Tag Archives: st gilles croix de vie

Wednesday 1st June 2022 – MY VISIT TO THE …

… sports doctor person was interesting today.

He had a look at my knee with his ultrasound scan thing and then put his thumb right on a certain spot that as soon as he touched it, it hurt like hell. Right on it with no messing around at all.

And then he gave me this injection right in the spot. And that hurt like hell too because the needle wasn’t long enough and he had to press really hard on my leg to make the needle go in deep enough.

He wants me to send him an e-mail to tell him whether there’s an improvement. And I do have to say that there does actually seem to be an improvement already, but how much of this is due to the placebo effect is anyone’s business.

He’ll write out a prescription for me to give to the physiotherapist to recommend some exercises that will build up my knee, and apparently I’m entitled to one session per week of sports training with him. Would I be interested?

He wants to see a resumé of my medical condition from the hospital at Leuven before he can work out a training programme for me. I’ll have to sort something out.

Anyway, once again I fell out of bed when the alarm went off at 07:30. I’m still not exactly bouncing with health these days and I wish that I could do better than this. But after how I was three or four weeks ago then anything is an improvement than that.

After the medication and doing some paperwork I went and had a shower, and I noticed that my weight is slowly – very slowly – going down. I seem to recall when I lost all that weight in 2019 was a combination of having food poisoning and being without my blood transfusion stuff for three months.

Due to problems on the road I was almost late for my appointment. Just as I was driving along the promenade a tractor pulled out of the port de plaisance towing a large boat on a trailer. And so we inched our way all down the coast at a maximum 25 kph until I could find a place to overtake.

After they threw me out at the clinic I drove back to LIDL to do some shopping. I needed some olive oil but I ended up buying everying except olive oil because they didn’t have any.

In fact I’m surprised that they had anything at all because the woman in front of me in the queue spent €256:00 on groceries. I don’t think that I’ve ever seen anyone buy so much stuff in a supermarket.

It was late when I returned from the shops so it was something of a very late breakfast. And then I ended up having a session on the guitar to keep in shape.

Another thing was to have a look at a couple of songs in this playlist that I was sent but I’m not convinced by their accuracy, especially when I saw a mention of a chord of “H minor” in one of them. That’s enough to make anyone smell a rat.

After lunch, rather regrettably, I crashed out for a while. And as I said yesterday, and the day before, and the day before that as well, it’s getting on my nerves and I’m rather fed up of all of this.

Later on, I just about managed to awaken myself in time to go for my afternoon walk around the headland.

Yesterday I mentioned the lack of Birdmen of Alcatraz and their Nazguls but I was going to have better luck today by the look of things.

As I watched, a Birdman rose up from the ground and began to hover over the cemetery ready to shoot off down the coast along the top of the cliffs.

And as he began to move away, another one began to unfurl his equipment ready to take to the air. It’s going to be busy out there today.

so having dealt with that I went over to the wall to have a look down onto the beach.

With it being half-day closing at school today and a nice day I was expecting to see quite a few people out there today enjoying themselves but to my surprise there was just one person down there on the beach by the Rue du Nord.

Interestingly, he was actually sitting there reading a book, very reminiscent of that girl who was sitting on the rocks at the end of the headland the other day.

It’s actually something of which I approve wholeheartedly. In fact it’s been a long time since I sat down with a really good book.

for the last couple of days we’ve been admiring the views out to sea.

It’s yet another day where the views were excellent. That white building at St Helier was once again quite clearly visible with the naked eye. But I was more interested today with the little islets down at the end of the Ile de Chausey.

A couple of years ago when we were on the Spirit of Conrad we were out there walking on that beach that you can see and it really is beautiful. And much of its beauty is due to the fact that it’s quite inaccessible.

While I was walking along the path on top of the cliffs I was overflown.

It’s our old friend the yellow autogyro. It’s been down the coast with a passenger, presumably for a lap or two around Mont St Michel and is now on its way back to the airfield.

We’ve seen it a few times just recently which is something of a surprise because we went for a couple of months through the winter without seeing it at all. It made me wonder where it had been.

And no, I haven’t forgotten …

there weren’t all that many people on the path again so I had it pretty much to myself today

At the end of the car park there was nothing happening so I went down to the end of the headland to see what was happening. No-one sitting on the bench by the cabanon vauban but if there had been, they would have seen this zodiac in the Baie de Mont St Michel.

And I’ve no idea what they were doing in their zodiac. They don’t seem to be fishing and I can’t see anything else to give me a clue. They might just have gone out for a roar around the bay with the afternoon tide.

From there I wandered off down the path on the other side of the headland to see what was happening in the port.

And we can all see why work had ground to a halt on L’Ecume II yesterday after the speed at which they had been working. Here she is! Gone! And never called me “mother”!

She’s actually over in the inner harbour even as we speak, ready to go back to Jersey at some point in the proceedings .

All that we are left with at the moment is the impressive-looking and expensive cabin cruiser that we saw in there yesterday.

Well, that isn’t exactly all.

On my way out to the sports therapist person this morning I noticed that there was a rather large mobile crane in the chantier naval. It looks as if they are now making a start on dismantling the dredger.

One of these days in the very near future a lorry will turn up and the crane will pick up the bits of dredger and drop them on the trailer.

In fact I’m surprised that she’s still there now. It’s been several weeks since she was lifted out of the water and she’s just been sitting there waiting for things to happen.

On my way back towards home, I was overflown yet again.

Actually, I had to wait for quite a while for it to arrive. I could hear its engine from a long way away and I was surprised that it took so long to reach here. It certainly made a racket when it did.

It’s another helicopter, a different one from the last one that we saw, but I do have the feeling that I’ve seen this one before at some point in the past.

And once it had gone by I could hear it rattling its way towards the airfield for quite some time as well. It was definitely one of the noisiest light aircraft that we have seen.

When I went out this morning I noticed that Thora was in port unloading.

She’s gone back out now but has left a pile of scrap metal on the quayside waiting for someone to come and collect it for taking away.

In her place is Chausiaise, the little freighter that goes out to the Ile de Chausey. I’m not sure why because there’s nothing on the quayside that needs to be loaded up onto her.

Back here I made a coffee and then came back in here to listen to the dictaphone. No nightmares involving Zero this time. Instead, I’d done something extremely silly like lending a scrapman some money and I was having a load of difficulty talking to him, never mind getting it back. We had to go back and I had to take someone with me and have one more go at speaking to him. We had to mountaineer up the side of this house to reach somewhere near where his office was. We couldn’t go in it. This was an awful climb up the bricks and the gutters etc. Finally we arrived within shouting distance of where his office was and we shouted without any hope at all. His wife heard us and said “he’ll be here in a minute” which I didn’t expect but it turned out that he was. We had a chat about the money that he owed me and I had a date by which he would pay me back etc. Of course I didn’t expect him to keep to any of this for a minute but it was even something that he had agreed to see me and talk to me about it. I didn’t think that there was any chance whatever that I’d be getting back this money at all.

Tea tonight was a curry made up out of leftover bits and pieces, and it was just as delicious as normal. And having written up my notes I’m off to bed ready for tomorrow.

But would I be interested in a once-weekly sports training session with a sports therapist? Do bears go to the toilets in the woods?

Friday 20th May 2022 – IT WAS ONLY YESTERDAY …

… when I said that we hadn’t seen L’Omerta tied up at the Fish Processing Plant and settling down in the silt for a couple of days.

And so of course it goes without saying that this afternoon when I was a-wandering around the headland on my afternoon walk, I should come across her tied up in her usual place, sitting down in the silt waiting for something to happen.

Bang on cue, you might say.

But anyway, let’s leave the subject of my afternoon walk for the moment and start as we mean to go on by turning the clock back to the start of the day when the alarm went off at 07:30 this morning.

And in news that will come as a surprise to everyone, because it certainly came as a surprise to me, I actually fell out of bed when the alarm went off. And how long is it since that has happened?

Mind you, I hope that you aren’t expecting too much because it wasn’t as if it inspired me to do any work. It wasn’t until about 09:30 that I had recovered enough to make a start. But not to worry because that’s better than a 10:30 or a 10:45 start.

The morning was quite a leisurely one. I didn’t actually exert myself too much but even so it ended up being something of a late lunch as I really couldn’t find the energy to pick myself up from my chair and walk into the kitchen. That was expecting far too much.

After lunch I carried on with my rather leisurely day until it was time for me to go off for my afternoon walk around the headland.

And as usual, the first place for me to visit would be the wall at the end of the car park where I could peer down onto the beach to see what was happening down there.

Although it wasn’t quite as warm as it has been just recently, I was still surprised at how few people there were down there this afternoon.

But those who were down there were taking full advantage of it. There were a couple of people down there sunbathing on a couple of towels spread out on the beach, and a couple more people out there having a swim around in the water

It’s been a good few days since we’ve seen anyone swimming around in the water as well.

It was a really nice day as I mentioned earlier, and today I could see for miles out to sea.

It’s been a long time since there has been anything like a clear view of St Helier in Jersey so seeing as we had one of those days today I thought that I would celebrate it by taking a photo of it.

Of course, I don’t really know what it is that I’m seeing out there on Jersey, but now I have no excuse because the ferries to the Channel Islands are up and running at long last. One of these days when I have more time and I’m feeling better, I’ll take myself off out there for a closer look.

But never mind the view out to Jersey for the moment, the view out to the Ile de Chausey was just as spectacular too.

It’s a long time since we’ve seen the island looking as clear as this. We can see all of the colours out there on the island quite clearly today.

What we can’t see though are any water craft. I was amazed at how few boats there were out at sea this afternoon. I don’t think that I counted more than half a dozen all told and this was the kind of weather that had they been there, I certainly would have seen them.

I carried on around the path along the headland and across the car park at the far end.

And I wasn’t alone out there this afternoon. I had all kinds of company, like this little fellow who crossed my path as I walked across the car park.

He was certainly brave, taking his like in his hands – or, rather, feet – like this and wandering across the car park where there was all kinds of traffic going by. But he did actually make it to the other side quite safely.

Natural history, and Lepidoptera in particular, is not my strongpoint so I can’t tell you anything about him unfortunately.

There was also something going on up above this afternoon too.

As I walked down to the end of the headland I was overflown by a light aeroplane on its way back to the airfield. It’s one of our regulars, F-GBAI, a Robin DR 400-140B that belongs to the local aero club.

She took off at 15:32, flew down the bay to Mont St Michel and back again where she came in to land at 16:08. And as my photo is timed at 16:02 (adjusted) that sounds about right to me.

The time is “adjusted” because I don’t alter the time on my digital equipment to reflect summer time.

But all of this excitement has proved to be far too much for some people.

Here’s someone perched on the rocks right at the end of the headland with her head buried deeply in a book. That’s certainly the right attitude and the correct way to deal with whatever issues life throws at you.

In fact, I had half a mind to go down there and join her.

However, I have other fish to fry so I wandered off down the other side of the headland towards the port to see what was happening over there this afternoon.

Out in the Baie de Mont St Michel I actually managed to find a water craft close enough for me to take a decent photograph.

There’s a kayaker out there looking as if he’s doing a couple of laps of Le Loup, the marker light on the rock at the entrance to the harbour.

But what’s intriguing me is how he’s taken his kayak out there because the tide is quite far out and he would have had to drag it quite a distance.

And as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, it’s not advisable to light a fire in a canoe. After all, you can’t have your kayak and heat it.

There’s been another change in the chantier naval over the last day or so.

That trawler from Caen, L’Oasis has now gone back into the water and Valeque isn’t there either. The only trawler there for the moment is the Jersey trawler L’Ecume II.

And the dredger St-Gilles Croix-de Vie is still there too. They haven’t sent a lorry to pick her up and take her away just yet.

Over at the ferry terminal we have one of the Joly France boats and the very new Belle France that run out to the Ile de Chausey.

Back here I had a strawberry smoothie and came back in here where I crashed out for a good hour or so. All in all, there wasn’t really much point in getting up so early this morning.

However I did eventually manage to find the time to transcribe the dictaphone notes. I was in Philadelphia last night, walking across a supermarket car park. I thought that someone beckoned me over but they hadn’t. When I reached there everyone was sitting around on these tables and chairs. There was a seat empty so I asked if it was OK if I could sit there. Someone said yes. Some woman with a baby was by it. They asked if I wouldn’t be comfortable somewhere else. I replied “no, I’m quite happy there”. Everyone was watching a baseball game taking place on this supermarket car park. As I watched, a big service bus pulled away from the car park of the supermarket so I started to follow the bus. I had to run pretty quickly but by the time I reached the end of the car park it had disappeared and I couldn’t work out which way it had gone. I imagined that it had turned right so I went right that way but I couldn’t see it so I went back to the car park entrance and tried to think more logically, looking for signs on the road but I still didn’t see anything although someone with a few kids started to cross the road nearby where I was. There was something about American health insurance, why Americans had a lot more money to spend because they aren’t spending it on health insurance like Europeans

I was with a friend of mine from the Open University and it’s been so long since I’ve seen her that I can’t remember her name. We were in Germany talking about World War II battles. We were describing one where some defenders were trapped in the ruins and how they were bombed by air by zeppelins until they surrendered. She was telling me that a friend of hers was coming for Christmas. It was someone with whom she could have a great deal of fun – a German living in Canada and he knew quite a lot about the old border in Germany particularly with regard to the city with which he was concerned. There was something else but I can’t remember what it was but when she started to talk about it my ears really pricked up so I asked if there was any chance that I could wangle an invite to go to see her over the Christmas period so that I could talk to this guy and find out more about all of this. She started to ask me a few questions about this and that, presumably to find out my interest. Just then as we came into this city a German Post Office cyclist came round a corner but slipped on some ice. The bike slid across the road and hit the kerb. I had my friend stop and got out of the car to go to see. This woman was all covered in blood so I asked my friend to call an ambulance. I checked with this woman if she needed an ambulance in my pidgin German as it was to be the case although she was quite distraught and shocked, not easy to communicate with. So I shouted again to my friend to call an ambulance but she seemed to be rather reluctant to do so and I couldn’t understand why because this was a clear case of someone who certainly needed one after what she had just gone through in the accident on her pushbike.

And later I was back in Germany in a conversation class or something or other. I can’t remember very much about this at all except that one student had a very lightweight tight-fitting crash helmet. I asked about this and the another students said that he’d been like this for the whole 6 years of the course and no-one had been able to talk him out of it. Anyone who would try now would be wasting their time as far as that went. But I can’t remember any more of this at all.

Tea was sausage beans and chips which were delicious, and now I’m off to bed. I’m dropping one of the medicaments tonight and seeing if that makes any difference in how I’m feeling. It’ll probably take a week or so to work but we shall see. I can’t go on like this.

Friday 13th May 2022 – THIS WAS PROBABLY …

… the worst day that I have had for quite a while.

And as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, I’ve had a few of those just recently.

So while you admire a few photos of everything that was going on out at sea this afternoon, when the alarm went off at 07:30 I couldn’t move an inch and it was just the same at 07:45 and again at 08:00. In fact it was, would you believe, 10:20 when I finally put my feet on the floor this morning

It wasn’t that that was the worrying part about it. What worried me more than anything was that I was feeling as if I had a hangover. I don’t know what there are in these pills but they are certainly kicking in with a vengeance

But seriously, if this is how I’m going to end up, I’m going to try to work out which one of these new medications it is that’s causing this and simply stop taking them.

As I’ve said before … “and on many occasions too” – ed … the only excitement that I seem to have these days is what goes on during the night. The last thing that I want to do is to cut all of that out of my life.

In fact I can understand why (although that’s not the same as saying that I agree with) the taking of hallucinatory drugs is so habit-forming. There is certainly something to be said for being taken out of yourself and going off on a series of voyages into the ether.

So while we’re on the subject of my nocturnal voyages … “well, one of us is” – ed … I’ve actually managed to pull myself together at some point during the day and dealt with the stuff on the dictaphone.

I was going to do a coach job which meant taking a coach to a race track by a big army camp in Yorkshire. I set off in Nerina’s Ford Escort to go to find the coach. When I reached the army camp I parked the Escort and got out but I must have knocked the gear lever by mistake for all of a sudden it revved up and roared off across the car park on its own with no-one at the wheel. It was late at night and there weren’t all that many vehicles on the car park but I had a feeling that this was going to be a recipe for disaster. I had to run after it but I didn’t have a hope of catching it. I could see it driving erratically around this car park. There was no way that I would catch it. Gradually the car park filled up, ordinary people, whole families of Gypsies hauling scrap and rags, soldiers etc. Of course I lost sight of the car and had to climb up onto a bank in the middle of the race course and that wore me out so I had to climb up a smaller one but I couldn’t see as far. Then they came in with the coach. I thought to myself that if I’d made such a mess of driving this Escort what am I going to be like driving this coach? This is going to be an absolute nightmare to me and how am I going to explain to Nerina what’s happened about her car? She’s not going to believe this story for a minute.

And then there was a big group of us on an aeroplane. I somehow ended up with a girl whom I’d sat newt to on numerous occasions. We were discussing an aeroplane incident in the Atlantic similar to the Titanic and we were looking for the location of the yellow parachute of the plane. We were poring over maps documentation etc but we couldn’t actually see it. As well as that we were having a big lengthy chat. This girl was married but was in bad company and they spent a lot of money gambling. I’d been trying to tell her to cut down on it. She told me that last weekend she’d refused to go out even though everyone else in her family had wanted to. They’d wanted to go out on a big gambling spree but she’d dug her heels in and ended uo not going out at all. I was immediately pleased with her. Our hunt went on with quite a few documents but we couldn’t relate anything in them to anything on the ground. In the end she asked me quite pointedly what I was going to do now. I interpreted this as being that she wanted me to go. I gave her a great big kiss but she fought me off saying that people were looking so I prepared to leave on my own

That actually took me until rather late in the afternoon to type all of that out. For the first part of the day I couldn’t actually bring myself to do anything. It was all far too reminiscent of 2003/2004/2005 when I was going through another phase like this and I remember how difficult it was to climb out of the pit back then.

It was only Rhys’s wedding that rekindled my spirit of adventure back then. I’ll have to persuade him to marry again.

A lot of the morning was spent trying to recover and then the rest of the day was spent tidying up in the kitchen. There were piles of stuff everywhere and all of the washing-up that I hadn’t done yesterday after my rather busy day.

There is of course the afternoon walk around the headland so I had to drag myself out of the apartment and off on my way.

First port of call was the wall at the end of the car park where I can look down on the beach to see what’s happening down there today.

It was a really nice day and there were plenty of people down there making the most of it. No-one brave enough though to take to the water which was a surprise. I’d have expected to have seen the crowds in there today with the nice weather that we are having but they semmed to have all chickened out.

While I was looking around out at sea at all of the maritime traffic, I was overflown by a light aeroplane on its way to the airfield.

It’s a new one on us. We’ve not seen her before. She’s F-PDYT, a Turquetil DYT-01 and that’s a machine about which I can tell you nothing at all.

Firstly, she hasn’t filed a flight plan and secondly, she wasn’t picked up on any radar anywhere so I can’t tell you anything about where she’s been and where she’s going.

And then I can’t even tell you anything about the manufacturer either because I can’t find any information about that either. It’s really not my day, is it?

As I walked down the path I came across a large group of people trying to take a selfie so I took their phones and duly obliged them. We had a little chat and then I carried on my way.

Nown at the end of the path I walked across the car park and down to the end of the headland.

For a change there wasn’t anyone sitting down on the bench by the cabanon vauban, which was a surprise because there was enough going on out there this afternoon to keep everyone entertained for hours.

We’ve already seen plenty of marine traffic going by this afternoon, but this speedboat was stationary out in the bay. There were several fishermen on board but in all the time that I was watching, no-one actually pulled anything out of the water.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that in all the time that we’ve been here, we’ve never ever seen anyone catch anything with a rod and line.

From there I wandered off down the path on the other side of the headland to see what was happening in the port.

There was quite a racket coming from the chantier naval this afternoon. It looked as if they had the air sander working full tilt on L’Ecume II grinding off the old paintwork.

In actual fact they are making quite rapid progress on her, which you can see when you compare her to how she was ON SUNDAY.

It’s not like them at all to be this rapid, is it?

Yesterday I mentioned that the dredger St-Gilles Croix-de Vie had finished its work in the harbour and had been towed across the harbour to the portable boat lift and had been lifted out of the water.

She’s now out there on a couple of blocks while they start to dismantle her ready to be taken away.

She doesn’t actually sail into port, as you might expect. She comes into port in a dismantled form on the back of a low loader and they assemble her on the hard-standing before they drop her into the water.

And then they dismantle her ready for her to be taken away again on the lorry that will come to pick her up in due course and take her off somewhere else.

This afternoon there was quite a crowd over at the fish processing plant.

All of the boats are coming in to unload, swarming around L’Omerta that is still there after all this time. And there are a couple of large refrigerated lorries over there ready to whisk away the catch.

Back here I carried on tidying the kitchen and putting away the shopping from Thursday. The place looks a little more respectable now which makes a change. It had got into quite amess over the last few days.

Tea tonight was a stuffed pepper now that I have some and it tasted quite delicious. But I’m using a different rice right now and it’s not as nice as the usual stuff.

So later tha usual, I’m off to bed. I have a weekend school for my Welsh course so I’m hoping for a better start to the day tomorrow that today’s start. That was appalling and I don’t want to do that again.

Thursday 12th May 2022 – HAVING HAD A FEW …

… extremely quiet days just recently, that all changed today. I’ve been rushed off my feet and haven’t stopped all day. I haven’t even had any time for tea.

There’s even some stuff on the dictaphone too but I haven’t had time to transcribe it yet.

It all went wrong earlier this morning when for some reason that I didn’t understand, the alarm went off at 06:15. I was actually up and about by the time that I realised and it didn’t take much for me to crawl back into bed.

When the alarm went off again at 07:30 I did manage to leave the bed something-like on time and after I’d had my medication I went to have a shower and clean myself up

Then I nipped out to go and see this sports therapist at Saint-Pair sur Mer.

My appointment was for 09:30 but he was running horribly late and it was gone 10:00 when he finally saw me. He asked me a few questions and poked and prodded me around, and it didn’t take him long to find out where the bone in my kneecap is broken.

There is a series of special injections that he is proposing for me so he gave me a prescription and an appointment to go back on 1st June.

This weekend I have a Welsh weekend school so I called at LIDL on the way home and stocked up with a big pile of stuff to see me through the next 10 days. It cost a fortune too. But I’ll still nip out for a few things late on Saturday that I couldn’t buy at LIDL.

By the time that I returned home it was almost lunchtime, never mind breakfast, but I had one of my fruit buns all the same with some coffee. And I was right. It really was delicious.

After lunch I was back out again. It was the turn of the physiotherapist to have the pleasure of my company.

First stop though was the corner of the Boulevard Vaufleury and the Boulevard des 2E et 202E de Ligne where you can look down upon the fish processing plant.

It’s quite busy down there this afternoon. This is the moment when all the boats are coming in to unload and they are having to fight their way around L’Omerta who is still tied up to the quayside.

It shows you what a busy little port it is, with all of the boats down there and the people on top of the quayside helping to unload the catch into the fish processing plant. There will be cars and vans on the lower level underneath too, there to take away the load from some of the boats.

There was plenty of activity out in the bay too.

And not just trawlers coming into harbour either. One of the yachting schools was out there this afternoon with the pupils having a sail around the bay, with someone in a zodiac shepherding them around. And I haven’t forgotten that one of these days in the near future I’ll be out there with them.

There were plenty of pleasure craft too like the large yacht in the foreground that has just come out of the port de plaisance. And there were a couple of speedboats loitering around out there too.

That wasn’t all either.

While I was here I had a look over towards the chantier naval to see how they were getting on with L’Ecume II. They are still bashing away at her but as I watched, something else came around the corner into my field of view.

It’s the little freighter Chausiaise, on her way back from, presumably, a run out to the Ile de Chausey with a load of freight. Someone mentioned to me that if she’s out there with no return load, she’ll bring back a pile of shellfish for the fishermen over there.

From the corner here I walked on down the hill towards the town.

As I was on my way I noticed in the distance that there was a shrink-wrapped speedboat on the quayside and as I approached I could see that Normandy Warrior was in port.

At least, I think that it’s she, because the bridge is slightly different and her skipper has moored her differently than her sister Normany Trader is usually moored.

There were also crowds queueing up to board Marité too. It looks as if she’s going off out for an afternoon’s sailing around the bay. The first time this year that we will have seen her.

The walk through town was rather agonising today and I don’t know why. I’ve noticed for the last few days that I’ not moving around as well as I have been.

And the physiotherapist put me through my paces todays. This new one works me a lot harder than any of the others whom I’ve had so far. I think that she’s on a “kill or cure” mission.

On the way home I called at the pharmacy for the prescription that the sports doctor gave me. If I pick it up while I remember, it saves all kinds of unfortunate complications for later.

The walk back up the hill was a struggle today. I really am becoming worse and worse these days.

There were several occasions where I was obliged to stop, including at the viewpoint overlooking the inner harbour. And “Gone! And never called me ‘Mother’!”. Both Marité and Normandy Warrior have cleared off.

But the shrink-wrapped speedboat is still on the quayside. Normandy Warrior hasn’t taken that away this afternoon. And so it looks as if either she or her sister will be back in port quite quickly to do the necessary. They won’t be leaving that on the quayside for too long.

Something else that was wandering around in the harbour was the local lifeboat, Notre Dame de Cap Lihou.

Strange as it may seem, they have been using her to tow the dredger St-Gilles Croix-de Vie around the harbour while she’s been doing her dredging. So by the looks of things, she’s just knocked off for the day and it going home to have a rest.

In actual fact, not that I saw it, but apparently she was back out later. The dredging is finished so she towed the dredger over to the chantier naval where the portable boat lift could winch her out of the water.

A little further on along the path we finally caught up with Marité again.

It’s a shame that I only had the NIKON 1 J5 with me. That just has the standard lens and so distance photography is pretty useless and I can’t really pick out anything.

But at least, by the looks of things she’s having a good sail around, even if it is with her diesel engines and not with her sails. I don’t suppose that many people still have the skills for this kind of thing.

Instead of going into my building I went for a look out to see what was happening.

What I was hoping to see was Normandy Warrior disappearing off into the sunset but wherever she was, she was well out of range of any equipment that I had with me.

All that there were that I could see were a couple of local inshore boats with a couple of fishermen therein so I had to content myself with them.

In any case, there was quite a haze out at sea and even the Ile de Chausey was difficult to see in these conditions this afternoon.

But it was actually a nice day so it was no surprise to see a few people down there on the beach this afternoon.

They were enjoying themselves, especially the few people who were brave enough to go into the water.

Having photographed them I came in here and had a strawberry smoothie and (regrettably) crashed out completely for a good half hour or so. This physiotherapist works me really hard.

And then I had to get everything together for my Welsh conversation class this evening. That passed quickly and it could have been much, much worse. But I’ve ended up with no tea and I don’t care either because I’m tired and I’m going to bed.

Tomorrow there are no plans but something will come along to disturb me, I’m sure of that.

But anyway, that’s for another time. Let me finally post up the details of my little nocturnal voyages from last night now that i’ve transcribed them We were in Wales, Hans, Jackie, Alison and me. We had to go to somewhere which meant going south on the train and then heading east and then back north again in the direction towards Shrewsbury. That was basically what we did and that was how we set off to do whatever it was that we were supposed to be doing.

And then there was something happening at the bar in the Rue des Juifs as well. We’d all taken musical instruments there and set them up in the alcove as if we were going to have some kind of performance but that was as far as I went with that.

Sunday 8th May 2022 – I WASN’T WRONG …

… when I said that I was likely to have a bad day today.

So while you admire a few photos of the various water craft that was out and about offshore this afternoon while I was out on my afternoon walk, I’ll tell you all about it.

It actually all went wrong late last night because having crashed out so definitively yesterday late afternoon, I wasn’t in the least bit tired and it was long after 02:00 when I finally crawled into bed.

Strangely enough, that was round about the same time that I went to bed last Saturday night too but how I wish that it was for the same reason.

Even though it was really nice to be back in my own bed, I was awake at 10:00 and couldn’t go back to sleep again. Nevertheless it was 11:00 when I finally crawled out of bed.

After the medication I did some work on the radio programmes, pairing off some music for a radio programme that I’ll be preparing in the future.

At the moment I’m almost a whole year ahead which is good news. I have to concentrate on building up a stock ready for if ever I get to go away again and, of course, for another eventuality which you all know.

That took me up to lunchtime – or, rather, brunchtime, because I haven’t had anything to eat yet. Porridge and toast and plenty of strong black coffee to keep me going for the afternoon because, surprisingly, I was starting to flag already.

As I said yesterday, I had a feeling that it was going to be something of a bad day.

But not quite yet because there were still things to do.

The first thing was to write a rather difficult message. I’m not very good at expressing my thoughts and emotions, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, and I always end up making a total mess of what I’m trying to write.

But when someone who has known me long enough to know better calls me “sweet”, then that’s the kind of message that deserves something of a rather special reply of the type that I’m really no good at all at writing.

Why does life have to be so full of complications? It would be so much better if I could simply rely on the power of thought transmission.

Having finally sent something (and that took much longer than it ought to have done) that I still didn’t think was good enough but was the best that I could do, I attacked the dictaphone.

I was having a dream about having to write letters to people (something of a premonition, I reckon). Someone was writing them on my behalf but something had happened. The situation had changed unexpectedly and the person writing these letters no longer felt comfortable doing it. The situation was not as she imagined it and she didn’t think that it was as I expressed it so she refused to write any more. I had to collect all the pens and papers and make a list of the people who have already had their letter, then sit down and write the letter again myself to every one who had been missed.

And then I was round at someone’s house doing some tidying up for them (as if that’s ever likely to happen. I can’t even tidy up for myself!). They decided that they would go out and I was still there, not making a great deal of progress. I was busy making myself something to eat when one of them came back, the first to come back and started setting out some food on the table. There were some cakes that he was laying out. I noticed that one of them was a plain scone and I wondered if that was for me. If so, that was quite nice of them. Then someone else came in with a strange-looking object that was like a glass globe that the top came off. They said “here, cook your food in that”. I can’t remember if it was porridge or something like that that I was making but I cooked it in this glass globe thing. It swelled up really nicely and when you coupled up a Land Rover to it at the back it looked absolutely perfect. Whatever it was that I was cooking had the look of like a cake or something like that but when I took it out of the microwave it went flat again which was a shame because it really looked so nice in this glass globe thing in the microwave.

As I expected, I fell asleep in the middle of dictating all of this. And then I fell asleep as soon as I had finished. And on the latter occasion, it was a really deep, intense sleep that wiped me out completely. Right the way up to time to go walkies.

And when I set out I was really in no fit state to go.

The first port of call once I was outside was to go down to the wall at the end of the car park to look down onto the beach to see what was going on down there.

The tide was on its way out so more and more of the beach was being uncovered. And there were more and more people uncovered too, to such an extent that several of them had actually taken to the water.

And that wasn’t a surprise because it was a gorgeous sunny late Spring day and there wasn’t much wind to cool things down.

even Rover was having a good time too, down at the water’s edge having a good bark at the passing seagulls, trying to chase them away.

Plenty of boats out at sea this afternoon as we have already seen, and plenty of fishermen too.

It seemed as if every rock had its own fisherman perched thereupon this afternoon. I counted a couple of dozen out there casting their lines into the water.

Not that we actually saw anyone catch anything. That’s been a regular theme running through these pages that we have seen hundred upon hundred of fishermen fishing from the rocks and not once have we ever seen anyone pull anything out.

There were crowds of people on the path too. It looked as if the whole town had turned out today for a walk around. After all, it is a Bank Holiday today – VE Day – and that’s quite an important date in the French calendar.

While I was out there looking at the sea I was overflown by a light aeroplane heading towards the airfield.

It’s one whom we know quite well – F-GORN, one of the Robin DR400-120 Dauphin 2+2 aeroplanes that they have.

When I returned home later I had a look at the flight database. The only flight that was recorded for her today was one where she took off at 15:07, flew briefly around the bay and landed again at 15:17.

But my photo was taken at 16:03 (adjusted) so she’s obviously been out again later and kept below radar level.

Incidentally, when I say “adjusted”, all of my appliances like cameras, dictaphones etc aren’t adjusted for Summer Time.

Crowds of people out on the paths, as I said earlier, and also a few people sitting on the bench down by the cabanon vauban.

There was plenty of activity going on out at sea and there’s little doubt that these people were enjoying the spectacle, both maritime and pescatorial. And with plenty of sun and very little wind, why not?

But I can’t stand here all afternoon watching them. I’ve forgotten to put the coffe on before setting out so I need to go home and make it. I headed off down the path on the other side of the headland towards the port to see what was happening there.

One of the things that I had wanted to do was to check the chantier naval to see what was happening there.

And I was right yesterday when I said that I thought that the trawler there might be a Jersey trawler. Indeed it is, and it’s one whom we have met before. J-158 happens to be the registration number of L’Ecume II and she’s been in the harbour here a couple of times.

Her claim to fame is that a couple of years ago her watch fell asleep at the helm and she ran aground on a sandbank. And by the looks of her hull, she looks as if she’s been having a few more issues as well.

Also in the photo are La Roc A La Mauve III, Valesque and an unidentified inshore fisheries boat.

Yesterday, we saw L’Omerta and another inshore fishing boat over there at the fish processing plant.

They are still here today, and from this viewpoint I can identify the second one. At first I thought that she was Lysandre but on checking her registration number I find that she is actually Petite Laura and she’s a new ship to us. We haven’t seen her before.

You can see in her stern all of the buoys and flags and so on of the type that we see dotted around in the sea just offshore. I’m convinced that they relate to things like lobster pots, indicating where the crew has dropped the pots over the side.

Having noticed the dredger in port yesterday I was interested in having a closer look at her today.

And I was right. She certainly is St-Gilles Croix-de Vie, she who comes into port quite often.

But I was more interested in looking at the water level in the inner harbour because that looks a lot lower than it usually is. So what’s happening there?

Back here I had a nice surprise. Rosemary has been tidying up at home and she told me that she had sent me a little gift. So in my mailbox was a little parcel containing a little book on identifying ships. That was really nice of her.

Armed with a mug of coffee I came in here and promptly fell asleep again and that’s how I spent most of the late afternoon. I’m not doing too well right now with all of this. The first couple of days after my transfusion always seem to knock me out.

After lunch I’d taken the last ball of dough out of the freezer.

Now that it had defrosted I rolled it out and left it to proof and then made myself a pizza.

This is the fourth out of this load of dough and I have to say that it was something of a failure becuase 600grams of flour divided into 4 leaves the base too thin. I’ll have to go back to 500 grammes into 3 for the next batch of dough.

So now I’ve written my notes I’m off to bed. I’m having an early start tomorrow to prepare a radio programme so I have to be on form. But where I’m going to find the energy to do it I really don’t know.

Tuesday 12th October 2021 – JUST FOR A CHANGE …

… today, no-one bothered me at all. I had quite a calm day today wthout having to deal with reams of phone calls, people having fits of hysteria an dall that kind of nonsense.

Last night’s sleep wasn’t as good as it might have been either. It was another one of these nights when I was tossing and turning around in bed.

Tons of stuff on the dictaphone too.

I was the owner of a helicopter last night and something had happened that meant that I was in a lot of financial difficulties over it. Some big company was trying to squeeze me out and had been serving writs and summonses on me that I’d been fighting off, not receiving and refusing to receive and so on. eventually I had to go somewhere in my helicopter and ran out of fuel and had to put down on the North European coast somewhere. So I had to land and somehow found my way back to my base but there was no food to eat or anything like that. There was a girl and a guy eating some stuff so I went to fetch their plates to wash them up but they hadn’t finished. They were playing some kind of game with a couple of cats.

There was something about a girl probably 13 or 14 driving around in an America sports car, probably in his 20s. She was clowning around in the car as if she owned it. They were just driving around like they used to do in the old days and generally showing herself off to everyone in this car.

I was in Shavington last night and they had organised a football team and it was playing friendlies. The first match that they played, they lost 2-0 and were getting ready on Sunday to play another match. They were discussing the teams, who was playing and who wasn’t, what position. I was thinking that it was a shame that they hadn’t done this a few years ago. Then a group of us headed back to the house. I was bringing back some things that I’d discovered in an old cellar. We bumped into a woman and her daughter. The daughter was on a scooter and were chatting away. The woman with me (I don’t know who it was) said “when we get back to the house I’d better get a cardboard box to put this girl’s present in. She was in fact 21 even though she only looked 13 or something. To descend into the cellar was a complicated thing. We had to move a metal grille with a pile of paper on it so this woman could go down there and get a box. half of the stuff on top of this box fell down and it was all generally confusing.

Later on my mother was going berserk about some photos that had been taken of the surrounding buildings. I had a close look at it but some of them I didn’t recognise although it was my camera. It looked to me as if someone else had been taking the photos so I was rather annoyed about this. as I tried to look my mother told me to stop wasting my time and not to bother looking through them because that was her decision anyway so I went for a walk. It turned out to be in Sandbach. I had a walk round, initially to have a look at these buildings but I don’t know what happened. I was eventually caught up in the kids coming out from school. The girls from the Grammar School were wearing big cloaks and just red tartan-coloured knickers, that’s all that they were wearing. Of course they were flirting around with a few boys, that sort of thing while they were doing it.

There was a lie-in until 07:30, which seems to be the start time these days, I had my medication, checked my mails and messages and then started to revise my Welsh ready for my lesson.

That started at 11:00 and went on until 01:30 without any problems although I made one or two simple errors that were rather embarrassing.

After lunch I had some correspondence to deal with and then I set out for town.

Down on the corner of the Boulevard des 2E et 202E de Ligne and the Boulevard Vaufleury, there’s a good view looking out over the harbour.

This afternoon, the sailing schools were out having fun this afternoon. It was a little cool and windy, but a nice sunny day so I suppose that it was the ideal kind of weather for them to be afloat out there.

Down in the harbour itself there wasn’t very much happening at all. everything seemed to be exactly as it was when we saw it yesterday afternoon.

There was however something goin on down at the Boulevard des Terreneuviers.

A dumper had turned up with a load of sand and was busy tipping it onto a container that has turned up today.

When the dumper left, I followed its course and I can now tell you that this compound and the associated machinery are here in connection with the work that we saw the other day in the Rue Cambernon.

At least, that was where it was heading when I lost sight of it.

Further down the hill I came to the viewpoint overlooking the inner harbour.

There’s something having been going on down there because the dredger St-Gilles Croix-de Vie has shuffled round a little and all of the pipes seem to have moved somewhat.

The number of pipes doesn’t seem to have diminished any, though. I wonder when they are going to start doing something with them. The dredger has been here for a couple of weeks and someone must be paying a rental for that.

First stop was at the Health Centre. My doctor had told me that a new cardiac specialist had set up shop there so I went to try and blag an appointment with him, taking with me the letter that my doctor had given me.

Unfortunately the receptionist was rather intransigent but I did manage to coax the doctor’s phone number from her.

Next stop was at the bank. I’d had my cheque for the last three months of my state pension from Belgium, and it needed to be paid in. Now, where can I go with €90:18?

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that I only worked for about 11 months in the Belgian State Pension Scheme, back in 2005/06.

Final port of call was at the Post Office. I’ve had the estimate for the repair of the NIKON 1 J5 and it’s less that I was expecting. I needed to authorise the work and, more importantly, to pay the bill.

The way back home up the hill passed much more easily that it has done of late and I’ve no idea why that is either. It wasn’t anything like the struggle that it was a couple of weeks ago, although it’s still a long way short of how it was 18 months ago.

Back at the viewpoint overlooking the harbour we could see that Buddy M, the trawler from Cork, is still there.

She’s been here a few weeks now having her overhaul, and I’ve noticed over the last couple of days that there has been a white van parked by her. maybe that can belongs to the mechanics.

From there I carried on up the hill, rather more easily, heading for my apartment and a cup of coffee. I felt that I had earned it this afternoon.

Outside the apartment there was one of my neighbours so I went over and had a chat, grabbing a photograph of a Birdman of Alcatraz on my way.

Shortly afterwards, another neighbour came over and then a third, ans we were gossiping away like a bunch of old women for about half an hour.

Most of the topic centred around the garden outside the building. There’s been a proposal for the occupiers of the building to do something with it, like plant flowers and the like. Not that it affects me in any way as I won’t be taking part, but I can’t be unsociable all my life..

Once everyone drifted away from the conversation I walked over to the wall at the end of the car park to look down onto the beach.

And pleasant day thatit was, there wasn’t anyone down there at all, even though there was plenty of beach to be on right now. Even the Birdmen of Alcatraz had folded up their wings and departed.

There were a few boats out there in the bay, but they were even farther out that usual so taking a photo would have been pretty much a waste of time.

But one thing that I did notice was a couple of people out on the rocks further around the beach.

They had piled up some of their clothing down there and had gone for a little paddle in the water. I hope that they were enjoying it.

Back in the apartment I made a coffee and then sat down to telephone the heart specialist. After much debate and discussion they eventually managed to fit me in on Monday 25th October – at 08:00.

That’s going to be some appointment, at that time of the morning.

Tea was pasta and veggie balls again in spicy tomato sauce – more spicy that normal because I dropped the tabasco sauce into the mix. But apart from that it was nice.

Now I’m off to bed, later than I would have liked, because I’m up at 06:00 tomorrow. I’m off to Leuven on the 08:45 train for a long day’s travel and I’m no good if I’m half asleep.

Friday 8th October 2021 – I WAS IN BED …

… last night really early – at about 22:40 as it happened, and I had one of the best, deepest sleeps that I have ever had, all the way through until … errr … 04:41. And then the wheels fell off.

When I awoke, I was drenched in sweat yet again (and isn’t this becoming a regular occurrence?), probably the worst yet, and then I spent the time until the alarm went off at 07:30 just tossing and turning in bed.

Staggering out of bed I went for my medication and then back here after dealing with my mails and messages I made a coffee and dealt with the dictaphone.

Yesterday’s voyages are now on line in the appropriate place and then I had a listen to today’s. I’d found myself a nice young girlfriend and I’d been round at my mother’s house with her. It was time for her to go home so I said “yes, you have school in the morning”. She said no, she wasn’t going to school. I asked 2 or 3 times but it didn’t sink in with me. We went to go out and it was pouring down with rain. My mother asked “what are you going to do now?” I replied “put our hoods up”. THe girl decided that it was rather too much so my mother said that she’d run us. I replied “I’ll drive – where are the keys?”. My mother refused and I thought that this was a strange turn-round from how things usually are. I got into the back of this Cortina estate and my mother and this girl got into the front and set off. My mother’s driving was all over the place, driving up the kerb and everything. I said to the girl “I told you that you’ll regret this”. We came to a road junction out of Vine Tree Avenue into Somerville Street in Crewe and I’ve no idea why we were there but my mother didn’t slow down. She just carried on. I shouted “aren’t you going to stop?”. She jammed her foot on the brake and the car slid across the road junction just missing another car coming the other way. I took this girl and we left the car and said “right, we’re walking”. This girl was rather unhappy about walking and said “we can always go to see Reg and have him drive us home” but he was just about walking as far in the other direction as it was walking her home to her house from where we were. I had this feeling again that here was something else that was slipping through my hands. That’s turning into a regular part of my dreams, isn’t it? Here I am with a bird on my plate and just as I’m about to get my fork stuck into it …

Later on I was back working in an office and who should start to work there but TOTGA? Of course I was very interested in that but she never seemed to have the time to talk to me, which was rather a shame. This affected me once to such an extent that I couldn’t concentrate on my work. I had the bougeotte, the need to move around. I went out of the office to go for a little walk. Some other woman came out and asked me where I was going so I told her. She said “well if you like I’ll come back afterwards and peel your carrots for you” which I thought was a strange thing to say. I got into my car, which was the Omega, left-hand drive, and drove it down the ramp into the car park. But my badge wouldn’t work the car park and quite a queue of people built up behind me. The guys in the office down there controlling the car park weren’t in the least bit interested. Eventually one of them came over and tried my badge but it didn’t work. He said “your badge has expired” and that was that. I had to make all of these people behind me reverse out of the way and I had to reverse the Omega back up which wasn’t easy with these vehicles coming down behind me and going off somewhere else. I ended up back in my office. By now there was a party taking place at lunchtime so I walked round the corner and there was TOTGA still sitting at her desk working. I went over and asked her “aren’t you taking part in the festivities?” and that was when things ground to a halt unfortunately, although I had a feeling that I was heading for yet another disappointment

Later still I was in some kind of army. I can’t remember much about this but someone came along with a cannon so I gave him a run out. His was far better than any artillery I had in my army so I was very keen to sign him up. I can’t remember what happened after this.

Finally, I’d gone to see a car for sale. An Opel. 40 miles on the clock despite it being 4 years old. It had been bought for someone who had become ill and had never ever used it. I went to see it and it really was in good condition as you would expect but it had had a bang underneath it and the paint had come off one of the sills. The sill was bent and the floor pan was rather bent. I offered then £4,000 for it but they wanted £8,000 which was what they had paid, which was probably right 4 years ago. I offered them £4,000 which they thought was a humiliation but I pointed out these defects and said “let me know what you think”.

It’s hardly surprising that I was totally exhausted after all of that, especially as it seemed to be so full of disappointment. Nothing seems to be going my way during my nocturnal rambles, rejected by TOTGA and having relationship issues with a girl whom I wish I knew who she was, and my family sticking their oar in to spike my guns just like in real life all those years ago.

Anyway, let’s not brood on the past.

Much of the morning was spent with this radio project, following up a couple of hot clues about people who might have a few things to say for themselves. But one thing that I have noticed, particularly with the Brits, is that they will spend days if not weeks moaning about something and yet refuse to do anything about it, even when the opportunity is presented to them on a plate.

A shower came next and as a surprise, I went one step further than Dave Crosby. Must be because I had a ‘flu for Christmas. I weighed myself today too and in the space of a week I’ve lost 1.2kg. At this rate, I’ll be gone completely in 18 months.

After an early lunch I headed off into town.

The first port of call, for a change this afternoon seeing as it was early, was to see if there was any sign of life at the roadworks in the Boulevard des Terreneuviers.

And there was actually someone there too. As I was walking down the hill he walked out of the compound and went to sit in the digger that was there. And that’s all he did – just sat there.

But there has been some kind of activity because the skip that was here has now gone. You can see the mark on the road where it was left. So something is happening, although it’s hard to say what it is.

Further on down the road, there’s still no change in the port.

The dredger St-Gilles Croix-de Vie is still down there in the harbour, still surrounded by all of the pipes and tubes. It looks as if nothing of any importance has moved since yesterday.

But I need to be moving so I pushed on down the Rue des Juifs and then down the steps towards the Place Pléville-Lepelley

The Place looks empty and deserted right now.

Over the summer there was the Bar Ephemère, “Chez Maguie”, down there with several tables and benches and all kinds of things but a couple of weeks ago it was all folded back up into the shipping container that was its home.

But now that’s no longer here. Gone! And never called me “mother”!

Usually there are hordes of people here too playing boules but there’s not a soul down there this afternoon. And that’s a surprise, seeing as it’s lunchtime right now.

The walk up the hill wasn’t as bad as it has been just recently. I only stopped once to catch my breath and if that were the case every time I’d be quite happy with that.

At the roundabout in the Place Semard there looks as if there has been a diesel spillage. There’s a big trail of sand around the roundabout that stops as the road begins to climb the hill. A couple of scooters were taking the bend very gingerly.

The physiotherapist had me on the tilting platform thing for 20 minutes and then the cross trainer to finish off. I pushed my personal best on by another 10 seconds and could have done better except that my right knee was feeling the strain. I was glad to stop.

After he threw me out I went across the road to the little Carrefour. I’m running low on fruit and I don’t want to go all the way out to the hypermarket tomorrow for just a few things as I’m off to Leuven on Wednesday morning.

Fruit is expensive in there but it’s right on the way home so I may as well splash out. And they had 1.5kg of nice-looking potatoes on special offer at €0:99 and I’ve run out.

It was a stagger back home carrying all of that but it had to be done and it saves me going out tomorrow of course

The walk up the hill in the Rue des Juifs wasn’t as easy as it might have been had I not been loaded up, and I was glad to reach the viewpoint overlooking the port.

Leaving on the wall with my energy drink in one hand, I could see that we’ve had a change down there on the quayside.

One of the Jersey freighters (it was the Normandy Trader with a skeleton crew as I learnt later) has been into port this morning, taken away a lot of the stuff that was on the quayside and it looks as if she’s unloaded another pile of freight that is waiting to be collected.

On the way down the hill earlier I noticed that there was something going on by the Eglise St Paul.

While I was here I took a photo and back home in the apartment I could enlarge (I only have the NIKKOR 30-110mm LENS on the NIKON D3000) the photo to see what was happening.

It looks as if they are working on the rear of a building in the Rue Couraye and using a crane to swing stuff over from the road by the church. Strangely, I’d just been walking up and down the Rue Couraye and I hadn’t noticed a thing. I must be slipping..

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that a few days I posted a photo of the flags on the car part at the Boulevard Vaufleury that had been shredded by the wind early in the week.

Today, they have turned up there in a cherry-picker and there are a couple of workmen there. Are they chanign light bulbs in the street lights there, aor are they actually dealing with the flags?

Whatever it is that they are doing, they have an interested spectator in Georges René Le Peley de Pléville who is watching from his plinth.

IN case you are wondering who he is, which I’m sure you are, he was born in 1726 in Granville and was variously a privateer, governor of Marseille and an Admiral of the French fleet, to name but three of his many positions.

On the way back home I went via the beach to see what was going on there.

Plenty of beach for it to be going on on, and quite a few people down there too, all armed with rakes and all kinds of unusual tools to scratch away at the sand to pull out whatever is left there by the tide.

Back home I made myself a coffee and then, rather regrettably, I fell asleep for 20 minutes. It’s been a while since I’ve slept like that, especially since I’ve been lying in, but I suppose that the walk and the physiotherapy has taken it all out of me

Once I’d recovered I set about adding a few of the noctural voyages for the journal entries for August. I’ve actually made it as far back as 21st August and there’s still plenty to go at yet.

Those potatoes looked so nice that I had steamed veg, veggie balls with vegan cheese sauce for tea and it was totally delicious tonight.

Now that my notes are finished, I’m going to have a quiet relax for half an hour and then go to bed for an early night.

No shopping tomorrow, but I have a desktop mixer panel with which I need to have a play around and make work. It’s been sitting on my shelves for far too long and it’s about time that I brought it into use if I can.

Thursday 7th October 2021 – I’M BEGINNING TO THINK …

… “which makes a change” – ed … that I may have underestimated the amount of time that it’s going to take me to do this project that I’ve undertaken with the radio.

Today i’ve done almost nothing except write out a (three-page) summary (in French of course) and e-mail it to all of the other members of the team (and that was not without its problems either).

And then deal with the inevitable enquiries, of which there were more than just a few.

There’s plenty of stuff on the dictaphone too but I have yet to find the time to deal with it all.

This is going to be a long three months.

Last night was pretty long too. I was in bed at something like a respectable time but it didn’t seem to do me much good as I was tossing and turning around for much of it.

And despite a period in bed that wasn’t all that much short of 8 hours, I felt like death when I awoke and things didn’t improve for a while.

After the meds and checking my mails and messages, I sat down to write out my notes for this project. I’d already done several rough drafts and so I had to merge them all together, and format them in a way that would be acceptable to users of Microsoft Word.

The rewriting was fairly straightforward but the formatting took an age and I wasn’t convinced that it was correct. In the end, I prepared a *.pdf s well.

The co-ordinator sent me the e-mail list so after lunch I could send it out. But three addresses bounced and so I had to make further enquiries. And despite several attemps, one of them is still bouncing. I have no idea what is happening here.

After lunch I prepared to receive the volley of responses and I wasn’t disappointed. But right now, late in the evening, I’ve not received one for half an hour. I shudder to think what my mailbox will be like in the morning.

There was the break this afternoon to go for my walk, somewhat later than usual.

First task was to go and have a look over the wall to see what was going on down on the beach.

The tide is well out now. We are not too far short of the lowest tides of this time of year, and as I was expecting, there were plenty of people down there this afternoon.

They weren’t actually going for a walk or a paddle in the sea but were mostly all scratching around in the sand and on the rocks looking for seafood that the tide has left behind. It’s that time of year again.

While I was watching the people on the beach I could hear a tappinng coming from the hole in the wall that we saw yesterday so I had a closer look.

Unfortunately I couldn’t see anyone there from my viewpoint, but instead I noticed a couple of people sitting on the bench by the steps down to the bench.

Where they are sitting is actually a small garden known as Le Jardin de la Haute Ville – the garden of the upper town. People drop off their compostable material up there and some people have created a little plot of flowers and vegetables to bring a little life to the area.

With nothing else happening out here, I headed off along the path on my walk.

As I approached the headland, a small cabin cruiser came into view heading towards the port. I’ve no idea why because he’s going to have a long wait.

He was making quite a wake behind him as he approached, and when I had a good look at the photo once I returned home, it looked to me as if he was actually towing something.

That piqued my curiosity so I enlarged and enhanced it, and to my surprise what has actually happened is that I have been photobombed by a seagull. Right on cue.

And so fighting my way past another horde of kids out orienteering, a couple of whom engaged me in conversation, I carried on down the path and across the car park.

Whether or not these kids are supposed to be orienteering I really don’t know, but they have found a good place to skive off.

Sitting on top of the old World War II German observation post out of the way of passers-by might be one way to avaoid the crowds. It’s just as well that it wasn’t as windy as it was earlier in the week.

And in case you are wondering, there was no-one sitting on the bench down by the cabanon vauban this afternoon. And that was possibly because there wasn’t anything much happening out in the bay just there either.

Round the corner though on the other side of the headland it seemed to be all happening.

The fleet of cars parked all along the seawall told me to expect crowds of people down there on the beach and on the rocks now that the tide is quite a way out.

The pêche à pied is now in full swing with half of the town out there this afternoon scratching around. No need to be selfish not sharing your shellfish with your friends, because they are all probably down there with you.

But in that photo I noticed something exciting down there that I couldn’t identify, so when I returned home I blew it up (I can do things like that despite modern anti-terrorism legislation) and enhanced it for a closer look.

And here’s something that I have forgotten all about. A good few months ago there was a digger and some other heavy equipment out there laying some kind of pipeline on concrete blocks.

So here they are, back again now that the tourist season is over and we’re having some low tides at the moment. I’d thought that they had finished this, but apparently not. I wonder how far out they are going to be going with it.

Meanwhile down in the nice, clean chantier naval we have a new occupant. So much for me saying that there doesn’t look as if anyone will be in there for a while.

There’s no name on her hull that I can see and although she looks very much like Spirit of Conrad, I don’t think that it’s her. I suppose that means another trip for me to go down and have a closer look.

But where’s the dredger? She’s disappeared from the chantier naval now. But she probably hasn’t gone far, I bet, and the fact that they are working on that pipeline right now seems to be more than just coincidence.

In fact, here she is right now, in the inner harbour.

And furthermore, I can tell you her name. She’s called St-Gilles Croix-de Vie and we know all about her because she was here in port a little over two years ago doing some dredging.

Having made “certain enquiries”, I can tell you all why she’s here too. She’s come to dredge the port de plaisance where the pleasure boats tie up, on the other side of the harbour.

There’s more equipment appeared now o the quayside behind her too. I can see that this isn’t going to be a work of five minutes, whatever is going on right now down there.

Before I go back home, I went to see how things were doing down in the Boulevard des Terreneuviers.

Not a great deal of change today, except that we how have a couple of piles of sand and gravel down there, so they are clearly doing something, even if it doesn’t look much like it right now.

Back here at the apartment I had a coffee and carried on dealing with the issues from my mail at lunchtime. I have a lot to learn about all of this because apparently I’m not making myself clear enough.

However, having done it all in French, I’m pleased that I did as much as I did.

Eventually (the next morning, actually) I found the time to transcribe the dictaphone notes. I was with Liz walking through the streets of Crewe, down Alton Street in fact. She was talking to me about her house move and how it had passed, and how much she missed her little Citroen car. It turned out that she didn’t sell to to the guy she was going to bit it had to go back to the garage because there was an issue with the paintwork. Part of it had faded and part of it hadn’t. It was almost white on one side and the guy wouldn’t take it. So we walked and chatted and she kept on wondering where it was that we had to turn off. She didn’t realise that Alton Street was one long straight road. Eventually she said that she had to go to the bathroom so she nipped behind a hedge. I said “Liz, if you’re going to the bathroom, go to the bathroom properly”. There was a public convenience in the park just round the corner. She said something like “it’s my toilet roll, not yours” and off she went. I thought that it would be a good idea if I were to go too.

Later on we were in Greece and we’d been to a party one afternoon or something. Someone pointed out that there was a big tourist attraction nearby but it meant taking a bus. About 7 of us left this party and found a local bus that took us to the big bus station which was where the railway station used to be in the past. We had to find out which was our bus. Then we had to buy some kind of wooden bead that would be our ticket. We met the bus driver who spoke English. She told us which bus it was. She said that she’d be back in 10 minutes and when she came back we could take our place. It was a strange way of doing things. There was another bus with these Japanese girls in it, all sitting by the door on their luggage, inside the bus. We went over to where the food was. It was mostly chips but there were some boxes of things that looked like gold, called Machynlles. I was interested in this because there’s a big gold mine near Machynlleth in Wales that the Romans exploited so I was trying to find out exactly what a Machynlle was. There was a girl there and they were all wearing aprons with what languages they spoke written on it. There was one girl there with Welsh on it so I went over to speak to her. I said a few words in Welsh but she didn’t really understand. In the end I found another woman and explained to her but she couldn’t understand my pronunciation so she went to find the box. Then she couldn’t find the box so I never did get to know. But when we alighted from that bus and were walking towards the bus station there was a girl there. We ended up with my arm around her walking towards the bus station which i thought was strange

There was also something about we were in Scotland. I can’t remember who I was with but we were going to see Morton play. We had to catch a bus but I couldn’t remember which bus it was so we were waiting in Wistaston Road just round the corner from Flag Lane. I was with someone and a bus came. It wasn’t that one so we waited again. I wandered away to do something. Of course that was the moment that the bus came and the person with me stepped on board and went off. In the end I had to hitch a lift in a lorry that brought me to within 10 minutes of the stadium just in time to hear the final whistle.

Tea was a burger and pasta with veg – I wasn’t up to cooking a proper meal and there are plenty of burgers in the fridge. When I come back from Leuven I’ll have a vegan pie to bake and a vegan curry to make. I don’t have the enthusiasm right now.

That’s probably because I’m tired again. I brilliantly fought off a wave of sleep earlier but I can’t do this for ever. I need an early night and a decent sleep – but when I’m going to have one of those is anyone’s guess.

Wednesday 15th May 2019 – BANE OF BRITAIN …

… 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
.

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

speedboat port de granville harbour manche normandy france eric hall

Thursday 9th May 2019 – BANE OF BRITAIN …

… strikes yet again.

All the way to LIDL and all the way back this morning, and I forgot my fitbit, didn’t I?

And I can’t blame being tired either, because I’d been to bed early and had a reasonably decent sleep.

Off on my travels too. I’d been staying in a hotel somewhere in a small town near Commentry with a couple of people and we’d been out looking for food. Eventually we came across a place that did couscous take-aways so we went and bought something from there. A while later I was back living in Les Guis so I had the idea of going back there to ask if they ever might need a delivery driver on occasions. I had to go home and print off a CV and I thought that while I was at it I’d print off a few extra copies and hand them out at similar places on the way. But the area was nothing like where I lived. It reminded me of the downhill slope of the road out of Clermont Ferrand past Vulcania and out to St Ours.

Unfortunately, I didn’t quite beat the final alarm, but it wasn’t far away. And after breakfast and a shower and general clean-up I headed for the shops.

You can tell that it’s election time very shortly.

The council has special poster boards that it erects at strategic places just before any election, and competing parties can paste their posters up on there instead of defacing the walls and doors of buildings.

It seems to work quite well, and helps to keep the place tidy.

LIDL didn’t come up with anything special at all, but at least the walk did me good and that’s the whole point of doing it.

Back here, I started to put everything away but my attention was distracted by some goings-on on the car park at the back.

It looks as if there’s some kind of meeting of driving schools going on in the public rooms. There are about a dozen driving school cars parked out there.

No idea what is going on though.

Back at work, I had a busy morning. Back in December 2013 I’d been to Clermont-Ferrand and ended up in the war cemetery there where I’d seen a few war graves.

Something about it had piqued my interest today so I spent a couple of hours doing some research into the incidents that led to the deaths;

Surprisingly there’s a lot of information available on the internet, including contemporary press cuttings and photos, and so I was able to edit the page to include an enormous amount of factual information.

We were interrupted by lunch, of course, taken indoors yet again due to the high winds. I’ve spoken to a couple of neighbours today and we’ve all been saying that the Spring this year is much colder than usual.

Having updated the page from Clermont-Ferrand, I attacked the photos from my 2015 trip to Canada. All of October 2015, all of September 2015 and half of August 2015 are now collated to the dictaphone notes by the time I stopped for tea. It’ll probably be finished tomorrow with a bit of luck.

There was the usual interruption for the afternoon walk in the wind.

And you can see just how windy it was by looking at the whitecaps on the waves down there

There was even someone out here wrestling with a kite, trying to make it stay aloft in the gale. He was having endless fun but I can’t say that he was particularly successful.

And I was shaken out of my complacent reverie by a rattle from overhead.

Someone in the area has had his chopper out this afternoon, because the helicopter went flying by overhead. It’s painted yellow with a red stripe and that makes me think that it’s the air-sea rescue helicopter.

It’s impossible to say whether or not it’s been out on a mission, or whether it was just a training flight.

Having had a day off yesterday for the Bank Holiday, the workmen were back today at the site of the new war memorial to the Heroes of the Resistance.

By the looks of things, they were installing shuttering along the edges of where that had dug out and laid gravels.

I hope that this doesn’t mean that they are going to concrete it over. I’ll use concrete because I’m no good at paving, but I’m sure the Council can do better than that. The paved path that they just dug up was quite well-done.

So I continued on my walk around the headland at the Pointe du Roc and had a quick glance at the Coastguard station to see if there was anything exciting going on.

There was someone out there on a ladder cleaning a piece of equipment. I’m not sure what it was though, whether it’s a CCTV camera or a siren or something.

But the concrete bunker underneath, that is roughly in the position which would correspond to where a mast anchored by that concrete cable-stay would be positioned.

Round now at the chantier navale to see what’s going on.

We seem to have acquired a different yacht today, the little one with the pale blue superstructure to the right of Grand Beau Temps.

The big pontoon dredger from the Vendee, St Gilles Croix de Vie is still down there and there seems to be someone working on her right now.

Further on around the footpath we can see down over into the harbour, and tied up to its quayside is our old friend Thora

She wasn’t down there in the harbour this morning when I went past on my way to LIDL, so she must have come in on the lunch-time tide.

And given the rather sharp turn-rounds these days, I wonder how long she’ll be staying

I came back here for my mug of hot chocolate and my brazil nuts and then continued on attacking the photos, with an interruption to wish Rosemary a “happy birthday”.

Tea was steamed veg and falafel with vegan cheese sauce. And I do have to say that it was the most delicious that I have ever made. I could eat that again – probably next week too for the second helping of falafel.

The apple pie and coconut sorbet that washed it down was delicious too.

Back outside for my evening walk again, and despite the wind it was another pleasant evening.

And another evening where the colours were totally beautiful too and they have come out really well in this photo of the beach at Plat Gousset at Donville-les-Bains.

You can see how strong the wind is by looking at the waves. Tons of white caps and the waves are quite strong. Just imagine the power in those waves there, waiting to be harvested.

And I wasn’t the only one out there enjoying the weather either.

There was a group of young people down there having a beach party and watching the sun slowly sink down to the horizon. It’s the kind of thing that takes me back 50 years.

As long as they were out of the wind they would be fine down there. It wasn’t quite so pleasant up here though on the walls.

A few days ago, I noticed a pair of seagulls up to no good in broad daylight on the roof of a house across the road.

And even more recently the gulls have been diving down to pick up the grass offcuts that the council had been cutting.

And now we know what is going on, don’t we? It’s nesting time and it won’t be long before we start seeing the baby seagulls staggering around on the roofs of the houses.

Just a final check in the harbour on the way home.

And Thora is still in the harbour, complete with her shipping container on board. Obviously the turn-round today isn’t that quick;

And round the corner I met the old lady who is Minette’s “mother”. We had quite a lengthy chat about cats, and even Minette came out to join in, although she remained rather aloof.

So back here and I don’t really feel like all that much. I’m going to have an early night and I’ll do the rest of this tomorrow morning.

helicopter pointe du roc granville manche normandy france

Wednesday 8th May 2019 – THE BIG ADVANTAGE …

… about wearing the kind of clothes that I do (fleeces, shell-suit trousers) is that when I’m caught outside in a torrential downpour for 10 minutes, I dry off just as quickly as I became wet once the sun came out.

This afternoon I went out and about on my afternoon ramble with the aim of going down to the chantier navale

However I was held up at the top of the Pointe du Roc by an exceptionally good view of the Brittany coast.

It’s not come out so well though, because even with the monopod the strong gusting winds were making it impossible to hold the camera steady.

Just for a change seeing as I was heading down to the harbour, I took the stairs all the way down to the foot of the Pointe du Roc.

We’d been down there once or twice after it reopened and I’d taken a few photos when I was down there on the viewing platform.

But it came to my mind that I hadn’t taken a photo of the viewing platform itself. I need to remedy that.

Continuing on around the footpath, and dodging the pedestrians who pressed on regardless of how narrow the path was, I had a good look around.

And here’s something that I missed on the previous occasions when I’ve been round here. It’s a concrete wire anchor, presumably for a radio mast or something similar, and quite possibly dating from the time of the Atlantic Wall.

I’ll have to look on my 1943 photograph and see if there’s anything that gives me a clue.

And it was round about here that I was drenched in the rain.

The maystery of the new yacht in the chantier navale is resolved.

She’s called the Grand Beau Temps and she is apparently registered here in Granville, although I don’t actually recall having seen her here in the harbour.

There wasn’t anyone around working on her to ask any questions unfortunately, so I don’t know any more about her.

While I was down here, I went over to have a good look at the red and yellow pontoon that has been in the harbour for a couple of weeks and has now appeared in the chantier navale

The first thing that caught my eye was here on the front. It looked at first as if it might be a grab of some description

But a closer inspection revealed that it might actually be some kind of gratter and suction pump

Round the back, there is what appears to be a suction outlet.

And that makes it much more clear. She’s probably a dredger, although that doesn’t explain why she’s been in the harbour here the last couple of weeks.

After all, they only dredged that last winter and it won’t be silted up quite yet.

There’s a plaque from the owners affixed to the cabin. and the surprising thing that the plaque told me was that she’s apparently owned by the town of St Gilles Croix de Vie

That’s on the Vendée coast opposite the Ile de Yeu where Cécile lived and where I went to visit back in 2013.

So the plot sickens.

This morning, having had a good early night and a decent sleep, I was up and about before the final alarm wen toff, which is always good news.

I’d been on a little voyage too during the night. I had an appointment at the Income Tax Office of all places in Northwich at 14:30. I was in Middlewich about an hour before, although it wasn’t much like Mifddlewich, and I had a couple of bags with me and a few other bits and pieces. I was on foot. I suddenly thought “how do I get to Northwich?”. I know the two roads that go there but which one do I take and which one gets me to the town centre because I couldn’t think which would be the best way to go. I was walking past Middlewich railway station (which was nothing at all like Middlewich railway station). There were some travellers parked there, a fairground, loads of buses and cars parked around there. And a taxi, an old FX4, was going to the station. It was L-registered (1973) so I thought that this must be the oldest taxi still working in the UK. It was rattling and clanking. I had to climb the hill to get over the railway bridge which of course doesn’t exist (but reminded me of where the canalised Weaver runs through Northwich near the old Hospital) but going up this bridge I just could not put one foot in front of another. It was just as if I was having to drag tons of stuff up behind me over this bridge. All I had was a couple of files of paperwork. I was just not able to put one foot in front of another. In the end there was some kind of office and for some reason I went in to sit down. It was like a doctor’s surgery with loads of people sitting round. I sat down and there were a couple of small girls behind me about 6 years old chatting like little girls do. I suddenly wondered why I was there. This wasn’t doing me any good at all, I had my appointment at 14:30 and it was now 14:15. I thought that I would now have to take a taxi to get there on time and I’ll need some money for that – I didn’t have any English money. So I stood up ans started to go out of this room. I said to everyone, as a gesture of pride, that I would be back in a minute. Some woman asked “how long?” so I replied “a minute or two” but of course I wasn’t coming back at all. I smiled at this young woman by the door and said “you can’t do anything without any money, can you?” and I went out, planning to go to the station to see if that taxi was there.
At some point though right at the very beginning of this I’d been out on the Northwich by-pass. I remember thinking that I didn’t have much time but I was hungry and there was a corner shop in one of the small towns on the by-pass so I remember walking there thinking that most people wouldn’t bother doing this because it would be too far. But I went anyway, ended up in this town, missed the corner shop and that might have been where I ended up in Middlewich.

With an early morning, we ended up with an early start to work and, in some really excellent news as far as I’m concerned, I’ve finished all of the dictaphone notes.

And I’ve also linked up the notes to the photos for Canada October 2015 and made a start on September 2015.

This is great progress indeed – to finish off one of my long-term tasks – and I gave myself a metaphorical pat on the back.

There are still plenty of other long-term tasks that need attention, so it’s not really made mush difference to the backlog of work.

It also helped that I didn’t have any distractions of any kind today, except lunch and my afternoon walk.

And also, a little 20-minute relax on the chair.

Another thing that is some kind of progression is that I now know what to do with the left-over stuffing from the pepper. Slice some onion and garlic and fry it with cumin, coriander and turmeric. In the meantime, cut a small potato into small cubes and give it three minutes in the microwave.

Then add the potato, the left-over stuffing and anything else that’s lying around and likely to be wasted, and make some rice and vegetables, and there you are.

Followed down by apple pie and coconut sorbet. Absolutely delicious.

And then out and about for the evening walk around the walls.

The light was really good tonight, looking towards the east, and the casino and the beach at the Plat Gousset were perfectly illuminated.

It’s a shame that there were so few people about out there enjoying it. Half a dozen down there on the beach and the promenade and just two or three people wandering around the walls.

While I was out wandering around the walls, I’d seen something moving rapidly across the sea.

No prizes for guessing what it was, because it’s that time of the evening. So I wandered round to the other side of the walls and there I encountered Victor Hugo just coming into port.

It’s that time of the year again and so the regular runs to the Channel Islands have restarted. She’ll be in and out on a regular basis for the rest of the summer season.

That wasn’t the only action that was going on down in the harbour.

The harbour gates are closed as you can see, and the red lights on display give that indication to ships and boats about to come in.

But there’a a queue of trawlers lined up at the harbour gates so I reckon that the gates must be right on the point of opening.

And now I’m going to have yet another early night. I need a good shower to clean up, and then it’s shopping time tomorrow. I need to be on form and it would do me good.

victor hugo port de granville harbour manche normandy france

EPIC HALL

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

Tag Archives: st gilles croix de vie

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Friday 20th May 2022 – IT WAS ONLY YESTERDAY …

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Sunday 8th May 2022 – I WASN’T WRONG …

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