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Tuesday 18th December 2018 – TODAY WAS …

… probably the worst that I have felt for a long time. In fact, it is quite a long time since I felt like I did today, although I do have to admit that at one time it was a fairly regular occurrence.

It wasn’t such an early night as I was hoping to have, and it was a struggle to rouse myself from my bed at anything like a reasonable time. I’d been on my travels too, discussing football results with a group of people, one of whom was a former friend of mine from Stoke on Trent. For those of you who are not clued up on these things, TNS – The New Saints of Oswestry Town, perennial winners of the Welsh Premier League, are having a bad time this season by their standards, and are adrift in third position. but last night they had apparently been playing Connah’s Quay Nomads who are out in the lead, and beaten them 7-0. Such an astonishing (but not surprising) result given the inconsistency in the WPL, and there we all were on our nocturnal ramble last night discussing the result.

After breakfast, I drifted around for a while not doing very much because I couldn’t concentrate on anything, apart from stirring around a pile of photographs. For part of the morning I was even flat out on the bed trying to gather my wits. Not quite sleeping, but not far off either.

Lunch wasn’t much better either I could feel myself slipping downhill until round about 15:00 when I went off with the fairies. And there on my chair I sat in a stupor until a loud noise on the computer awoke me. 15:45 it was too.

With something of a struggle I staggered off out into the hurricane and torrential rain. No-one was out there at all which is hardly any surprise given the circumstances.

But Thora was in port again, moored up at a different berth again.

She could well have come in yesterday evening from St Helier because I might have seen her outline at the quayside as I drove past her berth in the night.

There must be some serious kind of work going on somewhere in the old medieval walled town.

There were several pieces of heavy equipment such as this concrete mixer parked up here or hereabouts.

The streets of the old town are very narrow and the two archways through the walls are narrow and low. This prevents this kind of vehicle from going in and they have to park here and trans-ship their load.

We also have a visitor – a piece of heavy equipment – parked up on the forecourt of our building.

It’s some kind of cherry-picker with a large working platform. So it looks as if we are going to be having some kind of roof or guttering repairs to our building within the course of the next day or two.

I’m glad that I live on a lower floor.

Still feeling like death, I remembered that I had some of those high-energy drinks that I had bought last winter when I was ill. And so I liberated one from the Stores and drank it. Surprisingly, I felt a little better after that and I began to perk up.

So much so that a little later I was even working away on my High Arctic web page and it’s been a while since I’ve done that. It’s amazing what a little something like that will do.

For tea tonight, I found a Pepper and Green Bean curry from 14th November 2017. With some rice and vegetables and a leek from the weekend, it was delicious too. It’s amazing the stuff that I’m finding in the freezer.

The wind and rain had died down this evening so it was a reasonably-comfortable walk around the walls.

The sky was pretty clear too for a change and the photography was quite good tonight.

This particular shot of the Plat Gousset and the houses on the top of the cliffs on the rue de la Falaise came out really well. It’s a shame that the tide wasn’t fully in

And now that I’m home, I might try for an early night. I hope that this improvement in my health keeps up tomorrow.

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Friday 12th October 2018 – WHAT WITH ONE …

… thing and another (and until you get started you’ve no idea just how many other things there are) It wasn’t far short of 03:00 when I finally settled down to sleep.

That’s not leaving me too much time when there’s an alarm to go off at 06:00 is it?

Mind you, there was plenty of time to go off and disappear on another nocturnal ramble. This time it was to do with a load of girls who were saying goodbye to each other and going their separate ways. And I still haven’t worked out what that was all about either.

No-one was really hungry this morning so we didn’t have much in the way of breakfast. But I had a shower and then we put the washing machine on the go. I’ve no idea where all of this washing comes from – it’s certainly not me.

Once we’d gathered our wits, which in my case takes much longer than it ought, we went for a walk in the wind.

Granville was formerly the home of the well-known fasion designer Christian Dior.

His childhood home, situated on the cliffs on the way out of town, has been converted into a museum of his life and works, and it’s the kind of place that most women would like to visit.

and so this was our destination for this morning.

We went out along the walls of the old town and then down the steps onto the Plat Gousset.

Our attention was caught by a bicycle propped up against the wall with someone’s clothes draped over it.

So looking out to sea we saw someone perched up on the diving platform. And you can see how far in the tide is today by the fact that the platform is practically submerged.

And as we watched, our intrepid hero, clearly the grandson of Captain Matthew Webb, took to the windy water and started to swim back to the shore, cheered on by the onlookers.

As I remarked to one of the spectators, “he’s a braver man than I am” because I wouldn’t have liked to have been out there in those conditions.

It took him a while to make it back to shore though, although he never looked as if he was in any trouble.

However, we did have an interruption by some people who seemed to be rather concerned about what was going on.

Round the headland came the sea-rescue boat and it can’t have been a coincidence that they came on the scene just at that particular moment.

Of course, their services weren’t required at all but they were there nevertheless to keep an eye on the proceedings. Unless it REALLY was a coincidence.

It was a beautiful day for photography though. The colours really were superb and the excellent light brought them out perfectly.

I must have taken dozens of photos down there and it’s very hard to choose which one was the best of the bunch.

So I’ll just post one photo here and you can imagine all of the rest.

To reach the museum you have to climb up a couple of flights of steep stairs at the end of the promenade, but it’s well worth it, particularly on a day like this as the views from the top are stunning.

I was taking a few photos of the Ile de Chausey when I noticed a strange shape at the back of one of the islands of the archipelago.

So I photographed it with the view of cropping it and enlarging it back at home to see what it was.

But there was no need to do that really because I could see that it was a moving object. And just a minute or two later it burst out into the open sea.

Yes, we have another cruise ship cruising around the Chennel Islands. Not a particularly big one by the look of things, but interesting nevertheless.

I’ve not been able to find out which one it was either which is a shame.

That wasn’t the only maritime activity either.

As we were walking along the Plat Gousset we had heard a hooter telling us that a ship was leaving port. And 20 minutes later our old friend Normandy Trader hove into view.

She mad a really good photograph as she steamed … “dieseled” – ed … off to Jersey with the Ile de Chausey in the background.

The grounds of the museum are really beautiful and you can see why the Diors chose this place to be their home with views like this all over the place.

When they moved here in 1905 or whenever it was, there was nothing but bare rock but Mrs Dior arranged for tons of soil to be brought to the premises and this was transformed into what we see today.

The young Christian Dior has aspirations to be an architect, and it is said that some of the features of the garden and some of the furniture were made to his own designs.

But beautiful as the place might be, it came into the hands of the Granville town council who are now responsible for the upkeep, and the place seems to be suffering under the budget cuts while public funds are stashed away to satisfy what many people consider to be Madame la Maire‘s somewhat “over-ambitious” plans to abandon the town’s heritage and transform it into a playground for the rich.

So abandoning our fears about whether the railway line will be torn up and the only way to arrive at the town will be by luxury yacht with crew of 25, we carried on our tour of the garden.

Granville has been dubbed by many people (especially Madame la Maire as “The Monaco of the North” and it’s true that mediterranean trees, palm trees, and even banana trees will grow here.

As I reassured Josée though, they aren’t native to the area but if they are planted and well-maintained, they will survive.

The interior of the building was quite beautiful too and Josée spent quite a while admiring the dresses and the perfumes.

My attention was caught by the collection of miniature dresses on show because you didn’t just buy a Dior dress for yourself and your daughter, you could even buy one for your daughter’s dolly and hat surely is the height of decadence.

On the way out of the building Josée stopped to sample some perfumes and another woman went to spray me with stuff thinking that I was her husband.

With not having had much breakfast, by now we were quite hungry where we made our way into town and the fritkot for lunch. And he was open too, not like Saturday night.

Josée had a plate of meat and salad while I had some chips and a veggie wrap. And it was all quite delicious too.

Back here, I had a little … errr … relax, and then we set off again.

At the Christian Dior museum they had told us that our tickets give us the right to a reduction in the admission fee to the Anacréon Museum of Modern Art down the road from me.

Modern Art isn’t my thing, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, but Josée is quite into it and I have to keep my visitors happy. There wasn’t much in there that I would have liked to grace the walls of my apartment.

But Josée explained to me that I was understanding art incorrectly. If I simply want something to hang on a wall to look pretty then art isn’t for me. The purpose of art appreciation is to study and admire the artist’s technique.

So perhaps then art isn’t for me after all.

We stopped off for a drink on the way back and then went round for a long chat with Yves and Lily. They had a lot to say for themselves which is quite nice, but they also advised Josée against going musseling on the beach. Apparently there’s a virus going round and it’s not doing the shellfish any good at all.

Tea was some buckwheat crèpes with all kinds of stuff on (I had vegan cheese, onions, tomato, mushroom and garlic on mine) and to finish the day we saw the end of Seducing Doctor Lewis.

And after all of that, I’m exhausted.

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