Tag Archives: quorn

Saturday 28th February 2026 – I HAVE JUST …

… watched one of the best football matches that I have ever seen.

Of course, watching a good match is always quite enjoyable, but when it involves TNS not only being beaten but also royally stuffed by a real Welsh football team, and in a Cup Final too, that really is the icing on the cake.

It’s a match to which I’ve been looking forward all weekend, and so last night, I decided to have an early night so that I would really be in the best of form to watch it.

Of course, what I decide to do and what actually happens are not the same thing, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall. And so none of my faithful readers will be in the least surprised to hear that it was 23:50 when I finally made it into bed.

Yes, it was that late. I really don’t know where the time goes these days. No matter what I try to do, it’s very rare that I can beat my curfew time of 22:30.

Once in bed, though, I was asleep quite quickly, and that’s the last thing that I remember until the alarm went off at 06:29. It was another night when I don’t believe that I moved a muscle at all.

As seems to be the case these days, I struggled to make it into the bathroom, but I finally managed it and had a good wash, a change of clothes and a handwashing session. I need to keep on top of my socks and undies, otherwise I’ll run out of stock.

In the kitchen, I made my hot drink and took my medication, including the Vitamin B12 and Vitamin D supplements that the people at dialysis are insisting that I take. It’s only once a month, and I usually always forget to take them.

Back in here, I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out what was going on during the night.

One of my neighbours had a car parked on their property for a couple of months and I had my eye on it. Then, they announced that they were selling it but the price that they wanted for it was way out of my pocket and way out of what I thought it was worth, so I was rather disappointed with them about this. But we ended up walking into Crewe, walking down Delamere Street towards the post office one early Saturday morning. I had a letter to write and I needed a stamped envelope, so I thought that I’d go into the post office to buy one, but I suspected that if the post office were open at this time, there would be quite a queue inside. So we went and opened the door, and there was really a queue, quite a long one in there in fact, and they were all at one counter because there was just one counter open. Someone was arguing with someone about small change, saying that they’d had to go all the way to Chester this morning to fetch some small change, so they are rather careful about how they give it out. Eventually, the queue divided into two as another window opened. There was a young girl who went up to the window and handed over a ring. She asked if she could change this engagement ring for a single person’s ring. A couple of people felt sorry for her, but I seemed to remember that this girl had been engaged three or four times before, but it had all broken off, so I wondered what was happening now with this latest one. Then she explained that she’d like to have the money back, and have it back quickly, because everyone will remember what happened when she used a cheque last time she had to buy something. I for one didn’t know what she meant, but I imagined that one or two other people in this queue must have known or something like that.

In the past, I would always have been interested in cars parked up for ages in neighbours’ gardens, but these days, there’s not a car being made anywhere in the World that is of any interest to me.

The story about the Post Office is perfectly true, though. Go in there at any normally busy time, and there would only be one window open of the five or six available. And I know who the girl was too. She was a colleague of Nerina’s when Nerina worked at Crewe before she moved to Stockport, who was also in the same school year as my brother.

Interestingly, going to Chester for small change was an interesting point. When I had my taxis, we had the contract for the local McDonald’s. They could only ever use approved products supplied by the franchise and never buy anything in a local shop. There are several occasions when we had to run to the Wrexham outlet for a bag of lettuce or to the Chester one for some cartons of milk, that kind of thing. I remember once, the Saturday before Christmas, having to go to Wrexham for lettuce, taking Nerina with me, dropping her off at a supermarket there to do our Christmas shopping while I went to pick up the lettuce.

That was the kind of pressure under which we were living. We never had five minutes to ourselves to relax. No wonder our marriage didn’t last.

The nurse turned up as usual to sort out my feet and legs, and we had a chat about Welsh football. I’m not quite sure why because it’s a very specialised subject.

After he left, I made breakfast and began my new book, ESSAYS ON THE LATIN ORIENT by William A. Miller, having finished the previous one about plants at Calleva Atrebates.

This book goes back to 1921 and refers to the history of Greece under the Roman and then the Byzantine Empire, something about which I really ought to know much more.

Everyone knows about the “Franks” — the crusaders who passed through there on their way to the Holy Land and who seemed to spend more time fighting the Byzantines as they crossed that empire than they ever did fighting the Saracens to free the Holy Land — but that’s about the extent of my knowledge. I really ought to be doing better than that.

Back in here, I had something of a footfest with the highlights of last night’s matches in Wales. They were quite entertaining, but there was nothing remarkable about any of them.

In fact, it was quite a leisurely late morning, with the monotony being broken by a series of ‘phone calls about a missing letter. I posted it (or, rather, my faithful cleaner did) on the 12th February, but it’s still not been received and the action to which it refers took place today. I had to find a copy of the letter and e-mail it.

This afternoon, after my disgusting drink break, I attacked yet another pile of radio notes, as I said yesterday that I would. And now they are edited and the two halves of the programme have been prepared. The joining track has been chosen and remixed etc, and the notes are written ready for typing. This means that I can have a complete day off tomorrow. Won’t that be nice?

Round about 17:30, I went and prepared tea because there won’t be much time later. We had the football match to watch instead.

It was the League Cup Final with TNS, odds-on favourites to win (as usual), against rank outsiders Y Barri.

Usually, games involving TNS, the only full-time club in the league with a squad that cost a fortune, involve a backs-to-the-wall approach with the opposition penned back in their own penalty area with piles of desperate defending. However, I’ve noticed a weakness in TNS’s defence, and that is that they are very susceptible to the ball “over the top” with a quick forward rushing onto the ball. And Y Barri have the two quickest forwards in the league in Ieuan Owen and Ollie Hulbert

Y Barri took the game to TNS right from the start and actually had TNS pinned in their own penalty area for long periods of the game. And when the TNS goalkeeper couldn’t hang on to the ball from a cross into the penalty area, Ieuan Owen was the first to reach the loose ball, and that was Y Barri 1-0 up.

As the second half wore on, you could see that Y Barri were tiring rapidly, and it was a question of whether they could hang on. But as we entered injury time, we had Ieuan Owen reacting first to a loose ball about twenty-five yards out of the TNS goal, and what followed was the best goal that you are ever likely to see at this level of football. HOW ABOUT THIS?

That wasn’t all the excitement either. The match finished in a good old-fashioned brawl involving just about every one of the twenty-two players, all of the staff and all of the substitutes on the bench.

After that, I went and had the tea that I’d prepared – baked potato, vegan salad and one of those breadcrumbed quorn fillets that I like, followed by ginger cake and home-made ice cream

Now though, I’m off to bed, hoping for a good lie-in tomorrow. I certainly deserve it, but we shall have to see about that.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about my new book … "well, one of us has" – ed … one of my friends asked me what book I was reading at the moment.
"It’s called ‘Essays on the Latin Orient’" I replied.
"Oh yes" she said. "Weren’t they promoted to League One a couple of seasons ago?"

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Saturday 20th December 2025 – I HAD A …

… lie-in this morning.

At least, by current standards, that is. I didn’t wake up until all of 04:22 today, and isn’t that a change?

It was probably because I was even more tired than usual last night. Although after tea I was feeling rather perky, it didn’t last long and I was hit with an overwhelming wave of fatigue and ended up falling asleep I don’t know how many times while trying to type my notes.

As a result, it was another one of those evenings that should have been an early night but wasn’t – not by any means. It was a good 23:30 when I finally crawled into bed, and how grateful was I? Not as grateful as I would have liked because it took a while to go off to sleep.

Anyway, as I said just now, I awoke at about 04:22 and reckoned that I would give it half an hour and then raise myself from the Dead, but the next thing that I remember was the alarm going off at 06:29.

Eventually, I managed to heave myself out of bed and into the bathroom to sort myself out. While I was in there, I filled the washing machine and set it off on its rounds. And there are STILL some clothes that wouldn’t fit in.

In the kitchen, I made my hot ginger, honey and lemon drink and took my medication, and then came back in here to listen to the dictaphone. I was back on the taxis again last night. I was driving a hackney carriage and was taking some passengers towards the hospital. We were fairly busy at that point, but a couple of jobs had become confused, and the dispatcher was trying to sort them all out. In the meantime, when I made it to the hospital to drop off these two people, two other people came running out from under the porchway and asked me if I was free. I told them that I was, because these other jobs would sort themselves out. These people climbed in and asked to go to the “Lion and Swan”. Suddenly, I had a mental blank and couldn’t think of where the “Lion and Swan” was. Then I realised that it was along West Street somewhere so I headed off down that way and came to one of these complicated road junctions where I had to turn left and then right. Once I’d sorted myself out there, I turned right whereas I should have turned left. The guy suddenly thought “no, it’s the wrong name of the pub”. It turned out that when he told me the name, we were going in the right direction. When we arrived at where he wanted to go, he and his partner stepped out. I went inside with them and was making some cheese and tomato sandwiches for them.

This is becoming ridiculous, isn’t it? Why am I dreaming all the time about driving taxis? We have had some recurring dreams in the past, plenty of them, but none have recurred as regularly as this. As to having a mental block, that’s the kind of thing that happens all the time. There’s nothing new here. However, it’s very unlikely that I would be making sandwiches for my passengers.

The nurse turned up, his usual cheerful self. I reminded him that I’m having a lie-in and not to forget the coffee. I would write out his reply, but these are, after all, family pages.

Once he’d gone, I made breakfast and then read some more of Thomas Codrington’s ROMAN ROADS IN BRITAIN.

He’s still wandering aimlessly around the roads of mid-Wales, not really being able to identify where he is or where some of his camps might be. That’s actually no surprise because, for one or two of the places that he mentioned, I can’t find anything either – not even a mention of their existence. While I was researching, I came across a decent modern map of Roman roads and camps in South and Mid Wales, but it’s embedded and difficult to extract.

After I’d finished, I went to collect the washing and hang it up on the clothes airer that my faithful cleaner had put out for me yesterday when she was here. And then, I had work to do.

And by the time I’d finished, so were my mince pies. Six nice, baked and golden brown ones: two for Christmas Day, two for Boxing Day and two for New Year’s Day. They don’t look very nice, it has to be said, because I baked them in a silicone pie mould, and it’s not as reliable as a metal one, but they still smell like mince pies.

However, I actually cheated because the pastry is a roll of flaky pastry rather than homemade. I did once ask Liz how to make flaky pastry but it sounded so complicated that I decided against it.

There was plenty of pastry left over too, so for the first time in I don’t know how long, I made a jam roly-poly.

Back in here, I was exhausted. I sat down in my comfortable chair and did nothing for about ninety minutes while I gathered my wits. And seeing how few wits I have these days, I’m surprised that it took me that long.

Once I’d recovered and had a disgusting drink break, I attacked the next radio programme. I’ve chosen all of the music for it, remixed and edited it, paired and segued it. And then in another wild fit of enthusiasm, I chose all of the music for the following one too. So now I have four radio programmes on the go as I try to build up another good head of steam following all of the disturbances this summer.

Actually, I could have made much more progress than I did. At 16:00, I had another one of these overwhelming waves of fatigue and crashed out for about half an hour or so.

Tea tonight was baked potato, vegan salad and one of those quorn fillets that I like, followed by a slice of jam roly-poly with, for a change, vegan mango sorbet. One of these days, I’m going to push the boat out and try to make some vegan ice cream. I have some almond milk that needs using, so with some cream of coconut and some grated chocolate, it has the potential of being something special.

But not tonight because I’m off to bed. It might, if I’m lucky, be a lie-in in the morning but the way that things have been going just recently, it’s unlikely.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about recurring dreams … "well, one of us has" – ed … another recurring dream that I have is about football, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall.
That used to bother me so much that when the trick cyclist came to see me at dialysis the other week, I told her about it.
"It’s pretty much the same dream every night" I said. "I dreamed that I was playing in the Welsh Cup. The first night, it was the First Preliminary Round, the second night, it was the Second Preliminary Round, the third night, the Third Preliminary Round, the fourth night, it was the first round proper all the way through to last night when it was the semi-finals. I’m totally exhausted after all this football."
"Not to worry" she replied. "I’ll prescribe a somnifer for you for tonight. You’ll sleep like a baby, and you’ll have no dreams at all."
"Oh, I can’t take it tonight! " I said
"Why not?"
"I might be playing in the Cup Final"

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Saturday 8th July 2023 – I’VE SPENT MOST …

… of the day reading.

Browing around in the depths of various on-line libraries I came across a pile of interesting books that I’ve downloaded for future reference.

The first one was by Admiral Sir William Kennedy who when he was a young captain was in command of a vessel that was on fisheries patrol around Newfoundland and Labrador in the second half of the 19th Century.

He goes to great lengths to describe the wretched conditions in which the inhabitants of the Labrador coast were living during this period and ends up by saying
“these poor trampled-down folk, who never see a coin of the realm, are told they are British subjects. It’s an idle mockery … On our visits round the island, we met with sights enough to sicken us, and make us ashamed to think that these poor creatures were British subjects like ourselves.”

There was an account of visits to the Labrador coast by people like Wilfred Grenfell, whose voluntary charity was the only medical service on the Labrador coast until 1974. On his first visit to the colony (because Labrador was a British colony until 1949, not a part of Canada) in 1892 he was shocked
“with the ruling terror of poverty and semi-starvation implied by the conditions then prevailing”

After that, there was the report by the geologist Albert Low who explored much of the interior of Labrador in the 1890s which runs to over 400 pages, and includes such delightful entries as “Notes on weather during previous 24 hours – Sandy Lake 14th June 1894 – Thermometer broken”

However he is much more famous for his maps, which can be best described as “misleading”. He was a geologist, not a geographer, but was the first person to create comprehensive maps of the area that led several people, the most famous being Leonidas Hubbard in 1903, to their deaths in the Wilderness.

In fact I’m reminded of a comment of the guy in Cartwright who runs the petrol station who said that many of the place names recorded on the maps are not the names by which they are known locally by the inhabitants and more than one tourist has come to grief by misunderstanding a place name..

And then several other rather inconsequential 19th-Century books on Labrador which are interesting in what they omit that wasn’t known back then.

The one book that I wanted to find though is unavailable. George Cartwright, after whom the town of Cartwright was named, was a trader who worked the Labrador coast in the 1770s and 1780s until his enterprise was looted by pirates. He kept very comprehensive diaries about his activities and it’s thanks to them that much of the early life out on the Labrador coast and that of the Innu and Inuit is known.

However in 2013 a dramatic discovery was made. When he was back in London in retirement he wrote a series of books about his stay on the Labrador coast and they turned up in the collection of someone in South Africa.

They have passed into the hands of an academic at McGill University who has written a report on their contents and in what can only be described as Incestuous Academia, will make copies available to private researchers for a fee of $115

I spend hours, days, weeks, months, researching stuff and it all goes on-line free gratis and for nothing, and if anyone ever uses one of my Amazon links to buy a product and generate a little commission for me as a reward, I’m absolutely delighted. But I’m obviously doing it wrong.

As, obviously, are everyone else who make their work freely available to anyone and everyone and spread the knowledge pool around.

You’ll probably gather from the foregoing that I’ve not been to the shops today. Stocking up with stuff at Lidl on Friday meant that I didn’t really need anything and if I did, then it’s rather too bad.

It was a horrible night and I don’t think that I had much sleep at all. You want to see the distance that I travelled during the night. There were 3 of us, me, someone else and a young girl going somewhere by sea. We were actually in the water walking, pushing some kind of floating device in front of us and carrying some things on our backs so we had to be very careful. At times it was OK but occasionally we’d go round a headland and have the full force of the wind. I’d always go first and the young girl would come second. When we had to get into the water where there was all this wind, I’d stop to make sure that everyone was in the water and bunched up tight before we set off to walk through the stormy bits. We all had woollen gloves because it was really cold. every time she kept on dropping hers. I would make remarks like “I see that you’ve dropped one” etc. We pushed on against the storm all the time making progress although it didn’t seem as if we were actually accomplishing anything.

There was something else involving battleships. They all had names that they’d inherited from other ships and were allocated several colours. The names were written in that colour and that was the official colour of things on the boat etc. They were used along the south coast to defend the south coast against some kind of attack. They undertook quite a considerable amount of rehearsals and preparation that many people thought was pointless but nevertheless they did them all the same on board the ships just in case.

I can’t remember much about this but I was in a car with a boy I knew from school. It was his birthday. Someone had bought him a tape player. We stopped and he bought a couple of cassettes. We listened to them while we were driving to wherever it was that we were going. We went inside for his birthday. His friends were there. Some girl bought him some more cassettes. later on while we were washing up he was humming a tune. I vaguely recognised it. I asked him if it was a song off one of the albums that he’d bought to play in the car. He said “yes”. There was a discussion about the music. A girl with us thought that we were talking about some that he’d received as a present and wanted to know when we’d been in the car since we’d had them. While I was polishing some really dirty stained glasses he was talking about playing some kind of puzzle that he’d be doing at about 03:00 tomorrow. Everyone was really surprised that he’d be up and about at that time but he seemed to think that it was a fairly normal thing to do.

On the subject of school I was in school, but it was a different school than mine – pretty much the same but modernised and an extension had been built on it. I was on the top floor and had to go down to the ground floor for something. I went downstairs in part of the new building down to the ground floor to do what I had to do. To come back I had to climb up this kind of tower so far. There was a telephone box at the bottom with all kinds of lists in there of courses that were taking place virtually to which you could sign up. I was extremely interested in this even though I was no longer a student. I tried to work out how i could join some of them. I was climbing back up this tower. There was a guy climbing up there too, a student. We were talking. he was saying that we climb the tower so high and then go inside and up the steps. You can’t go to sleep while you’re climbing up. I said “that’s a shame. What if you wanted to?”. we had a joke. It turned out that for some reason or other coaches weren’t allowed to use the tower for radio. He had an exemption because there was something the matter with his connection service so he was allowed to have an aerial on the tower and could use it. We kept on climbing. The extension on this school was really expensive and luxurious. While I was walking through it there was a crowd of people having some kind of lecture on art, all standing around. I had a quick look in there and a quick look in the toilets. It was clear that someone had spent a lot of money on the place. It was never like this when we were students there

Finally there was something else about a blood test someone had had. It was a huge test and they were told to file it away. They said that they hadn’t read it yet. The other me who was there then said “that’s why you have a smaller place where we can file away the documents that we’d read. In order to do that, just read it now and file it away. That way you’ve done everything that you need to .

It’s no wonder that I had a hard time leaving the bed before the second alarm went off, and why I had such difficulty actually doing anything this morning.

My mushroom and potato soup with crusty bread was delicious though. It was the usual onion and garlic fried in olive oil with cumin, coriander, turmeric and chervil. Then the mushrooms were fried in, a couple of small diced potatoes, a stock cube and some water to cover it.

After it had simmered away for half an hour I added some vegan soya yoghurt and whizzed it up. And I’ll do that again.

Tea tonight was a breaded quorn fillet – one of the batch I bought a couple of months ago. And it was really nice too cooked in the air fryer with the chips and a salad on the side

The radio notes are finished so I’ll dictate them before I go to bed.

Here’s hoping that I have a nice lie-in tomorrow because there’s a lot to do. There’s no pizza dough so I’ll have to make some more, and I’m pretty low on biscuits so I’ll have to bake some more tomorrow while I’m at it. I reckon that I’ll go for honey, ginger and oatmeal biscuits tomorrow. They should be delicious.

There is a big pile of digestive biscuits, I know, but I fancy having a go at making another batch anyway and see what that brings me.

One other thing that is going through my mind is to go back to making my own drinks. Since I’ve had the sodastream I’ve stopped doing that because fresh fruit juice with fizzy water is so much nicer, but I ought to make more of an effort. I enjoyed my little drinks production line when I did it before

But I’ll worry about that tomorrow. Right now I’m going to finish off the radio stuff and go to bed.

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Saturday 4th February 2023 – AND I WAS DOING …

… so well too.

But once again, this afternoon, I crashed out for half an hour or so and that effectively disrupted me completely. I really did think that I’d gone beyond that.

It was probably something to do with the night that I had had, which was later than usual and coupled with difficulties about going to sleep once I was finally in bed.

And I was off on quite a few voyages during the night too. There was something about a woman who was on Death Row back in the 19th Century for having strangled a teacher. It turned out that it wasn’t her but someone else. He’d arranged the crime so that it looked as if she’d done it. He was being blackmailed by this teacher for something or other and wanted to put an end to it all so he put an end to the teacher. Then he came in to gloat over the woman before she went off to be hanged. There was also something about a sale on eBay of a place infested with rats etc. It turned out to be a Ford garage that had closed down years ago. It was full of old Ford bits and pieces, spare parts etc. While we were all watching the video of this particular place I wrote a note to someone who was there, saying “this is how my place is going to look in 20 years time”.

Following that, I’d been in Canada and the USA. It was a Sunday and I was flying back on the Tuesday so I had to drive to Montreal, hand back my hire car and find a place to stay for the night and then fly back to Europe. When I came back I went to the radio offices and there had been a few changes. They had agreed to let a girl whom I used to know interview a few people. I had one or two projects in mind that she could do so I said that I’d go to see her. Someone else said that they would come along and bring the equipment. I set off up the stairs to her office under the eaves. When I arrived there was one of her daughters and someone else. I said “have you seen your mother?”. They replied “no, she’s gone in the air ambulance”. I asked “what’s happened?”. They replied “someone has been injured over at the nail bar”. I said “but the nail bar is only just there across the car park”. “Oh yes, they have had to go to the person’s home”. Just at that moment the other person came into the office so I said “yes well some people will do absolutely anything for a ride in a helicopter”. It looked as if we weren’t going to make any progress at all on that particular day with that particular plan.

In fact, what happened during that little voyage was exactly as she would have behaved in real life in similar circumstances.

At some point during the night I awoke because of a stabbing pain in my right knee. But then back in this dream with that woman again again after I’d sorted out the pain in my right knee there was something about bringing more animals around to be shared out amongst the different offices. I wondered what animal we’d put in her room – whether we’d put something like a gorilla. It would be quite a handful for her to handle if of course she didn’t get the better of it first

Later on I was back in this dream yet again, at the radio we’d gone out to try to interview a few people about various things. The weather was really poor so in the end we didn’t go out because there wouldn’t be anyone there. I was chatting to a girl who worked at the radio. She said that the bad weather didn’t seem to stop me going outside and started to call me a few uncomplimentary names working her way through the alphabet for a name with each initial. I stopped her when she reached round about “D” or “E” because I couldn’t see the point in her continuing. She had made her point. There was much more to it than this but I can’t remember now.

And finally I was round at my niece’s last night although it was in the UK. We’d gone to discuss a few things. It was in the evening after we’d had a meal and I was feeling rather tired. I had a girl with me. I don’t know who she was but she might have been Percy Penguin, who doesn’t appear in these pages half as often as she deserves. We were all sitting there basically doing our own thing listening to the radio and the adverts. When an advert for a certain delivery company came on the radio I explained to the girl with me that that was where my niece’s’s daughter worked (which she actually does). This girl was confused about which daughter because there’s a choice of three. It went on like this for a while. In the end she suddenly announced that she was tired. We hadn’t actually done anything which was rather disappointing but I could understand how she was feeling because I was far too tired to do anything. I’d just sat there and done nothing. I think that my niece was rather fed up too and had wandered off to do her own thing somewhere else in the room so it was no surprise that this girl was totally bored.

When the alarm went off at 07:30 I was up and out of bed reasonably promptly despite how I was feeling, and how I’m looking forward to a really good lie-in tomorrow. That’s because I’ve had a really busy day today and accomplished quite a lot.

For a start, most of the morning has been spent finishing off the notes for the two radio programmes that I’ll be preparing, and I even went as far as to dictate them and upload them onto the computer for editing. That’s what I call working hard.

Next step was to find what I needed for this money transfer. And that’s not easy too because the paperwork that they want doesn’t exist. This afternoon I spoke to people at both the banks concerned and they agreed to send me some information that they think might do. And I hope that it does too because it’s important.

And then there were the notes of my nocturnal voyages to deal with. Plenty of those, as you have seen already.

It was round about here that I crashed out, which was rather unfortunate. I was quite a long way away with the fairies and even when I finally awoke it took me a good while to gather up my wits, something that is quite surprising considering how few wits I still possess these days.

Once more, another lovely, delicious tea. We had one of those breaded quorn fillets that I like with a baked potato and some salad. I’ve really got the hang of all of this now and my meals are looking much nicer.

So now, not only am I up-to-date, I’m actually ahead of myself at the moment. I really can treat myself to a day off tomorrow and how I’m looking forward to that. But something will come along to disrupt me, I’m sure of that. It usually does.

And next week I’m hoping that Caliburn will be back and I can get on with organising myself properly as I would like to, even doing a lap or two around the shops if I’m lucky. Things are looking up.

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Saturday 24th September 2022 – I REALLY DON’T KNOW …

… how to start today. I’ve been trying to think of some significant event that could open up today’s entry with a bang, but I couldn’t really think of anything.

It’s been that kind of day today.

35ma light aeroplane baie de Granville Manche Normandy France Eric Hall photo September 2022So while you admire a couple of photos of a few light aeroplanes that were flying around this afternoon, I’ll start at the beginning.

When the alarm went off I was in a University lecture and the lecturer was reading out the conditions for a test. The way he calculated the marks to be awarded only led up to 80%. he said “don’t worry. The other 20% will be awarded depending on how well you got on watching a couple of films”. Of course that didn’t seem right to me. he started to give the instructions but I was busy drawing flowers on the whiteboard that I had. he came out with something and I made rather a lame joke about it. Half-way through, the invigilator came in to ask him if he was ready to start. He said “I have them wound up. They are already cracking jokes “. I thought that had I known, I would have cracked a better joke than that.

light aeroplane baie de Granville Manche Normandy France Eric Hall photo September 2022It wasn’t a very enthusiastic start either.

Although I managed to beat the second alarm, it wasn’t by much. I was still dressing when it went off.

But after I had taken my medication I wandered off for a shower and a general tidy-up.

And then it was time for a quick trip to Lidl. I didn’t want much today because I have something organised later in the week and shan’t need much food – at least as far as LeClerc goes, so there wasn’t much point in going there.

It actually took much longer in Lidl than it might otherwise have done. Only one queue open, and some doddering old woman was having a dispute with the cashier.

She seemed to think that the cashier had failed to charge the reduced price for a short-dated item and nothing that the cashier would do to convince her and it took an age for the matter to be settled. Of course, the cashier isn’t going to print out the receipt and give it to the customer until the bill has been paid.

And when it did come to paying, the old woman had to dig deep in every pocket and bag that she had in order to find the right amount of cash.

There was a lot of words being said by those of us who were stuck in the queue.

f-gnnx Pierre Robin DR400-120 pointe du roc Granville Manche Normandy France Eric Hall photo September 2022So while you admire F-GNNX, a Robin DR400-120 belonging to the aero club at St Brieuc that came to pay us a visit this afternoon, I was eventually finishing my purchases and driving home.

Having sorted out my purchases I came in here to check my mails and messages.

Do you remember the saga of Not My Cat from the other week? A friend of mine was followed home by two kittens yesterday. They came into her house and settled down. She added “despite leaving the front door open they didn’t want to return outside at all”.

Anyone who knows anything about cats will realise that the cats have now adopted their human and that is that.

Armed with a coffee and some cheese on toast, I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night.

You’ve already read one note from the dictaphone but there was something else too. We were back in the war. The area of Russia where we were living was invaded by the Germans. I’d been caught as being away from my own place when I’d been talking to this girl. I ended up having to work for the Germans but I eventually found my way back home again. There was a second wave of invasions and I was caught yet again away from home so we decided that I’d pretend to be a flatmate of this girl and I’d be having singing lessons. This is how it started. Of course the military came to raid us again. It turned out that the guy who was in charge of the military was the guy who raided the place where we lived the first time so that didn’t work and we were all taken off.

So no TOTGA, no Castor and no Zero last night. But no-one else to disturb me so I ought to be thankful for small mercies.

After lunch I was idly surfing the internet, like you do … “like YOU do” – ed … and I came across a live football game – Wales under-19s v Republic of Ireland under-19s.

It was pretty short of skill as you might expect but a couple of players impressed me. I don’t think that anyone would ever get past whover was Ireland’s n°4.

There were a couple of distractions while it was going on, which meant, would you believe (and knowing how things usually pan out with me, you probably would), I missed the two goals that Ireland scored. 2-0 for Ireland, the final score, which rather flattered them, I reckon.

As the final whistle sounded, it was actually bang on time for my afternoon walk so I hopped outside.

people taking photograph on beach rue du nord Granville Manche Normandy France Eric Hall photo September 2022Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that a regular feature that runs through these pages is one of photographs of people taking photographs.

Sown on the beach we had some guy posing at the water’s edge with some kind of dog that seemed to be a fashion accessory at his feet while someone else was taking photographs with a mobile ‘phone.

Not exactly what you would call the height of artistic endeavour but it makes some kind of unusual subject.

And just as well too because as far as I could see, they were the only people down there on the beach this afternoon.

jersey shtandart baie de Granville Manche Normandy France Eric Hall photo September 2022And while I was up here by the wall, I was having a look around to see what was going on out to sea.

And look who’s back in the neighbourhood. Right out there in the bay a good few miles offshore is our old friend the Russian sailing ship Shtandart. She’s come back to haunt us.

And I can tell that it’s her for the simple reason that there is no AIS signal from anyone out there in that direction. Had this been any other sailing ship she would have had her AIS transmitter functioning but regular readers of this rubbish know all about her switching hers off.

And look at Jersey in the background. On the extreme right we can even make out one of the offshore Martello Towers but I can’t make out which one it is from here.

st helier jersey Granville Manche Normandy France Eric Hall photo September 2022That prompted me to take another look at Jersey, without the distractions of Shtandart.

Over on the right we can see the blocks of flats at St Clément. As you’ll see when I finally add the photos from my trip to Jersey there are four fourteen-storey blocks of flats one behind the other on the seafront there and they show up quite clearly.

And then to the left we have various buildings in and around St Helier. It’s not easy to identify which is which because the sunlight is rather bizarre today.

But what I will do is to cadge a lift over to Jersey in Normandy Trader and film a video of the approach when the identity of the buildings will be much clearer.

And while we’re on the subject of Normandy Trader, Nathan her skipper tells me that he came into port on Wednesday while my friends and I were out to pick up those dumpers that we saw at the quayside on Sunday, and then had to come back the following day for more agricultural equipment.

la grande ancre baie de Granville Manche Normandy France Eric Hall photo September 2022There was some other stuff out and about too this afternoon.

One of the boats was instantly recognisable. I didn’t need the zoom lens on the NIKON D500 to tell who she was.

Sure enough, it’s another one of our regular customers, La Grande Ancre returning from a day’s fishing out at the Ile de Chausey.

The other boats were too far out to have any realistic idea of whom they might be, so I ignored them for the time being and headed off for my walk – or “hop”, more like.

wedding pointe du roc Granville Manche Normandy France Eric Hall photo September 2022The path along the clifftop was really busy this afternoon. There were quite a few people walking about.

However what had attracted my eye was this large group of people on one of the lawns at the end of the headland by the car park.

While I’d been watching the football earlier, one of the distractions was the noise of motor horns coming from vehicles at the Public Rooms presumably attending a wedding. What looks to have happened now is that all of the guests had adjourned to the lawn to carry out their celebrations in the open air.

They even had a couple of cars parked on there, decorated with flags and the like. You can see one of them over on the right.

kayakers baie de mont st michel Granville Manche Normandy France Eric Hall photo September 2022It actually wasn’t all that much of a nice day for it, no matter how it looked in the previous photos.

And I’m sure that the guys in the two kayaks down there would be able to confirm it. It was cold to the extent that I had on a sweater, and there was quite a wicked wind blowing – one that was certainly rocking the boat.

This would have been the kind of weather that had I been out there on the water I would have wanted some kind of heating. But it’s never a very good idea to light a fire in a canoe for as you know, you can’t have your kayak and heat it.

I’ll get my coat.

cabanon vauban person on bench pointe du roc Granville Manche Normandy France Eric Hall photo September 2022What with all of the activity down there this afternoon, once more I’m surprised at the insouciance of some people.

Here we have a big wedding, a pseudo-Spanish galleon, a couple of kayaks, some fishing vessels and several aircraft flying by, all of which in a very strong wind, and here we have someone else sitting in a ringside seat on the bench down by the cabanon vauban and he is far more preoccupied by something else.

Maybe it’s his telephone, maybe it’s a good book, but there’s that much other stuff happening that I would have thought that he might have taken more of an interest in it.

la grande ancre baie de mont st michel Granville Manche Normandy France Eric Hall photo September 2022Especially as just a minute or two later, La Grande Ancre goes sailing … “dieseling” – ed … part.

When I’d seen her earlier, she seemed to be pretty-much loaded up and I was really interested to see what she might have been carrying.

So here she is, and just look at all that shellfish. and not even a single seagull launching a dive-bombing raid for a free lunch.

It certainly must be profitable out there on the Ile de Chausey with all of that on its way back to the Fish Processing Plant, so I hope that they don’t hit any rough seas otherwise all that lot will come sliding off.

chantier naval port de Granville harbour Manche Normandy France Eric Hall photo September 2022having seen la Grande Ancre I wandered off down the path on the other side of the headland towards the port.

Yesterday we had seen Le Poulbot in the cradle of the portable boat lift waiting for the tide to come right in so that there would be enough water to float her away from the quayside. Anyway, she’s now cleared off back into the water than that is that

There’s still that empty place though where Pierre de Jade was until earlier in the week. I suppose that someone will come along to claim it in due course

In the meantime, Gerlean and L’Omerta are still where they were, over on the right of the yard.

ch922398 Gwenn Ha Ruz port de Granville harbour Manche Normandy France Eric Hall photo September 2022By now, one of the other boats that was out in the bay has come into port.

She’s one that we have seen before – CH922398, otherwise known as Gwenn Ha Ruz, which means “White and Red” in Breton.

There’s quite a load on board her too so it must have been a really good day out there today from that point of view.

By the way, don’t confuse Gwenn Ha Ruz with Gwenn Ha Du, “White and Black” in Breton. That is the colour (and nickname, incidentally) of the flag of Brittany. And you can see the similarity between the Welsh and the Breton languages.

Back here I had a play with the radio programme that I’ll be preparing on Monday. It’s going to be a special programme because there’s an event that needs to be celebrated so I spent quite a while trying to find some appropriate songs.

But now I have my 10 and one or two extra to fill in at the end. But I’ll need to make sure that there wiil be plenty of stuff to cut out of the text because I don’t have the same room to manoeuvre as I usually would for an 11th track.

Tea was a baked potato with veg and one of my breaded quorn fillet things. They really are nice. And as I’m having to ration the potatoes at the moment I had a slice of apple pie from the freezer. Dated September 2020, it was still quite nice.

And now before I go to bed I need to make a start on a mega-back-up. It’s been ages since I’ve done a complete one for the travelling laptop so I need to think about that.

It doesn’t matter how long it takes of course because Sunday is a lie-in and I fully intend to make the most of it.

What could possibly go wrong?

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Saturday 23rd July 2022 – HAVING COMPLAINED YESTERDAY …

belle france baie de mont st michel Granville Manche Normandy France Eric Hall photo July 2022… that we hadn’t seen Belle France out and about anywhere for a while, quess who we ran into this afternoon?

Sure enough, there I was out and about on my afternoon walk and as i was crossing the lawn at the end of the headland, from around behind a bunker she came.

It didn’t look as if there was anyone on board so presumably she’s on her way out to the island to bring back a boat-load of tourists.

It just goes to prove once more that I have the Kiss of Death when it comes to things like this. Every time that I make some kind of profound comment I am confounded.

Just like yesterday when I was waxing lyrical about the subject of kites and I was wondering to what exciting place I would be heading and with whom I would be heading there. And instead I ended up going almost nowhere and with no-one either. There was just something vague last night about a few drinks in these tetra-packs and taking a car in for a service etc. I can’t remember anything at all about anything except that and I’ve no idea at all what was going on.

When the alarm went off I struggled to my feet – really struggled – and then after my medication I headed off to LeClerc. I was there so early that the place wasn’t open yet and I had to queue with a pile of other folk for a while before they would let us in.

Once inside I did my usual shopping and bought a few extra things as well. For instance, they had some alcohol-free beer on special offer so I bought a six-pack to add to the supplies in here.

It was only just after 10:00 when I returned so I had a nice early breakfast, and then everything fell apart. I had the worst day that I’ve had for quite a while – several years in fact.

You can tell by the times of the photos that I ended up not going out for my afternoon walk until about 17:00 (adjusted). That’s because from about 10:45 until about 16:45 I was flat out on the chair in my bedroom. Out like a light with no prosepect whatever of awakening.

Anyway, I eventually summoned up the strength to go out for my afternoon walk.

And as usual the first place to go was to the car park at the end of the headland to see what was happening down on the beach.

people on beach rue du nord Granville Manche Normandy France Eric Hall photo July 2022The weather had improved dramatically since yesterday and even since this morning when it was still quite cool.

By now it was quite warm and that had brought out the crowds, even if there wasn’t all that much beach right now for all these crowds to be on.

And I do mean “crowds” because there were loads of people out there on the beach today.

Some of them had even taken to the waters which was quite brave of them because I don’t think that the weather was that warm today. Not warm enough for swimming anyway.

paddle boarding baie de Granville Manche Normandy France Eric Hall photo July 2022In the previous photo we’d seen al kinds of water craft in the water just offshore.

A little further out we had a couple of men on paddle boards looking as if they were going for a good run along the coast this afternoon. Not that I know anything about paddle boards though. It’s not my idea of entertainment.

And that was really all that there was going on down at this end of the beach. There weren’t any Nazguls out and about this afternoon or anything else of any interest.

I left them all to it and wandered off down the path on top of the cliffs towards the end of the headland.

boats baie de Granville Manche Normandy France Eric Hall photo July 2022There might not have been very much happening down by the car park, but it was all action further on down the path towards the end of the path.

The sea was absolutely heaving with boats and there was hardly any room to swing a cat in between them.

This is just one photo of half a dozen that I could have taken that would have shown the same situation. It seems that everyone who is anyone has taken to the water his afternoon and it must have been total chaos at the slipway trying to put all of these boats into the water in the limited time that’s available when the tide is high enough.

And taking them out of the water is going to be even more exciting.

commodore goodwill english channel Granville Manche Normandy France Eric Hall photo July 2022It wasn’t just pleasure craft that had caught my eye this afternoon either.

There was something large moving around out in the English Channel behind the Ile de Chausey so I took a photo with the aim of enlarging it and enhancing it when I returned home.

Back here when I examined the image more closely I found that her silhouette bore a close resemblance to the freight ferries that run between Portsmouth, the Channel Islands and St Malo.

And when I checked the fleet radar, I found that at the time that I’d taken the photo, the freight ferry Commodore Goodwill was out there in the English Channel. She left St Helier at 13:30 and arrived at St Malo at 18:50.

f-gbai Robin DR 400-140B baie de Granville Manche Normandy France Eric Hall photo July 2022And seeing as we were mentioning yesterday an obscure 1960s one-hit wonder, today it’s the turn of another one – Pete Townshend’s chauffeur John “Speedy” Keen and SOMETHING IN THE AIR.

It’s one of our old friends, F_GBAI, a Robin DR400-140B from the aero club, flying out into the bay de Granville.

My photo is timed at 17:09 (adjusted) and she was picked up on the radar at 16:10. She flew around the bay, then back inland, then down the coast and back where she disappeared off the radar again right by the airfield at 17:23.

red autogyro pointe du roc Granville Manche Normandy France Eric Hall photo July 2022She wasn’t the only thing in the air either today.

This is something that I don’t recall seeing before. We’ve seen the yellow autogyro flying around here quite often but this is the first time that we’ve seen a red one. She looks quite new and clean too.

So pondering on this mystery I wandered off along the path towards the end of the headland to see what was happening there.

Surprisingly there was nothing at all. No-one fishing off the rocks and no-one on the bench by the cabanon vauban either. And so I wandered off towards the port.

la granvillaise baie de mont st michel Granville Manche Normandy France Eric Hall photo July 2022Meanwhile, out in the bay here, we have La Granvillaise coming for a sail past, towing her little dinghy behind her.

The other day I believe that I mentioned something about hos we haven’t seen so many of the charter boats out there so far this year so it’s odds-on that we were going to see one of them out and about this weekend, wasn’t it?

No change in the chantier navale or in the inner harbour so I came on home for my chocolate drink. and to try to do some work seeing as I’d had a miserable day so far.

Tea was the left-over breaded quorn fillet from last weekend, with potato and veg. Really delicious. I’ll have to go back to Lidly to see if they have any more of those.

The one problem with having slept so much today is that I can’t sleep now. It’s quite late, or, rather, early next morning, and I’m still not tired. It’s totally messed me up, this sleep that I’ve had today and I’m going to regret this very much. But it’s a sign of the times I reckon.

It makes me wonder how tomorrow will work out with all of this going on – or not going on, as the case may be.

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Sunday 1st May 2016 – THEY FINISHED …

… the second round of chemo much earlier yesterday and so at about 22:30 I was able to settle down to go to sleep. In fact, I fell asleep halfway through one of the James Lee Wong films starring Boris Karloff in the title role.

But I wasn’t asleep for long. Not just tossing and turning either but my right had swelled up quite dramatically and there was a procession of nurses and doctors who came to see it. But I can do without all of this, I can tell you.

I’ve also developed a kind of air-bubble in my left ear too. I’ve no idea where that has come from but they will get a specialist to look at it tomorrow.

By breakfast time, the swelling had gone down enough that I could at least make a fist, but I’m off my food yet again. Jam and soya drinks are now on my proscribed list so you can see that things are definitely looking down. Lunch however was quorn fillets with potatoes in a tomato and mushroom sauce, and I enjoyed that very much.

I also enjoyed the shower that I had although we are going through another session of where I don’t want to look in the mirror to see what they have done to me.

This afternoon, it goes without saying that I crashed out. That’s the usual procedure following chemotherapy as I know from last time. But they did wake me up to give me two pochettes of blood. I suppose they think that that might revitalise me but the way that I’m feeling, it’s going to take more than two pochettes of blood.

They have given me a tablet to prevent bits of me swelling up, but what it is in fact is a diuretic. Every time I drink something, then 5 minutes later I have to dash to the bathroom. What a silly thing to give me so close to bed-time.

So if things go according to plan, I’ll be leaving here tomorrow so I’d better have an early night if I can. But we’ve all heard about plans before, haven’t we, so I’m saying nothing at all.

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