Tag Archives: shellfish

Friday 5th November 2021 – I’VE BEEN …

… really busy today and accomplished quite a lot, what with one thing and another. And, of course, once you start, you’ll be surprised just how many other things there are.

Nothing important though, regrettably, but nevertheless it’s all helped.

Perhaps the most important thing that I did today was to bake some fruit buns.

The last one of the previous batch disappeared on Wednesday and being so busy yesterday, I didn’t have the opportunity to make any more. it was toast for breakfast yesterday.

But as soon as I’d taken my medication this morning I made a start on the next batch.

It took an age to mix the dough because I think that my banana wasn’t as big as usual so the mix needed more liquid, but as you can see, it has turned out some lovely fruit buns and I’m really happy with these, even if the dough has separated in the oven.

After a rather late breakfast I headed off into town to pick up my injections.

But straight out of the front door and looking down the bay, I was surprised to see just how clear everything was today. I could actually see the houses at St Helier, 58 kilometres away, with the naked eye and it isn’t every day that that happens.

Now that Normandy Warrior (more of which anon is up and running, I might yet have an opportunity to go out that way on board a ship to see what there is to sea on the coastline of Jersey.

Down the hill to the viewpoint overlooking the inner port I could see that Marité was still out and about on her travels

In her place there was one of the trawlers moored up there. Behind her in the loading bay is Chausiaise, the little freighter that goes over to the Ile de Chausey.

Ther eis still plenty of freight on the quayside after the two Jersey freighters were in port on Wednesday. This might mean that we’ll be having yet another visit some time soon to take it all away. Business seems to be picking up in the port at the moment.

Of course it’s Friday morning, and that’s the day that it’s possible to buy fresh fish on the quayside.

The concession here is run by the owners of the trawler Galapagos and they are here every Friday morning, except of course when the trawler is in the chantier naval, as she was over the summer.

My first port of call was at the Medical Centre. I’d had my third Covid injection last Friday and I had to pick up my certificate. It was all ready for me so I didn’t have to hang around.

The pharmacy on the other hand was packed out with people and I had to wait a while before I could pick up my injections.

On the way back I almost – very almost – made it right to the way to the top without stopping. I was about 50 yards short and I’ve no idea why I stopped because I could have made it quite comfortably to the top. It was just an instinctive reflex action.

But the mystery of why the portable boat lift is parked up in the middle of the yard is now resolved anyway.

As we can see in this photo, it’s had its wheels removed so it’s no longer a portable boat lift. It must be under repair for one reason or another and it’s rather difficult to work on it where it usually lives, with all of the dangers of falling into the sea.

Back here, I had the account for repairing the NIKON 1 J5. I paid that and then seeing as I had my bank account open, I paid another bill or two that were hanging around in the queue.

This afternoon I finished off the journal entry from Wednesday with its 20-odd photos and that’s now on line. And then I went and did one of the ones from when I went to Leuven last.

And that’s not all either. I made a start on transcribing a few dictaphone notes from a while back and they’ll be updating a few journal entries in due course.

Meanwhile, from last night, A well-known gangster like Edward G Robinson came round to the house and what went on resulted in him wanting to be fed. I was in charge of the cooking so I made a main course which was OK but for dessert everything that I was proposing that I knew I had in the freezer or the fridge had gone as if someone had come in and raided the larder one night. This led to an extremely tense situation with him getting more and more angry until in the end I found a tin of pineapple rings. I was able to open them. Even though he was looking at me with a look that could kill, I managed to conjure up something with pineapple rings and ice cream but it was extremely uncomfortable, all of this, with him being menacing like that.

I was recording and editing some radio programmes at some time last night too but I can’t remember now why or when.

Afterwards, there was a football match going to take place between two teams. One team decided that they would put a little bit of dynamite in the changing room of the other team to destroy their equipment before the game. They were setting this dynamite up on the clothes locker but the other guy had the cable wrapped round his leg so when it came to go, he couldn’t leave. This led to a frantic scramble as they tried to untangle this cable. The two of them finally managed to leave the building. Instead of it being a small explosion it was a massive devastation that probably flattened stuff within a quarter-mile radius. Cars were destroyed and everything. People who survived gradually streamed away. Of course all the police were there, everything like that. At some point I was preparing to watch the game, someone asked me if I wanted a game to kick around but I said “no” because of my health. They tried to persuade me. It was hard to understand how anything living had been within that radius. Out of the shelter of a wall came this boy and girl. They’d obviously been having a smooch or something. being in this little recess had saved them. Out of the next recess stepped these two boys, clothes pock-marked and burnt but they were still alive. They walked away, filtered through this police cordonn checked and seen that they were victims and walked on. You could see all the street lights in a blue haze because of the smog and everything. A little earlier I’d been talking to a girl. She’d gone off somewhere down the road so I thought that this would be a good excuse for me to go and talk to her and see how she was doing so that’s what I decided to do

A little later my brother and I were going to watch the Alex. We were considerably early so I’d brought my computer with me to do some work. He was wondering if we had to pay or if we’d get complimentary tickets but I was better than that. I had a key to get into the ground. We fought our way through the crowds up to the front. There was a guy from school there so I said hello to him out of mischief more than anything else, used the key and let ourselves in. We were searched by a woman who was … err … very thorough then I had to find a place to sit where I could work amidst all the crowds. By this time I’d lost my brother. He’d wandered off somewhere so I had to follow him around. There were so many crowds of people that we ended up being blocked and couldn’t move. Worse, it was behind the commentary box so you couldn’t actually see the pitch from there. I was standing there hoping that this was all going to clear in the next few minutes so that we could find somewhere decent to sit and have a good view.

Finally I was with a girl last night and we ended up in a bar. For some reason she was very unhappy and had her head sunk down on her lap. I put my head down on top of hers and whispered a few nice things to her and gave her a little kiss. After a while she asked “shall we go?”. I was wondering about “go where and why?”. Of course, with my curiosity getting the better of me I sad “yes, let’s go” and we prepared to leave.

Another thing that I did in the middle of all of that was to go out to look at the beach.

Not that I made it very far across the car park before I was called into action. Someone had his chopper out this afternoon and just as I walked out of the door it went flying past.

It’s the red and yellow one, the Air-Sea Rescue helicopter that is based at Donville les Bains. I’ll probably find out tomorrow what it’s been up to when I read the newspaper, unless it’s a training exercise. They aren’t usually reported.

Once the helicopter disappeared behind the college I went over to look at the beach.

There was quite a bit of beach this afternoon. The tide is well out yet and there were a few people down there taking advantage of the lovely afternoon because it really was nice as you can tell.

Considering that it’s the beginning of November the weather is unseasonably mild. It must be building up to a really hard winter I reckon. It’s been a while since we’ve been in the grip of an Arctic winter.

So with the nice clear weather, the view out to the Channel Islands was just as good as it was earlier in the day.

What caught my eye was something white right out there off the coast of Jersey so I photographed it on the offchance that it was something interesting.

Back in the apartment when I enlarged and enhanced it I could see that it was a yacht. I was impressed that I could pick it out at this distance.

It was Ingrid’s birthday yesterday but I was rather busy so I rang her up to talk to her once I returned. She told me all of her news, some of which wasn’t very cheerful, and I told her of mine, ditto. We’re a right pair, between the two of us.

Tea tonight was a baked potato, a vegan burger and a tin of refried beans. I haven’t had refried beans since I was IN SANTA FE IN 2002 but I found a couple of tins in Noz a while back and they need eating.

If I were to tell you that in the football tonight Connah’s Quay Nomads put 4 past Bala without reply, you would think that there had been a right spannering going on. And when I tell you that Beriala finished the match with just 9 players, you’re probably not surprised that it was a 4-0 defeat.

But the damage was done long before Chris Venables and Keiran Smith saw red, thanks to probably some of the most clinical finishing that I have seen, and three of the best goals that you are likely to see this season.

Bala unfortunately offered very little up front except for a shot from Chris Sang that he really ought to have scored. In fact it was something of a damp squib performance compared to Connah’s Quay’s fireworks.

A Connah’s Quay victory, certainly, but 4-0 is nevertheless a considerable exaggeration.

Anyway right now I’m off to bed now after my very busy day. No shopping tomorrow as there is no Caliburn but I’ll go down for a walk to the market and pick up a lettuce and some mushrooms.

See you in the morning.

Sunday 25th July 2021 – BANE OF BRITAIN …

.. strikes again! And in spades too, so it seems.

As regular readers of this rubbish will recall, there is a new trawler that arrived in the chantier naval and from my handy little spec up on the clifftop I couldn’t see a name on her superstructure.

Most of the trawlers around here have their names written on the wind deflector above the windscreen and so I mentioned earlier this week that I’d go down there at some point and have a look.

So here I am – and guess what? Yes, of course, they are repainting her and the wind deflector has been painted over in thick grey primer and I couldn’t see a thing. It’s just as you would expect, really, isn’t it?

What else you might expect as well is that seeing as I had promised my self a nice lie-in this morning I was awake at 07:20. But if anyone really thinks that I’ll be putting my sooty foot on the bedroom floor at that time of the morning then they are mistaken, especially seeing that I didn’t go to bed until something like 03:15 this morning after my mega-crash-out during the day yesterday.

Even putting my feet on the floor at 10:20 and making the effort to move was some tough going but I managed it.

After the meds I made a new mix of dough for another loaf, and this one might actually work because the yeast foamed up like bottled Bass when I activated it. Fresh yeast from a different batch.

Back in here, I went to have a listen to the dictaphone but I couldn’t find it. Eventually I came across it, on the floor still working with 4:45:00 of silence on it.

Well, not silence, actually quite a lot of my snoring and my apologies to Percy Penguin, who doesn’t appear on these pages as often as she deserves, for not believing her. Although what I was doing sleeping with Percy Penguin there is something that I don’t understand.

There was however something of interest on the dictaphone. And I didn’t track it down by listening to it – 4:45:00 of my snoring is far too much even for me – but by looking for my speech waveform pattern with my sound-engineering program, although the sound that I make when I’m dictating in my sleep is nothing like the sound that I make when I’m awake.

Anyway, I digress … “and not for the first time either” – ed.

I was in a Welsh lesson last night with a variety of different people. The first part went well but in the second part the Welsh presenter had a flood so we had to do it ourselves. We talked about where we had come from, what we’d been doing, what we were doing now and what we were going to do, to keep it very simply for the beginners in our lesson to catch up. I can’t remember any more of this. I fell asleep instead.

So having dealt with that I paired up all of the music for the radio broadcast that I’ll be preparing next week and sorted out a speech for my regular guest. That took me up to lunchtime.

This afternoon I started to work again on my trip down the Brittany coast on Spirit of Conrad and wrote out some noted for about 10 photos. I would have done far more than that but I … errr … (fill in your own answer)).

Before I went out for my afternoon walk I kneaded the bread dough a second time, which had by now gone up like a lift, and mixed in the sunflower seeds. Then I shaped it and put it in a bread mould and left it to proof.

Of course the first port of call was the beach so I headed off across the car park to the far end to have a look over the wall

And what a change from a week ago when there was hardly enough beach to swing a cat. Today there was beach for miles, as much as anyone would want. But it was windy and overcast again, and that might explain why there weren’t too many people about down there.

But surprisingly, there wasn’t all that much going on out at sea either. A Sunday in midsummer and a darn sight better weather than yesterday, and I expected to see everyone out there today making up for lost time.

But not a soul

However, one place where there was no shortage of activity today was down the coast at Donville les Bains.

The tide is well out, as you have seen, and the bouchot beds are uncovered today. The harvesters are out in force this afternoon with all of their equipment giving it a really good go.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall what happens there but for the benefit of new readers, of which there appears to be more than just a few just recently, the bouchots were a comparatively recent and quite serendipitous discovery.

Someone planted some stakes with ropes attached into the ground for some purpose and when he returned he found that although his original purpose was a failure, the strings were covered in mussels.

Mussels are usually harvested from the sand and thus are quite grainy and gritty, but with growing on strings, there’s no sand in them and so they are said to be quite smooth and delicious, not that I would know of course.

This area is now quite famous for its bouchots

Anyway, now that the biology lesson is over for the time being, I can clear off along the path on the clifftop.

Not exactly far from the madding crowd. There were loads of people walking around there today on the path as you can see in this photo. And there were plenty more than these too.

And I could count on the fingers of one hand the number who were wearing masks, which is rather disappointing seeing how the infection numbers here are now going through the roof. I really don’t know what the answer to this one is, except that I hope that Darwin catches up with them pretty quickly.

Anyway, high time that I stopped moaning and pushed on along the path. I have things to be doing.

It was round about here that I was overflown yet again by an aeroplane taking off from the airfield at Granville.

This time I can tell you who she is because she has a pretty distinctive shape, even if she is quite far out over the bay. She is in fact F-GVJC, a Piper PA-32-300 Cherokee Six serial number 7140066 and she took off at 15:59 to perform a series of concentric circles around between here and Avranches.

It’s the same one that w saw the other week and the reason why I wasn’t able to correctly identify her then when we saw her much more distinctly than this is because there’s a coachline that goes right through the middle of her registration number.

For a change, instead of crossing the path and the car park, I took the low road down the steps and along the path lower down.

And it was down there that my right knee gave way again. That’s three times now and for a while I had to hobble, if not limp along on my way. Sometime during the week I have to see the doctor about my injections and I’m going to try to blag my way onto some physiotherapy sessions or something like that. I can’t go on like this. Bits are dropping off me now at an alarming rate and I’m fed up.

On my way round, I noticed that there were people out there at the peche à pied.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall what goes on here, but again for the benefit of the new readers, the beach between average high tide and average low tide is let off in a series of concessions to commercial harvesters, as we saw with the bouchot farm.

But whether or not they are actually being exploited, no-one else can harvest seafood from there. It’s like gold claims – once it’s claimed, it’s claimed.

However a few times a year the low tides are so low that the water goes below the level of the commercial beds, and that area that’s uncovered is now available as a free-for all for just about anyone who cares to go raking in the sand or prising oysters off the rocks.

But they have to share their catch with their friends. After all, no-one should be selfish with their shellfish.

Having been forestalled (I’ve gone all Peary-ish again) at the chantier naval, I thought that I’d take a photo of these objects and tell you what they are.

These are actually shellfish dredges. The trawler or fishing boat will drag these out behind it and it basically ploughs up the sea bed.

The shells and other obstructions like bicycle wheels, scuba divers and World War II munitions go in through the mouth and whatever is too small to be of any interest goes out through the grating.

The rest is kept inside the dredge and has given more than one fishing boat crew an unexpected surprise when they have hauled in the dredge. Sometimes, the phrase “shell-fish” is more appropriate than they realise.

Of course, this type of fishing is only appropriate in fairly shallow water where there are no rocks.

You’ll notice that they all have a serial number welded onto them in MiG-weld and in some cases the name of the boat to which they belong.

Every boat has a registration number painted on her hull somewhere and the the registration numbers of the boats around here, being registered in Cherbourg, begin with CH, although there are still one or two older boats, such as La Granvillaise for example, who still like to display the old “G for Granville” number.

So having organised that, I hobble off up the hill on my way home cursing my luck about the trawler. I’ve no idea when they will have painted her name back on.

A strawberry smoothie was my treat when I returned, and then I bunged the bread into the oven to bake

While it was going that I peeled diced and blanched 1.5kg of carrots and I would have done the rest too but the saucepan was full by now.

when the bread was baked (and what a good loaf that is) the pizza went in.

And here’s the finished product. Really nice although I still can’t make the base any more crispy than it is.

No pudding, you will note. There is plenty of jam roly-poly left, and I have a cunning plan for the rest of the week, more of which anon.

And tomorrow I’ll tell you about the bread. If it tastes as good as it looks it will be a belter, that’s for sure.

But that’s enough for today. For a Day of Rest I’ve done a great deal and I’ll need a day off to recover.

No chance of that, though. I have far too much to do and I’ve no idea how I’m going to fit it all in with my busy schedule of arrears that are piling up.

Tuesday 7th January 2020 – I WAS RIGHT …

… last night when I doubted that I would be able to stay awake long enough to finish my notes for the day.

About half-way through I felt myself going off and although I managed something of a recovery, it wasn’t for very long and 5 minutes later I was in bed under the cover and away with the fairies with the notes unfinished.

At least – I think that I was away with the fairies because when I checked the dictaphone this morning it was bearing a rather strong resemblance to my bank account, or to the cupboard of Old Mother Hubbard.

One thing about crashing out early was that I was awake early too – 05:35 in fact. But I still managed to have to fight to beat the third alarm call out of bed.

After the medication, I made a start on today’s project. And that is to do another radio programme for my weekly rock show. I’m actually working now on the first programme after Brexit and while I’m not allowed under the terms of my contract to “engage in polemic”, nevertheless I have a cunning plan.

As Pete Seeger once famously said, “songs are weapons” and I haven’t given up the fight.

There was a break for breakfast of course, and having worked all the way through the morning afterwards, it was 13:20 when I went into town for my dejeunette.

Down at the fish-processing plant I was treated to some excitement. The first fishing boat in was unloading and it look as if they had a big pile of crabs.

It wasn’t appropriate to go for a closer look because they were working quickly, so I had to content myself from here.

The harbour gates were closed so I went that way round over the path on top.

Here’s a photo of Victor Hugo and what’s interesting is not what’s there in the photo but what’s not there. Yes, Granville seems to have gone out for another trip somewhere.

And I shouldn’t be surprised if Victor Hugo will be joining her at some point because her bridge was busy. There were three our four officers having a discussion on board her

While you admire the photo of Thora here, I’ll tell you about my encounter with a guy from the Port Authority.

He’d come out of the Port Authority office and was clearly looking very official, so as he strolled around the harbour I fell in with him.

Having asked the right questions, I can tell you that the gates open 105 minutes before High Tide and close 105 minutes afterwards.

And furthermore, he told me that there has been no gravel boat in port for over two months and he has no idea when the next one will be arriving

Thora was there and all loaded up. Those big builders’ bags had been all loaded on board.

One thing I’ve been meaning to do is to chat to the skipper but once more the ship was deserted and no-one was about. So that was that.

Instead, I went and picked up my dejeunette from La Mie Caline and came back home for lunch.

The afternoon walk was taken in the cold and the wind (although not as windy as it has been).

Once more, there was a light out in the Baie de Mont St Michel over by Cancale on the Brittany coast, and I’ve seen enough of these now to be able to make an educated guess that it’s a trawler-type of fishing boat.

And here you are. I cropped the image and enlarged it when i returned home and sure enough, I was right about that too.

And that wasn’t all of the excitement either.

There was another yacht today out there in the Baie de Mont St Michel. Not as extravagant as the one out there yesterday with the bright red sail but still nice enough.

But what wasn’t there though was Thora. She must have cleared off quite rapidly as soon as the harbour gates were open.

Back here, I had another little … errr … relax – something that is annoying me because I was doing so well just now – and then pressed on with my project.

There was another brief pause because our “outside broadcast” from the Bain des Manchots – the Swim of the Giant Penguins – at Donville les Bains was being broadcast. And for those of you who missed it, you can HEAR THE PODCAST at your convenience, provided that you take your phone there with you.

It was 19:20 when I finally finished my radio programme – it had taken me far longer than I expected seeing as I’d made really good progress this morning.

What with being late I had another helping of the curry – lengthening it with some frozen spinach and one of the remaining endives.

Alone again on my evening walk, and my run was agony. I was ready to give up long before I hit the ramp although I pushed on nevertheless.

That good spell of health that I’ve had this last couple of months is coming to an end unfortunately . All the signs are there.

Although Thora is no longer with us, there’s more activity down at that end of the port.

They look like the shellfish cages and so that can only mean one thing, and that is that Normandy Trader must be on her way into port. Those are part of the load that she fetches and carries for this Jersey Co-operative thing.

So I headed home, all alone in the wind and light rain that had now sprung up.

So having done the radio programme that needed doing, tomorrow I’m going to freeze the carrots that I bought, deal with the orange and ginger drink and then start on the programme of the football supporters. I want that finished by the time that I come back from Leuven on Sunday.

That is – if I ever get there, because I’ve just heard that my train from Lille to Brussels is cancelled.

Friday 26th April 2019 – I’VE HAD …

… another miserable day today.

Not because I’ve been tired – in fact I’ve managed to go the whole day without even the slightest hint of crashing out – but more to the fact that I couldn’t summon up the energy to do anything productive whatever.

I’d had another bad night too, tossing and turning for most of it. And yet I’d managed to go on a few mazy, amazing voyages.

We had been on a ship, a big one, in the South China Sea somewhere and it sank. Three of us were washed overboard and we swam in this sea for quite some time – days, it seemed, – until we were washed ashore on this populated island. We had to climb over a fence and found ourselves in someone’s back garden. The woman had a big sprawly house that had started off as a small cabin and had been enlarged with additional rooms haphazardly as time had gone on. She fed us and said we could stay the night. Next morning I went for a walk around. The guy had this beautiful large yacht and it was clear that he spent a lot of time looking after it. he was talking about going around the Arctic on it and I agreed that this would be the right kind of craft to go up there and he wasn’t the ordinary run-of-the-mill Indonesian or Filipino fisherman, he cares about his boat and done his research etc. We ended up walking through a typical suburban English housing estate but a huge weird animal like a rhinoceros but with a weird head with all kinds of appendages stuck on it. I grabbed my camera and took a photo but the flash didn’t work so it didn’t come out and the animal disappeared before I could try another shot. I went back to the house to ask about staying another night but she said “no, it’s full”. So I asked if there was anywhere else I could stay. She replied that there was bound to be somewhere else in the town. She then cooked me a meal and they asked me questions “do you eat ‘x’, do you eat ‘y’? How long is it since you’ve eaten ‘z’? Did you eat it when you were a kid?” all this kind of thing. But now it was becoming dark and I needed to find a place to stay and, more importantly, a way to get off this island and back to wherever it is that I’m supposed to be
A little later I was with a woman and I can’t remember what it was that I was doing but we’d been detained by someone, a young smallish guy with black hair and a black beard. He said that he had been working for the CIA and should have been an agent but they said that with his perfect memory he ought to be a salesman. He showed a photo of this woman coming out of a department store. This immediately filled her with horror. She looked around and there was this young lad behind her smiling away. He said “do you remember this story?” and produced a newspaper article showing that she had been arrested in it for something or other. By now she was in tears, making some kind of totally incoherent statement. he then produced some kind of small light-blue patterned cushion and said “you always leave your calling card behind in places like this, don’t you?”, waving the cushion around and that put her into even more tears.

I awoke several times during all of this going on, and eventually went back to sleep to step right back into, not the one where I was with that woman, but right back to being on the island again, in exactly where I had stepped out a while before. I don’t recall ever doing quite that before. But anyway I did end up stopping the night at that place on the island and I remember undressing to go to bed. I had my wet-weather overtrousers on so took them off, got into bed and went to sleep. Next morning I was up early and started to dress. Everyone else was getting up and this young girl came in to say hello, and a few other people. The house was busy pretty quickly. I ended up sitting ona bed with a huge collection of cats sitting on me, first a black one and a ginger one, then a white one and all different ones taking it in turns to sit on my knee for a stroke. I heard the buzzer on my phone so I looked and saw a message “your breakfast ready at 09:15”. I thought that I’d better finish dressing. These two women came in and went to a cupboard fetching out little phials of stuff. They game one to me and said “this will do for you”. I worked out that it was shampoo and it hit me that they were “suggesting” that I take a shower. I wanted to finish dressing but I couldn’t find my trousers. the plastic overtrousers were there but not the normal ones.

The alarms went off at 06:00 and so on but I couldn’t care less. 08:25 was when I awoke. But that’s not at all the same as saying that that was the time that I left my stinking pit. Not at all.

So a rather late start to the day, and once I’d composed myself, I attacked a few of the dictaphone notes from just recently that had built up on the dictaphone. And that took me most of the morning too and I don’t know why.

Lunch was inside again, with the start of the last batch of home-made hummus out of the freezer. It’s just as delicious as it was the day that I made it too.

After lunch I made a start on the outstanding mountain of photos that need to be dealt with. And the more I deal with, the more there seems to be to deal with.

There was a brief stop of my walk around the Pointe du Roc in the wind. On the car park were a couple of people on those weird foot-first bicycles.

One of them was towing a trailer on which were two 110-watt solar panels, so I went to have a chat with the rider. It’s an electrically-assisted bike and the panels charge up the batteries while he’s cycling.

On a good day they can give about one and a half charges to the bank of batteries so that’s probably a range of about 30 miles.

But I don’t get the trailer idea though, unless it’s for the luggage. I would have been tempted to go for a roof over the bike and put the panels on that.

The Quebec flag on the front bike is of no significance. The people on board came from La Rochelle.

Back here I continued with the photos in a very desultory fashion until tea time. That was a really delicious steamed veg and falafel in a really tasty cheese sauce. One of the best that I’ve ever made.

My evening walk was interrupted by a collision with a neighbour. We had a lengthy chat about this and that.

And as I continued on my way I was interrupted yet again. Parked in the rue Notre Dame was one of the commercial lorry-type of Land Rovers but what caught my eye about it was this beautiful 12-volt winch.

I have a 12-volt electric winch that I was going to fit onto the Kubota tractor to winch logs and things like that around the farm, but I never actually managed to get round to fitting it.

In fact, there were a lot of things down there that I never got around to doing.

As a result of all these delays I almost missed the start of tonight’s football.

It’s the final round of matches in the Welsh Premier League tonight and Bala Town were playing Caernarfon Town live on the internet. Caernarfon played for the first 15 minutes as if they were asleep, and during that time Bala had scored a goal and missed two or three total sitters.

It took 33 minutes for Caernarfon to threaten the Bala goal, and then the match livened up.

The second half was a wonderful advert for Welsh Premier football, and for the final 15 minutes Caernarfon were camped in the Bala Town half and although they didn’t manage to equalise, they hit the woodwork and and a couple of other good chances too.

Down south in the manth between Barry and Newtown, Newtown didn’t do enough to overhaul Caernarfon so that gives Caernarfon home advantage in the playoffs for the vacant place in the Europa League next season. That’s not bad for a team that was only promoted to the Welsh Premier League this season, and it’s all down to the fact that while they might not be the most skilful players in the league they have a magnificent team spirit.

It’ll also be interesting to see how Noah Edwards plays next season. I didn’t think of him as anything extra-ordinary at the start of the season, but as the season has gone on, the better he’s become. If he continues this progression next season he might become another Henry Jones or Callum Morris or kayne McLaggon.

It’s shopping tomorrow so I’m off to bed right now. It won’t be an early night so I’ll probably crash out in the afternoon but that’s par for the course these days.

sea on rocks baie de mont st michel granville manche normandy france

waves sea wall baie de mont st michel port de granville harbour manche normandy france

yacht baie de mont st michel granville manche normandy france

mussel beds donville les bains manche normandy france

Sunday 30th December 2018 – I DON’T KNOW …

… where I’d been during the night but when I came back I was running my taxi business again. In a wooden hut of some kind that was quite cold – but when I noticed how tall the hut was and how poor the heating was, this wasn’t a surprise. The phone hadn’t rung at all for the hole shift so I was puzzled as to how we could keep going. But at the end of the shift a large envelope and chart was pushed through the door. “Ahh, the Post” I said, but the girl dispatcher said that it was the work detail of whoever had been working the shift. So we did have a driver and the driver had done some work. I needed to visit the bathroom and so went outside to water the plants. This was in Vine Tree Avenue by now, and I noticed that the front garden had been planted with leeks and lettuce. Just as I started to do the necessary the woman next door came out of her house so I turned my back to her as if I was watering the plants. She came over to me so I had to hurry, and she began to chat. I noticed that her car, a Mark IV Cortina, had strange white numberplate so I asked her about them. “They are German” she said (which they aren’t). I told her that I was in Germany a few days ago. She mentioned that her trip to Toronto shortly had been cancelled due to insufficient bookings. By now we were in a hotel and someone, clearly the organiser, came over and started to usher us to the door. I told him that it’s a sad reflection on the state of affairs of his company that they cancelled the trip to Toronto, but he said nothing, except to continue to usher us towards the door. I asked hi if he was trying to throw us out, and if so, what was his authority to do so. So he began to push me – and I grabbed him by the lapels of his jacket and said that if he wanted to ask me to leave he could do so politely. This led to quite a confrontation, including mention of the police, which carried on back into the taxi hut that I had mentioned. he started to look at my books and papers so it was my turn to insist that he left my premises.

That took me up to about 07:15 but there was no chance whatever of my leaving the stinking pit at that time. 09:45 was much more reasonable.

A late breakfast, which is fine for a Sunday, and then a day spent doing almost absolutely nothing.

News from the UK is that Strawberry Moose has made a couple of new friends and is spending his night tonight in a different bed. He certainly has more luck than I do.

I’ve been talking on the internet to Liz and Alison on line too. They had a good Christmas and are having a nice relaxing time. Alison and I made a few plans for my next visit to Leuven.

For lunch, I just had two slices of toast. I’m trying to cut down on my food right now. I’ve definitely been eating too much just recently.

We had the usual two walks today too.

There were hordes of people around this afternoon enjoying the holiday atmosphere. The beach was quite popular too, with people down there scavenging amongst the rocks for shellfish.

Which, presumably, they would share with their friends because you mustn’t be selfish with your shellfish.

One of my neighbours was out there too. He was telling me that at Donville-les-Bains they had a sea dip today and he took part. All of them in fancy dress. They are braver people than I am. Mind you, I wouldn’t have minded being there to see them.

Tea tonight was a vegan pizza. And for some reason the crust wasn’t cooked as well as it might be. But it was delicious all the same.

There will be an alarm tomorrow so tonight is an early night. Last day of the old year. And I’ll have to make a list of the things that I have accomplished.

Friday 28th December 2018 – WHAT A …

… horrible day.

It didn’t start off too well. I was in bed early enough and away on my travels too.

I shall spare a few blushes by mentioning no names but it concerns someone who went away from home in the afternoon to see a friend and I didn’t see her after that. So I locked the door and went to bed. She turned up at some time during the night, well the worse for drink which would have been quite an unusual thing. Although I knew really what had gone on, I had a member of my family round and so she explained that she had gone to meet a friend at the Wistaston Manor Hotel who was crying in her cups about a failed relationship. This had led to something of a consolation drinking session, which then overflowed into the evening. Consoling her friend took much longer than it seemed so she came back home late, found the house locked, thought that I was out and so went round to my parents’ house in Davenport Avenue – but they were out. So she went across the road to the Social Club which was still serving, and so waited in there until my parents returned home. But of course, she couldn’t wait there without making use of the facilities of the club, such as the bar. A load of nonsense of course, but it wasn’t in my best interests to contradict her in public.

The alarm went off at 06:00 and again at 06:10 and 06:20, and I was up and about at some reasonable time. But it ended up being a late breakfast as I was sidetracked by a few issues.

After breakfast I started to work but at about 08:30 I started to yawn again. And from then on, despite a second coffee, I couldn’t keep going. A short time later I lay down on the bed and the next thing that I remembered, it was 10:45. All in all, it was sometime after 11:00 that I managed to haul myself out of bed.

That wasn’t all either, because this afternoon I had another trip away into the wild. The stresses of the journey yesterday are proving far too much for me.

Most of the day has been spent in debate on a group in my Social Networking account. The affairs of Doctor Beeching and Ernest Marples crop up quite regularly and lead to a huge chasm between the participants, depending upon which side of the political fence one sits. And my regular contribution is to post a pile of facts into the argument, which don’t fit too well with either party. It rumbled on for most of the day until the group Admin closed the debate. That was a shame because everyone was (for a change) conducting themselves with respect and dignity and all in all, it was quite enjoyable. Harks back to the days of OUSA Debate.

The rest of the day has been spent in editing photos and tidying up a pile of directories on my laptop. I’ve freed off a huge pile of space on the laptop by doing that.

We had our usual couple of walks of course today.

It’s obviously “that” time of the year because there were loads of people out there on the beach with buckets and spades and the like, presumably searching for seashells among the rocks and in the sand.

Flexing their mussels, one might say. Still, it keeps them out of mischief.

It wasn’t just at Granville that they were doing their Neville Shute impressions.

Down there at Donville les Bains it looks as if they are bringing in a boat. There are some oyster or mussels beds out there and it looks as if they have been out there servicing them.

They have certainly picked a nice day for it.

Remember last night when there was a fog that had descended over the Baie de Mont St Michel?

It’s still here this afternoon. The pillar with the marker light for the entrance to the harbour is swathed in mist. That puts visibility down to about 800 metres, I reckon.

When you consider that a modern supertanker required several kilometres to pull up to a dead stop, it’s not the kind of day to be out there on board ship without a radar.

Tonight’s meal was a pepper, sweetcorn and mushroom curry from 15th January. And it was just as delicious as it was when I cooked it.

later on after tea, I was out again for my evening walk.

The fog has lifted pretty much, and there were a good half-dozen or so fishing boats already in, tied up at the fish-processing plant and unloading.

Not only that, there were about another dozen fishing boats loitering in the vicinity waiting to come in on the evening tide for their turn to unload.

So now I’m going to have an early night. It’s shopping in the morning of course, being a Saturday and I need to be on form.

people on beach plat gousset granville manche normandy france

winter fog haze baie de mont st michel granville manche normandy france

night fishing boat port de granville harbour manche normandy france

Sunday 17th June 2017 – JUST WHEN I WAS THINKING …

… that we haven’t had a gravel boat here in Granville since before they replaced the harbour gates, here into the harbour Neptune comes sailing … "dieseling" – ed … in.

And for those of you who are thinking, as indeed I was, that she looks rather familiar, she is in fact our old friend Islay Trader but with a new name.

She’s arrived in port having come from Ramsgate in Kent, where she left yesterday morning at 10:15.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that I mentioned a good few weeks ago that the heaps of gravel were building up.

But I never expected that it would have taken this long for someone to come along and take it all away.

And it’s going to annoy more than a few mobile-home dwellers who have moved in to occupy the loading bay, seeing as the mobile home park down the road here is full to overflowing. If they don’t move, and move pretty quickly, they’ll find a few hundred tonnes of gravel dropping onto their heads

So what was I doing down on the harbour then so that I noticed all of the itinerant holidaymakers?

The answer was that I noticed that the sailing boat that we saw yesterday was still at anchor down there, and seeing as I was out and about? I went for a look.

She’s called the Charles-Marie and she’s available for private hires and parties, either moored or at sea. And there was one such party taking place on board as I was down there, complete with musicians.

She advertises a few tours too, including one up near Greenland and that has got me thinking. I shall have to make further enquiries about that.

But here’s a thing.

While I was walking back from the quayside, I heard a “SPLATTTT” behind me so I turned round.

And there was a seagull, with some kind of shellfish which it had clearly carried in its beak and then dropped from a great height onto the asphalt and concrete roadbed.

And with the crustacean’s shell having been well-and-truly shattered by the hard landing, the gull was now quite happily picking away at the exposed flesh.

I was totally fascinated by this, but dismayed that it never offered any to me. After all, you shouldn’t be selfish with your shellfish..

Last night was a reasonably-comfortable sleep, although being awake at 06:25 was not what I was wanting. But being awake and being out of bed are two different things, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall.

09:25 is a much-more respectable time on a Sunday. A late breakfast, most of the time of which was spent clearing up the glass of orange juice that I had thrown all over the table and floor.

And regular readers of this rubbish will recall me sayig that I had made a significant purchase at GIFI yesterday.

So abandoning all traditions, I did some work this morning and here you can see my toilet shelf unit all assembled and in its glory.

Storage in this place is non-existent and one has to be inventive. So when I saw this I thought to myself that all of the stuff that is lying about on the floor and in the way will now have a place to go.

Unfortunately there’s a design fault in it, in that it’s just two inches too low to clear the toilet seat. But I can invent something for that in due course.

But it’s not like me to be working on a Sunday, is it?

Lunch was on my wall as usual, with my book but not my lizard friend. I wonder where he got to. And on the way back I met Gribouille and his mum.

That was the cue to go for a stroll.

A quick lap around the walls of the Medieval Town to see what was going on, and down on the beach I noticed these two swimmers leaving the water.

I had to admire their resilience. You wouldn’t have got me into the briny in this kind of weather, that’s for sure. Or in any kind of weather at all these days.

There’s a craft fair and artists’ open-air exhibition in the old town today.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that I missed the one last year due to having to go to Leuven for a hospital appointment, I was keen to go this year.

It would be nice to find an original seascape to hang on my wall here to decorate the place a little. Maybe not “The Fighting Temeraire” but something similar that would appeal to me.

But there will be nothing whatever going on my wall from this exhibition.

I mean – would you put something like any of these … errr … paintings on YOUR wall? I wouldn’t even embarrass myself by exhibiting stuff like this.

And if anyone fears that I am singling out this stallholder, then they may rest easy because all of the offerings on show where of this kind of quality, to a greater or lesser extent.

And all of the stuff was outrageously expensive too. I was reminded of Ruskin’s comment on Whistler’s painting ‘Nocturne in Black and Gold – “(I) never expected to hear a coxcomb ask two hundred guineas for flinging a pot of paint in the public’s face”.

There was a house clearance sale going on at the same time, so I stuck my head in for a look. A woman inside asked me “would you like to go upstairs?” to which I replied that that was the best offer that I have had for quite some considerable time.

On my way back from the harbour, I noticed that there was a brocante in the town centre, so I headed in that direction.

And it was another one of these brocantes where the stuff was nothing but overpriced nonsense. There were some paintings on offer that were marginally better than those up in the medieval walled city, but at €3,000 apiece, they weren’t that nice.

But I found a guy selling CDs at €2:00 each and I ended up with a copy of Spyrogyra’a Alternating Currents and a copy of Gargantua by Gentle Giant, a live recording from Germany in 1971.

And what is exciting about the latter album is that although recognised as an official Gentle Giant album, it’s a album that was copied from a tape and only ever released in Italy.

And it’s so obscure that even the Gentle Giant website has the musicians listed incorrectly. According to them, the drummer is Malcolm Mortimore but the date of the recording suggests that Martin Smith was still the drummer at that point.

On the way back up the hill I noticed that our old friend the CF Bedford is back again.

And isn’t this much more like a CF Bedford? And engine crane and two guys busily lifting the engine out by the roadside?

I’m not sure what it was that they were doing, but by the time that I went out for my evening walk, they seemed to have finished it.

We’ve seen this machine before too.

This was one of the floats for the carnival back in February, and I’ve no idea why they have resurrected it and brought it up here this afternoon.

It’s certainly “art”, that’s for sure, but not the kind of art that you would expect to see at an event like this. But nevertheless, it’s much better than anything that I sa there.

Round the other side of the vehicle I noticed that there were several people, including the owners I imagine, tucking into lunch.

A rather late lunch, but then again I suppose that they have been preoccupied. It seemed to be such a social thing to do, out on the street on an afternoon like this.

They should have been selling a few tickets and inviting passers-by for a butty or two.

But I came back here instead and went to Caliburn and took out my battery-powered bass amp to clean it up.

And much to my surprise, there was still some life left in the batteries. And so by way of a change, I had half an hour on the bass with it running through the amp instead of the Amplug. And that made a pleasant change. It wasn’t too loud either.

And using the diagrams that I have been making, I’ve been running through a few numbers and it’s amazing how much it seems to all come back.

Another thing that I did this afternoon, shame as it is to admit it, is to have crashed out. And not once but twice. How sad is that?

Tea was a pizza of course, and then my walk where I met Neptune. And not just walk either. For reasons that I shall explain in due course, I forced myself to run. And I found that I could manage about 100 metres before I gave up, totally exhausted. But the first time in almost three years.

So bed in a second, rather later than usual, because today’s entry as well as containing dozens of photos contains 1460 words and it’s taken ages to write out.

It’s hardly surprising that I’m so exhausted these days.

EPIC HALL

The Poisoned Pen (or Poisoned Chalice, more like) – or my relentless struggle against reality

Tag Archives: shellfish

Friday 5th November 2021 – I’VE BEEN …

Sunday 25th July 2021 – BANE OF BRITAIN …

Tuesday 7th January 2020 – I WAS RIGHT …

Friday 26th April 2019 – I’VE HAD …

Sunday 30th December 2018 – I DON’T KNOW …

Friday 28th December 2018 – WHAT A …

Sunday 17th June 2017 – JUST WHEN I WAS THINKING …

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