… strikes yet again!

There I was, out on my evening walk, and the autogyro that hangs around out here flew by slowly overhead. So Yours Truly went to take a photograph of it, only to find that he had forgotten to put the memory card back in after extracting the afternnon’s photos.

So last night wasn’t as early as all that, and it was something of a mobile night too.

I started off by going round to a friend’s house. He had been doing something wrong and was on the point of having a nervous breakdown, and his wife and daughter were quite broken up by it too. The doctor had prescrbed them all a very strong sedative so I had a look at it. I saw the name and knew that it wasn’t appropriate for their situation at all so I told them all not to take it and have a word with the doctor. But the husband took his and it poisoned him. As a policeman I asked for his desk lid to be sent to me. It took quite a while to have this sent to me so that I could examine it. I must have forgotten it though because several years later when I was tidying up my office I actually came across it in a corner. I thought that it was far too late to do anything about this case now so I may as well stick it back in the corner and forget all about it.
After that, some woman was in a restaurant last night and sitting there she had a parcel on the table. All of a sudden someone came over to her, threatened her with a gun and asked for the parcel. She refused to hand it over and a third person sitting at an adjacent table grabbed hold of the parcel, threw it across the room, the waiter caught it and he and the third person disappeared immediately. he problem resolved by me appearing, a bit like the Saint sorting everything out and dealing with this other person, had him arrested etc. Then this woman had a threatening letter – either return this article or face death. But she didn’t have this article – what could she do? We were wandering around the school in Nantwich by the way. I said that we are going to have to find it. What do we know about all of this?. We discussed the facts as they happened and came to the conclusion that this third party was nothing to do with the robbers at all – the people who were after this. There must be some other reason why they had suddenly become involved. It seemed to be a very well worked out plan too. There was something going on that none of us knew anything about. She made a remark about “these people, they can’t really spell”. I asked her why and she replied that they had spelt “dagger” as “daga”. That suddenly rang a bell with me – wasn’t that some kind of sculptor or painter or something? Are they talking about the same thing? Are they really interested in what’s in this parcel? Or is there a fourth puzzle now going on?
From there, it was a question of some kind of ballet due to take place but it was one of those things that kept on being postponed a bit like East Lynn – always next week. Someone came to see me about it and said that he had been given the opportunity to finance the ballet. What did I think? I thought that the first thing to do is to see it, find out about it and why it’s being postponed. A question of finance is one thing but a question of competence is quite another. He asked “how do I know what’s good or what’s not?” I replied that you have some professional advice, take some people. I know someone in the area – TOTGA – who could help. I explained that her daughter had danced with the Royal Ballet when she was 10. I was sitting in my car and he got in, and said “take me to …” (some address) that was only 50 yards away. So I reversed the car, without looking or even trying, between two vehicles ready to turn round, thinking that it’s only 30 yards away now if I were to go backwards. But I went forwards and ended up down a long dead-end where there was this gorgeous 1960 Massey Ferguson chromed tractor. We looked and said “God this is wonderful”. We were on foot after this and that was when the conversation had taken place about the ballet, half in the car and half on foot. TOTGA was in the bit on foot. We walked past some shops – one had been Nichole’s Dance Wear but was empty and the sign badly painted over. The other one was a Sports Shop with all of these little kids trying out these weird swimming costumes and doing some kind of running group action for photography. We were talking about this ballet of course. He wandered off and there had been this queue somewhere. I asked him how handy he was – dood with his hands. If he were no good with his hands he would have to get someone in to make all these dresses and this would cost him a fortune because they aren’t cheap. That was something that he needed to bear in mind.
Later on, someone had made an incredible mchine. It was 6 solar panels fastened in a circular formation so that they would pick up the sun 24 hours per day and the machine was in the middle of this circle. We’d seen the diagrams and the notes which had taken up a couple of pages of A4. I thought that whoever patented that would be making a fortune and he’s going to need all of these drawings because these are going to form part of his patent application.

Strangely enough (although it actually isn’t) I can pick little threads out of all of the foregoing that compare with a few little things that were either going on over the last couple of days or going on right now.

Even more interestingly, while we are on the subject if the subconscious, after I left school I ran away from home and moved to Chester where I met a few lads my own age.

One of them had a sister who always followed us around and it wasn’t until I said something curt to her and she burst into tears was it explained that she was interested in me. But by that time my interest lay elsewhere.

And I’ve no idea why, but she suddenly appeared in my mind today, after not having given her a moment’s thought for 45 years. It’s rather strange.

I missed the third alarm but it was still fairly early when I crawled out of bed. And with a reasonably early start I’ve accomplished a lot today.

The notes for Canada 2016 are all collated with the photographs, and I’ve made a good start on Canada 2017. But I’m convinced that I’ve done this lot before too.

As well as that, I don’t know what I did to the CD recording program that I use but today, it managed to detect the album names and track listing. Have I fixed it? Or has something else happened?.

We had lunch of course, taken indoors, and then our afternoon walk in the windy sun, or the sunny wind.

And once again, the seas around here were absolutely heaving with sea craft. More than I’ve ever seen before. All of these yachts here, off the headland at the Pointe du Roc.

It did make me wonder what was going on with them all, especially the one centre-right nearest the rocks.

And it wasn’t just out at sea where there were the crowds.

With the schools being off for half a day each Wednesday, people have plenty of mid-week spare time and today in the really nice weather it was time for the beach.

The kids were particularly enjoying themselves down there. making sandcastles by the looks of things.

But this is something that I would call “courageous”.

These days I’m much more nesh than ever I used to be, but even when I was fully-fit you’d be very lucky to see me in the water. But this guy seems to be doing fine.

He’s actually quite a way out from the shore just there.

But as we all know, once you are actually in, you’re in and it’s not too bad. But getting out of the water can be purgatory.

And I seem to have solved the mystery of the cherry-picker down on the Plat Gousset

There were a couple of guys on there inspecting the windows of the Rest and Rehabilitation Home down there. And there were a couple of vans fitted out with the kind of equipment that is used for carrying glass and windows.

So it looks as if new windows might be on order down there in the near future.

My route carried on around the walls past the Place Maurice Marland overlooking the harbour.

The gates must have not long opened, because there was a continuous stream of fishing boats coming in. Here we have three of them coming into the harbour in line-astern.

Like I’ve said earlier, I don’t recall seeing so many fishing boats getting out and about from here.

Back here, having given Minette a little stroke on the way round, I carried on working until tea time.

With some stuffing left over, I added some other bits and pieces of leftovers and a small tin of flageolet beans and made a curry.

There’s some left over for tomorrow too, which will save me a good deal of time.

Later on I had my incident with the memory card. I came back in for it and carried on with my walk around the Pointe du Roc.

Just half a dozen or so out there enjoying the beautiful sunny evening, including quite a handful of people who were fishing with rod and line once more off the Cap Lihou.

And although I stood and watched them for a while, I didn’t notice them actually catching anything. In fact I’ve yet to see anyone pull anything out of the water at Granville with rod and line

But as I said, the weather really was beautiful this evening.

Although it was rather more mistier than yesterday so the view was not quite as clear, at a certain moment tha haze over the Brittany coast lifted for just a brief moment and I was able to snap this photo of the coast and the lighthouse somewhere round by Cancale.

Tomorrow I’ll have to go to seek a reference point to see if I can find the locale
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Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that every now and again some mysterious buoys appear in the sea just off the coast.

And so it was this evening. There was a whole row of orange buoys anchored for some reason just off the coast here in the Baie de Mont St Michel.

No idea what they are doing and what they represent, but at least they are clear of the lane taken by trawlers coming and going into the harbour, otherwise we might have an unfortunate incident.

There’s a change of occupant in the chantier navale too this evening.

Our 10 green bottles are now reduced to three – the dredger St Gilles Croix de Vie from the Vendée, the trawler that has been undergoing major rebuilding for as long as I can remember, and the passenger cabin cruiser.

The yacht that’s been there for a while has now cleared off and we have two bays vacant. I don’t imagine that it will be empty for long.

There’s a change of occupant in the wet harbour too this evening.

Our old friend Thora must have come in on the afternoon tide without me noticing her. Another load from the Channel Islands I reckon, with a load to pick up from here and take back.

But she’s not quite parked in her usual place this evening. There must be a good reason for that and I wonder what it might be.

But I was rather confused by something in the harbour.

There was a type of boat in the harbour that I didn’t recognise at all, so I took a photo of it thinking that I could enlarge it and have a closer look back in the apartment.

And the mystery was soon cleared up. It’s not one boat at all but two completely different boats tied up side-by-side and that was what was confusing me.

Now I’m going to try for an early night again. I need a decent sleep again, and I have shopping tomorrow of course.

trawler granville manche normandy france eric hall

speedboat pleasure boat granville manche normandy france eric hall

yacht buoy granville manche normandy france eric hall

sea plat gousset granville manche normandy france eric hall

crowds on beach promenade plat gousset granville manche normandy france eric hall

sailing school baie de mont st michel granville manche normandy france eric hall

fishing boats entering port de granville harbour manche normandy france eric hall

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trawler granville manche normandy france eric hall

trawler granville manche normandy france eric hall

speedboat port de granville harbour manche normandy france eric hall