… that I’m holding my own.
Yes, I don’t want to be holding anyone else’s, that’s for sure.
Mind you, someone else could hold it for me, depending on who it was of course and several candidates spring to mind. And that reminds me, I’ve not heard anything from Percy Penguin (who doesn’t feature in these pages half as often as she deserves) for absolutely ages.
That’s right – I’ve been to see the doctor this morning. He’s quite pleased with my progress and thinks that I’m in a stable condition. But then again, so was Mary after giving birth to Jesus.
There’s even better news too, although not necessarily for me alone. I asked the doctor about this virus and how it was doing. he replied that there hasn’t even been a call for a test in Granville during the last 10 days, never mind a case of the virus.
He’s of the opinion that the number of cases is falling dramatically due to the success of the detention à domicile and if this keeps up, then Granville will be one of the first places to have the restrictions lifted.
However, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, statements like this are usually the Kiss of Death for any hopes. So we shall see.
But apart from that, today has been a horrible day for me again.
It all went wrong last night with me being very late going to bed. After 02:00 it was, what with one thing and another.
Surprisingly, I managed to beat the third alarm although I was feeling like death.
With the medication out of the way, I had a listen to the dictaphone. I was standing with a group of people on a square somewhere last night – a “circle” thing that you used to get with Council House estates. This square was being modernised and the road being reorganised and so we were standing in a group there and it was going to be one of these funk, soul R&B blues things but the guys were white and that took everyone by surprise.
After breakfast I had a go at doing some digitalising. Another two albums and, to my complete surprise, apart from two tracks that “stuck” and needed quite a bit of encouragement to work properly it went so rapidly that I didn’t have time to do more than half a dozen or so of the photos from July 2019.
By now, it was time to go to visit the doctor so I grabbed my things and headed for the stret.
It’s been a while since I’ve been out on foot into town in the morning and there was plenty of activity about, like this fishing boat that’s setting off into the English Channel, towing its dinghy behind it.
For a moment or two I thought that it might have been our old friend La Grande Ancre on her way out but I really can’t tell form this image.
And I can’t tell from this image what this thing is either.
It’s some kind of pontoon or raft of some description with a cabin and a crane and several buoys on board. It looks as if it might be doing something with the mooring chains in the tidal harbour.
However, when they’ve been doing that in the past, they’ve done it on foot at low tide, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall. I couldn’t see why they would want to go to the expense of bringing in a special craft to do the job.
The excitement is a long way from being over too.
Yesterday, we saw that Joly France has moved from her spec at the ferry terminal and was moored up in the inner harbour. I’d noticed earlier that Chausiais wasn’t there this morning either, so I was wondering if she had gone off on a delivery.
But no – she’s here in the inner harbour having a friendly chat with Soirit of Conrad. So there’s something going on at the ferry terminal too, then.
But never mind that for a moment. There seems to be quite a lot going on with the new pontoons at the “Rue du Port” side of the harbour.
It’s difficult to see exactly what they are doing here, but the giant mobile crane that occasionally puts on an appearance here and there around the harbour is back and it’s in position to lift something.
And I can’t think that they will be lifting that will be so heavy that they will need this crane for it.
Bit I carried on and went to the doctoor’s, and then off through the madding crowds (of which there were more than just a few people) up to LIDL.
Although I spent more than usual, much of that went on a new mini-wok. My frying pan is quite small and some of the stuff I make is too big, but far to small to cook in the giant wok.
However, despite everything that i spent, I forgot the carrots, as I found out when I went to peel them this afternoon.
On the way back home I always keep my eyes open for anything unusual or exciting, and this in the rue St Paul is one of those things – something that made me look twice at it.
Rule N°2 (regular readers of this rubbish will recall having seen Rule N°1 a while back) of hanging up signs and notices is to make sure that there are no creases or folds in the material that might distort the message.
Or do you think that that is splitting hairs?
Something else on which we’ve been keeping an eye just recently is the new house that’s being built on the corner of the Rue Charles Guillebot and the Impasse de la Corderie.
For quite a while, progress on it was stalled but they started up a short while ago.
And now they have managed to go as far as the roof. If they aren’t careful, they might be in a position to finish it off before too long.
Bu tit’s not going to be anywhere where I might want to be living.
La Mie Caline was open so I picked up a dejeunette and then went across the road to the pharmacy to pick up my medication for the next month.
On my way back up the hill in the rue des Juifs I wanted to see how the big crane was doing. But there she was, gone. And never called me Mother. Instead the floating pontoon is over there with the giant crane.
And I couldn’t even see what they were doing with that one either. It’s not my lucky day, is it?
As to where the big mobile crane has gone, that question soon resolved itself too.
And it also answered the question as to why Chausiais and Joly France have moved. With the ferries to the Channel islands being suspended now until the 11th may at the earliest, it looks as if they have seized the opportunity to carry on with the work that they were doing before all of this erupted.
With no ferries to worry about, they can presumably crack on.
And so I cracked on too, back home and started on the final work for the two radio projects that I had on the go. And by the time I knocked off for lunch, I had finished writing the text, it had all been dictated, uploaded to the computer and one of the projects had actually been completed.
After lunch, it didn’t take long to finish off the second, and I could breathe a sigh of relief. There are just 3 or four live recordings to deal with now, and then I’ll be at my target of four months ahead.
First job after finishing was to catch up on a pile of e-mails that needed sending out, and second job was to sort all of the albums that have been digitalised to date and file them away.
That latter job was one that took far longer than it ought because, having already crashed out for 10 minutes earlier, I went out like a light for a good half hour while I was putting away the albums.
And I do mean “out like a light”. It was as bad as I have been for quite a while and the type that would have had me crawling into bed had it happened this time last year.
There was still some time left to do a couple of little things before I knocked off at … 17:00 … for my hour on the guitars.
But at 18:00 I had other things to do.
The apple crumble is down to the last helping and there was some crumble mix left over, so I used it and the remaining cooking apples to make a small crumble.
But first, the home-made ginger and orange drink was finished off this morning so I needed to make some more. The lemons were looking somewhat sorry for themselves so I ended up with a home-made orange and ginger cordial today.
And here’s all of the finished product it all of its glory. There’s tons of stuff that I’ve been making just recently and once I have the time I’ll be trying more stuff.
While the apple crumble was cooking, I stuck a couple of potatoes in the oven with it and after a while a slice of frozen pie went in there too. With mixed veg and gravy, that was tea followed by the last of Sunday’s apple crumble with soya coconut dessert
Outside for my evening walk later on.
The sky wasn’t as good as it has been just recently though. No clear skies this evening. It was rather overcast and it was unlikely that we would have a good sunset. But this fishing boat sailing off into the setting sun was quite interesting
The Ile de Chausey is out there somewhere but it’s lost in the haze tonight.
Having dumped the rubbish in the bin, I set off on my run to the top of the hill.
And that was the worst that I have ever felt for quite a while too and I wished that I could do something else. But that kind of attitude bever helped anyone and I need to stop being so defeatist.
At least I had another really good view of the fishing boat pushing on out towards the Channel Islands or wherever.
There were no fishing boats that I could see in the Baie de Mont St Michel, but there were several out in the English Channel tonight.
From my vantage point up on the cliff I could see at least three, and here’s one of them just here. She looks as if she’s been down near Beéhal-Plage for some reason although I can’t imagine what it might be.
As for the others, it wasn’t easy to tell what they might (or might not) have been up to
A year or so ago regular readers of this rubbish will recall seeing the erection of a monument at the Pointe du Roc in honour of Maurice Marland and the other member sof the resistance who carried on the struggle against the Germans during the Occupation.
Four flag poles were erected, but with no flags and there was much speculation about which flags were to be flown here.
But today, we know the answer to that. Somewhere in the course of the day they have been out there to hoist a few – the French,the USA, the UK and, surprisingly, the German flag.
But then, I suppose, the German people were as much the victims of a wicked ideology as anyone else. And I can’t help thinking, as I witness the rise of Fascism in the UK and the USA and several other states in Europe just as in the 1930s, that “those who don’t learn from history are destined to repeat it”.
The sunset wasn’t as spectaculr tonight as it has been during a couple of evenings just recently.
Nevertheless there was a girl who had breached the security barriers in order to go down to the viewpoint at the bottom to admire the view. I wonder if she thought that what she had seen was worth the risk of the €135 fine is one of the Police Municipale ageents had appeared out of the blue.
There were certainly not so many people out and about this evening, but of those whow ere there, one of them was a guy with whom I’d exchanged pleasantries the other evening.
There’s been a great deal of talk here and there from certain people all over France complaining that the small local operators have been refused permission to fish whereas the larger multinationals are out there regardless.
The regular readers of this rubbish will recall having seen enough evidence to suggest that this is clearly not the case here. We’ve seen plenty of fishing boats from here out at sea and here are a few that are at the fish processing plant unloading their catch.
So I’ve no idea what is the source of these complaints
While I was here recovering my breath from one of the legs of my run, I had a good look across at the ferry terminal to see if there was any evidence of the work that the large mobile crane had been undertaking.
Not a sausage, as it happens. I didn’t notice anything in the way of new work. But I did notice that the crane is parked up here, presumably for the night, which must mean that whatever they were doing, they hadn’t finished it.
Presumably then they’ll be back to have another go tomorrow, so I’ll have to check tomorrow and hope that it will be more evident.
That just leaves the support pillars for the floating pontoons.
There has been a great deal of work going on there during the course of the day with all kinds of equipment being used and so I was quite looking forward to observing the progress that they have made.
But as bad luck would have it, there was little if no evidence of anything that might have required the use of the cranes. All that I could see that was different today wat that another one of the support pillars for the new floating pontoons has acquired its rain hat.
And they wouldn’t surely have needed a big mobile crane for that.
My run continued onwards and I went down to the rue du Nord to check on the sunset. The girl who had been there yesterday was there again, but with a friend (she must have heard about me). And there were now heavy clouds obscuring the sun so it wasn’t worth hanging around. I ran on home.
So now it’s late and I’m having a bad day today. Not much sleep, and what I did have was at the wrong time of day. I don’t seem to be recovering quickly enough from my athletic endeavours either and despite the reassurances of the doctors I might be holding my own but I’m not feeling myself.
Looking back on my notes from the High Arctic last year when I was three months without my medication and how I was feeling (which is why I make these notes), I can see it all happening again.
No hospital appointment until July too – another two or three months to go. Heaven alone knows what I’ll be like by then.
