Tag Archives: pozzo

Wednesday 4th June 2025 – I HAVE FINALLY …

… put my sooty foot inside my apartment downstairs. I rang up the letting agents to ask them about the keys, and was told that they had them there as they weren’t sure what to do with them. As my faithful cleaner was in town, I sent her a message and a couple of hours later, she duly presented herself at my door with the aforementioned.

And I do have to say that the tenant has not been very kind to the place. I shall have to find a decorator now to give the place a coat of paint before I move in, at the very least.

But anyway, as I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … it’s a total waste of time going to bed early, because all it means is that I awaken correspondingly early the following morning.

Being dog-tired and dead to the World last night, I dashed through what I needed to do and then crawled into bed at about 22:30, where I fell asleep even before my head touched the pillow.

And while I expected to be awake early, because that’s how things are when I try to have a lie-in, 03:20 is really rather ridiculous. No matter how I tried, I couldn’t go back to sleep and at 04:00 I was sitting at the computer working.

First task was to deal with the radio notes that I’d dictated a couple of days ago in another early start. They are now all edited, the programme has been assembled and it’s all ready to go – in about a year’s time. I’m that far ahead these days.

Next was to listen to the dictaphone to find out if I’d been anywhere during the night. And I was surprised to find that I had, despite how short the night had been. I had been working on a figure in 3D last night. The bottom part went really well but I was disappointed with the upper half. I tried working it with another basic figure and managed to make the top half fine but the bottom I didn’t like. In the end what I did was that I saved the bottom half of the first figure and the top half of the second figure and then merged them both together. It seemed to work very well. Then I thought that I’d better work on some texturing for it to make sure that it’s at least finished in some fashion. That was what I was doing when I awoke.

Except, of course, that I didn’t awaken. And, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, I just don’t have the time these days to do as much with 3D that I did back in the farm where I seemed to have an enormous amount of free time in the evenings after I’d finished work. In fact, I don’t have the time to do very much of anything. Where does the time go?

And later on, I was working on the biography of the group “Soft Machine” of Robert Wyatt. I was having the same kind of difficulty there. I could make half of the biography go very well and the other half not. When I went to do it again I managed to do the reverse so I thought once more about splitting them into two and combining the two best halves. That was where I reached when I awoke.

This seems to be becoming an issue, this “doing things by halves”. As for Soft Machine’s biography, they haven’t featured in any of my programmes for over a year so I’m hardly likely to be working on their biography. I think that the radio stuff is getting to me too! And I didn’t awaken then either.

After I’d had a wash, a good scrub up and taken my medicine, I found plenty of other things to do until Isabelle the Nurse arrived. She didn’t have much to say for herself this morning. She was in something of a rush, I reckon, and was soon off on her travels.

Once she’d gone, I made breakfast and read some more of my book MY BOOK.

It seems that our author is as much in a rush to reach the final pages as I am. We’re dashing through castles at an incredible rate, including a whistle-stop tour of that well-known English castle, Urquhart Castle, situated in that very traditional “heart-of-England” county called … errr … Inverness shire.

We didn’t stay there long though. We’re now in Wareham Castle in Dorset, where I encountered this magnificent sentence –
"Wareham Corfe are the keys of Purbeck, or rather Corfe is the fortress and Wareham the bridge-head of that bold projection of the chalk of Dorset, the southern headland of which bears the name of the protomartyr of England, and of which the triple spurs of Durlston, Peverell, and Studland form the eastern points, each with its own bay, and the whole protecting from the prevalent west wind the great indentation of the coast between Purbeck and the Needles, in the bight of which opens the harbour of Poole, and, under Hengistbury Head, the mouth of the twin streams that once gave name to Christchurch, before either castle or priory rose upon the banks of the Avon."
That is probably the most flamboyant sentence that I have ever read

Back in here, I had to telephone the agents to ask about the keys, and then I sat down to plan the next radio programme, which will be broadcast on … errr … 19th June 2026, assuming that the World has not come to an end before then. Whoever would have thought that, in the 21st Century, we would be thinking like that?

However, retournons à nos moutons as they say around here, I didn’t have half of the music that I needed so I spent a lot of time hunting it all down. But by the time that my cleaner arrived, I’d chosen all of the music, obtained it all, remixed and edited it, paired it off and segued the pairs all ready to write the notes.

Armed with the keys, a tape measure, a notebook and a camera-phone, we went downstairs for a look around and to measure up.

The place doesn’t look as nice as it did in the photos from when it was sold in 2016. The walls have had some patching up done to them and where they have been painted, the paint colour doesn’t match. The interior of the fitted wardrobe needs painting too. I’s been done with cheap emulsion and looks quite awful.

There’s an awful smell coming out of the dishwasher drain and that’s going to have to be cleaned out and sealed off because I don’t use a dishwasher and there’s no other way of preventing the smell from rising.

All in all, it’s not as nice as it was made out to be, but seeing as it was only 67% of the price of the two others that are on sale right now in the building (and one of those is in a poor state) I’m not complaining at all.

When it’s finished, it will be something really exceptional, I hope, provided that I can afford to have it done. The days when I could do things like this (and would do too at the drop of a hat) are long-gone.

We came back upstairs and I went through all of the photos, sorted them, annotated them and send one batch off to the electrician for his attention, showing exactly what I want doing.

Afterwards, I began to go through them again to annotate them for the joiner who is doing the kitchen, but then I reckoned that I need to be finalising the plans for the kitchen. That’s not a job of five minutes, especially as IKEA’s opening statement on their kitchen planner is “which oven would you like?” and there’s no “none” option.

As usual I became quite bogged down in whatever I was doing and made very little headway before it was time to knock off for tea, having a little chat with my architect friend along the way..

A leftover curry again, with more curry left over because I wasn’t all that hungry, which was just as well, seeing that I’d forgotten to take some naan dough out of the freezer.

On that note I’m going to go to bed ready for dialysis tomorrow, I don’t think.

But seeing as we have been talking about our author and his long-winded way of expressing himself … "well, one of us has" – ed … I always remember two guys discussing various words in the English language.
One of them said "do you know what? I reckon that the word ‘marriage’ must be one of the longest words in the English language."
"Of course it isn’t." retorted his friend
"And why isn’t it?"
"Because it’s not even a word."
"What is it then?"
"Everyone knows the answer to that. ‘Marriage’ isn’t a word, it’s a sentence."

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Tuesday 10th December 2024 – I THINK THAT …

… I must have an araignée au plafond, the way that things are turning out.

There I was, early this morning, thinking that I have sufficient supplies to postpone my next LeClerc delivery until the next weekend.

Then I realised that there would only be a handful of days from then until Christmas.

And then I was thinking “Jeezus H Goddam Bleeding Chri…..estttt” – I have Christmas Cake and Mince Pies to make and I haven’t even begun to think about the Christmas Cake yet, and there’s only two weeks to go!

Yes, I’ve not had my usual reminder, have I? And you know what my memory and my awareness is like!

And it was early this morning too, because when the alarm went off at 07:00, I was already up and about, sitting at my desk working.

Just for a change last night, I was in bed before 23:00. Only just, it has to be said, but even so it’s still worth noting. and I was so tired that I fell asleep almost instantly.

Nothing whatever disturbed me and I slept right the way through until all of … errr … 05:20 when something outside awoke me. No idea what it was but I couldn’t go back to sleep so round about 06:20 I gave it up as a bad job and left the bed.

In the bathroom I had a good wash and scrub up and then went into the kitchen for a drink and to take my medicine

Back in here I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. I was back driving taxis around Crewe again last night. It was a wet, rainy winter night and we were quite busy. I had two girls driving on the shift with me. I was running around quite well. I went to pick up a fare at one of the clubs. There was a meeting there just turning out and there were loads of people there. One couple were friends of mine and they asked me if I could sort them a taxi. I radioed into base and arranged for someone to go to pick them up. I carried on driving, and at one stage someone paid me £5:00 so I had that on top of the pile with a piece of paper over it. I carried on driving through the night and came back home again when the shift was finished. The two girls were in there cashing up. I noticed from the sheets that the passengers who had asked me to find them someone had not only been picked up by one of these girls but a return journey back home had taken place too. I thought that that was a pretty good trip. We were just sorting through a few things and it turned out that some young boy from the hospital had not been entered into the sheets. He’d started today and as a result someone was really late going for him and really late picking him up. It ended up with the police coming round to find out about what was going on. They had three particular complaints with which to deal about this. Of course I had to try to think about how this might have happened and what we were going to do about it for the future

These days I seem to be spending a lot of time driving taxis during the night. The last time I actually drove one for real was in 1989 but then in Brussels I spent until 2004 driving my boss around in a limousine. Early retirement at 50 was offered and as I couldn’t see myself driving a C15 around Brussels delivering the office mail (we were taken out of the front line at 50) I took what was on offer and headed off for pastures new. Even so, I still find it hard to understand why I seem to spend so much of my sleeping hours behind the wheel of a taxi.

Plenty of time before the nurse arrives so I spent it working on my Jersey page but I didn’t go very far because he was early today

There were the usual patronising remarks that really irritate me but he was soon gone and I could go to prepare my breakfast.

And to read ISAAC WELD’S BOOK too.

He’s continuing his stay with the First-Nation people and is pouring out his thoughtful observations, many of which have yet to come into the common consciousness of some people even today.

He tells us inter alia that "Le P. Charlevoix observes, that the Indians seem to him to possess many personal advantages over us; their senses, in particular, he thinks much finer than ours"

He also says that "the Indians have most retentive memories ; they will preserve to their deaths a recollection of any place they have once passed through; they never forget a face that they have attentively observed but for a few seconds ; at the end of many years they will repeat every sentence of the speeches that have been delivered by different individuals in a public assembly; and has any speech been made in the council house of the nation, particularly deserving of remembrance, it will be handed down with the utmost accuracy from one generation to another, though perfectly ignorant of the use of hieroglyphicks and letters"

On the subject of their memory and power of recall he tells us "A party of Indians that were passing on to some of the seaports on the Atlantic … were observed, ail on a sudden to quit the straight road by which they were proceeding, and without asking any questions to strike through the woods in a direct line to one of these graves, which lay at the distance of some miles from the road. Now very near a century must have passed over since the part of Virginia, in which this grave was situated had been inhabited by Indians; and these Indian travellers, who went to visit it by themselves, had, unquestionably, never been in that part of the country before; they must have found their way to it simply from the description of its situation that had been handed down to them by tradition."

This part of the book is probably the most interesting, not only because if talks so much about the lifestyle and behaviour of the First-Nation and Native American people, but also because he pulls no punches in his criticism of the Europeans who have corrupted the morals of the native people.

Back in here I revised my Welsh and then went to the lesson. Today, it was rather like the curate’s egg – “good and bad in parts”.

After lunch I decided that it was time for direct action.

First thing that I did was to make some dough for bread as I have now run out

Second, and most important thing, was to check the supplies for making my Christmas Cake.

Having decided that I have almost everything, I sorted out all of the dried fruit and put it in to soak. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that in the Bulk Barn in Fredericton two years ago I found some brandy essence and rum essence. It’s not available here as everyone uses the real stuff, so I loaded up and brought it back in my suitcase. I made a marinade with some of it, mixed with vanilla and orange essence and water, poured it over the fruit, mixed it in and it’s now in the fridge soaking.

Next Tuesday I’ll have to bake my cake. Last year I left my dried fruit marinating for a month, so I wonder if a week is going to be good enough

As for marzipan and icing sugar, I shall have to rely on my faithful cleaner at the shops next Tuesday morning. What a state to be in, hey?

My dough rose really well today, which was good news, and it cooked well in the air fryer. What I’m doing now is baking it just halfway and then turning it over for the other half. That seems to do the trick. All I need to do is to work out how to turn a cake over in mid-bake.

After the hot chocolate I came back in here and chose the music for the next radio programme, paired it off and segued it. Tomorrow I’ll write the notes for it, but I have a lot going on so I’ll see where I fetch up.

On the subject of my moaning about this stabbing pain, I’ve been summoned next Monday to the Imagerie Department of the hospital. No idea what they are going to X-Ray but I hope that it’s for this foot. It’s not unlikely that they may find something that is the cause of these mobility issues that I have. Wouldn’t that be nice?

Another thing that I have done is to address an e-mail to the agents of this building, about the defective handrail outside my door. After all, I don’t want to go head-over-heels down the stairs and me casser à la margoulette

Tea tonight was a lovely taco roll with rice and veg, followed by vegan ginger cake and soya dessert. Yet another simple but delicious meal. I definitely eat quite well around here.

So now I’m off to bed ready for a good start tomorrow, fighting fit and full of beans – I don’t think.

But while we’re on the subject of Native American memory and recall … "well, one of us is" – ed … Isaac Weld has first-hand experience of that.
At the start of his journey, he landed in Philadelphia where he was first informed of this ability, so he decided to put it to the test. He asked the first native American he met "what did you have for breakfast on the day that the Revolutionary War broke out 18 years ago?"
"Eggs" replied the Native American
So, suitably impressed, Weld set off on his marathon journey and for three years he travelled around the Continent of North America.
Back in Philadelphia three years later, he went to find his ship to go back to Ireland, and there standing on the quayside was a group of Native Americans.
Being friendly, Weld went up to them, raised his right hand in salute and said "how?" in greeting, like you do
One of the natives replied "scrambled"

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Thursday 4th July 2024 – THE DIE IS …

… cast

And in a most unusual turn of speed that can only be described as “indecent haste”, I’ve had a communication this afternoon from the letting agent for the apartment downstairs –

"Dear Sir
Please find attached a copy of the formal notice that we have today sent to your tenant … in accordance with your instructions of … "

So in other words, proceedings have begun to recover occupancy of the apartment on or before the end of this current tenancy lease on 3rd June 2025.

As it happens, I feel quite awful about putting someone out on the street. I wouldn’t like it at all and I didn’t when it was done to me.

However I shouldn’t feel bad because the tenant had two opportunities to buy the apartment herself. It’s the law in France that if a let property is put up for sale, the tenant has first dibs and it’s been sold twice since she’s been there.

Secondly, I’ve offered to exchange my rights in this apartment (which I rent, of course). It’s configured differently but it’s basically the same apartment from a point of view of size and accommodation. However, she turned down my proposal, turned it down flat.

All we need to know now is what I have forgotten or overlooked.

If I were doing all of this myself there would almost inevitably be something or other that I have failed to consider, but having a letting agent means that there’s someone else to blame when it all goes pear-shaped

So with half the new kitchen packed on the landing outside the door here and the other half in the back of Caliburn, and a cat awaiting in a shelter or refuge somewhere close by, it’s “all systems go”. It looks as if I shall have to do some serious packing.

But one thing is for certain is that when I finally sit down in that apartment I’ll breathe a huge sigh of relief. I shan’t miss the 25 Steps one little bit.

When I went to bed last night I breathed a huge sigh of relief too. It was actually quite late when I finally fell into my stinking pit but after my exertions during the day I was good and ready for it

During the night I don’t recall moving a single muscle. When the alarm went off I was flat-out in exactly the same position in which I’d hit the hay earlier

And it was a very confused me who responded to the alarm this morning by trying to answer the ‘phone, something that would have brought a smile to BILLY COTTON‘s face if only he had seen it.

Eventually I managed to tear myself away from my nice warm bed and went for a wash and brush up etc before coming back in here to find out where I’d been during the night. There was something going on with my ill-health again. There had been demonstrations in Montlucon. I’d been sent a form to fill in for me to say whether or not I’d been at this demonstration for just the one day or the two days. If I’d been there for the two days I was entitled to go along there and help clean it up, and I’d receive a daily subsistence allowance for the two days. I thought to myself that this is the first time that someone had really made an effort to bring the sufferers of this disease together and actually make it worth their while to come out of the shadows and announce who they are to the World and then be paid for this clearing-up of these sites in Montlucon. I thought that this was a definite amount of progress for this illness and I was wondering where it was going to take us next with this idea of opening up everything.

Transcribing that little lot, I was thinking to myself that anyone reading this article would imagine that I was suffering from the Bubonic Plague or something equally contagious and nasty but of course as far as I am aware, what I have isn’t contagious so you’re all quite safe.

That is, apart from this ‘flu bug that I don’t seem to be able to shake off at the moment. And that’s not frightened the nurse away because he’s still coming round.

He didn’t have a great deal to say for himself this morning. He was clearly in an introspective mood. He changed the dressing on my right foot, organised my puttees and then left in a hurry.

What I’ve been doing today is to finish off the radio programme that I started yesterday. I have had to perform a lot of judicious (and not so judicious) editing, cutting and chopping about and in the end I’ve finished with 56:39 minutes of music and musicians” banter

That is leaving me just 3 minutes and 21 seconds, or 201 seconds in fact, for an introduction and at 300 characters of text per 17 seconds, I need about 3500 characters of text. So far, I’ve written 3672 so there’s a little room for manoeuvre.

But as usual when I write stuff for programmes like that, I’ll review it a few times before I go with a definitive version. The usual programmes where I have 11 songs and about three quarters of a minute to introduce each one, you can’t do all that much. But I like to think that the text for any concert that I broadcast says all that it needs to in the time available to it.

Seeing as we are talking about concerts … "well, one of us is" – ed … I came across the soundtrack for an interesting concert.

There was a group quite active on the British Rhythm and Blues scene in the early 1960s, Johnny Kidd and the Pirates, and their claim to fame is that their guitarist at the time, Mick Green, is credited with having invented the concept of the “power trio” of guitar, bass and drums, by being able to play lead and rhythm guitar alternately and inspired whole generations of some of the most important musicians and groups in rock music. I’ve played bass in many a power trio and to me, that is rock music at its best

Johnny KIdd was killed in a car accident in the mid-1960s but is group reformed later and produced three or four LPs that I would love to find. Instead though, I came across a concert that was recorded in 2006 in a pub in Northern France with the Pirates, including Mick Green

The quality is rubbish unfortunately, but nevertheless …

Later on this afternoon I’ve been busy. Firstly, the cleaner stuck her head in. She brought my next batch of injections that had now arrived at the pharmacy. But poor girl – if it carries on like this, she’s going to need a lorry. I’m sure that I have more medication here than the chemist has in his stock.

And then, having used up the last of the bread this morning I need another loaf for starting tomorrow so I’ve been baking.

And what can I do with half an oven while there’s bread in the other half? The answer is to make a big vegan lasagne – tofu, mushroom and red lentils with tomato sauce all covered in a bechamel sauce.

That was a lovely surprise for tea too, lasagne with steamed veg. One slice to go and two slices for the freezer for another time. Like I say, the food in this place is simple but it’s really first-class.

So I’m going to bed and hopefully to have a good night’s sleep and to make all kinds of plans about the apartment downstairs.

But thinking about my dream earlier, it reminds me of a story that I heard from a schoolteacher friend of mine on the Wirral in a particularly rough primary school.
She set the children an exercise in their English language lesson – to write a sentence with the word “contagious” in it
After two minutes little Johnny put his hand up to say that he was finished, so my friend asked him to come out and read his sentence to the class
So little Johnny coughs to clear his throat and begins "Next door’s garden fence blew down in the gales and it will take the contagious to pick up all of the bits"

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Friday 30th June 2023 – THAT WAS THREE HOURS …

… of my life that I’ll never ever get back.

It beats me (well, it doesn’t actually – it’s called “egoism”) why people come to these meetings and spend hours talking about nothing of any use whatsoever. There was even a lengthy discussion that went on and on and on about a Motion AFTER it had been defeated.

In my opinion, such as it is, all these meeting and others of a similar type should be held standing up, outside in a rainstorm. That would succeed in concentrating the minds.

My mind was sufficiently concentrated last night to have been up and about once more long before the alarm went off. But I really did wonder why because my head was spinning around for a good few hours. It really was quite uncomfortable.

After the medication I came in here to carry on working but knocked off at 10:00 to stagger outside and catch the bus into town. There was no way that I was going to walk into town.

Having stocked up on a few of the basics I came back on the bus and made myself some coffee and cheese on toast for brunch, and then I started work.

Today I’ve finished my exploration around Cartwright (at long last) and even as we speak I’m heading out in an open boat to go for a walk on what I consider to be the Furdustrandir, the “Wunderstrands” of the Norse sagas and to walk in the footsteps of Vaino Tanner, the Finnish anthropologist

His claim to fame is that during his expedition to the Labrador coast between 1937 and 1939 he made the observation, that has since gone down in history as far as I’m concerned, that

  1. Inuit girls are very keen to marry settlers of European descent
  2. they are the hardest-working of all of the Inuit people (and then goes on to list all of the household tasks that they are expected to do in the home)
  3. they have an extremely sensual nature

I was intrigued to find out how he discovered all of this, particularly the third point, so as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, I went to the High Arctic myself in 2018 and 2019 to conduct my own field research into the matter.

There was a pause, for much longer than I was hoping, for this perishing waste of time of a meeting that could have been accomplished in less than an hour had everyone been of a mind to do so, but some people really like to have their money’s worth.

Back here, I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. I was down on the farm at one point and decided that I was going to stay here this time. That meant moving a lot of stuff from outside the barn door and moving some stuff around inside the barn so that I could put Caliburn in, then I could sleep in Caliburn and cook outside. It was dark and raining bit I did what I could. Then I went to get into Caliburn. Then I remembered that just before I parked him up I’d changed something over but hadn’t tried to see whether he’d start or not. I got in and turned the key. He took an age to start and when he did he wouldn’t fire up or run normally. he was coughing and spluttering. By this time I actually had him into a field where I planned to turn round. I thought to myself that I’m going to have a devil of a job now trying to move him to the path seeing as he’s not running correctly and I had my things all over the place.

There was also some kind of public meeting taking place with crowds of people. I had to wire up the PA system to broadcast to the hall. We had a row of 4 speakers down each side and 4 speakers either side of a corridor down the middle. It meant running wires to them. A friend of mine was cutting the wires and I was installing them. We reached one point where we’d had to move a few things around and the two wires were about 2 metres short. I had to go back to my friend who was busy talking to some young child and sorting something out for it, and ask him for some cables 2 metres long. He cut them. I thought to myself “should I give him back the old wire or should I just keep it and take it home with me at the end when everyone has gone?”.

I was back in that hall again later, this time in rural Canada. There was a big crowd of people in there whom we’d been investigating. A WPC had disguised herself as a citizen in order to infiltrate the group to find out what the private organisation was all about. One day she didn’t turn up so we went for a closer listen to the people and found out that they were concerned about how interested we were and didn’t seem to have had a hand in removing her.

Finally, there had been some kind of issue in an Army camp where I was. The junior staff was rather insubordinate. One of them had stood up to the Colonel and said something quite offensive to him on the lines of “well, you aren’t in charge of me; I am” which outraged the Colonel. He was fuming about it. he was planning on having everything all toughened up in the camp to re-instill some more discipline. There was much more to it than this but I awoke again with a massive attack of cramp in my left leg. That playing up now is all I need.

Tea tonight was chips and salad with some of the frozen sausage rolls, cooked with the chips in the air fryer. Just one more serving of those and then I’ll have to start on something else. But if I go to Noz tomorrow, which is debatable, they might have some more frozen vegan stuff on offer.

But actually there are plenty of carrot burgers, breaded quorn fillets, sausages and falafel so it’s not as if I’m actually going to be short of anything.

And thinking on, I need to make more space in there because I haven’t had a vegan pie for an absolute age. That thick onion gravy was delicious yesterday and some more of that, with steamed veg, new potatoes and a slice of vegan pie really would be delicious. My mouth is watering just thinking about it.

But that’s tomorrow. Right now I’m off to bed and hoping to have a really good sleep. Not that I will, I expect, but I have to keep on trying.

Actually, that’s something at which I’m quite good. A lot of people have said in the past that I’m very trying, which was quite nice of them.

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Saturday 20th May 2023 – YOU CAN TELL …

… that it’s THAT time of the year again.

All the way back from the shops this morning, stuck behind two perishing motorhomes crawling along at 10 miles per hour admiring the scenery and occasionally coming to a dead stop. “Ohh look Petunia! A seagull!” all the way to the motor home camp site which, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, is just 200 yards down the road from here on the way to the lighthouse.

So it won’t be long before Caliburn and I will be playing skittles with the hordes of tourists swarming across the road without even looking before they step off the edge of the pavement.

Anyway, that’s for later on in the season.

Right now I’m more interested in what happened today, and especially this morning when just as I was on the point of throwing the bedclothes off and raising myself from the dead, the alarm went off. So we’ll call than a honourable draw this morning.

There was some paperwork that needed doing first thing after my medication so I did that and then it was time for me to nip out to the shops. And I noticed the tenant in my new apartment cleaning the windows. Word has spread around quite quickly.

Noz came up with a few things, including a new non-stick pie tin to replace the old cheap metal ones that I had. It’s the same pattern design as the frying pan I bought the other week.

Matching frying pan and pie tin? Whatever next? I’ll be going for colour-co-ordinated curtains at this rate. They were having a “cat accessory” sale as well. After what I’ve been dreaming just recently, do you think that someone is trying to tell me something?

At Leclerc I hardly spend anything. There wasn’t much that I needed apart from the fruit and some soya desserts that were in the clearance bin. And then I had to go across the road to post a letter to the property management company of this building.

Back here I had coffee and breakfast – more cheese on toast (it’s lovely being able to buy vegan cheese) – and then checked the dictaphone. I was in Caliburn at one point. We were driving somewhere through the countryside and came to what looked like a steep hill. I got out to push Caliburn up the hill but it wasn’t actually an uphill but a downhill. Caliburn roared away all on his own and I had to run after him. I ran for a couple of miles and came eventually to a bad bend. There was a Bova-bodied coach that Caliburn had hit. Several people in it were badly injured. There was shattered wood and a couple of other cars badly damaged all around there. My first thought was that I was really really sorry about all of this. I said it about 3 or 4 times. One guy on the coach who seemed to be uninjured said “I’ve bandaged some of the people over here as best as I can but there’s all that side down there. I felt really dreadful

And then I was with, of all people, that strange Burmese girl whom I met in Brussels. We were in Egypt and I had to go to Cairo to pick up a hire car but I was the wrong side of the Nile. I met some friends of mine – it might have been my friends from the Wirral in fact – and we were chatting. Then I thought “God! I’m going to have to go”. I had a choice between saying goodbye to the Burmese girl or to a cat and strangely I chose the cat. I picked up the cat and stroked it. everyone else in the area came round and started to stroke it. In the meantime the Burmese girl was hiding in a little recess somewhere. She wouldn’t come out and her mother was scolding her for this and that. In the end she asked me when I was coming back. I said a date and she said “I’ll make sure that she’s here to see you”. I thought that that was strange but anyway that was what we arranged. I had to set off to walk to Cairo. They rang me up from the hire company and said that they’d dropped off the car somewhere. I thought “I now have to go to walk and pick up this car and come all the way back and load it. Why couldn’t they have dropped it off at the hotel where I could simply have loaded the car and gone?”. I set off and met the husband from the Wirral. The vehicle that they had for me was one of these big American semi-trailer rigs, just the cab unit. I thought “this is enormous”. Alvin got out and said that it’s a 5-speed and started to give me a whole run-down but I couldn’t hear a word that he said. He wandered off and the Burmese girl and I climbed in – what she was doing there with me – she said something like “wouldn’t it have been a better idea to have arranged this vehicle differently?”. I was beginning to think that driving something big like this through the streets of Cairo she was probably right. I wish that I’d done it differently now but it’s too late. She was nervous and asked “shouldn’t we have this vehicle towed?”. I said that if anyone is going to do any towing it’s going to be this. This is the correct vehicle to do that. We set off anyway and I suddenly realised that I didn’t know whether this was a petrol or diesel engine. What’s going to happen now when I come to fuel up?

I stepped back into this dream later on and she was wandering around a supermarket looking for some hamburger buns so she could make hamburgers for tea.

And then she was there again a third time. The two of us were actually at a rifle range at a fairground, in a booth, a sort-of shooting gallery. The guy in control of the place was behaving rather strangely so we were keeping some kind of eye on him at the same time that we were shooting to find out what was going on.

Finally, we were talking about history later and Pliny the Younger whose eye-witness accounts of things like the eruption at Pompeii in which his father was killed was the basis of a lot of modern history.

It’s strange though, thinking about that Burmese girl turning up in the middle of the night. What brought her into the proceedings?

In fact, it was pretty strange all round. About 20 or so years ago (I was still working and had the armoured Opel Omega) she sent me an e-mail. “I’m a Burmese illegal and I need help. I think you can help me”.

What help I would be to a young desperate girl is anyone’s guess, and how did she find my e-mail address?.

That’s the kind of thing that piques my interest and has brought me more than my fair share of trouble in the past, as events in the High Arctic will demonstrate, but anyway, I must know more about this.

We met and I took her for a drive and then a walk, taking all of the usual precautions. She regaled me about how she’d fled Myanmar through the jungle swamps and into Thailand and stowed away on an aeroplane – you know, the usual story.

But while she was telling me this I was looking her over. Perfectly manicured hands and skin, designer denim jacket and jeans – someone who’s fled through the jungle and stowed away on an aeroplane? If it looks like a duck and walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, then it’s a duck and that’s all there is to it.

So I was wondering where all of this was going to go, so seeing as we were close to Valentine’s Day I sent her a bunch or red roses a couple of days later to try to draw her out but I don’t think that she was born yesterday because she cottoned on to my game, I reckon. After she’d tried to up the ante with a story about how she “really did have a passport” and I still didn’t take the bait, it petered out.

There have been a few bizarre encounters in my life, and that was certainly one of them. And I wasn’t on a ship remixing a Colosseum live concert either. I must have been losing my touch.

For the rest of the day I haven’t done very much. Just a leisurely ramble around here and there, and I had the guitars out for a while a well.

For tea there were no chips because the potatoes aren’t big enough. So I cubed them and fried them and they were just as good with a salad and some of those small breaded quornburgers. There’s still a few left before I start on the big ones, but the freezer is now emptying quite quickly and I’ll have to start another marathon baking session soon.

Hence the new pie dish.

So before I go to bed I’ll dictate some radio notes. That will give me something to do tomorrow and at least make sure that i’ve actually achieved something this weekend. High time I did some work.

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Friday 19th May 2023 – AT LONG LAST …

… the internet is back up and running, as you might have noticed.

What has apparently happened, as the technician who came round just after lunch told me, was that there was a short-circuit in one of the apartments that had fused the main installation in the building.

They had repaired the installation but the short circuit persisted so they had to disconnect the circuit and gradually reinstate it apartment by apartment until they could find out which one it was.

Of course, it was in one of the apartments that is a “second home” for someone from Paris who wasn’t here so it couldn’t be fixed until they’d contacted the apartment owner and found a keyholder so they could go in, and of course it was in the circuit before mine which meant that I was disconnected while all of this was going on.

Whether that’s the case or not, I don’t know. But it will explain why the connection flickered on a couple of times quite briefly during all of this.

But every cloud has a silver lining, and it’s a real ill wind that doesn’t blow anyone any good. It gave me an opportunity to catch up on a mountain of outstanding work, which isn’t all done but it’s still progress, and also, because the technicians were coming to check my installation, it meant that I had to tidy up the bedroom. I even had the vacuum cleaner going for a while.

And while I was tidying up, I found the missing spare battery for the NIKON D3000 that I lost a long time (as in several years) ago. It had fallen underneath one of my bookcase units.

So how did I celebrate everything? Well, while I was in town this afternoon I treated myself to an ice cream. I felt that I deserved it.

Especially after last night. I was so engrossed in a couple of tasks that it was long after midnight when I finally crawled into bed. And when the alarm went off at 07:00 I was stark out. It was an effort to haul myself up out of bed before the second alarm went off five minutes later.

Mind you, after the distance that I travelled durning the night, I was surprised that I made it back in time for the alarm. At one point I was living with a group of Mexicans from 100 or so years ago, the time of the Revolution. We were living on the margins. We weren’t actually revolutionaries or criminals. I can’t remember most of this but there was one part where we were in a cave and there was some kind of event taking place concerning someone who had made a promise that he’d pay to have his wine crop blessed and fruitful but hadn’t done so. And so they held him to submitting his youngest daughter, who was 10, to be sacrificed. He had to fill in all this form to state about her etc and that he was willing for her to go and that he recognised that he was in default for not having thanked whoever it was properly for promoting the fruitfulness of his crops

Did I mention the story … “no you didn’t” – ed … about the 2 girls who had tried to buy some wine from an off-licence to get a teacher at school into trouble? The server recognised them and wouldn’t sell it to them. He had his revenge quite accidentally. It was the school outing and he’d forgotten to tell the parents of one of these girls. She hadn’t gone to school that day – she was paying truant. She thought that everyone else would be at school and cover for her but of course not being there on a day when there were so few students her absence was noticed and someone complained to her parents. When this all came out, the shopkeeper had forgotten to tell the parents about the trip as well, he said “don’t forget that I remember you from the day when you were in my shop so be careful not to make a fuss. You can see why karma has caught up with you”.

And then I had to go to meet someone in the centre of London so Aunt Mary had given me a book, an ancient book about Civil Engineering that she wanted to sell and have some money. All of the booksellers were around Angel Bridge Railway Station. I arrived at the Metro and the guy in the ticket office saw me coming. He had a ticket all ready. I asked for a return too but he replied “no. This is a weekend ticket and you can use it any time like but you’ll have to hurry. The train is in”. I took the ticket, paid for it and dashed downstairs but missed the train, found that I was on the wrong platform, walk back up halfway and enquire of the guard or look at the sign to find myself on the correct platform ready to go. But there was something else in this dream about someone being pregnant. They were discussing the pregnancy and talking about gifts that they should buy. One of the girls was very upset that someone else had been chosen to buy the nappies etc because she said that she didn’t have all that much money. That would have been an ideal present for her bearing in mind her shortage of money.

And we’ve had quite a few dreams when I’ve been wandering around the Underground in London, haven’t we?

Finally I had to go to do some research on Emerson Lake and Palmer. I found someone who had some information on them who lived in London so I went down. She was a bus conductor on the buses. Rummaging around in her office I came across a book that was an assembly of photocopied press cuttings going back all the way to 1967, news articles and everything. It was an absolute goldmine and I was enthralled reading it. It mentioned a whole load of clubs and places in London that you could see from the window of this woman’s house. I was there making notes. When she came up onto the top deck of the bus to show someone some damage that needed to be repaired I told her about the book and told her that on no account was she to let it out of her sight. It’s something that she really ought to keep for posterity. When I finished I was going back downstairs to her house. They were talking about a car going for an MoT. I thought “I’m not doing anything this afternoon so I can take it”. I put the book in my rucksack hoping that no-one noticed and went round to see about this car. It turned out to be a pedal car for children. I thought “this is strange” but I’d already offered now so I’ll have to go. I asked her where I’d go. She replied “turn out of here, go up the hill to the roundabout and it’s the 5th street on the right down there”. I was trying to make a mental note of this but it sounded like more than 5 minutes away but I was already committed now so I’d have to go and do it. This book of press cuttings is a little gold mine. I’ve never seen anything quite like this, especially in a dream.

After the medication I came here and slowly unwound myself and then attacked another project. A while ago I’d found the soundtrack of an obscure German rock band that had performed at one of the Hawkfests some time ago.

Back in those days technology wasn’t what it is today and this was full of holes from a worn recording tape. Using the techniques that I’d been practising just recently about “cutting in” pieces of music from elsewhere in the track, I set about repairing the holes. It wasn’t easy, but I managed in the end to make something quite presentable and you’d never find the joins. Even I was impressed.

There was a break for coffee and a fruit bun and I do have to say that the fruit buns that I made in the week are excellent. And as for the biscuits, that I have yet to mention, they have really worked and are even better than the chocolate ones that I made a while back

By now it wasn’t far off lunchtime so seeing as I was expecting visitors I started to prepare for a shower but bang on the dot Rosemary rang me for one of our marathon chats.

Just as she finished, Christian from the radio came round for the radio programme that will be broadcast this weekend. We had a drink and chat, and he told me about a local musician who is looking for a bassist. That piqued my interest, as you can imagine. It’s quite lonely here sitting in my bedroom playing with myself.

As soon as he left, the technician came round and checked that everything was working properly, and once he’d gone I could finally have my shower.

It was a painful walk into town to find some mushrooms for my salad tonight, and whet there were were pretty grim. Mind you they had some of those small peppers so I bought a couple for future use.

Next stop was the estate agent to drop off this paperwork, and then the long painful walk back up the hill to home, punctuated by a call at the new ice cream parlour that’s just opened

Back here I cleaned the peppers and put them in the freezer, and finally the physiotherapist turned up. His “marathon session” turned out to be 20 minutes but he had me working quite hard. I was glad when he left and I could have my hot chocolate and delicious ginger oatmeal biscuits.

And then , regrettably, I crashed out for about an hour.

Liz awoke me and we had a chat on the internet (now that I have an internet on which to chat) for a while and then I ended up with a late tea. Chips and mini sausage rolls cooked in the air fryer with a salad.

The mini sausage rolls are starting to run out now so I’m going to have to search for a vegan savoury stuffing so that I can make my own. Puff pastry is quite time-consuming and difficult to make so I might have to by a roll of ready-made stuff and use that.

So shopping to morrow, so I’d better have an early night. I’ll pop into Noz and see what there is there on offer. I could do with a change of diet. I’m still wading my way through the asparagus tips that they had but there are bound to be other exciting things.

Mustn’t forget the vegan yoghurt either. I’ve run out of that and it makes a lovely addition to my leftover curries. Things are definitely looking up around here.

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Thursday 4th May 2023 – I HOPE THAT YOU HAD …

… a happy star wars day today. May the Fourth be with you.

It’s certainly been with someone, because it hasn’t been with me at all. I don’t know why but I seem to have gone several paces backwards today.

It was another one of these usual nights that started off with a disaster. Every night before I go to bed I back up my computer.

There’s a powerful memory stick in one of the back ports and I use the search option to identify all of the files that I’ve used during the day and copy them onto the memory stick “just in case”.

So there I was using the “search all files saved today” function and all of a sudden it came up with “no files found”. That’s of course nonsense because I’ve spent much of the day working on the computer.

Three or four attempts came up with the same result, but then all of a sudden the light went on in my brain. In the time it had taken (a mere few milliseconds) to actually start and then finish the search it had passed midnight. So “today” was now “yesterday” and I wasn’t searching that. In the couple of milliseconds that had been “today” I hadn’t used any files.

From all of the foregoing you’ll gather that I had a late night. But even so, coupled with all of the usual difficulties that I’ve been having about sleeping, I was still up and about before the alarm went off at 07:00.

When I say “up and about”, I mean in the figurative sense. The body was there but the mind certainly wasn’t and I can’t think of a single thing that I did during the morning. I just sat and vegetated.

At lunchtime though I went and had a shower in the hope that that would revive me (it didn’t) and then I walked into town. And I hadn’t gone 20 yards from my doorstep before my right leg collapsed again. Luckily I had my crutches to hand otherwise we might have had a nasty accident.

It gave out again a bit further on as I headed down the hill and this is extremely discouraging news. I’m off to Leuven next Wednesday and this is not the time for my leg to be breaking down.

At the letting agent’s I introduced myself and gave them the necessary paperwork and discussed my plans. They shall make further enquiries and get back to me. But it’s not going to be as quick as I was expecting or hoping. Not to worry though. The news that they were able to give me was encouraging from my own point of view.

It was a bright sunny day when I set out so of course I went without a coat. And so as you might expect, it was raining when I returned. Only for a while tough. It soon brightened up again.

Still warm though, so the sight of two elderly tourists wandering around in thermal bubble-jackets, woolly hats and scarves was rather bewildering.

Back here I had some hot chocolate and more of my coffee biscuits and then transcribed the dictaphone notes, of which there were more than just a few. And for a start I had awoken again right in the middle of a dream only for it all to completely evaporate away the moment that I awoke. This is all very depressing and disappointment because I want to know who it is on whom I’m missing out.

Later I’d gone out for a run in a wood in an old quarry. I was running around there when my brother appeared (yet again). For a while he was with me but I accelerated a little and left him behind. When it came to going back home I started to race and I was quite some distance in front. I pounded up a steep gravel bank to the top, only to find that he had caught up with me somehow. He said something like “oh I’m going to catch you up”. I replied “no you aren’t”. He asked why and I replied “I’m going to go ‘BOOOH” to you” which of course I did. he was so startled that he fell down in this quarry all the way to the bottom again. I could have carried on had I wanted but I stopped to see how he was. Then we carried on back towards home talking about football and things like that.

And then I was with a girl from University last night. We were talking a bit about old times, then I forget most of what happened after that. But later I stepped back into this dream and she was running a newspaper or some kind of similar office. I’d started to do some volunteer work for her. I turned up in the afternoon after lunch. She was doling out the work to different people. She gave me a couple of pieces, one of which was some information about someone who lived in a certain building in the City of London. At first I didn’t recognise the name of the building – then I did because it was the building where my aunt used to live but had changed names. I knew that there was a pretty disreputable guy who lived there. This was asking all kinds about him. She wanted someone to research it. That’s why she asked me to do it. There was more stuff too, a little more complicated. I was reading this memo that had come. It was a simple straightforward memo by the looks of things. I suddenly had a kind-of Writer’s Block. I couldn’t think of how I was going to reply to it. Then I began to worry thinking that I don’t have much time as it is. I can’t afford to spend this time sitting here staring at this and not actually doing anything about it.

I also had a phone call to make. It was really early in the morning. Another friend of mine from University (and I wish that I’d noted who he was) was in a Court case. He’d said something about something or other. I’d sent him a message asking him if he needed me to do anything for him – to find anything. But late last night as I was going to, I noticed that he’d replied and said “no” so this morning very early as soon as I awoke I phoned him and had a very quiet word with him to wish him luck and making sure that there had been no new developments overnight that needed me to do something on his behalf.

Finally, coming into Paris, I was with a couple of good friends. We were driving. The first thing that I noticed was that at the slip road at the side of the motorway there were a couple of motor bikes that looked as if they’d had an accident and were blocking the road. A little further back there was a car and someone was moving a pile of cones so that the car could join the main motorway rather than carry on along the small road. Then there was a whole pile of motorcycles that looked as if they’d been flattened by something and cars that were parked any old how. It all looked as if they’d been disturbed by a hurricane or tornado or something. As we dropped down the hill into the city we could see everything in the distance. There was what looked like a huge gorilla walking around in a park quite some distance away. We could make it out with the naked eye. We all stopped and had a look. Just then our car performed a 360° pirouette then carried on driving.

After all of that I … errr … reclined for a while.

Tea tonight was one of those curried vegan burgers with some curried fried rice. And for some reason it didn’t taste as nice as my food has been doing just recently. In fact, thinking about it, yesterday’s meal didn’t taste as good as it might have done either. I wonder if I’m sickening for something.

Like I said just now, this is really not the time for me to go breaking down.

But break down I did because when I came back in here after tea, I crashed out yet again. This really is too bad.

Things are going to have to improve at some point soon, I hope, because all of this is getting on my nerves as you can imagine. I’m not looking forward to my trip next week if I can’t do better than this.

But one thing is certain after what I learnt today, and that is that I’m not going anywhere without my crutches. Not on your Nellus Secundus

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Wednesday 26th April 2023 – THE DEED IS DONE

After this morning’s efforts I’m now the proud owner of another property. All signed, sealed, delivered and paid-for

But when I’m able to move into it is another story completely. There’s a strict procedure to follow and, surprisingly, it’s not the duty of a solicitor to perform it. It needs to be undertaken by a huissier, which is, I suppose, a cross between a bailiff and a Clerk of the Court. So I need to make further enquiries.

But the timetable that I had laid out in my head is looking … errr … optimistic.

The solicitor tells me that the letting of the property is undertaken by a management agent – the same management agent who manages the communal affairs of this building – so that’s obviously the best place to start. In fact, on the way home I stopped off at their offices to talk to the managing agent but she was busy. They said that she would call me back this afternoon but it’s now 21:30 and I’m still waiting.

There was plenty of waiting around during the night too because it was yet another bad night. At some point I did go off to sleep but I did awaken at about 04:00 for several hours but dozed off again. I awoke about 5 minutes before the alarm went off so I fell out of bed with the idea that at least I could say that I beat the alarm again, but I didn’t feel much like it.

After the medication I went for a shower and then Caliburn and I headed for the hills and the notaire‘s office at la Haye Pesnel.

09:30 was the time of our meeting and to my surprise, I only had to wait 10 minutes today beyond that time. That makes a change. Nice guy though he is, he usually works to his own convenience and not that of his clients.

he explained the reason to me why completion took so long. This building is officially an Ancient Monument, built in 1668 and registered on the French list of Historic Places.

There are all kinds of things that need to be investigated in this case. It’s not easy tracing the official history of a building and finding the deeds of a property that old when there’s been a Revolution and a couple of World Wars that have destroyed all kinds of archives. For example, the Public Records Office in St-Lô, the capital of this département, were destroyed by the Americans in a bombing raid in June 1944 and I bet that the Revolutionnaires had a bit of a bonfire too.

That’s the least of the problems that the notaire faced. Because it’s a listed building the Government has first dibs and so it can’t be sold to a private person until the Government has been offered it and sent a formal refusal.

And so once the sale can actually go ahead, the change of ownership (even if, in my case, I only own 250/10000 of the property) has to be notified to the Register of Historic Buildings and a list of permitted and forbidden alterations and activities has to be prepared.

The notaire certainly earned his money.

Liz thinks that it’s appropriate that I’ve bought a slice of French history. I told her that it’s appropriate because I’m something of an ancient monument myself.

In case you don’t know, where I live is part of a huge old military barracks complex built by the French in the 17th Century to protect the coast of Normandy from raids by the British forces based in the Channel Islands in the turmoil that followed the 30 Years War.

It was occupied by the French Army until 1988 when it was abandoned and fell into disrepair. The huge dormitory building is now the local High School, the canteen is now the Young Workers’ Hostel, the Officers’ Quarters is now the public rooms and Council offices and the other two buildings that were the barracks offices have been converted into small apartments.

When I moved here, it was as a tenant, with the aim that I can have a look around the town and see if I could find somewhere nice to live with the money left over from the sale of my apartment in Brussels, but I love it here up on the rock with the sea on three sides in this magnificent building and my really nice neighbours.

As I’ve said before … “and on many occasions too” – ed …this is the first place in the whole of my life where I’ve actually felt “at home” so I didn’t want to move away. I’ve had to wait patiently for something to come up for sale that I could afford.

Of course I’m not in my new place yet, and it will be quite a while before I am as well, but I’m one step further on down the road.

Ordinarily I would have qualms about putting a tenant out on the streets but a rented apartment has to be offered to a sitting tenant first, and so she’s had a couple of bites at the cherry and turned them down. And in any case, I can always put her in touch with the landlord of my current apartment if she needs somewhere else to go.

Anyway, retournons à nos moutons as they say around here.

When I left the notaire I went to the management agent but she was unavailable, so I went across the road to LeClerc for a bit of shopping.

Back here I had a coffee and some cheese on toast from the air fryer, and then I went to see the President of the Residents’ Committee to thank her for everything that she did. It was a tip-off from her that put on on the scent of the new apartment and I shall be forever grateful.

The cleaner had been and gone while I was away chatting so I made some hot chocolate and armed with some of my delicious chocolate biscuits, I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. I was living in a caravan somewhere in a field. When I returned home my brother was there. He’d found his way in and was going through my record collection. I went to throw him out but he put up a bit of resistance. In the end I had to phone the police. At that point he left but he took several of my albums with him. I had to follow him to find out where he was going and what he was going to be doing. The police weren’t a great deal of help which I thought was unfortunate. In the end I walked back from Crewe (we were in Crewe at the time by now) to my caravan. All along the path were loads of dead foxes. It was very difficult to say whether they had been dead before or dead since or whether someone had moved them. I really didn’t know what I was going to expect when I returned to my caravan. When I opened the door I couldn’t see whether anything had changed or not. It was one of these dreams that awoke me bolt-upright and I couldn’t go back to sleep for ages afterwards.

And then I was part of an investigating team inspecting a battlefield in Normandy during the war. We were looking at a damaged American tank. We examined some of the bullets that had hit it. They turned out to be American. Part of the job of our unit was to investigate American or Allied weapons that had fallen into the hands of the Axis so we were interested in these bullets. We managed to find one that was almost intact. Somewhere near the battlefield was another unit that was involved in discipline etc that had a female civilian judge in charge of it. I went with my officer down there. We presented ourselves to this woman and explained what we had found. She wanted to know our interest. We said what we were doing. Our job was to trace this equipment to find out whether it had been equipment that had the Germans had captured, whether it was equipment that had been sent to the Soviet Union on Lend-Lease or whether it was something much more sinister than that, an American soldier firing on his own side. A guy with this woman judge immediately went on the offensive to some kind of absurd and ridiculous degree that embarrassed everyone there in this room. It made the situation completely uncomfortable. We had to explain that finding the answer to these kinds of questions was very important for a variety of reasons but he was still carried away on this emotional tide.

And while I was on my travels later on, someone had contacted me to go to meet them somewhere. I got back into Caliburn and set off. I noticed that Caliburn was running low on diesel. I thought that I knew where the diesel station was but by the time that I’d arrive it would be after 19:00 and it would be closed. It was in a very rural area so what would I do? As I drove down this road I came to 2 petrol stations, one on either side of the road, that I’d forgotten about. Problem solved. I pulled in there and fuelled up. I went in there to have a coffee too. You chose a mixer cup and they mixed your coffee and poured it into a goblet to give to you. I said that I’d go to the van for my thermal mug. When I reached Caliburn it was surrounded by people eating sandwiches etc so I had to fight my way in. I took my thermal mug but it was full of rubbish so I had to start to remove it. Some wouldn’t come out. It was a really difficult job to extract this rubbish. When I returned to the coffee counter the woman saw me. She asked “rubbish?” and found a waste bin to throw it into. I gave her my mug but I must have been distracted because I stood there and she was serving other people. There was an issue with someone’s card. She had to ring up about it. I asked “is that my card?” and she replied “no, you’re good to go”. Just then the guy she was ringing up managed to get through. He said something about Cheadle Hulme. I said “are we that close to Manchester”? She replied “that’s not that close to Manchester, is it?”.

I’ve forgotten most of this final dream. There was a couple of teenagers, a boy and girl, who were doing ice-dancing. Their routine wasn’t particularly adventurous but you could see that they were quite relaxed. They knew their stuff and quite enjoyed it. The next couple came on, a much older man with a girl probably about 6 or 7. You could see that she was terrified as they went through their routine. It was as if this guy was dancing with a plank of wood. They tried a few adventurous things and it must have been a horrible thing to do because you could see that this girl was scared to death. She was as rigid as a board as he was trying to hold her and twirl her around in the air. We thought “this isn’t any good whatsoever. They are never going anywhere like that”

And then I crashed out. The events of the day have been far too much for me, I reckon.

Tea tonight was a delicious left-over curry with naan bread. That’s the last of that batch and I do have to say that it was a total success. I shall definitely have to make much more of that, and quite right too

So that’s enough for today. I’m off to bed. I have the nurse coming to take a blood sample tomorrow morning so I shall have to be fighting-fit and hope that he won’t be looking in vain to find a vein in my arm. I’m fed up of being a dartboard.

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Wednesday 1st September 2021 – JUST FOR A CHANGE …

… I’ve had a much better day today. In fact, I’ve been feeling somewhat sprightly today and it’s been a long time since I’ve been able to say that, hasn’t it?

With going straight to bed last night right after the football, I went straight to sleep and that’s exactly how I stayed until the alarm went off at 06:00.

More stuff on the dictaphone too. I was going to work in Brussels and it was really early – 06:00. I arrived at work which was the triangular building on the corner of the roundabout near where I used to work. I couldn’t find put which door to go in. I eventually found one, but it was the wrong one. It took me to all kinds of areas that I didn’t know. In the end I found myself back on the street on the other side and managed to get in. We were talking about cars and we’d just bought a new Austin Ambassador. We should have bought an Opel Ascona estate just to do casual running about but we decided against that in the end. I had my car keyrings on my private keyring and my private keys on the office keyring. Some woman came into the office looking for my car key, picked up the keyring with my private keys on it and walked off. I had to chase after her. When I reached her office it was empty. I thought “how am I going to go home now that she has my car keys? In any case, I’d been away from the office for so long that I couldn’t even remember where my car was parked

There are about 30 other files on there right now and I hope that my new keyboard comes tomorrow because this one is driving me bananas. There’s no NUMLOK the N only works when it feels like it, the CTRL sticks and the backspace eraser has problems all of its own.

Trying to do anything with this keyboard is taking about 10 times longer than it should.

After checking my mails and messages I sat down to write up yesterday’s notes ad was promptly interrupted by a whole series of phone calls from Estate Agents, restaurants, wrong numbers and Rosemary who wanted another marathon chat.

As well as that, there was an exciting debate going on in an internet chat room that took up a lot of time.

And so with all of that it was rather a late lunch yet again.

Once lunch was out of the way I had a shower and a general clean-up and the headed for town.

thora marite port de Granville harbour Manche Normandy France Eric Hall photo September 2021Down in the harbour there was a lot going on this afternoon.

Down there at the quayside in the loading bay is Thora, one of the two little Jersey freighters. Now that the Festival of Sailing Ships is over and the dockside has bee cleared, the freighters can come in and unload

In the meantime there’s something strange going on. She has one of her sails unfurled and I’ve no idea why.

And I don’t know which one either. In actual fact I’m pretty useless about sails. When the skipper of the THE GOOD SHIP VE … errr … OCEAN ENDEAVOUR told me that the sail was a mizzen, I told him that we had better find aother one.

galeon andalucia port de Granville harbour Manche Normandy France Eric Hall photo September 2021And still in port today, a couple of days after her announced departure, is the Galeon Andalucia.

She’ll be putting down roots if she stays here much longer.

My walk up to the physiotherapist was somehow easier today. I only stopped twice to catch my breath going up the hill and that’s a sign of progress. I can’t remember how many dozen it was when I was on my way to Leuven.

He had me on his machine today for the whole half-hour doing all kinds of manoeuvres and I was glad to stop. But if it hurts me, then it’s doing me good.

On the way back home I stopped at the Carrefour down the hill. no point in going to LIDL just for a lettuce when they were only €0.99 in there. And I bought a can of energy drink for the climb back up the hill.

trawler returning to port de Granville harbour Manche Normandy France Eric Hall photo September 2021By the time that I’d returned to the port, the harbour gates were’t far off closing.

That’s the signal for all of the trawlers out at sea to turn round and run for home, just as this one is doing.

I can see the green and gold strips on her hull so she is either Coelacanthe or Tiberiade. It’s not possible to tell which one she is at this distance looking into the sun and I only have the NIKON D3000 camera with the 15-110 lens.


This one doesn’t need any introduction though because we’ve seen quite a lot of her just recently.

Even if we can’t read her name painted on the wind deflector above the windscreen, we can tell from her colour scheme that she’s Monaco du Nord II.

She spent several happy weeks in the chantier naval a short while ago and regular readers of this rubbish will recall having seen her there in several of the photos that I took.

She’s one of the first to come into port this afternoon and she’s going over to the Fish Processing Plant to unload her catch.

chausiaise port de Granville harbour Manche Normandy France Eric Hall photo September 2021Meanwhile, also in port this afternoon is the little Chausey freighter Chausiaise.

And I DO mean “in port” too because she’s actually in the inner harbour, not moored up at the ferry terminal.

That seems to indicate to me that her main work is now finished for the season and she’ll only be going out on the odd occasion from now on.

My work is almost finished – at least, my walk is. I’m going to head off home for a banana smoothie (I’ve finished the strawberry stuff)

people on beach rue du nord Granville Manche Normandy France Eric Hall photo September 2021But not until I’ve checked out the beach and seen what’s happening there this afternoon.

Still a few people out there braving what is left of the beach now that the tide is well in. And while I couldn’t see any swimmers out there today, the woman wearing a bikini walking back from the water is pretty suggestive, I suppose.

Back here in the apartment I made a series of phone calls that took me right round in a big circle and ended up back where I started. Yes, we have a new candidate for “Worst Estate Agent In The World’ today.

Tea was a curry of all bits and pieces left hanging around, and it tasted delicious.

After that, I came in here to type my notes but I was side-tracked and it’s now 02:11.

But the good news is that the keyboard that I drowned in coffee the other day – I now have it fixed and working. At least now I can type like I’m supposed to and I’ll have a lie-in tomorrow. I have a little visit to make in the late morning.

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