also these sound files to send off for some gap-filling, a pile of questions for a bunch of elves, some shopping to do (as I’m at a weekend Welsh School this coming weekend) and several other things before I even start to think about my own work.

There just aren’t enough hours in the day.

Monday 23rd August 2021 – DOWN IN THE TOWN …

… This afternoon there was all kinds of stuff going on.

In an effort to prolong the holiday season and entertain the tourists, all of the streets in the town centre were closed off to traffic and there was a braderie – a sale – and all kinds of stalls and entertainment to go with it.

And the streets were crowded with people too, taking advantage of the opportunities that are presented to them while the sale goes on. And I wonder how long it’s going to go on, whether it’s just a one-day affair or whether it’s going to go on for a few days yet.

This morning I was up and about as the first alarm went off and after my medication I attacked the radio programme that I was planning to prepare.

And by 10:30 it was all finished, all the way from start to finish, despite having stopped for a coffee and for breakfast. That’s the quickest that I have ever prepared a programme.

While I was listening to the programme that I prepared and also the one that will be broadcast this coming weekend, I tried to send off this weekend’s programme but my internet was playing up. I’d noticed at the weekend when I was watching the football that the connection wasn’t as fast as it might have been.

After a while, being totally fed up with it, I ended up by hard-wiring it and almost immediately there was a dramatic increase in transfer speed and things are now going much better.

For lunch, there wasn’t any salad in the house. However there was some frozen soup that I had made a long time ago and that went down really well with what was left of the bread that I’d brought home from Leuven.

This afternoon I had a nice hot shower and a good clean-up to make myself look pretty and then I left the apartment for my appointment with the physiotherapist.

As I wandered down the side street towards the harbour I noticed that the tide was miles out.

The tide was so far out that there were quite a few people at the peche à pied this afternoon. That’s just as well because there wouldn’t be anyone out there with a rod and line, as far as I can see.

On the extreme left of the photo you’ll see the VEE of the medieval fish trap at St Pair sur Mer. It seems to be that quite a few towns along the coast around here had a fish trap, and it’s a shame that they have never been maintained.

Down the hill I went towards the town centre and this is where I encountered the braderie.

From the viewpoint overlooking the port I could see all the way down to the Rue Cambernon and all the way down to the end of the street.

The street was blocked off and there were hordes of people wandering around down there. Many of the shops had their stalls out in the street and some of them had tents and awnings over the top – not that we were expecting very much in the way of rain today.

And of course, the cafés were doing a roaring trade.

While I was here, I had a good look around to see what else there was going on down there this afternoon.

We’ve seen the Festival of Working Sailboats all over the area surrounding the harbour, but most of that has now been cleared away. There was just one lorry down there, and it was loaded up with all kinds of bits and pieces from one of the exhibitions.

In the background is one of the trawlers with a banner protesting about the offshore wind farm that has been proposed for the bay. And I’m not sure why they are complaining because the turbines are to be mounted on the rocks rather than in the sand and silt, so they wouldn’t be dredging there for seafood anyway.

By now I was down in the town centre.

My route along the Rue Cambernon had taken me down to the Place Charles de Gaulle. The kiddies’ roundabout was going full speed ahead, and there was a mobile barbecue van cooking a load of sausages.

It was using the dreaded charcoal fuel, judging by the smoke and the smell. The previous mayor tried to outlaw that a couple of years ago but the market traders took her to court over it and won their case.

It certainly adds ambience to the market and any other event, but I’m not sure that it’s the ambience that they want.

While I was here I took a few photos of the surrounding streets, and you’ve already seen one of the photos.

All of the streets radiating from the Place Charles de Gaulle were closed, including the Rue Paul Poirier where I stayed when I first came here. As an aside, I was in the room right above the pink canopy on the extreme left of the image.

Underneath it is a chip shop and snack bar, and it totally surprises me that with the braderie going on and all of the crowds in the streets, they have decided not to open today. That’s a mystifying decision.

All the way up the Rue Couraye the braderie stretched.

You can see all of the stores and the crowds even here at the end of the pedestrianised area.

The traffic rejoined the street at the Boulevard Hauteserve but that didn’t bother too many of the shops. They still set out their stalls regardless and the crowds still thronged the pavements.

At the therapist’s, he poked and prodded the area around my knee with a couple of large brass needles and then with his hands. And he found a few places that were really painful.

He came to the conclusion that my anterior cruciate ligament has failed, and that there’s a certain weakness of the muscles. He’s prescribed a course of treatment of two sessions a week for 10 weeks, starting on … errr … Wednesday.

He told me in the meantime not to go carrying anything heavy, so I set off up the hill to LIDL to do my shopping.

There weren’t many people there but those who were there were doing all kinds of mega-shopping and it looked as if I was going to be waiting in the queue for ever. But luckily a till opened up right by where I was standing and I was the first in and out.

On the way back home with my heavy load, I went past the building site on the corner of the Rue St Paul and the Rue Victor Hugo.

The big, expensive crane is still there of course, but there are no workmen operating it. In fact there haven’t been any workmen on the site for quite a while and the whole place is overrun with weeds that cover many of the materials that were deposited there.

And that’s something that I don’t understand either. Those cranes cost a fortune to hire so I can’t understand anyone hiring one and having it on site and then going off on holiday for a couple of months. If they weren’t going to use it they should have waited until September for the crane.

Down the hill in the Rue St Paul and the Rue Sainte Geneviève I went, and cut through the Rue Saint-Sauver back into the town.

The braderie had extended into the Rue Saint-Sauver too and many of the shops had set out their stalls into the street.

All in all, there were all kinds of stuff on sale in this braderie and some of the prices looked interesting, which was a surprise considering how things normally are around here.

There were plenty of people out there too this afternoon taking of advantage and it was a case of having to fight your way through the crowds if you wanted to get anywhere.

So fighting my way through the crowds I ended up down the end of the Rue Paul Poirier ready to climb up the Rue des Juifs.

That was closed off too, and I don’t understand why because most of the shops along here aren’t the kind that would have a braderie or an outside stall.

Clutching the energy drink that I had bought at LIDL, I attacked the hill and made it all the way to the top with just 5 stops for breath – a vast improvement from Saturday.

One of the stops was to speak to a neighbour who was coming down the hill. She had plenty to say for herself so we had quite a chat while I recovered my breath.

Another pause for breath was at the viewpoint overlooking the loading bay at the harbour.

And we seem to have acquired a yacht down there right at the moment, and I’ve no idea where it came from and why it’s still there. The family down there seem to be taking quite an interest in it as well

I don’t suppose that it is freight for one of the little Jersey Freighters to take back home with it. I’ll have to see if it’s still there on Wednesday when I go back to see the physiotherapist, or maybe make more enquiries about it.

The climb up the hill was far less stressful than Saturday, which was a relief, so even though it was much later than usual, I went to have a look at the beach to see what was going on.

Despite it being rather later than usual, the tide was still well out and there were a few people walking around on the beach. Not as many as I was expecting to see, considering that the holiday season will be over at the weekend and they should be making the most of the few days that they have left.

No-one was brave enough to actually be in the water which was a surprise. Although it was quite late in the afternoon, it was still fairly warm and there wasn’t all that wind blowing about today

While I was looking down onto the beach I was also looking out to sea to see what was going on.

The Ile de Chausey was looking quite nice, and there were a few boats out there. I could see a yacht and also a speedboat quite clearly.

The camera that I had with me was the old NIKON D3000 fitted with the 18-105mm lens so it’s not going to pull out images anything like as good as I might have done with the big NIKON D500 and the 18-300mm lens, but it’s nice and light.

Not as nice and light as the NIKON 1 J5 but as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, that needs repairing.

Back here I made myself a strawberry smoothie and came in here to write up the dictaphone notes, but instead I crashed out completely. I missed just about everything and my tea was quite late.

Stuffed pepper now that I have the peppers and mushrooms, with rice and veg. No dessert.

Now that I’ve finished my notes, it’s quite late so I’m off to bed. I have a Welsh lesson tomorrow and I need to be on top form for that.

Saturday 10th July 2021 – 265 DAYS …

… since we were last in the Stade Louis Dior to watch a football match, so I’m told.

And I nearly missed this one as well because the kick-off was at 16:00 and at 15:00 I was fast asleep, crashed out in my chair slumped over my desk. It was something of a scramble for me to make it to the stadium in time for the kick-off.

Up until that point it had been a reasonably good day as far as I was concerned. Once more I was up as soon as the alarm went off at 06:00 and although it was a struggle to gather my wits (which will be quite a surprise to everyone seeing as I have so few wits left these days) I gradually pulled myself round ready to face the day.

First task after the medication was to listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. Noticing that the newspapers had arrived today we read them and we noticed that the group “White Spirit” was appearing somewhere. They had one of these young female singers so the two girls would have liked to have seen them. I ended up buying 4 tickets and I took a friend of mine and the 2 girls so the 4 of us went. The 2 of us decided that we didn’t really want to go so we’d wait outside the hall in the car. He’d had to paint the doors inside-out so the paint was one colour but I’d had the tin and taken a look inside it and it was the right lot so I thought that … indistinct … Anyway they wandered off. This girl was singing and at the end of the first song she came down the corridor and came out to us saying “I hope that you 2 are going to behave because I’m going to be coming out here afterwards to see you”. She stayed to chat to us for a while. She was sucking on a stick of rock and I thought that seeing as she has a stage performance to do she’s being extremely I couldn’t think of the word. But there was much more to it than this of course but I can’t now remember what it was. And never mind the guy – who were the 2 girls we took to the concert and who was the girl who came to see us? Yes, all these girls appearing during the night and I can’t remember who they are. What kind of state is this to be in?

Later on I had to go to Manchester with a computer or PA or something so I got on the tram. Someone I knew was on there so I said “hello” to him. We set off and were well on our way when suddenly the tram came to a stop. I walked down towards the front past this guy again to see what was happening. There was some big accident in front of us so I got off the tram and started to wave the traffic through. All the traffic including this tram got through this obstruction. It all drove away and left me standing there so I had to hitch-hike. I had a lift with someone in a Mark I Cortina and it was an automatic with a bench seat in the front, or it might have been column change with a bench seat in the front. We were talking about something with these cars. I said something and he denied it but I knew that I was right but he wasn”t having any of this at all. In the end I took the rubber mat out of the front and emptied it out to make the car a bit tidier. He told me that I could drive on the way back. There was lots more to this dream as well but I can’t remember it now.

Having dealt with all of that, what remained was to bring up to date yesterday’s journal entries. Perhaps I should add at this point that although I said that I was going to have an early night last night, but in fact I became engrossed in the acoustic guitar and ended up playing for a couple of hours.

And I can’t do the slip-change from Chord C to Chord F and back again like I used to. I’m far too rusty.

Having organised the notes from yesterday I spent the rest of the morning organising the new laptop bag and making sure that it has everything that I need in it.

And then I packed the little suitcase that I’m taking with me, and sorted out the clothes that had been airing on the clothes airier on my windowsill since I can’t remember when.

While I was sorting things out I came across an old USB drive and a USB SD micro-card reader stuck in the pocket of an old abandoned bag.

And searching further I came across the missing audio cable for which I’ve been searching since I don’t know when. I must have taken it with me to Canada a few years ago so that I could couple up my old *.mp3 player to Strider’s audio input socket, and then forgotten to unpack it.

Here’s hoping that whatever new vehicle I might buy to replace Strider will have a USB socket. Yes, I was having a good look at a Subaru Forester estate car this afternoon while I was out.

After lunch I came in here to do some work on my photos but I soon crashed out on the chair. And then it was a rather desperate struggle up the hill.

On the way out to the football ground I went past the Place Charles de Gaulle and the Saturday market.

Summer is in full swing here in Granville if you are a kid (except in the Square Maurice Marland of course) and the kiddies’ roundabout is in full swing with plenty of potential customers. I stayed to watch the proceedings for a minute while I caught my breath and then pushed on up the hill.

And it was a long, lonely climb up there and I had to stop four or five times to catch my breath. I’ve aged 20 years over this last couple of months and that has filled me full of dismay. But I eventually arrived at the Stadium Louis Dior.

En Avant Guingamp play in the French Second Division, but this was described as “A Team from EA Guingamp” which probably means that it contained triallists and players on the fringes of the first team rather than the first team itself.

And in an astonishing match, and in a game that Granville pretty much dominated, they somehow managed to lose the game 3-0. Threw it away completely and comprehensively.

Two goals they gave away by defenders going to sleep and there should have been a third as well except that the Guingamp player stood on the ball instead of kicking it. The third goal was a wonder strike of a curling free kick round the blind side of the defensive wall.

Granville had a bew player playing in the centre of defence – an older guy – and he certainly looked as if he had been around the block a few times. He was head and shoulders above anyone else on the pitch. He wasn’t a centre back from what I could see but more of a defensive midfielder distributing the ball out of defence. If he has signed for the club then things are looking up.

But once again, total defensive lapses and a bunch of forwards who couldn’t score in a brothel

But here was something interesting that I have never seen before on a football pitch at this level.

Two players on the same team with the same number. And about 20 seconds after I had noticed, so did a few other people and the “older” n°33 was quickly withdrawn and replaced by another player. And he’d only been on the pitch for a couple of minutes too.

The younger n°33 took some time to warm up but once he got going he had a good game. He almost scored too, getting in on the end of a delicious cross to the far post but his shot was somehow scrambled off the line.

So after all of this I think that it’s going to be a long, hard season, if we manage to complete it.

On the way up towards the football ground I’d noticed the town centre covered with these signs.

There had been something in the local newspaper about shops opening all day on Sunday during the summer season but I hadn’t realised that parking will be banned in the town centre too. This makes for interesting opportunities if ever we have a summer here.

Actually it was quite warm now – the sun being out made a change from the damp, dreary start of the day, so I went for an ice cream. But my favourite ice cream parlour was surprisingly closed. I had to walk quite a way before I found another one with non-dairy options.

By now I found myself on the quayside at the spot where the fresh fish seller sells his catch from his boat every Friday morning.

However he’s announced that he’s not operating until the middle, missing the entire summer season, which seemed rather strange to me. But then I noticed the photos of his boat, and that explained everything. Do you recognise it?

Anyway, clutching my ice cream I wandered off down the quayside to see what else was going on that I might have missed since I’ve last been on the quaysid.

And here’s an old friend of ours riding the waves at her mooring here in the inner harbour.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that for the past couple of weeks we’d been seeing the trawler Philcathane up on blocks in the chantier naval until she went missing, back into the water, at the end of the week.

By the looks of things she’s all finihsed now with her nice fresh coat of paint and she’ll be ready to go back to the fishing grounds on Monday.

And the interesting question now is “who has gone to replace her in the chantier naval?

But never mind that for a moment. Let’s turn our attnetion to the immediate present and what’s going to be going on in town.

It looks as if they are planning quite a pile of events to welcome the tourists to the town and this one is certainly a new one on me that I haven’t seen before.

It looks as if there is going to be some kind of swimming race from the port and around the Pointe du Roc to somewhere on the other side of the headland. So good luck to those who are attempting it.

And never mind “no parking”. They will probably need a good ambulance of two or three at the finishing line to take away the unlucky ones. Struggling with the tides and the currents in the sea won’t be as easy as some people might think.

While I was walking along the edge of the quayside I was overflown by a helicopter. Someone has hed their chopper out this afternoon.

The only camera that I had with me today was the NIKON 1 J5 and the standard lens (I’ve mentioned before that it passes amost unnoticed into sports grounds and the like where a large DSLP won’t) so I wasn’t able to take much of a photograph of it this afternoon.

Without the telephoto lens I can’t see if it’s the yellow and red air-sea rescue helicopter, a drab olive military helicopter or a multi-coloured civilian chopper. But hs didn’t have any of his emergency lights on so whatever he was doing wasn’t anything urgent. I could press on without witnessing anything dramatic.

So, did you all guess the significance of the photo to which I drew your attention earlier?

We’ve all … “well, one of us” – ed … been wondering who the big blue trawler is that’s appeared in the chantier naval the other day and now we know.

She’s called Galapagos and she belongs to the people who sell the fresh fish on the quayside. And now we also know why they aren’t going to be selling fish until the middle of September and we also have an indication of she’ll be back in the water.

There were some people with the yacht Rebelle. They weren’t very talkative but at least I know that she’ll be back in the water “shortly”.

And while I was chatting to the people working on Rebelle we were disturbed by yet more activity – this time coming from the water.

Of course it’s the weekend, a Saturday evening in Summer zo the tourists are out in their hordes The Ile de Chausey is one of the places to be and so by the looks of things, there have been plenty of people out there.

This is when the two Joly France boats that work the ferry out there come into their own. This is the newer one of the two, Joly France 1 as you can tell by the windows in portrait mode, and she has quite a load of people on board today coming back from the island.

From the chantier naval I wended my weary way up the hill in the Boulevard des Terreneuviers and made it back home. There was time to upload the photos to the computer and then I knocked off for tea.

There’s plenty of stuffing left over and also a pepper that won’t survive until next week so a stuffed pepper it was, followed by chocolate sponge and chocolate sauce. And that reminds me – it’s been a while since I made a jam roly-poly. That will have to be the next dessert.

Back here to write up the journal today when I noticed that I’d performed 95% of my daily activity today. So never one to miss an opportunity, I took the NIKON D500, fitted the f1.8 50mm lens and went for a walk around the block.

And who said “The Land Of The Midnight Sun” then?

This is the sight that greeted me as I stepped out of my apartment this evening. We’re situated at 48°50′ here and that’s far from being in The Land Of The Midnight Sun so imagine what it must be like somewhere north of the Arctic Circle.

It did remind me of the nights that I was driving coaches on my Friday night run to Central Scotland and on one occasion one June-end it was so light that when I’d dropped off my passengers I drove to Stirling and parked up on a mountain top near there to watch the midnight sun and that’s 8° further North.

While I was here at my little spec at the end of the car park I went over to look over the wall.

Not that I was expecting to see anyone on the beach this evening – as a matter of fact I couldn’t even see the beach – but I was more interested in what was going on along the coast, insofar as I could see it.

The Rue du Nord is quite well illuminated right now especially round by the Place du Marché aux Chevaux, and then carrying on to the left we have the lights of the houses on top of the cliffs at the Plat Gousset and then the lights of the waterfront reflecting into the sea down on the promenade at Donville les Bains.

Back across the car park and along to the road now to see what’s going on here right now.

That is of course the Rue du Roc that leads to the headland where we find the lighthouse, the semaphore and the coastguard station – not that you can actually see any of those right now.

It’s very had to believe that a year ago I could run all the way down there to beyond the end of the street lights and then turn left and keep running all the way down to the top of the cliffs. The way I am these days, even just looking at the images makes me feel totally exhausted.

They were halcyon times, they were.

That’s the view in the opposite direction, looking towards the Port St Jean and the entrance to the medieval walled city.

And that shadow down there is the guy on whom I almost stepped in the dark because I hadn’t seen him. I must pay greater attention when I’m out and about in the dark. But at least he gives the photo some animation.

After all is said and done, the Porte St Jean all floodlit at night is one of my favourite photo objects and the shadow gives it something different.

Through the arch we can see the Rue St Jean illuminated by the street lights and in the foreground to the left is the car park for the Foyer des Jeunes Travailleurs

Still 3 or 4% of my daily activity to perform in order to bring me up to my 100% and so I thought that I’d better go for a walk down to the viewpoint overlooking the harbour and see what’s going on there.

And it wasn’t easy to find my way down there either tonight as this economy drive means that all of the streetlamps are switched off and I had to grope my way down there in the dark.

What was even worse was that the harbour was in darkness too. There were just a couple of isolated streetlights and that was really our lot. It was difficult to work out where I was or what I was photograpiong but somewhere down there in the shadows are Granville and Victor Hugo.

They are the two boats that in better times provided the ferry service between Normandy and the Channel Islands but the combined effects of Covid, Brexit and the tight-fistedness of the Channel Islands in refusing to pay a subsidy towards the reopening of the service is making the recommencement of the services more and more unlikely.

At least here at this end of the harbour the presence of a couple more street lights makes it slightly easier to see what’s going on.

Over to the right the ferry terminal is brightly illuminated by several lights but to no good purpose because there won’t be any of the ferries coming into port for quite a while yet.

To the left of the image, illuminated by two street lights are the port offices. They are open when the harbour gates are opened and there is movement in and out of the port.

But with thz harbour being in total darkness like this I don’t think that there will be much movement going on right now.

In the foreground, all wrapped up on the darkness of the night, is the fish processing plant and there isn’t much going on round there right now either.

One final photo before I toddle off back to the warmth and comfort of my own little apartment.

Just behind where I was standing to take those two photos of the harbour area is the Eglise de Notre Dame de Cap Lihou. part of it is obscured by the medieval city walls but the spire isn’t, and it’s illuminated tonight for a change. I can’t go back home without photographing that now, can I?

So back in my apartment I’ve accomplished 102% of my daily activity and been out for my first night-time walk for about 6 months too and taken some photos.

And I’ll have to go out again and take some more, only this time remembering to adjust the ISO from 800 to 6400 so that I can let in more light without straining the camera unnecessarily.

Brain of Britain has struck again, hasn’t he?

Thursday 8th April 2021 – TODAY, I’VE HAD …

… another one of those nautical days that we have every so often.

There has been so much traffic on the waters today that I’ve really been spoilt for choice when it came to taking photos because I could have taken 100 and still not done justice to everything that was going on out there at sea this afternoon.

When I went out there this afternoon for my little walk around the headland I was overwhelmed by the amount of nautical traffic that was bobbing up and down on the high seas, from the smallest plank-boarders to some of the larger trawlers and freighters that hang around the port.

And it wasn’t just out at sea that we were having all of this excitement.

It was pretty busy in the harbour this morning too. One of or favourite boats, the little Jersey Freighter Normandy Trader has come into port on the overnight tide. She’s now tied up underneath the crane at the loading bay while the personnel of the Chamber of Commerce make ready to unload her.

You can see all of the material on the quayside already. I reckon that this is the load that she has to take back with her to St Helier. And you can see how busy she is with all of that load. No wonder her owners are talking about buying a larger boat

And it’s not just at sea and in the port that we are extremely busy. Thee was quite a lot going on in the air today too.

The bright sunny weather has certainly brought out the aeroplanes this afternoon, like this one that overflew me as I walked my weary way around the headland. I’ve no idea what it is because I couldn’t see the registration properly. I can see the last three letters – VNA – of its registration.

Although I checked, there was nothing of that registration that had taken off from or landed at Granville Airport this afternoon. It’s probably frustrating me deliberately by not filing a flight plan so people like me can’t identify it.

So while you admire the picture of the busy port this afternoon with the crowds of boats queueing up and the portable boat lift now tackling Lys Noir, I’ll tell you about my busy morning.

It was rather a late night, although not as late as it has been once or twice, so I was able to leap out of bed with alacrity when the alarm went off.

After the medication I attacked the dictaphone notes for the last couple of days seeing as I missed out on doing it yesterday. And if you now look at yesterday’s entry, you’ll see that that is now up-to-date with the entries for yesterday now incorporated. Now that those were out of the way I could turn my attention to last night’s travel.

Some people came round to my house, including an old friend of mine so I invited a girl to come along as well. I made all of the arrangements but just at the last moment when I was getting ready to receive my visitors I had a ‘phone call to say that this girl was having to go into work so she wouldn’t be able to come. I had a little morning’s entertainment with these people and just strode out and the followed me. They went their separate ways. I just happened to be walking past their house when a car pulled up and these 3 girls got out. 1 of them said “so-and-so will run you home” referring to her youngest sister. “She knows the trick about the car”. They parked up but then they saw me walking past and asked “Eric, are you coming in?”. I walked up the path towards the door to join them.

having dome that I turned my attention to the photos from August 2019 on my North American Adventure and managed a few of those before it was time for me to go off for my shower.

And having done that, I wandered off out on my way to the shops for my mid-week shopping trip.

My route took me past the top of the Rampe du Monte à Regret where they are using the poor state of the medieval wall as a training ground for young apprentices.

And sure enough, there were about half a dozen there, a few of whom were females, something that is always nice to see. All of them with their trowels and mortar boards doing a nice rightward lead along all of the cracks. It brought back many happy memories of when I was POINTING THE WALLS AT MY HOUSE all those years ago.

having watched them for a while I pushed on … “pushed off” – ed … down the steps and on into the town.

And it looks as if they are getting ready for the summer season, such as it might be this year, in the town.

The other day when we were around the town we saw the candyfloss and sweet stand that had arrived in the town and was now parked up hear the harbour. Today I noticed that the kiddies’ roundabout has arrived and has now been set up in the Place Charles de Gaulle ready to entertain them for the next few months.

My next port of call was LIDL for the midweek session of my weekly shopping. I didn’t want all that much from there so I ended up with quite a light load. So not to waste the trip I stocked up with some soya milk and some tomato sauce because I can always use that sort of thing and I never seem to have enough.

On the way back home I had to go along the Rue Paul Poirier, and that wasn’t as easy as it might have been.

There were roadworks in the street today and it was closed to all traffic. Not for pedestrians though so I could make my way along there and while I was it it, I could see what they were trying to do.

They had half of the road dug up near the junction with the Rue Etoupefour but as for why, I didn’t have any idea. They were digging a small trench and one of the guys was relaying the cobbles where there is the 5-minute waiting spot, cutting a few of them with his stone cutter to make them fit into their spaces. I suppose we’ll have to wait for a few days after they have cleared off in order to see what they have been doing.

At the other end of the street, having pushed my way through the roadworks, I crossed over the road and started to go up the Rue des Juifs where I glanced down at the junction of the Place des Corsaires and the Rue Etoupefour.

There was a man down there with some of the cobbles pulled up, chipping away at them. I’m sure that it can’t be a coincidence with people working like this at both ends of the street . They must be doing some kind of work in common so I suppose we’ll find our about that in due course too.

Anyway I carried on up the Rue des Juifs with my light load hardly impeding me at all. I wasn’t going to say that I ran up the street but it was a good climb up there with hardly a pause for breath.

There was an occasion to call for a pause halfway up the hill because there was something of interest going on at the docks.

One thing that I’ve noticed is that each of the Jersey freighters, Thora and Normandy Trader has started to carry a couple of small sealed containers, presumably with private freight, and this morning they were unloading one of them from the deck of Normandy Trader and putting it on the quayside ready to be taken away.

That was all of the excitement for the morning. I wandered off home for my hot chocolate and sourdough fruit bread and to continue with my photo editing.

Unfortunately I didn’t manage to do too many because I crashed out on my chair. And crashed out completely too. I must have been out for about an hour and a half altogether. As a result I had a very late lunch.

After lunch, seeing as it was a nice sunny day with very little wind I went and attacked Caliburn’s door.

Trying to take off the door card was a contortionist’s delight and it took me an absolute age to free it off just so far that I could put my hand inside the door skin. And as for where the spring clip that holds on the window winder went, I have absolutely no idea.

Being able to put my hand inside the door skin was one thing. To actually open the door was something else and my hands ended up black and blue with cuts and bruises but with a great amount of force and inconvenience I finally managed spring the catch and open the door.

With the door open I could re-attach the bits that had fallen off and do the necessary adjustments and now the door will open from the outside as well as the inside. But I’m not putting the door card back on until I’m sure that it works.

While I was out there working, I was not alone.

Yesterday we saw the seagull on the windowsill of one of the apartments on the other side of the building. And this time the bird is waiting at the correct window – the one where there is the plastic bird model on the inside. And you only have to look at the state of the window to see how often it is that the bird calls there.

But anyway, I went off inside to put away my tools and then came back outside to go for my afternoon walk in the sunshine.

The first thing to do was to go to the wall at the end of the car park to look over the wall to see what was going on down on the beach today.

The tide is quite well in this afternoon so thee wasn’t all that much beach to be on today but even so, there was still enough room for a few people to wander about. These two people were having a pile of fun leaping about from rock to rock down there and they will probably keep on doing it until the tide comes in and cuts off their only means of retreat.

There was no retreat for me today. I was continuing my walk along the path on top of the cliffs. And despite the really nice weather there was hardly anyone else about so I had the place pretty much to myself

A little earlier I mentioned that there was quite a lot going on in the air and I mentioned the light aeroplane that flew by overhead.

We also had another regular visitor going past me overhead this afternoon someone whom we haven’t seen for quite some time. It’s the old yellow autogyro that we’ve seen in the past on several occasions. We saw a different one, a reddy-orange one, fly past us the other day and it made me wonder when we would be seeing this one again.

She was flying quite high over my head too, much higher than normal and he had a passenger too so they presumably are on one of these sightseeing trips that she does every now and again

The French have a saying jamais deux sans trois – “never two without a third”, and that applied to the aircraft that I saw today.

In fact they may well have said “thirty-third” because there were so many in the sky this afternoon. Today’s choice of aircraft is an Airbus A320-232 that’s operated by Vueling Airlines, a Spanish low-cost airline and is operating their flight VY7826 /VLG7826 which is the 15:00 from Barcelona heading to Gatwick Airport.

Her registration number is EC-MVE and airframe number 8130 which means that she was built about three or so years ago and supplied new to the airline which means that she was supplied new to the airline in February 2018.

She wet past me over head at about 25,000 feet and 388 knots and had already started her descent down to the Gatwick flight path as I was watching her

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that we have spent a great deal of time discussing Chausiais, the little freighter or barge that runs the freight between the Ile de Chausey and the mainland.

She’s usually been tied up at the ferry port or in the inner harbour but today I’ve actually been lucky enough to catch her on her travels, coming back from the ile de Chausey.

She’s down there now manoeuvring her way between a couple of yachts as she returns to the port after her little run out. I suppose that with all of the tourists and second-home owners being here fleeing the lockdown in Paris, she has plenty of work to do, ferrying the supplies out there to the island.

From the end of the headland I followed the rail of yachts Chausiais and all of the fishing boats towards the harbour.

The harbour gates into the inner harbour aren’t open as yet but the time can’t be that far off because the queue of trawlers around them waiting to go in was quite oppressive. I don’t think that I’ve ever seen so many loitering around the harbour gates. Chausiais had quite a struggle to fight her way into her berth.

Earlier on we saw the portable boat lift wrapping her slings around lys noir but I didn’t hang around long enough to see what they were going to be doing with her. Instead, I carried on along the path.

While I was walking around on the path above the harbour I’d noticed a sail being erected in the inner harbour. And earlier while I’d been fixing Caliburn’s door, I’d seen my neighbour Pierre who owns Spirit of Conrad in his working clothes leap into his car and drive off.

Putting 2 and 2 together, I assumed that it must be Spirit of Conrad that was having her sail hoisted, and it seems that I was quite right. It looks as if she’s being prepared for the sea again so I wonder where she might be going this time. We had fun on her when we were down the Brittany coast last summer.

Back at the apartment I had a coffee and then finished off the day’s photos from August 2019. I’m now on the Bozeman Trail at the site of the worst humiliation of the US Army at the hands of the native Americans prior to the battle of Little Big Horn where Colonel Fetterman and his entire troop of 79 soldiers and four civilian scouts were cut down by Red Cloud and his Sioux warriors.

Before guitar practice there was time for a little bit of the Central Europe trip and then I absorbed myself in music. And I didn’t really enjoy it al that much tonight. My heart wasn’t in it for some reason and I couldn’t really get going.

Tea was taco rolls and rice and veg, followed by some of my jam roly-poly and coconut dessert.

Tomorrow is going to be a Welsh revision day, I reckon, ready for the restart of my courses. I’m becoming far too rusty. I could do with an early night but I’m not going to get it today, that’s for sure. It’s late so I’m going straight to be. And I’m hoping to have pleasant dreams despite my new evening medicine which somehow has the effect of tranquilising me.

Thursday 10th December 2020 – ISN’T IT NICE …

… when you see that someone has actually read something that you’ve posted and actually gone out and acted on it?

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that a few days ago when we were discussing the miserable array of Christmas lights around the port, and I aid something to the effect that I thought that at least they might have made an effort with Marité and having lights strung up in the rigging?

It seems that whoever they are in charge of her have read what I have had to say on the subject and strung up some lights in the rigging as I suggested. But you can’t exactly say that they have pushed the boat out, can you? I’ve seen far better lights than these in my time, as I’m sure you have.

All in all, it’s a rather disappointing effort and they could – and should – have done so much better with this. But at least they’ve read my notes and done something.

But what a bad day I had today.

And that’s a shame because it started off so well as I beat the third alarm to my feet – something that it always good news.

With the medication today I tried the mint cordial-flavoured Kefir that I had made but it wasn’t anything special and was also pretty inert which was a shame. I’d expected something much more lively.

After the medication I had a listen to the dictaphone. I was working on my own with doing a videographic thing and this kid and her mother had done some kind of magic performance and her father asked me if I could add it on to a video which I agreed that I would do. But it wasn’t going to turn out as easy as I thought because some of it needed cutting out because it was too long but there was music on there and it would disrupt all the sequencing so I had to think of a way in which I could do that. The father was very precise about the bits he wanted including in this film and I started to be worried about whether I had the technology to actually be able to do it despite what i’d been telling people. First I’d have to look for a video editing program but I don’t have one of those.

I was with Castor last night in a pub in south-west London (hello Castor!) but I can’t remember very much about it except that she went to the bathroom and was gone for ages and ages and I was wondering if she’d run out on me again. Eventually she came back. We’d been talking about doing a furniture removal, something like that for her. She said that people she knew had some stuff. They lived in a place called Abbey Sides. They said that it was only like a 5 minute walk away. I had a look on the A to Z and she was right – it wasn’t all that far away from where we were. I suggested that we drank up and went to have a look. For some reason this was taking an awful lot longer than it ought to have done. But I don’t remember any of the rest of this and I can’t really remember the beginning either.

After that, I had a shower and shock! horror! I cut my hair! Now I look a little more human. And I wish that I’d weighed myself after I’d cut it, something that might have made me feel better.

After the shower I made a start on some of the arrears of my trip to Central Europe. It’s one of the three big ones today – the one where I spend a whole day in Karlovy Vary in the Czech Republic and this is going to take ages to deal with – there are about 50 photos in this.

Before setting off to the shops I had to pay a bill – or, at least, write out a cheque to pay a bill. The rates on my house in France are due again. And I bet that you wish you only paid … gulp … €26:00 per annum for your rates.

It was cold this morning as I went down into town, so I was glad that I had taken my gloves.

They make it easy to operate my camera and so when I saw a lorry and a fork lift truck unloading goods at the quayside it was a pretty straightforward operation to take a photo. At least the camera was charged today.

But this unloading can only mean one thing of course. And that is that either Normandy Trader or Thora is heading this way from the Channel Islands, or even now that there’s quite a pre-Christmas and pre-Brexit rush on, that Chausiais is going to be doing another little run.

So down the Rampe du Monte Regret I went and up the Rue Lecampion into town.

Just here in the Place Charles de Gaulle they seem to be setting up some kind of stall for street entertainment, presumably for the Christmas period. I suppose that Christmas still has to go on, even if I have never felt as less Christmassy as I am feeling right now.

All the decorations in the town are there too, and I’ll come by one evening in the dark when (hopefully) they will be illuminated, and take a photo of them to add to the records.

But instead, I posted my letter in the post office and pushed on.

Regular readers of this rubish will recall that several weeks ago I stumbled by accident upon a little alley in the Rue Couraye that had steps going down to the level below.

It was an alley that I hadn’t noticed before, and it’s been my goal to track down the other end and see to where it leads. So when I reached the end of the Rue du Bosq I had a look around and sure enough, I could see it leading down into the Rue du Marias just on the corner.

And from here it looks as if it goes through someone’s terrace. I’m not convinced that that’s a popular idea with some people.

At LIDL I didn’t buy very much, and nothing at all out of the ordinary except a ginger spice cake. I’m going to find some marzipan at the weekend and marzipan it and then ice it. It won’t be the same as a Liz Messenger cake, but it will be the best that I can do.

On the way back home, this delightful little notice here caught my eye.

There are building works going on all over the place and in the Rue St Paul there are at least three houses undergoing renovation. This is one of them and they have fenced off the front and indicated to pedestrians that they must somehow squeeze through the gap between the fence and the wall, unless they would like you to go through the window.

Either way, you need to be either very thin or very athletic so that rules me out. I walked around in the street.

By now the weather had broken and it was raining quite heavily. I was becoming soaked to the skin going home.

Back here I had a hot chocolate and some cake, and then promptly passed out fast asleep. And it was awful – one of these really deep sleeps that makes me feel so awful. I was stark out for an hour and then it took me an hour to come round, so awful was I feeling.

After lunch I crashed out again but I did manage to do some kind of work here and there on my day in Karlovy vary

But by now it was time for me to go out for my afternoon walk.

The rain had stopped falling by now but the wind was blowing somewhat and the sea was rather rough. This little fishing boat was making rather heavy weather of the journey back from the fishing grounds this afternoon back to the harbour.

And I now know why it is that these fishing boats have a roof over the deck like this. It’s to prevent the seagulls, who usually follow the boats in to harbour, from diving down and helping themselves to some of the catch.

While I was looking around, I noticed the view down the Cotentin Peninsula, and there was some astonishing stuff going on there as you can see.

The first thing of note was the rainbow underneath the clouds. We’ve had plenty of rainbows around here and this one is unfortunately far from the best, but it will do to be going on with.

The second thing is the sunlight. You might have to click on the image to see it but there’s a shaft of sunlight shining right down on the town of Hauteville sur Mer, illuminating it like a spotlight would on a stage.

We’ve seen quite a few of that phenomenon just recently too.

You will remember earlier that we saw them unloading a pile of merchandise on the quayside and I speculated that one of the Jersey Freighters may well be on her way in.

Well, not only has one of them come in, she’s going out too on the same tide. That’s Normandy Trader heading back out to sea with a full load on board, having undergone probably one of the quickest turnrounds yet.

If she’s turning round as quickly as this in port, it’s hardly surprising that we haven’t seen her all that often even though I know that she’s been on her way in. And the same with Thora too. I bet that we have also missed her loads of times.

So after watching her fighting her way through the waves on her way home, I walked on around the corner and across the lawn and the car park to see what was going on in the Baie de Mont St Michel.

There’s nothing actually happening right now out there, but we are being treated to another one of these late-afternoon winter suns of which we have seen plenty just recently. If you thought that it looked impressive over at Hacqueville sur Mer just now, how about this for a spectacle?

This is probably just about the best one so far. It’s come out really well and if you look carefully, underneath the cloud you can see the Brittany coast.

Not wishing to hang about too long, I trotted off down the path, across the road (where there was no dog to annoy me) and then down the path overlooking the clifftop, doing my best to avoid falling into one of the very large puddles.

And look at this! There’s been a change of occupant in the chantier navale, so it seems. Ceres II has departed now and our yacht is in there all on its own.

It’s going to be pretty lonely there if it doesn’t find any shipmates to come and keep it company. Not that I’m wishing ill on anyone, but we need a busy shipyard here so that we can have a thriving port.

But where has Ceres II gone to? She can’t have been gone long because the van that has been attending to her is still there.

The answer is that I reckon she’s there. The portable boat-lift still has its engine running so it’s been working quite recently. And that array of aerials and ancillary equipment that you can just about see looks as if it’s off Ceres II.

So I just about missed her going back into he water, which was a shame. But never mind. I decided to push on for home and a hot coffee, and do some work. There’s plenty of it, right enough.

Unfortunately my bad day carried on and instead of working I ended up crashed out yet again. This is absolutely no good at all and I wish that there was something that I could do about it. But it’s the story of my life right now and it isn’t going to improve.

After my guitar practice, which went according to plan, I had tea. I finished off the last of the fresh broccoli along with other steamed veg with some veggie balls and vegan cheese sauce, followed bu apple pie.

And while we are on the subject of tea, they had a big pack of mushrooms (well, it is the season, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall from the other day) on special offer in LIDL today so I must remember to do a pan of lentils in the morning ready to make a lentil, mushroom and potato curry tomorrow.

And if I leave the eyes in the potatoes, then it’ll see me through the week.

My runs tonight were rather half-hearted and although I completed them all (keeping to dry land) I can’t say that I was inspired.

But it was a really beautiful night to be out, another one of those occasions where I could see for miles. St Helier and Jersey could be seen with the naked eye 58 kilometres away and in the phot you can even see the red lights on the radio tower at the back of town.

That’s a hand-held photo by the way. It’s far too windy to take the tripod out at the moment but I’ll be out there with it one of these days when the wind calms down.

Nothing much happening elsewhere either. It was all rather disappointing.

The lights down in the Rue des Corsaires were visible so I took a quick photo and then cleared off for my run across the Square Maurice Marland, where battling against a gale-force headwind thoroughly exhausted me. But I had a look at the lights on Marité and then ran on to home and warmth

And before I went to bed I did a little radio work. I had the music going on in the background, the music from which I’ll be choosing the tracks for the next programme, and two absolutely ideal tracks came up. So I’ve been dealing with them. I may as well make a head start.

But now I’m off to bed. Plenty to do tomorrow still land I really don’t feel like doing it, but I have to crack on, I suppose. It won’t do itself.

Thursday 20th February 2020 – NOW HERE’S A THING!

When the first alarm went off this morning at 06:00 I was actually sitting at my computer working.

And yes! I had been to bed – not a case of staying up all night, as has happened on several occasions, eben though it was something of a rather late – in fact very late night (a huge pile of my favourite tracks came onto my playlist while I was thinking of going to bed so I stayed up and listened to them).

It all happened this morning quite by accident too. I awoke at about 05:20 to find myself dictating into the dictaphone that wasn’t switched on. The reason – a flat battery.

None around by the bed (I forgot to look in the camera bag) so I had to leave the bed to find one. In the radio bag there was only one so I had to search the apartment to find some more.

By the time that I found them, I was wide awake so there wasn’t much point in going to bed. I may as well start work. And I wish I knew where that battery disappeared to. It was one of my new ones too.

So I had my medication and was checking the dictaphone when the alarms went off.

I was back in Hankelow Hall again There was a huge crowd of us having a party or something and Clare Channing was there and I can’t remember who else and her husband. They had the electric on for some reason or other and were having a party. I was upstairs trying to do something and had to go to the bathroom so I went in and it was overwhelmed with cobwebs and things but there were still things hanging everywhere and so on. But there was toilet paper which was great. I switched on the light but the light wouldn’t work. I tried putting the bulb in various positions to see if that was something wrong but no. But I thought it was still light so I could go anyway. But I was called down at that point. A lot of people had gone and there were just a few around. Someone brought a big plate of sandwiches and gestured towards them “there’s some here that you can eat”, some kind of paste or something on really dark brown bread like German. I said I hope that I’m going to get more than this for my tea because there was really only two triangles and I can eat a lot more than that when I’m going. But no this seemed to be my entire teatime and I felt a sense of dismay at that.
I was In Hankelow Hall last night and there was a lot of us there doing something downstairs. I went upstairs to use the bathroom and it was all covered in dust and there were decorations everywhere all over the wall and everything, cobwebs, but I went in al the same. I found some toilet paper which was just as well but I couldn’t get the light switch to work which was odd. It wouldn’t come on. I messed around with the cable for a bit trying to get that into a better position but that didn’t work either. I realised that I was going to be more embarrassed by getting further, deeper into this than I intended to. And someone shouted out, it was a cry of “Maths” so I had to go downstairs and eat my maths. We were in a building like St Joseph’s so I went downstairs and changed my money and got some maths, changed some more money and got some motorbike company and had my evening meal. Although I was sitting at a table with a few people I had my thoughts practically about me and I stayed like that until the alarm went off at 07:15 when I was the first out of the door and got a boat ready to sail off to see the animals to see how they had survived the winter.
I’m not sure if the second part of the above is the same as the first part and dictated a second time in a different fashion, or whether it really is a different voyage that, by simple coincidence, is related to the first one.
A little later I was doing something but I can’t remember quite what that involved a couple of old cars and I had to swap these old cars around. I ended up in a black Citroen traction avant. I had to drive it up the road and down a slip road onto the motorway and off again somewhere. I got up to the set of traffic lights where you turn left for the motorway and turned onto the sliproad. Round about there, there was a boy and a girl weaving about in the road on pushbikes talking to each other and I clipped the heel of the boy on the bike. Of course that was all I needed! he insisted on filling in an accident form, all this kind of thing. Of course this traction hadn’t moved for years and there was no paperwork with it. he was quite insistent about this so I had a root around in the vehicle, found some kind of paper about something and he seemed to be quite satisfied with this, saying that the controle technique was OK and so on. In the meantime I was talking to this girl about the car. She said “if this was 30 years older it would be a real veteran”. I said “I know. It came out of a barn down on the French border somewhere (… I was in Belgium …) and we were having a friendly chat about this car and he was getting a bit up in the air about all kinds of things which he was right to do but anyway …

After breakfast I sat down and split up a few digital music files into their component tracks. And while it might have been more straightforward that on previous occasions, it was not without its complications.

One of the albums ended up with 19 minutes of extra music and of those, I only recognised one. I ad to search all the way through a pile of catalogues until I could find which version of the album it was and, more importantly, the timings because not every catalogue entry has the timings.

And then I had to listen to samples of the extended tracks to make sure that it really was what I was expecting to hear and that it was all in the correct order – because I’ve been caught out with out-of-order recordings before, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall.

“But why are the recordings out of order?” I hear you ask

The answer is that with studio master tapes, they are recorded, quite simply, in the order that they are recorded. However, unless it’s a concept album or something where the running order is crucial, the producer will then try to sort out the tracks so that there’s as near as possible an equal length of recording on each side of an LP or a cassette. And quite often, that’s nothing like the order in which they were recorded on the studio master tapes.

That was the cue for me to head into town and LIDL so I had a quick shower and put the washing machine on the go before leaving the apartment.

There was nothing whatever of any relevance on the way down into town so I didn’t loiter around. But my route took me onto the Place General de Gaulle where they have assembled the stage, to see what else was happening.

And there was certainly plenty of excitement there this morning.

There was a bunch of guys manhandling a trailer around on the square, so thinking that they might be trying to steal it, I went to see if they needed a hand.

Actually there were delivering it, not taking it away. And I’ve no idea what it might be except that it makes reference to ma vie dans la Manche – “my life in the Manche” (the département here).

And so my thought is that it might well be some kind of sales pitch, tourism or advertisement thing ready to try to seduce the crowds at Carnaval.

Instead of going up the rue Couraye I went along the Cours Jonville to see how they were getting on with the chapiteaux, the marquees that we saw yesterday.

And by the looks of things they might well be almost finished over there now. And that’s a really impressive task that they’ve undertaken to do it so quickly.

Mind you, they’ve r^probably had plenty of practice doing it. I imagine that the marquees are hired in and that the fitters and installers come from the hirers and do this every week.

But this is a new thing and I’d forgotten all about this, even though I stood on it last year to have a good view.

There’s a Princess of Carnaval and on Sunday she’ll be standing on this stage to address her loyal supporters.

And I’m amazed at just how quickly they’ve set up this stage too. There wasn’t even a hint of this here yesterday lunchtime when I came for my bread so it looks as if they must have dashed through the installation yesterday afternoon.

Up past the cinema and onto the rue Couraye that way up towards LIDL.

At the roundabout at the Place Pierre Semard by the railway station, I came to another halt. On Monday as I came by there were just a couple of lorries here but today the fête foraine, the funfair is practically all installed ready for the opening on Friday evening.

These people don’t ‘arf crack on with this kind of work when they have a timetable to which they have to adhere

When I first moved here there was a car spares shop and rally centre in the avenue du Marechal Leclerc but it closed down not long after I arrived.

A few months ago the windows were pained over on the inside as if something was going on there but there were o visible signs of anything at all. Today though, they’ve ripped out the shop window.

And so with this work going on, it looks as if there’s going to be a new occupier in there. I wonder who it might be and, more importantly, what they might be selling.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that over the last few weeks we’ve been examining LIDL here for vegan and vegetarian products on sale as their range slowly expands.

What we’re featuring today is another discovery that has taken me by surprise, namely a range of gluten-free products. This is a major Leap into the Unknown by a shop like LIDL but it’s a sign of the times, I suppose.

But it’s not all good news though. It’s a good job that I bought those vegan burgers when I did because there are none in the freezer today. Whether it’s a temporary rupture of stock or something more permanent remains to be seen.

And LIDL felt the benefit of my largesse rather more than usual today. They were selling bathroom stuff in there and one of the things that they had was a magnifying tabletop mirror, something that I don’t have and which I can certainly put to good use.

being rather later than usual today I didn’t loiter around too much but headed for home.

And regular readers of this rubbish will recall a while ago that we saw them erecting a crane outside a house in the Impasse de la Corderie, but not a great deal happened subsequently. Today though, there’s some shuttering gone in and a pile of breeze blocks have been delivered.

Clearly things are going to start happening there sometime soon. I wonder what that will be.

Over the last few days we’ve seen them erecting the fairground attractions on the Parking Hérel.

That’s all the heavy stuff going in there but there’s a smaller car park next to it in the rue Saint-Sauveur and they are setting up a few attractions there today.

So that looks as if it’s going to be Kiddies’ Corner for all of the tiny tots to have their round of fun. As you can see, in one fashion or another the Carnaval and the fête foraine are taking over the town.

At la Mie Caline I picked up my bread and headed back up the hill towards home.

And my progress was erected in dramatic fashion by the sight down on the parking area that they’ve been renovating where they ripped out the old railway lines.

We have a compactor down there now flattening down the surface. So I imagine that they are going to be putting the top layer on there any day now.

That’s going to be exciting to see what they are doing – I hope.

Back here at the apartment I reflected on the fact that I hadn’t made any observation whatever about the climbs up the hills today. That alone tells me tjat I must be feeling somewhat better than of late.

And so I made a coffee and returned to the digital sound files.

As well as the ones that I’d previously downloaded, I actually managed to track down a couple more and they were summarily dealt with too.

The next task was to make myself a decent badge with my name on it for the weekend. We have badges for the radio but with our given names scrawled on the back in felt-tipped marker pen. I wanted something much more official so I scanned my badge, inserted text with my name in bold font, and then printed out two copies on stiff paper and glued them back-to-back

And it’s moments like this that I wished that I had my laminator here.

This was another job that took an hour to do. 5 minutes to scan the badge, 5 minutes to insert the ext and 5 minutes to print it out and stick it together, and blasted 45 perishing minutes to find that flaming thing that I sodding well had in dratted hands 10 damned minutes earlier.

By now it was lunchtime so I made my butties.

This afternoon I had plenty to do.

Not the least of which was to contact the company who made the desktop mike stand that I ordered and which came the other day. The mike mounting is about 2.5cms and yet the diameter of the microphone is actually 4.5cms.

It looks as if the wrong mounting bracket was put in the box so I had to photograph the set-up to send off to the suppliers.

Of course I don’t have my coloured ruler – that’s in the pocket of my jacket that’s hanging up in a hotel bedroom in Calgary – so I had to invent one.

Coloured rulers – where each inch or centimetre is coloured differently are really useful because when you are photographing objects like this you can lay the ruler alongside it then take your photo, and the presence of the coloured ruler in the shot shows at a glance the effective size of the object.

Tidying up was next. I’ve found that the plastic containers in which I’ve been buying my carrots fit nicely in the small drawer of my desk – suspended from the top of the sides leaving a space underneath.

And so I tidied the drawer out and found a few things about which I had completely forgotten

Final task for today was to start the photos from the summer. All of June is now finished and I’ve now started on July.

But so much for my shipboard idea about placeholders. By the time that I’d reached just number 7 I’d already overtaken the placeholder numbers.

And the fault in the images on the portable computers doesn’t seem to be the photos but the screens, as I suspected. On this screen, which is quite expensive and good quality, as well as being more modern technology, they look so much better.

A couple of interruptions though. The afternoon walk was one of them but I didn’t go far as we were having a torrential downpour and hurricane-force winds. I did about half a lap in an ad-hoc direction that kept me out of the wind, and then came back.

The second interruption was … errr … a little relax. And no susprise given my night. The only surprise was that it was only for about 10 minutes and wasn’t all that deep.

Tea was all of the leftovers with spicy tomato sauce and pasta with vegetables, followed by apple pie and raspberry sorbet with chocolate sauce and it was magnificent.

And then the evening walk. The weather had subsided but it was still quite damp outside.

Nevertheless that didn’t stop me going for my evening runs. And for two days on the run … “groan!!” – ed … I ran on for a good few metres on my first run and on my second run ended up halfway up the ramp instead of flaking out at the foot.

Yes, I’m definitely feeling better.

And for two days on the run, Minette was there on her windowsill waiting for her stroke. It’s very relaxing, stroking a cat. Good for easing the stress.

The pizza van was there again, parked bang outside Le Contremarche, the new posh restaurant in the Place Cambernon.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that I pointed out the other week that she had a new van. And now it seems to have been painted. Business must be good.

So now I’m home, finished my notes and ready for bed. And with new batteries in the dictaphone I’m hoping for a decent night’s sleep.

Whether or not I have one is another matter.

And no water craft today either. What is happening to me?

Saturday 7th December 2019 – WHAT DO YOU THINK …

… of the Christmas decorations in the rue Paul Poirier this year, Strawberry Moose?

Well, of course, I wouldn’t have put it quite like that but nevertheless, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, I’m singularly unimpressed by the (lack of) imagination shown by the city fathers (and mothers) this year.

It’s not a great deal different that in any preceding year and when I see some of the effort that goes into making the chars, the carnaval floats, each year, I was expecting more than this, I have to say.

But talking of imagination, my imagination was working overtime last night. Despite being a night much (indeed very much) later than I had intended, and despite struggling to my feet somewhere in the same vicinity as the alarm calls, there was plenty of time to go off on a ramble.
And that was even though it took absolutely ages and ages and ages to go off to sleep last night. At one stage I thought that it must be getting light by now and I still hadn’t off to sleep, but sleep I must have done and dream I certainly did. I was with a group of people and as is my wont, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, I’d given a few of them nicknames as would be appropriate. It actually came out in the discussion as I mentioned a nickname about someone or something. These people were all dying to know who it was and what I meant and what other nicknames I had given to anyone or anything else. There was one nickname in particular that I’d given to someone and I really didn’t want anyone to know because it was a very special nickname. So I was there and I decided that I would resist all efforts. One girl in particular came along and started to question me much more about this and this was a surprise really because it was this particular girl to whom I was referring with this special nickname. I told her that it wasn’t something that I usually talked about, who was what, and I was aware that I was fobbing them all off all the time. Just when the questioning was starting to become intense, I told the girl that if she guesses correctly I would give her my farm, something like that. But just as she started to question me intensely the alarm went off and I breathed a sigh of relief.

And I wonder who the girl was. And, much more interestingly, what the nickname was.

After breakfast I started to try to figure out a way of combining these … errr … 68 track fragments from the mixer panel into one coherent track that I could edit down, but after about three or four, I gave up the idea. The lack of a pause control (or “until I can figure out how to pause a recording” more likely) is putting the kybosh on any of my attempts to do anything with that right now.

And so I turned to my faithful old dictaphone. A mike socket in, a headphone monitoring socket, a USB cable connection and – a pause control (I’d made sure of that when I was buying that!)

Switching the mike setting to “unidirectional” instead of “omnidirectional”, I plugged one of the expensive mikes into the microphone socket and did a couple of trial dictaions.

Much to my surprise, the quality was phenomenal. Much better by far that any other recording equipment that I’ve had here. And in stereo too. So I bit the bullet and re-recorded the audio vocals onto that using the mike, and then uploaded it to the laptop.

Once it was on the laptop I started to make a start to edit it. And even though I say it myself, what I have done so far (because I haven’t done it all by any means) sounds quite impressive.

But at a certain point I had to give up. I’m going out shortly and I need to make my butties, so a trip down into town was called for.

The tide was well out this morning so I could go the long way round and over the path on top of the harbour gates and then alongside the quay that way.

And Normandy Trader was conspicuous by her absence. Sneaked out of the harbour under cover of darkness.

having picked up my dejeunette from la Mie Caline, I wandered for a couple of minutes into the town centre to see how the market traders were coping with the decorations.

And we were being entertained too. A duo, backed by digital music unfortunately, were singing “The Pink Aeroplane”.

And I bet that you don’t know of a song of that title, but it is in fact a mondegreen. It refers to the title of the song la Vie En Rose – “Life in the Pink” that was on several occasions misheard, as in any good mondegreen, as L’Avion Rose – “The Pink Aeroplane”

With nothing much else to do I had a good walk around the stage to watch them, but the Nikon 1, good little camera that it might be in normal circumstances, isn’t up to being pushed beyond its limits.

So as I was taking a photo of the girls still singing, someone nearby came into the frame and the camera focused on them and not on the stage.

Perhaps I should say that the Nikon 1 is always set on “manual exposure” as its whole purpose is to be a quick “point and shoot” camera, leaving the big Nikon D500 for the more challenging work, when I have it with me.

The automatic setting though isn’t light enough for my requirements, so I’ve set the function (FN) button to work the exposure compensation and I always go two stops down with that.

If there are any minor lighting challenges with that setting I can edit those out

Strawberry Moose who was with me in spirit, if not in body, drew my attention to this sign just here.

He’s absolutely right, of course. Security cameras are designed to prevent crime of course. But the word volée in French can mean two things. It really and literally means “flown”, but in common usage an article that has “flown” will mean that it has been stolen.

And this little play on words has been used to great effect when I lived in Belgium. The Belgian Army bought a load of helicopters from MV Agusta. These helicopters were totally useless, and it was very strongly believed that a pile of well-filled brown envelopes had passed underneath the table at the signing of the contract.

One Francohone comedian asked the question “what’s the difference between a Belgian Army helicopter and a Belgian Government Minister?”
“Well, in Belgium it’s the Ministers who voléew/em>”

Heading quickly home to organise a shower and make my butties ready for departure, my attention is drawn to yet another piece of pathetic parking – a subject that features quite often on these pages, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall.

And this isn’t just bad parking, this narrow street is actually a bus route and service buses come up here every 40 minutes or so. And they are pretty busy on a Saturday morning.

But don’t let that fact get in the way of a selfish effort to save oneself a 20-metre walk.

Back here I had a quick shower and clean up, made my butties and headed back out up town.

13:30 I had to be at the football stadium, and I was there by 12:15.

The crowds were already gathering, and quite right too. US Granville are playing away in the Coupe de France at Plabennec three hours or so away, and the club had laid on free transport for the supporters.

And that was a gesture that I appreciated very much and I wish that there were more opportunities to travel to away matches.

There were so many fans wishing to attend that there were actually two buses. Mine was the yellow Van Hool but there was this black one too.

All very nice, and took me back to my halcyon days when I used to drive tour buses like this all over Europe.

We were only about 20 minutes or so late getting away, which surprised me greatly, so I settled down to eat my butties and, shame as it is to admit it, slept for most of the way.

Not something that I really should be ashamed of, because I had had a bad night and it wasn’t as if there was anything else to do on board the bus.

Armed with the obligatory blue-and-white scarf (left over from a cup exploit a few years ago and cost e3:00 – still, the bus was free and the club deserved some reward) and a Normandy flag (free provided by the Normandy Chamber of Commerce) we poured out of the buses at the car park that had been set aside at the local high school up the road.

This young boy was very proud of his scarf and flag, and also his make-up too.

There was a girl on board the bus doing the make-up for free, but I declined. My mush is ugly enough without a load of makeup adding to it.

Down the street we all filed in a crocodile tothe football stadium, where the gates were firmly closed for another half-hour.

One idea that was in my mind was to go for a walk into town for a look around and see what was going on, but the stadium was quite some way out of town.

Much as I fancied a coffee, I could get one here in the ground.

With 90 minutes to go before kick-off I grabbed a coffee (and a bag of chips) and went for a walk around the ground.

The reason why it’s so far out of town is that it was formerly a farm, bought by the town in 1968 and transformed into a sports complex that was opened in 1972.

And, by looking at things, they did quite a good job of it too for a small town and a club playing in the equivalent of the Northern Premier League

There’s a main stand that runs down the side of the pitch like most football grounds, and also a smaller stand behind one of the goals.

That’s where we are installed – some form of crowd segregation I suppose – and I do have to say that the facilities here are somewhat better than Granville offers its away supporters when there was crowd segregation.

It was somewhat embarrassing to see the facilities (or lack thereof) offered to the Bordeaux fans at the stade Louis Dior two years ago.

The club had hired two coaches, as I think I explained earlier, and as they were pretty much full, that worked out at about 100 people or so.

As well as that, several people had come under their own steam (I’m not quite sure why when the buses were free) so by the time that kick-off took place, there were probably about 150 people in the away end.

That’s the figure that was reported by the club and it looks about right to me.

Plabennec play in white so Granville had to play in a blue kit tonight. And it brought them quite a bit of luck too.

It’s probably fair to say that Plabennec had the lion’s share of the game tonight, but they huffed and puffed their way through the match without threatening ever to bring Granville’s house down.

Granville in the meantime sat back and soaked up the pressure, setting out on a few forays of their own.

One thing that I have said … “and on many occasions too” – ed … is that the tactic that Granville adopts of playing the ball quickly down the wings counts for absolutely nothing if they can’t put the crosses into the penalty area and don’t have anyone taking advantage of them.

And so today it was a pleasant surprise when during a foray upfield after a corner kick, the big centre-half got his head to one of these crosses that usually pass uninterrupted over the goalmouth.

Never mind a goal, it almost burst the back of the net and just goes to show what you can do when you have the correct players and when you put your mind to it.

Later on in the match Granville scored a second from a well-worked routine just outside the penalty area.

That must have been a disappointment for Plabennec because at 1-0 down and having more of the ball there was always a possibility that they could pull something out for an equaliser, but at 2-0 down it was a uphill struggle.

That was how the match ended – 2-0 for Granville.

And at the final whistle the players came down to the away end to greet the fans. Something that I thought was a very nice gesture. It was only right too because the noise that the fans had kept up during the match had helped the team push onwards.

A real “12th man” in the stadium tonight.

On the way back, I slept for some of the way, which was just as well. There wasn’t much else going on.

And by the time that we returned to the Stade Louis Dior it was about 23:45. We’d had a really good afternoon out all together, and it was really nice of the club to lay on the buses for the fans.

It was just as well that I’d put on my winter woollies because it was pretty taters outside too by now.

My walk back home was a long, lonely, cold vigil. I was probably the only person out there at that time of night.

Still, it gave me plenty of opportunity to admire the town’s Christmas decorations. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that I’d seen them erecting the decorationsa few days earlier, but I’d yet to see them properly working.

But I was really a little disappointed by what’s on offer.

Not necessarily because of the quality and the amount of decorations, but apart from the famous ski slope that we saw the other day, it’s all pretty much the same as last year.

It wouldn’t be too much, surely, to have a redesign of the Christmas decorations or even to shuffle the decorations around so that they are in different places, just to relieve the monotony.

So while you admire the rest of the Christmas decorations, I’m off to bed. I’ve had a very long day and I need my beauty sleep.

hristmas tree place pierre semard granville manche normandy france

christmas decorations rue couraye granville manche normandy france

christmas decorations gare de granville railway station manche normandy france

christmas decorations place general de gaulle granville manche normandy france

artificial ski slope christmas decorations place general de gaulle granville manche normandy france

christmas decorations place general de gaulle granville manche normandy france

Friday 6th December 2019 – I HAVE JUST SEEN …

… one of the strangest football matches that I have seen for quite some considerable time.

It’s the Welsh Cup this weekend and there are several banana skins lying aound. One of those is Carmarthen Town v Rhydaman, and this was shown on the live internet feed tonight.

Carmarthen are at the foot of the Welsh Premier League and struggling whereas Rhydaman, one division below them in the pyramid, are in 5th place and having a good run of form. Not the match that I would have picked – I’d have gone for Colwyn Bay v Airbus – but’s good enough. It’s the kind of game where you can smell that someone is in for a scalping.

And a scalping there certainly was. Rhydaman, playing away from home at Carmarthen, ran out winners. And not just by the odd goal either but they won 0-4.

You would have thought from the scoreline that this was a right spannering, but that was very far from the truth. Whilst Rhydaman were the better side, they weren’t all that better. The difference was that we were treated to 4 magic moments of Trundlemania

Yes, Lee Trundle. He must be 45 now if he’s a day but still proving that he can cut it with the best and while he’s slowed down considerably as you might expect, he still showed the kind of magic that made him a multi-million pound footballer in the days when multi-million pound footballers were still quite thin on the ground.

I mean – just HOW do you defend against something like this?

Despite a reasonably early night, I missed the alarms again. Not by much – only a few minutes in fact, but missed them nevertheless.

Not only that, although there was nothing on the dictaphone, I had a vague recollection that during the night I’d been on a voyage and found something that was way beyond exciting – the same feeling of elation that I had when I I came across that Santana concert after 42 years of searching.

But what it was, we shall never know now.

After the medication and breakfast, with no dictaphone notes to do, I attacked a couple of digital music files to break up into tracks.

One of them took me four hours to do, and for a variety of reasons too. It was an album of a live concert and with this digital sound analyser program that I have, I could see that it was a series of individual tracks that had been artificially joined together – and by a blind man by the looks of it too.

16 tracks altogether so it took me quite a while to edit all of the joints together properly so that it actually looks like a live concert as well as sounds like one too.

Then I had to break the file down into 16 individual tracks and save each one of those individually, but not before I’d copied about 15 decent applause tracks (some of which went on for half a minute and more) from the file, cut out any speech and unnecessary noise from them, boosted the volume in what are called “S-curves” in places to hide the difference in volume in the joins where I’ve cut things out, and then saved them to disk as 15 individual files.

Applause tracks are good and I love them because I can do all kinds of exciting things with them. But you need a good number of them from the same concert because if you “mix and match” applause tracks from different concerts, the applause doesn’t sound similar and it gives the appearance of being false. And if they are long applause tracks, you can cut them down and that gives you even more opportunity to make something different.

Round about 12:45 I knocked off for lunch.

No bread here and no lettuce either so a walk into town was on the cards. And quite right too. Past the docks where the harbour gates were open sothe trawlers could come inside to unload.

And Charles-Marie is still over there with her winter wrap on.

The gates to the harbour can’t have been open all that long because there were several fishing boats on their way into port right now.

This one coming into port just here gave me a good opportunity for a photo-shoot but as I took a shot, my photo was once more bombed by a blasted seagull.

They get absolutely everywhere, these perishing things.

At the Super-U the lettuce was extortionate. €1:39 for a small one. That’ll teach me to forget one at LIDL, won’t it?

At La Mie Caline I picked up my dejeunette and walked across to the Place general de gaulle to see what was going on.

Nothing right now as you can see, but clearly something will be going on in the very near future because we seem to have acquired a stage.

That’s going to upset a few of the marketeers tomorrow. It’ll quite take the shine off their sausages, now that they can begin to roast them again with charcoal following a recent Court decision.

But what about our famous ski slope in the town?

No room for any humans on there because we seem to have been overrun by animals. I can understand why they might want to use animals as decoration, but why beavers … or … errr … Castors to the French people around here.

What does a beaver have to do with the festive season?

This is much more like the kind of thing you would expect to see at Christmas, isn’t it?

We have a sledge here and a reindeer pulling it. Presumably there will be a Father Christmas around somewhere to travel in it.

But I have a cunning plan and I shall be having a word with Strawberry Moose in early course and we will go for a little walk together late one night for a photo opportunity.

Yesterday I mentioned and indeed showed you a photograph of the Christmas decorations that they were unloading at the Square Potel in the rue des Juifs, and I remember saying that I would go for a butcher’s today.

So here I am in the Square Potel with the decorations and I do have to say that I’m considerably underwhelmed by it all.

Mybe it’s just me I dunno, but I was expecting much more than this.

After lunch, I attacked the sound mixing desk for the vocals for the current project. It took me hours to figure out again how to record anything with it because I had forgotten what I did last time. And then I had to clean out all of the test files, set the volume levels and the like, and then clean out those test files too.

And then I could start.

The recording level is quite low using the built-in mike but my sound analyser program enhances that with no loss of quality. But there is a major problem with it, in that there’s no “pause” facility. So every time you stop for a think or to clear your throat, it restarts with a new track.

Trying to edit out about 40 of those into one coherent track and then split that down into tis segments is going to take me an age.

But I have made a startling discovery, and that is that the mikes that I bought for the mixing panel, using the adapter that came with them I can plug them into the dictaphone, which DOES have a pause facility. And also an output for headphones.

In view of this, I see a whole new world opening up for me here. For although the sound is somewhat tinny, it seems to be of a much higher quality.

One thing that I didn’t mention today is that the high winds are back. And with a vengeance too.

There was quite a storm raging out offshore and so even though the tide was on its way out, the waves were still rattling down on the rocks.

Not too many people out there today and that’s hardly a surprise given the conditions.

But overcast and miserable and foggy it might be here, over across the bay on the Brittany coast they were having a different kind of weather.

Low cloud, yes, but on the periphery there was bright sunshine and it was creating a most unusual lighting effect over there.

Wouldn’t it be nice if it could do the same thing around here on this side of the bay?

Going around the headland was taking my life in my hands with the wind that was sweeping around there.

narrowly avoiding being squidged on the pedestrian crossing, I went round the cliff to see what the waves were doing on the sea wall.

Not a lot, because the tide was going out rapidly. It must have bee quite impressive an hour or so ago.

Nothing changed at all in the chantier navale today, and Normandy Trader had sodded off too … “that was quick” – ed … so I stood and armired the waves for a little longer.

Every now and again there was a wave more powerful and deeper than the others, and that was providing me with some exciting entertainment.

But after a while I gave it up and headed for home and coffee.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that pathetic parking features quite regularly in these pages. Here’s another example.

I’d seen her pull up as I was on my way home with my lettuce and bread, and I thought to myself at the time “she’s not going to leave that car there, straddling two places and with 6 feet of room in front, is she?”

But yes she is. Gets right on my wick it does.

Back to the sound files and then a break for tea. I made a curry with the leftovers again and there were so many leftovers that there are some leftovers left over. That’ll be a tea for another night then, won’t it?

This evening it was raining when I went out so I didn’t hang around. I had my run though, right up to the top of the ramp and another 20 paces further on. It was feeling good today.

Then we had the football and now, considerably later than planned (like 01:45) I’m off to bed. I’m a busy boy tomorrow and another task has reared its ugly head as well.

Where will I find the time?

Wednesday 27th November 2019 – WHAT A WASTE …

… of a morning this was!

Although the night wasn’t as late as many nights have been just recently, I still had a few problems this morning.

I heard the 06:00 alarm go off sure enough and I’m not sure what happened next but when I heard the next alarm go off I thought that I’ll give it a couple of minutes and then get up before the third alarm, like I usually do.

After a few minutes I had a quick glance at the time before I arose. 06:25 it was. So for some unknown reason I had completely missed the second alarm.

At that point I decided that seeing as I had already missed my target time, another couple of minutes wouldn’t hurt any.

The next thing that I remembered was that it was 08:47 and I’d been right away with the fairies.

As indeed I had been. And not on my own either for there were three of us again and we were having something to do with the animals. We were looking after the animals in a kind of laboratory place and a couple of guys came past and were talking to us so we were talking back to them. But for some unknown reason the conversation took off into a kind of 1950s type of scene with all pork-pie hats and that kind of thing. I was speaking to them not as I would today but going back 50 years and everyone was wondering why. They didn’t understand the language for a start so I explained that this was how English would have been 50 years ago in the days of the Teddy Boys, all this sort of thing (of course the Teddy Boys were earlier than that) but this was when the period was, back in the teddy Boy days and they found it difficult to understand. From here it kind of drifted off into a wartime scenario and I can’t remember very much about this second bit where it was during the war.

By the time that my feet were on the floor it was almost 09:30 and I decided to forego breakfast again. Just have a coffee and some juice and then crack on with work. There’s an open-air fruit market on a Wednesday morning as I discovered when I was on one of my marathon walks just recently. I’d planned to go out there for a butcher’s but it won’t be today.

The first thing to attack, as far as work goes, was the dictaphone notes. And a mega-one of 12 minutes at that. All in all, from the night of 20th-21st September this year there were over 20 minutes of dictaphone notes and many of them are quite disturbing.

But the 21st was the morning that I set off from Montreal to ottawa so it was bound to be an extremely turbulent night. And had I listened to what had been going on during the night before I set off, I probably wouldn’t have gone.

But I didn’t, so I did, and that was an end to it. But I’ll be thinking long and hard before I put any of the night’s activities into print in the public domain. They will join the others that have yet to see the light of day until I have had an opportunity to consult m’learned friends.

The plan was to work on until about 11:00 and then go into town for a dejeunette (I’ve decided that I’ll do that every day from now on) and the Post Office to post the letters that I didn’t post yesterday.

But when I did glance at the time, it was just coming up to 12:00. This late start killed me off and it was far too late to go to the Post Office. I carried on with work instead.

Round about 13:00 I broke off and headed down the steps into town. The tide was out, miles out in fact, and all of the boats in the harbour were high and dry.

With the tide being out, the harbour gates would be closed so I headed off round the back of the fish-processing plant and onto the path across the top of the gates and went into town that way.

Striding along as if I were on my way to invade Poland, I was feeling so good that at a certain moment I even broke into a little run. And that’s not been anything that has been seen this side of this Century – me running for no good purpose in broad daylight.

Armed with my dejeunette, I went to inspect the edifice in the Place General de Gaulle.

And I now know what it is, because there was an article about it in the local paper. It seems that Granville has pretentions about being a winter ski resort (don’t ask me how or why because I don’t have a clue either) and they are building an artificial ski-slope.

All that I can say is that the mayor and her cohorts are going downhill fast.

After lunch I carried on with the dictaphone notes. There were some mega-ones in there as you might expect, what with everything that was going on and how I was feeling, but I was determined to break the back of the issue today.

By the time that I knocked off for my afternoon walk, I had reduced the backlog to a mere 69. There are only a handful of really long ones in there, one of which is … errr … over four hours (and that can’t be right) so with a bit of luck I can crack on and whittle them down.

And then I can start on the photos.

When I had gone out earlier in the day it had been quite windy. But now the wind was simply wicked.

The tide was out so I can’t show you just how wild the seas were, but you can have an idea simply by looking at the whitecaps in this photo.

They would have made rather a mess of the sea wall at the harbour or at the Plat Gousset.

Talking of the Plat Gousset … “well, one of us is” – ed … I stopped to have a look down there and to see what was going on.

Just one solitary soul out there on the beach and no more than half a dozen on the promenade itself. And that’s hardly surprising because it really was a dreadful wind.

In fact, we’ve had nothing but gale-force winds since I’ve been back from North America and I don’t know about anyone else but I’m getting rather fed up of this.

It’s a good job that my apartment is a really solid building. If I had owned a paper shop, it would have blown away a long time ago.

My route into town took me down the steps to the Place Marechal Foch, but I didn’t get very far at all.

My trip was interrupted by a young black cat that was wandering around in the undergrowth so I stopped and had a little chat with it. They say that stroking a cat is a very good way of relieving stress, and who can argue with that?

The moggy and I were there for a good few minutes until I moved on.

Not too far as it happened, because down below me the Plce was cordoned off and there was a pile of machinery down there digging up the road surface.

There were a few guys down there too who looked as if they had something to do with it all so I went down the steps to ask them about it.

But they must have seen me coming because they took off and by the time that I reached their van, they had long-since departed and that was that.

I had to content myself with a really good examination of thr work to see what I could see.

Definitely electric trunking and the trace cable for pulling through was there. So I was wondering if this is a bit more of the fibre-optic cabling that’s been going on here for as long as I can remember.

What I’ll do is to come this way tomorrow on my way to the shops and see if the guys are there then, and I can ask them

Down at the Post Office I posted my letters and then I came back here. And with a coffee and a slice of Liz’s cake, I really hit the jackpot.

And big-time too.

A quest that I have been undertaking for almost 43 years has deamatically come to a conclusion.

Let’s turn our clocks back to 22nd january 1977. I was living in Crewe, sharing a flat in Nantwich Road with Allen Marsden. And on the radio came a “Sight and Sound” concert of Santana.

It was the most amazing, most phenomenal live concert that I have ever heard either before or since and, grabbing a tape, I recorded it. I’ve played the tape to death and it’s all worn away now, and over the last 40-odd years I’ve been trying to track down when and where it was recorded. I’ve even been to the BBC to ask them, and they were no help.

But idly surfing the internet looking for something else I suddenly found a Santana live concert from the Hammersmith Odeon on 15th December 1976 and I only had to listen to the first three notes to know that this was exactly the concert for which I had been seeking.

It really is superb! Just listen to “Soul Sacrifice” from about 44:00 onwards.

So listening to Santana on an endless loop I attacked the web page updating. And by the time that I had knocked off for tea, another 30 had bit the dust.

All in all, I call that I good day’s work!

Tea was a burger on a bap, followed by pineapples and blackcurrant sorbet.

And then the evening walk around the headland.

Despite the high winds yet again, the sky was beautifully clear again and once more there was a beautiful view up the coast. The lights of Bréhal-Plage came out perfectly in this picture, taken with the camera being hand-held.

Of course I could have done a lot better with the tripod, but in this wind? You must be joking!

Onwards or upwards then, and round the headland and along the top of the cliffs overlooking the port.

Nothing much has changed in the chantier navale. Spirit of Conrad, Omerta and Aztec Lady are still in there on their blocks, and there’s badger all else for the moment.

So I carried on and broke into a run at my usual spot, much to the amusement of a passer-by and his dog. And tonight I made it all the way over the rise and down the bank as far as the pedestrian crossing.

That’s the farthest that I’ve been

So now it’s bedtime and I’m hoping for a better day tomorrow, with a nice long walk up to LIDL. That should be interesting. I forgot to see what the sale goods are.

Tuesday 26th November 2019 – YET ANOTHER EVENING …

… walk missed tonight.

Not through any lack of willingness or through any other distraction. In fact, I did my best and made about 100 metres down the road before the savage winds and torrential rainstorm drove me back and inside again.

Not the kind of weather to even send a dog out.

What with one thing and another, it was a very late night yet again. The problem is that when you start on one thing, you’ll be surprised at just how many other things there are.

Mind you, I still beat the third alarm out of bed. Not by very much, I have to say, but I beat it all the same. Despite having only 405 hours sleep, I have a vague recollection that there was some epitaph for someone who had died and it involved a piece of music. However it wasn’t that piece of music that they were listening to at all but another piece of music completely and I’ve no idea at all why this piece of music was chosen as the title of this obituary

Well, that was what was on the dictaphone and if you can make any sense of it, let me know. There’s a “contact me” button down on the bottom right of your screen.

After the medication and breakfast I attacked the dictaphone notes. And after a good session I’m now down to a mere 76. But there are some pretty big entries left in there, including one of FOUR HOURS and so it’s not going to be plain sailing by any means.

Round about 09:o0 I came to a stop as I needed to sort out some info for the tax Office. This involved printing out some stuff and of course it was at this moment that the printer decided to throw a hissy-fit.

It took me an age to sort out everything, including trying out two different blue ink printer cartridges before I could find one that worked. And I even filed a few papers away, and that’s not like me.

By the time that I was organised it was about 11:15 so I hurried off, not realising that I’d forgotten the most important document of them all.

The harbour gates were closed so I went the pretty way over the top.

But at first I couldn’t see the old red Iveco daily that has been parked on the car park by the fish processing plant for quite a while. It wasn’t there

But it’s not gone far. It’s been moved out to the edge of the car park now overlooking the loading and unloading dock, although I’m not sure why.

It was about 11:45 when I reached the Tax Office and although there was just one person ahead of me, I had to wait an age. It was after the place had closed for lunch and i could tell that the guy who saw me wasn’t impressed by that.

Although I was there in the computer, he couldn’t find any details of my visit there last year which was bizarre. There was nothing on record, not even my tax exemption certificate. I just KNEW that I would regret forgetting to take a copy with me.

Anyway, I left him with all of my papers and he can sort them all out himself. If he needs anything else he can write to me.

They had to let me out of the back door and I headed off into town. As I expected, the Post Office was closed for lunch, so I needn’t have written those letters.

But I’m glad that I came because I was able to see them doing something completely bizarre in the Place General de Gaulle by the War Memorial. They’ve heaped up a pile of haystacks, for whatever reason I really don’t know.

And anyway, the boulangerie was open so I bought another dejeunette for lunch. This is becoming a habit. And why not? The bread is always fresh, there’s no waste and the walk down to town and back does me good.

Cheese butties for lunch because I’ve finished off one pot of hummus and there was some cheese left over in an opened packet. have to use that up.

After lunch, I still had these carrots to deal with so I sliced them all up, blanched them with some bay leaves and now that they are thoroughly drained and dried they are now in the freezer freezing away to themselves.

I just have to go there every so often to break them up so they don’t congeal in a solid mass.

That was the cue for me to go for another walk this afternoon.

And just as I stepped out of the door a helicopter flashed right past the car park at almost-sea-level. I’m not sure who was more surprised, me or him, but I had the presenc eof mind to snap him as he flew past me.

And it’s come out rather well considering. But I do wonder what is going on with people getting their choppers out all over the place.

That wasn’t the only activity out there either.

The tide had turned and was on its way in and so the fishing boats were slowly making their way back to harbour. There were two trawlers out there and as far as I could see, they were painted in the same livery so presumably they belong to the same people.

They were on their way in to port to unload.

There was something else out there too so I took a photo of it to enlarge back in the apartment.

Despite my best efforts, it’s not improved the situation very much. There’s a smallish boat coming over from the Ile de Chausey and it’s going at quite a rapid rate of knots.

So we’ll have to pass on that one for now and try again some other time.

Although the tide was quite some way out right now, the storm that we were having and the high winds were pushing the waves along quite dramatically.

Down here they were pummelling their way into the sea wall with quite a considerable amount of force.

It would have been nice to have been out there and to see what was going on at high tide.

We’ve had another change in the composition of the visitors to the chantier navale.

We can see the usual suspects. Spirit of Conrad is there, and so are Omerta and Aztec Lady. But where has the fishing boat gone – the modern one that was over to the right behind the others?

It looks as if it’s gone back into the water again. Presumably they’ve finished what it was that they were doing.

As I aid just now, the tide is on the turn and so the fishing boats are on their way back to port.

And as you can see, there’s already quite a large queue of boats down there underneath the fish processing plant busily unloading what they have caught today.

The cranes are working hard pulling up some of the containers, but there’s also one boat unloading its catch into the white van parked underneath.

We haven’t finished the photos either.

You probably noticed in the photo of the Ile de Chausey just now that there seemed to be a rainstorm out to sea. But by the time that I had worked my way around my circuit it had now advanced into the Baie de Mont St Michel.

And as I said at the start, we got the lot down our necks later.

Back here I amended a few web pages, worked on the Christmas presents that I needed to order (and that took some ordering too, I’ll tell you, and a big pile of work to go with it) and then stopped for tea. There was half a pepper and a few mushrooms that needed eating so I added a potato to it and made a curry. The fennel and fenugreek that I had bought gave it all a beautiful kick, and the coconut milk left over from the carrot soup added something to it too.

And even better, there’s some left over for later in the week.

No walk because of the weather, so i was chatting on the internet for a while and then writing my notes. But you’ve no idea how quickly the time passes and I’m late for bed.

Let’s hope that I have a good sleep.

Saturday 6th April 2019 – I’VE JUST SEEN …

… a most astonishing football match.

When I tell you that the score was USM Donville 0 US Sainte-Croix St_Lô 4, you’re probably thinking that it was a really one-sided match.

But nothing could be further from the truth. It took about 25 or 30 minutes for the teams to find their feet but then we were treated to a thrilling, pulsating match where the game flowed in waves from one end of the pitch to the other.

We had several misses from open positions in front of goal, superb saves by the two goalkeepers, a good half-dozen desperate last-minute tackles and goal-line clearances and the intervention of the woodwork.

US Sainte-Croix St-Lô were marginally the better side and had the match finished 1-0 in their favour, then no-one could complain about the result. But to lose a match like this by 4 goals to nil is extremely flattering for the victors and extremely depressing for the losers.

Last night was rather a late night, and we had a really strange thing happen this morning. There are three alarms that go off in the morning – at 06:00, 06:10 and 06:20. I definitely heard two of them and I dozed off waiting for the third one.

But either I slept right through it or else it didn’t go off because the next thing that I remember was that it was 07:25.

But at least there was plenty of time to go a-wandering. I’d been doing something with music, playing in groups and I’d been trying to write a song but al my songs ended up being the same. I reckoned that I would work on one while I was away with Alvin and Ann, because we had a skiing holiday arranged. We’d arranged to meet at the airport. I went with Ann and we were waiting to get all of my stuff off the conveyor belt, she had got some of hers, and Strawberry Moose was there of course. Alvin turned up and he was asking about our things and we replid that we hadn’t received them all yet. They were coming round and people were asking me questions about Strawberry Moose, was he coming skiing and all of this kind of thing. But then the phone ringtone sounded in my pocket. But it wasn’t the phone that was ringing but the dictaphone. I’ve no idea why that should be. We met up with our tour guide – there was 6 of us. She took us into this shopping complex that was like an Indian temple, all done out in green and brown tiles. All different shops and I was wondering how anyone could afford to rent a place in here but yet more and more shops were being let out all the time. She took us through a discreet side door and down some stairs. I said that I hadn’t realised that there was another way around this building to which she replied that her husband was a football agent and had an office in this building. We ended up in his office, that was even more like an Indian temple and much more luxurious, said hello to everyone and took us outside. She started to talk to us about the holiday and our ship, and pointed it out. It was across a valley and on top of a hill. She said it’s called the “(I forget) but don’t worry about it being brown – the colour has nothing to do with it. These names are fleet names. She said that it was time to go – her watch said 11:00 but I looked at mine and said it was 08:50 – that tells you how efficient I am. Where we were standing was at the side of a road that ran along the bottom of this slope and there was a big coach depot just a little further along on the other side. There were half a dozen coaches there, all Plaxton Elites from the late 1960s that they had in this yard but with central doors rather than front doors as usual. There were also two brick pllars with a beam across which was uses I suppose for lifting engines and the like. But now I was worried about my blog entry – I hadn’t done it yet (I hadn’t as it happened, last night before going to bed). But there was so much going on that I would be squeezed back all of the time and there would be all kinds of things that would be left out of my usual daily routine
A little later I was with a group of soldiers. We’d been captured on this island and held in a kind of detention cell. One of our party had escaped and was hiding about this building site somewhere. A couple more of our people had been never been arrested. I managed to talk my way out so I thought that I would walk around. I was standing on the roof of this bunker but someone told me to come down. I stayed up there in defiance so he was making all kinds of threats about me. In the end I picked up a flare gun that was lying around and loosed off a couple of flares. He dashed up onto the roof and in the confusion I grabbed hold of his rifle and pushed him so he fell off the roof, fell on his back and broke his back. By now I had alerted all of my friends so I climbed down. The guy who escaped was hiding in a plastic box with a cement mixer and polystyrene tiles. The people who had evaded capture had seen the flare and come back. We took over this island and this building site, imprisoned all of our enemy. Right at the very end this girl came running out and ran up to one of my partners and threw her arms around him. I asked “is this the comic relief then?”. He replied “no – this is … and we are going to get married soon”

There was the usual morning procedure and then I had a shower and a general clean-up ready to hit the streets quite early. But a message on the phone stopped me in my tracks. “Your delivery will be made this morning between 09:00 and 11:00”.

And so I waited, and at 10:05 the package turned up. Or, should I say, one of the packages. Now I’m the proud possessor of at 57-inch telescopic monopod.

Tripods are quite clumsy things to carry around, especially when you are on foot with luggage, but in many circumstances, particularly with the high winds that we have round here and with long exposure times in the dark, you need lots of stability.

There isn’t always a handy wall to lean on or lean against. And so a nice telescopic monopod that will collapse into a corner of your rucksack for just €12:99 is a good deal in anyone’s language.

The rest of the package will follow (hopefully) on Monday and then I’ll tell you all about it.

But I’ve spent even more money today.

Despite its issues I’m still persevering with the mirrorless Nikon 1 J5 because it fits nicely in the pocket when I’m walking and under normal conditions it doesn’t let me down at all. I’ve had some good photos with it.

Its difficulties come under abnormal conditions like very low-light or high-speed situations.

Now that these cameras are gaining wider acceptance there’s moe stuff on the market, so every now and again I’ll keep my eye open on the camera sales to see what second-hand lenses are available.

And much to my surprise one of these popped up on the second-hand market for less than a third of the price that is listed here for a new one.

The price seems to be too good to be true but an f1.8 lens working at 12800ISO should give some incredible low-light photos, so it has to be worth a try and to see what I can make of it. I’m not holding my breath though – if it does turn up and works it will be something, I suppose.

Once the lens had come, I nipped out to the shops, in my new trainers from last weekend. LIDL coughed up a couple of little extras but there was nothing in NOZ worth talking about, except for one of these vacuum storage things that compress your clothing. I’m going to give it a try to see if I can do something about the clothing that I take on holiday with me.

LeClerc had nothing exciting at all, although I bought a spare pair of bootlaces to keep in my rucksack in case I need them on my travels.

Back here, I’ve run out of hummus, so I made another batch. I forgot the garlic unfortunately, but it still tasted really good.

This afternoon, I sat down to work, but by 14:40 I couldn’t go on. I ended up back in bed where I stayed until about 16:30. Dead to the world in fact.

Later on, in the rain I wandered off in the rain and my new boots to the football at the Cité des Sports.

Eems Sea was still down there at the quayside. And in the daylight I can say that it looks so much better than it does in the half-light and I really can believe that it was built comparatively recently.

And furthermore, it looks as if all of the gravel has been loaded and the hatches are all battened down.

While I was walking through the town centre Rosemary telephoned me, so we arranged to speak later.

While I was on the phone, I was admiring the roundabout that has appeared just recently in the Place Charles de Gaulle opposite the Mairie

It looks quite bright and cheerful over there and there were a couple of kids on there having a whale of a time. And why not?

Further on along the road to the Cité des Sports I happened to glance down the driveway of a house and found an old car parked at the end of it.

It’s a Citroen Acadiane and regular readers of this rubbish in one of its many previous guises will recall that I owned one of these for a short while.

I bought it as a D-i-Y project from one of the Ixelles Council’s abandoned vehicle sales but I “lost” it when the garage in which I stored it was cleared out when the site was redeveloped.

After the football I came back home, passing by the empty berth where Eems Sea was moored just three hours ago (that was a quick turnaround) and had a very long chat with Rosemary again.

So now it’s another late night, without any tea too. But I can have a lie-in tomorrow because it’s a Sunday and there’s no alarm.

And then I can try to get back into the rhythm of things.

Saturday 2nd March 2019 – IT’S “CARNAVAL”!!!

And I was actually out there for part of the time joining in the festivities, even though I didn’t feel all that much like it.

It all started to go wrong even while I was still in bed.

It wasn’t as early as I would have liked – more like midnight in fact. And when the alarm went off at 06:00 (and 06:10, and 06:20) I didn’t actually haul myself out straight away.

Plenty of time though to go on a voyage, and It was certainly a weird one last night. Something like a sketch from “The Men From The Ministry” where someone (and it might even have been me but I doubt it) was trying to shave, but here seemed to be no soap so I’ve no idea what was being used and the blade was so blunt that it was merely smearing it around on the face. It wasn’t until much later that the realisation dawned that, sitting there half-shaven and in a mess, it might have been better to have simply used a new razor with a decent blade. And this ended up somehow with two people, the poor shaver and his sidekick, sitting in a car in the driveway of a country house doing everything wrong, and I’ve no idea why.

07:00 when I finally crawled out of bed and attacked the medication. And later on, we had breakfast of course.

There was an hour or so while I had a bash at the photo database, and then there was work to do.

I’d forgotten that I’d filled up a 32GB memory card on the Nikon 1 while I was away in Canada in September. I hadn’t saved the files and the card that’s in there now id filling up.

When I say “saved” the files, everything is saved onto the laptop and then on an external hard drive. But before I reformat the memory cards, I copy the images onto DVDs as an extra back-up.

These hadn’t been backed up as yet onto DVD so I spent a couple of hours copying them all onto a pile of DVDs, labelling and saving them. And then, of course, formatting the memory card.

I’m running out of space too in the hard-storage bit so I had to shuffle all of the disks around to make enough space in a storage container.

I had a quick lunch, and the went outside to head into town.

On foot of course because we are hemmed in right now. Just look at all of these caravanettes parked up on the public car park just outside our apartment building.

You can’t move for the blasted things and the blasted grockles that drive the blasted things.

And they are everywhere. Every last square inch of space has a caravanette parked on it.

Even our old friend the ancient CF Bedford isn’t safe. A couple of caravanettes have crammed themselves in around it.

And if you look across the port, you’ll see a few dozens more scattered around all over the place.

Anyway, I struggled up the road nevertheless to see what was going on

Including the unedifying spectacle of watching some unkempt middle-aged man struggling to keep control of three large dogs that were jumping up and down on a girl of about 7, and getting all upset when I told him that he ought to keep his blasted dogs under flaming control.

We almost had an “incident” there.

So I took up my place half-way up the rue Couraye and whatched the children’s parade come down.

It seemed to be strangely quiet this year – not even half the floats and parades that I remember from last year.

Tomorrow and Tuesday are the big days of the carnaval of course but even so …

After the parade, I went for a walk down town into the place Charles de Gaulle to see what was happening there.

Not all that much either compared to last year. I seem to recall that it was heaving in there back then.

But at least it gave me an opportunity to study some of the costumes of the paraders, and I was suitably impressed with some of them.

So while you admire a few more photos of the people and paraders, I climbed back up the hill for home.

And for some strange reason it was a long, weary climb back up here.

I could tell that I was not feeling myself right now yet again, and that’s no good.

Back here, I spent most of the time fending off waves of fatigue until near tea-time.

Two taco rolls with the last of the stuffing, with pasta and vegetables. Followed by one of these soya almond desserts.

The plan was then to go out and inspect the night-time carnaval activities, but a couple of things delayed me.

Firstly, I wasn’t feeling as well as I ought to have been. A kind of general fatigue and tiredness I suppose – the after-effects of my illness.

Secondly, I suddenly went freezing cold.The temperature in here is reasonably warm, but it was just how I was feeling I reckon.

Thirdly, a football match appeared on the internet. Barry Town v Cambrian and Clydach from Tonypandy, in the Welsh Cup.

I didn’t have the strength to plug in the laptop to the big TV in the living room.

Instead, I curled up on the chair and watched it on the big computer.

For a while anyway. I was just getting colder and colder so I ended up in bed under the covers watching it from there.

And then Rosemary rang me up, so I was chatting to her down the bed while watching the football.

Who says men can’t multitask?

We were chatting for almost all of the second half of the game and then my bad throat gave out so I had to hang up.

As for the football, Barry Town were clearly the better side (which is no surprise seeing as they are one division up) and they soon went into the lead.

But then they missed half a dozen easy tap-ins. One after the other was miskicked or sailed over the bar from three feet out.

And I remember thinking that they’ll pay for these misses.

Which they did, because all of a sudden they found themselves 2-1 down – two goals out of nothing had caught them cold.

But class will out and in the end they scored two goals later in the game to make the score look better than it ought to have done at one time.

Fitness and perseverence told in the end, for Cambrian and Clydach were puffing and blowing at the end.

So having missed the fair, I’m off to bed. Fatigue, headache and all.

I’m definitely not so good right now, but a good lie-in tonight and tomorrow might make me feel better.

At least I hope so. It’s the big parade tomorrow.

And if you want to see the rest of the photos of the carnaval for today, you need to go to THIS LINK

EPIC HALL

The Poisoned Pen (or Poisoned Chalice, more like) – or my relentless struggle against reality

Tag Archives: place charles de gaulle

Sunday 7th August 2022 – IT WAS JUST AS WELL …

Saturday 5th March 2022 – WHILE YOU ADMIRE …

Monday 21st February 2022 – THIS WINDY WEATHER …

Thursday 25th November 2021 – I MIGHT HAVE BEEN …

Monday 23rd August 2021 – DOWN IN THE TOWN …

Saturday 10th July 2021 – 265 DAYS …

Thursday 8th April 2021 – TODAY, I’VE HAD …

Thursday 10th December 2020 – ISN’T IT NICE …

Thursday 20th February 2020 – NOW HERE’S A THING!

Saturday 7th December 2019 – WHAT DO YOU THINK …

Friday 6th December 2019 – I HAVE JUST SEEN …

Wednesday 27th November 2019 – WHAT A WASTE …

Tuesday 26th November 2019 – YET ANOTHER EVENING …

Saturday 6th April 2019 – I’VE JUST SEEN …

Saturday 2nd March 2019 – IT’S “CARNAVAL”!!!

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