Tag Archives: st pair sur mer

… another day of disputes down at the dialysis centre, as some people totally fail to understand exactly what “stay connected up until he’s down to the dry weight” really means, and want to shut down the procedure with ten minutes and one hundred and fifty grammes still to go.

“Is it me?” I wonder, or are there really some people who just can’t understand a plain and simple instruction?

My body is a bit like that sometimes. It can’t understand a plain and simple instruction either. All I wanted it to do was to act like the previous night and let me have a really good sleep until the alarm goes off, but no such luck. I was in bed quite late last night and it took me an age to go to sleep as well, but I awoke, probably with the wind, as we had a gale blowing outside, at whatever time it was – I don’t know, but whenever it was, I couldn’t go back to sleep. I just lay there, tossing and turning, until the alarm went off at 06:29.

For once in my life, I was actually up and about quite quickly because I had a lot of things to do. I went to the front door and unlocked it, and then I went into the bathroom to organise myself and have a good scrub up. I even had a shave in case I meet Emilie the Cute Consultant this afternoon at dialysis.

Back in here, I had a listen to the dictaphone to see where I’d gone to during the night. Unfortunately, I hadn’t gone very far.

Last night, we were doing something with a couple of teams in the Cymru Premier League or the Cymru North League. I remember that Drenewydd was one of them. What we were doing was trying to work out some kind of either a handicap for the scores or some kind of adjustment in respect of their league positions. But Drenewydd, who were currently third in the table, were not very happy about this, and their manager had all kinds of things to say to us about the situation while we were doing it.

As it happens, Drenewydd are lying third in the Cymru North table. But this dream is, I reckon, all about the forthcoming match on Friday night between Trefynnon, adrift at the foot of the table with the unenviable record of just one point and conceding the most goals so far this season, and TNS, way out front at the top and who have been scoring goals for fun just recently. Their 9-0 thrashing of mid-table Cambrian United the other week must make gruesome reading for Trefynnon.

We’ve had a 9-1 result just recently too, and then there’s this campaign by a “journalist” who wants to open up all of the results that have been censored by some of the leagues due to the extremely heavy defeats that some clubs lower down the pyramid have suffered, despite his “article” six months or so ago deploring the heavy thrashings that some clubs have had and how demoralising and embarrassing it must be, etc., etc.

Isabelle the Nurse worked her way in later and dealt with my legs and feet. I told her about my bad night again and she wasn’t all that much help in helping me find a solution. Maybe there isn’t one. I dunno.

After she left, I made my breakfast, and while I was eating, I was reading some more of THE REPORT OF THE WOOLHOPE NATURALISTS CLUB 1870.

Today, we’re still carrying on with all of the papers that have been read before the club in the year 1870. There have been all sorts of subjects addressed, but right now, we’re reading a speech by an eminent mushroom expert called Elias Magnus Fries from Sweden, one of the people who were mainly responsible for the differentiation and classification of mushroom types.

None of it is controversial, however, and in any case, I don’t know enough about mushrooms to argue.

When I’d finished breakfast, I stayed sitting at the table because I had some important work to do. My chatbot and I started work on a brand new project the other day, but when I tried to open the relevant file yesterday, I couldn’t find it, despite looking and looking.

It turned out that I’d downloaded an upgrade of ChatGPT onto the big desktop machine, and the installation had installed without deleting or overwriting the old installation, and yesterday, I was trying to open the older version. And files made with the new version are not, surprisingly, backwards compatible with the old version, so the old version won’t show them.

So to cut a long story short, when I opened the new version, the file was sitting there as it should be, and so are the old files too, which are forward-compatible with the new version.

Thus yesterday, feeling full of confidence and reassurance … "the fool" – ed … I went to upgrade ChatGPT on the travelling laptop. That was no problem. I made sure that my Windows shortcut was pointing at the new version, which it was, and then clicked to open it.

And guess what? That’s right. The file wasn’t there. And copying the URL link from the chat that was open on the desktop computer into the laptop’s chat window address bar simply produced an error message.

Consequently, Chatbot and I spent two hours trying different things to make it appear, but nothing worked. Not even rubbing this brass lamp that I have in here.

When the alarm went off, I had to stop and prepare myself for dialysis, sort out a disgusting drink and my midday medication. Once I’d done that, I had to prepare the travelling laptop to take with me. My faithful cleaner came along too in order to deal with putting the anaesthetic on my arm.

After she left, I took up my usual position of “slumped over the table with my head resting on my arms” and slowly drifted away into a nice peaceful sleep for what seemed like all of thirty seconds when the doorbell awoke me.

“It can’t be the taxi already, surely?” I thought, but it was. And when I checked the time with the clock on the microwave, it was 12:58. I’d been asleep for over half an hour.

At first, I was the only passenger, but we stopped to pick up our usual Thursday voyager from the Aqua Gym at St. Pair to take to the other side of Avranches. We had a nice drive in the lovely weather … "it’s still summer here" – ed … down to Avranches, where I arrived five minutes early. Nevertheless, it wasn’t until 14:20 that I was plugged in.

When I weighed myself on entry, there was another huge spike in my weight. My calculations were that if I were to stay for four hours with the machine on maximum, it would clear it. The nurses tried to dissuade me, even though they had the doctor’s authority to do it, and in any case I insisted. So we had the “on your own head be it” and they eventually did as I instructed.

There was an injection that I had to have today to boost my immunity system, so my cleaner had fetched it from the chemist the other day, and I took it to the clinic with me. When I saw the doctor (not, unfortunately, Emilie the Cute Consultant), I told her “here’s a little present for you, doctor”. She wasn’t sure whether or not I was being serious, but when she saw the injection, she took it and put it in the fridge.

Once everything was up and running, I settled down to watch a football match from the weekend – Hwlffordd v Y Fflint.

Even though these teams are near the bottom of the table, they usually play some classy, stylish football. However, that certainly wasn’t the case in this match. Y Fflint certainly tried, but their midfield was overrun by the Hwlfforth midfield. Hwlffordd certainly had the better of the play, and even though they had a player sent off three quarters through the game, they still appeared to have too much in the tank for Y Fflint.

That’s how it seemed, anyway, until the ninetieth minute when Y Fflint’s Joe Malkin glanced a header into the Hwlffordd net. Y Fflint hung on until the end of the game to give them a most unexpected victory.

With staying on for four hours, I could see most of a second match, so I chose Llansawel v Colwyn Bay.

This should have been an “away banker”, but it didn’t turn out like that at all. However, I’ll tell you about the game after I’ve finished watching it.

With about ten minutes and one hundred and fifty grammes to go, the nurse came to unplug me. “Why?” I asked.

“We can see that this black line, which shows us how much fluid there is to collect, has grounded out. So now, all we’ll be doing is taking out your normal body fluids”.

“You heard what the doctor said,” I replied. “I can’t leave until I’m down to my dry weight”.

And then we had a big argument about it all. In the end, they telephoned a doctor who basically said “let him do what he wants,” so I stayed.

Even so, I was still 200 grammes over my dry weight when I left, and that was so disappointing because I’ll just have to take it off on Saturday along with everything else that has accumulated. But it really is bad news when I have to fight with these people.

What made things worse was that there were two nurses around my bed while I was being unplugged, and they were talking about me as if I wasn’t there. It was hardly polite, as were some of the comments. Not that I was upset by it, just bewildered as to why it was happening.

The taxi was waiting for me as I came out of the building, and as I was the only passenger, we could go straight home.

When I arrived at … gulp … 19:20, my cleaner was waiting for me to help me into the apartment. That was just as well because as the evening drew on, it was quite cold. And it’s soon going to be jacket-wearing weather in the morning and evening, I reckon.

Once I’d sat down, my faithful cleaner bunged a disgusting drink in my hands so that I didn’t forget, and then went up to her apartment.

After she’d left and I’d drunk my disgusting drink, I went to make my tea – some more of that potato salad that I made the other day with some ordinary salad and a spicy burger. It was a strange meal, but there were bags of protein in it, and that’s what I need.

In here later, I began to write out the notes for the day, but once again, found myself asleep on my cjair later on with my notes only half written. I posted them on-line with a “to be continued” stamp and I’ll finish the rest tomorrow morning.

Before going to bed, I went for a ride on the porcelain horse and at one point, I almost fell off. Then in the bathroom and trying to stand up after sitting on the chair, my hand slipped off the freezer and I smashed my head really hard on the fridge door as I almost fell. I really was in no fit state to be around, so I was glad that I had decided to go to bed. I wasn’t safe anywhere else.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about my cleaner … "well, one of us has" – ed … she told me when I arrived home "there was a report on the TV about a 75 year old guy who was stopped by the police for going at 157 kilometres per hour (about 95 mph) in an area with a 90 kilometre per hour (about 55 mph) limit."
"Really?" I asked. "He was probably afraid that he would be late for his own funeral."

LIVE: Monday 28th September 2026 – IT HAS BEEN …

… a fairly uneventful day today. So much so that I had to struggle to think of a dramatic way of opening today’s entry, but in the end I couldn’t, so that was that. Instead, I’ll just stroll on in a chronological timeline until I have a marvellous fit of inspiration.

And so to begin, I didn’t have the early night for which I’d been hoping yesterday. Although it was before 22:30 when I went to bed, it wasn’t many minutes before it. And although I was soon asleep, it wasn’t for as long as I had hoped.

At some point, and I’ve no idea when it was, I awoke. And then I tried to go back to sleep, which was not as easy as it might have been. However, I did notice something bizarre. I can sleep quite well when I’m lying on my left side and even better when I’m lying on my right side, so those are the positions for which I try to aim.

However, when I tried that last night, I’d wake up again a short while later to find myself lying on my back, and that’s a position in which I can never go off to sleep. And thinking about it, I’ve been spending far too much time lying on my back instead of on my sides just recently.

At some point, though, I must have gone to sleep because the alarm at 06:29 awoke me from my slumbers.

We had the usual battle of wills about standing up and heading to the bathroom, and I think that it was only the possibility of meeting Emilie the Cute Consultant at dialysis that drove me onwards, having first remembered to unlock the front door. And in the bathroom, I had a good scrub up and a shave, “just in case”.

Back in here, I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out what had happened last night.

There was someting last night about me having to fill in some kind of form for something. But when I had the copy back, I noticed that quite a lot of the text that I had written had been removed. There was a note in its place saying “text removed by editor as being too long and not to the point”. I then tried to remember what it was that I had written, but no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t remember what I’d written that had been removed.

Strangely enough, I do have a form that needs completing this week. But the bit about having the text removed reminded me of what I had written last night about Kent. That, I suppose, was also too long and not to the point of whatever it is that I’m supposed to be doing.

Isabelle the Nurse turned up as usual. It’s her last day today before her week’s rest, so I wished her good luck. She replied that she’s probably going to need it because it’s raining outside right now.

After she left, I made breakfast (and my new bread is delicious) and read some more of THE REPORT OF THE WOOLHOPE NATURALISTS CLUB 1870.

Luckily, they finished talking about that gruesome parasite and have moved on to discuss the flora of the Clee Hills and the Longmynd. And in discussing autochthonous plants, he notes "At the Miocene period, or, more strictly, at its dawn, a temperate clime prevailed within the Arctic circle. Poplars, planes, and lime trees grew within twelve degrees of the Pole, and so have beds of the same fossil plants been found in North Greenland, where now an enormous ice cap covers the whole country, leaving only a narrow slip of land free from ice in summer."

When I was in Greenland in 2018 and 2019, I can promise you that it was nothing like as bad as that. I wondered what his opinion back in 1871 was about global warming, but I didn’t have long to wait before I found out.

Just two or three pages further on, we have "Mr. Croll, who attributes the changes of climate marking the different periods of the tertiary epoch to periodical variations in the eccentricity of the earth’s elliptical orbit, tells us that for the last 60,000 years eccentricity has been very small."

Back in here afterwards, I reviewed the radio programme for this coming weekend and sent it off for insertion in the stream, following which I reformatted the music that I need for the programme that I’ll be preparing. When that was all done, I even managed to re-edit a couple of songs that have gone into the folder to await my further instructions.

At 12:00 my faithful cleaner came in and sorted out my anaesthetic, and then I had to wait for the taxi. He was late today, and we already had one person in the car. We had to go to St Pair for a third one and then down all these little country lanes where our driver drove as if the hounds of hell were after him. We ended up being three minutes early at dialysis, despite how late we were running earlier.

Today, I was honoured with being placed in a single room, so I was either going to have a medical examination or the head doctor was going to come and give me … "yet" – ed … another lecture about chatting up the nurses. But it was also the farthest possible bed away from the front door. They really are making me work for a living around there.

And being early, I’d arrived at about the same time as everyone else, so I had to wait for a while before they came to sort me out. Although it was the same nurse as Saturday – one of the newer ones – the connecting up was much less painful and I was up and running by 14:20.

At first, all I wanted to do was to sleep – I don’t know why – but I livened up after I’d had my 15:00 coffee and orange juice, so I began to watch the football.

Today’s match was between two of the newly promoted clubs, Cambian United from Andypandy … "he means Tonypandy" – ed … in the Rhondda Valley and Llandudno.

Both these clubs are doing reasonably well and seem to be managing to keep up with the established mid-table clubs, which is more than can be said for some of the others, so I was expecting it to be a good match.

And I wasn’t disappointed either. Both clubs went at it hammer and tongs right from the kick-off and it ended up being one of the best matches that I’ve seen. Plenty of blood and thunder, plenty of skill, plenty of aggression. What really surprised me, though, was that Cambrian roared into a 4-0 lead after forty-seven minutes, and that was a long, long way from representing the balance of play.

In the second half, Llandudno had a change of tactics and managed to claw three goals back, but ran out of time at the end. Still, I’m not complaining at all about the game.

There was also time to watch the first twenty minutes or so of Cardiff Metropolitan v Caernarfon, and I’ll tell you more about that game when I’ve seen the rest of it.

Although I’d seen Emilie the Cute Consultant on my way in, I was right in thinking that the big white chief would come to see me. However, we just talked about the implant in my arm and the pain that it was generating when I was plugged in. He said that he’d have a chat with the nurses about trying a different method.

However, as I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … it’s not the way that they do it that’s the problem. It’s because the implant itself is damaged, as I have been told on many occasions by the doctor who gives it the six-monthly examinations.

When my time was up, I was unplugged quite quickly while my taxi driver was waiting at the door to my room. It was another one of my favourites, so we had a really good chat all the way home, like we always do. She told me all about her holiday in Brittany and how hot it was. But luckily, the campsite had a pool, so she, her husband and her two kids spent every day sitting in the pool to keep cool.

Funnily enough, I’d been thinking for several days that I hadn’t seen her for a while, but she had come over to chat with me the other day while she was on ambulance duty, and now she had come to take me home.

We were home quite quickly, and my faithful cleaner helped me into the apartment and stuck a disgusting drink into my sweaty little mitt once I’d sat down.

After she left, I added the vegan cream into my curry and gave it a good stir. Then I made some rice and veg and helped myself to a ladleful of curry. It really was delicious, and there’s plenty left to freeze for later.

Back in here, I began to write up my notes, and I was doing quite well ar first. However, this huge wave of sleep came out of nowhere, and as it passed, it took me with it.

When I awoke, I was totally incapable of carrying on, so I posted on line what I’d written up to then and went to bed. The rest can wait until tomorrow morning.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about parasites … "well, one of us has" – ed … Donald Trump was arrested and placed in a filthy parasite-infested cell.
"That must have been awful," said a news reporter "Trump having to share a cell with parasites in it."
"I know" replied his colleague. "I felt really sorry for those parasites."

LIVE: Thursday 17th September 2026 – IT’S ALL EXTREMELY …

… quiet in here tonight. And that’s because I’m on my own. Round about midday, the Hound of the Baskervilles dragged his master off to the car and the last time that I saw them, they were heading due east somewhere, in the general direction of Munich.

It was really lovely having company. After all, I’m not used to it. and as I said to him … "the friend, not the Hound of the Baskervilles" – ed … it’s open house here, and he and his sidekick are welcome to come here any time they want and can stay as long as they like.

Especially if he continues to make the coffee like that.

And I was ready for a mug of coffee this morning. I was in bed at something like a reasonable time, and although the wind was blowing, it didn’t disturb me that much and I was soon asleep.

However, round about 04:00, there was an enormous gust of wind that awoke me dramatically, and I wasn’t the only one to be awakened because my friend told me later that the Hound of the Baskervilles had awoken him round about that time, so something had obviously scared him … "the Hound of the Baskervilles, not the friend" – ed …

Once I was awake, I found it hard to go back to sleep and I tossed and turned for hours. However, at some point, I must have dozed off because the alarm awoke me.

And for once, I failed to beat the second alarm, dismal failure that I am. I just couldn’t unstick myself from the bed and I don’t know why. Consequently, I was quite a while late starting work this morning.

The first task was to listen to the dictaphone to see where I’d been during the night.

During World War II the Chinese had decided to co-operate with the Allies against Japan, so they had sent radio signalmen on board many of the Allied ships. Those ships flew a white flag with the letter "G" on it. Someone made some remark about the one on his boat, saying that he was wearing some kind of flowing kimono or something like that in luxurious silk. Of course, we were sitting there thinking that he’s not going to last five minutes like that.

Being on board a ship would be nothing to bother me, although I have no idea where the Chinese man in his blue flowing kimono comes into it all.

Then this dream changed to something else. I was with a colleague from work and we were in Czechoslovakia or somewhere, and I was living there, and it was very similar to that one about Poland or Czechoslovakia the other week. We had to go to see someone, so another one of the workers picked me up and drove me all the way to Prague for this meeting. It turned out in effect that there was only going to be two of us, a young person from the other side. We had this meeting in what used to be a railway station, and we were chatting really about not very much at all. Just as the meeting was ending, this guy said that he’d forgotten to give him something. He put his hand in his pocket and pulled out a hammerhead. He said that that had fallen off someone’s Land Rover the other day. I mentioned a name and asked “it’s not him, is it, because he’s only just bought a new one?” but it wasn’t. Anyway, what happened next? So we made ready to go, and I suddenly remembered that someone had given me an axe head to sharpen, so I was busy sharpening the blade on the axe. The person with me was rather frightened in case I hurt myself, so he held my elbow. That led to an argument because you can’t sharpen anything if someone is holding your arm.

We’ve been spending a lot of time in Czechoslovakia and the Czech Republic just recently. Wishful thinking on my part, obviously. But the name that I mentioned was someone related in part to where I used to work.

Sharpening the axe head is also an interesting situation to contemplate, with someone trying to stop me carrying out my plans, which seem to have been infiltrated. It’s a nuisance, isn’t it?

The nurse came along for his final German lesson, a final big hug of the Hound of the Baskervilles and to sort out my feet and legs. And then another Welsh lesson, big hug, etc., before parting.

The Hound of the Baskervilles dragged his master off on yet another walkie, and I made breakfast and read some more of THE REPORT OF THE WOOLHOPE NATURALISTS CLUB 1870.

Today’s subject is columnar ice, and that set me off on the trail of William Scoresby. He was one of the earliest of the “ice-masters” who worked the whaling ships in the Davis Strait and places like that in the first quarter of the nineteenth century. He gave a great deal of advice to the Admiralty about his experiences in the Hugh Arctic, especially concerning the ill-fated Franklin Expedition, but it was usually always rejected because he was a “civilian” and “the Admiralty knew best”, even if no Royal Navy sailors had ever set foot in the places where Scoresby had been.

His book, “Journal of a Voyage to the Northern Whale Fishery”, IS AVAILABLE ON LINE and as of this morning, is available in my own little digital book collection to read at a later date. I can see that I shall have to take my laptop with me when I go, in order to read all these books at my leisure. I hope that they have charging points down below where I’m going. Would I need an international adapter?

Back in here, there were a few things that needed finishing off, and then I started to make a couple of plans for things that I need to do over the weekend. However, proceedings were brought to an abrupt halt by the alarm reminding me that I need to prepare for dialysis. When you think about it, it’s bizarre that I have to set an alarm to remind me, but it’s not a case of “I might forget”. It’s just that with having this tendency to fall asleep at strange times and in strange places, I don’t want to be asleep when the taxi comes for me.

In the kitchen, I had my disgusting drink and midday medication, and my cleaner came to put the anaesthetic on my arm. However, as you might expect, she spent more time saying goodbye to the Hound of the Baskervilles, who was on the point of leaving.

After everyone had left, I waited for the taxi – not that I had to wait long because it was here at 12:42. There was already one passenger aboard, and we had to stop at the Aqua-gym at St Pair to pick up our usual Thursday passenger. Consequently, we arrived at dialysis early, not that it did me much good because so did everyone else, and I had to wait until 14:20 before I was up and running.

Once I was finally on my way, I could watch the football. Today, it was Trefelin, near the bottom of the table, against Penybont, third from top. And it was not, as you might expect, another “men against boys” encounter, but Trefelin pushed Penybont all the way and the latter had to work really hard for their 1-0 victory. Trefelin’s defence was excellent, except for that one lapse of concentration that cost them dear.

After that, we had the first half of Llandudno v Caernarfon. Llandudno, another newly promoted side, has adapted well to the level of skill required in the Premier League, and when I ran out of time watching the game, they were down 1-0 but by no means out of the contest and had, in fact, looked the better side.

There had been a few interruptions during my session. For once, the blood pressure alarm sounded only once or twice, but the most important was the doctor, telling me that she’d arranged this Hôpital de Jour thing and I should be expecting to hear from the hospital quite soon about it. And as she was walking away, my telephone rang. It was the hospital telling me that I had to be there on Monday morning at 09:00.

Blimey! Things are moving fast!

Half an hour later, the nurse came to give me the details of the appointment and said that she’d arranged the taxi to pick me up and the one to take me to dialysis afterwards. What a day that will be!

The nurse who was on duty was the one who is … errr … more relaxed about her working methods and, for some reason that I have yet to understand, switched off my machine a good five minutes before the end of the session, despite my protests. Every gram or millilitre that they can squeeze out of me is important.

Not only that, but she didn’t come back to unplug me for ten minutes so she may as well have left it running.

My taxi driver, the same one who brought me, was waiting for me, but we had to go across to the hospital to pick up someone else going to Granville so it was about 18:30 when I arrived home. My faithful cleaner was waiting for me and helped me into my apartment, where she stuck a disgusting drink into my sweaty little mitt.

After she left, I began to think about eating but I couldn’t face cooking anything tonight, so I had some crackers with cheese spread, followed by one of my nice, juicy plums. And it was so juicy that I’d better eat the rest quite quickly.

Once I’d dined, I began to write out my notes, but as usual, the dialysis had been a little too much and I couldn’t stay awake. I ended up posting on-line as far as I’d reached and went to bed. The rest can wait.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about the High Arctic… "well, one of us has" – ed … there was a radio programme in Canada once discussing global warming, the retreat of the ice and the migration northwards of the species who live on it.
However, the programme was more concerned with the polar bears who were migrating south into human-inhabited zones hunting for food.
Part of the discussion concerned the odd handful of polar bears who migrated south, and then back north again, then back south etc., as if they couldn’t make up their minds.
"There’s no particular worry about those" said a panellist.
"Why not?" asked the presenter.
"They are what we call the ‘bi-polar bears’"

LIVE: Thursday 10th September 2026 – ANOTHER FINE DAY …

… at dialysis, I don’t think. In actual fact, we were back in the bad old days of everything when I didn’t really feel like anything at all.

It really was quite late last night when I went to bed again, long after midnight. I don’t seem to be able to concentrate on anything right now, not even to stay awake. Once in bed, I was asleep quite quickly, which makes something of a change, and although there was much less than six hours left to sleep, I was still looking forward to a decent sleep for a change, seeing how absolutely whacked I was.

However, it wasn’t to be. Around 04:00 I awoke, and that was effectively that for the rest of the night. However, when the alarm went off, I didn’t know where I was … "so what’s new?" – ed … and I ended up pushing my pillow, the telephone and one of two other things out of the bed. It seems that I was lying transversally in the bed instead of longitudinally. It was only a miracle that I hadn’t fallen out myself.

Once I was sitting on the edge of the bed and dressing, I realised how awful I was feeling. I was freezing cold too, and that’s always a bad sign. But I made it over to the chair at the computer, and the first thing that I did was to listen to the dictaphone to find out. And I was surprised by just how far I had gone, even if it was only around Marcey-les-Grèves.

Last night, I was out with the taxi company with the guy who thinks he owns the show who was driving me. He told me that a couple of days ago that some car had missed the roundabouts at Ponts and had gone hurtling straight through the door of someone who was living there. A couple of drivers of the taxi company had seen it and they were absolutely horrified by the accident because there were at least two or three dead in different places around here. However, the taxi company couldn’t find the time for them to be off and recover. It seemed that one of the young drivers of the company had missed the turn. She’d got round but … fell asleep here …

This is the kind of accident that really is horrific when you see it, especially if the car crashes into a building and brings the wall down. However, I don’t think that the taxi company would refuse sick leave to someone who has witnessed a sight quite like that.

Then later on, I was out with him again, the same guy. We were talking about the road from Ponts up to the ring road. It was taking sometimes two days to come down there. I enquired as to why they wouldn’t go through Marcey-les-Grèves. He explained that that was closed because of the roadworks. So we went to have a look at the closed road and the roadworks, and we saw that nothing had actually taken place … fell asleep here …

Why am I falling asleep so often when I’m dictating my dreams? But the story of roads being closed while there is no work going on is nothing whatever new around here. It happens all the time.

So I was giving my instructions or advice to the driver about which ways to go and when to come, etc. I pointed out a road with a 30 kph speed limit and said that it might be possible to go down there from Marcey-les-Grèves to come out at Ponts without too much trouble. He thought that maybe they would if they could and if they knew about it. I told him that it was his job to make sure that they all knew about it and maybe he should take a run down there himself to make sure that it was all in good condition and possible to go past.

That’s a road down which I’ve been taken on several occasions when we’ve come into Marcey-les-Grèves and found the roundabout at the motorway ring road blocked. And it’s always worked quite well. But as he considers himself to be the boss, he should be the one doing the investigating and reporting.

Did I mention something about the girls who drove for the taxi company? I mentioned too that it was possible for people to be stuck in a rut and not want to enjoy the fruits of the captivity that they had made.

This is a meaningless dream, I suppose, although, just like me, who has had almost all of his pleasures curtailed, I have to make the best of what I have. There’s no point in crying about it.

There was also something about the taxi company having to move their operation at Marcey-les-Grèves because there were plans to extend the ring road. Everyone was dismayed because they thought that the company would have to close down, but I was sure that they would find somewhere else from where to operate. And as it happened, the company announced a few days later that they had taken over the Opel dealership in the town, presumably meaning that the taxis and ambulances would be operating from there.

There actually is a proposal to extend the ring road, but from what I’ve seen, it will pass about 400 yards from the taxi head office. But it’s always a fear, nevertheless, and the idea that the company might take over a car dealership is not necessarily a strange one. They seem to be in “acquisition mode” at the moment.

When I heard movement in the kitchen, I went to investigate, and there was indeed the sight of coffee being made. I dashed off for a ride on the porcelain horse and then went into the dining area for a lovely coffee and chat with my friend.

Isabelle the Nurse turned up as usual, and the Hound of the Baskervilles, who didn’t bark at all, offered her his paw and then allowed her to scratch his belly.

When she found the time, she came over to sort my legs and feet and then spent another five minutes saying goodbye to His Nibs.

That was the cue for both the Hound of the Baskervilles and me to have our breakfasts, although I had to make mine first, of course. The plan was that His Nibs was going to drag his master off for a walk afterwards, so I explained to them not to expect them to find me up when they come back. I’d put a fleece on earlier, but I was still freezing cold, uncomfortable and tired, so I was going back to bed for a bit.

And I did go back to bed too, fully clothed, even down to my slippers.

It was 11:15 when I awoke, so I went and did a few bits and pieces, and at 11:45, went off for a stroll on the parapet. Back in the kitchen later, my friend nipped off to the café at the back for lunch. I sorted out a disgusting drink and the midday medication and began to prepare my ruckack. When Auntie Cleaner came in, she made a fuss of the Hound of the Baskervilles and then began to deal with me. By the time that I was sorted out, my friend was back, and we waited for the taxi, and I made a fool of myself thinking that a sound effect on his ‘phone was the doorbell.

The driver who came to pick me up was the young, chatty girl who likes home-made pizza. We had a good chat all the way to the aqua-gym at St. Pair, and then the usual “Thursday lady” joined in all the way to Avranches.

They dropped me off first, and I went into one of the wards, a little two-bedded one at the back of another, where a new patient was being plugged in. When they weighed me, I was the lightest that I have been for a while after a pause of three days. I don’t know how.

Before they plugged me in, I gave them my “orange bottle” that I remembered to take. They weren’t impressed with the quantity and, to be honest, neither was I. I really do wish that I could have persuaded the Hound of the Baskervilles to make a donation.

After they left me, I put on the football – Hwlffordd v Connah’s Quay Nomads. But I just couldn’t keep going. I fell asleep I don’t know how many times, so at the end of the first half, I switched off the computer and went to sleep.

When I awoke, they unplugged me quite quickly, so I went to look for my chauffeur. He was already there, and I was the only passenger, so I was at home quite quickly too, where my faithful cleaner was sitting on her mushroom waiting for me.

She helped me into the apartment where my friend was waiting, and we had fried potatoes with veg and falafel, followed by fruit cocktail and ice cream. Then I came back in here to write my notes up for tonight.

But I don’t know what’s happened to my taste buds. I know that everything I eat these days tastes of salt, but that meal somehow tasted of pure salt, and that’s what I’m tasting right now. So I’ll take my medication and go to bed and hope for a good night, although the amount of coughing that I’m doing right now will stop anything from happening. It’s probably about the worst that it’s ever been.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about a contribution from the Hound of the Baskervilles … "well, one of us has" – ed … I was just picturing their faces at the laboratory had I done so.
I can imagine Emilie the Cute Consultant giving me the results later.
"Mr Hall, I have some bad news for you."
"Ohh no! What now?"
"As well as all of your other problems, you now seem to have rabies and distemper."

Monday 24th August 2026 – NOW HERE’S A …

… thing!

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that on three or four occasions, I’ve found myself being awoken by a phantom alarm. And on one occasion, I was even up and out of bed before I realised that it was a false alarm.

But what happened this morning was far, far more bizarre than that. However, you’ll have to read on to find out what it was.

Last night, although I made a determined effort, it was almost 23:30 when I finally crawled into bed, totally fed up of the day and everything like that. And surprisingly, it took me an age to go off to sleep.

And now we come to the exciting bit.

This was another strange night when at about 01:35, I awoke to find myself sitting on the edge of the bed, thinking that the alarm had gone off. I had to convince myself to go back to bed when I found out that it hadn’t.

But what was interesting about this is that usually, when there’s a phantom alarm going off, I really do “hear” it in my sleep, even though it doesn’t ring. Last night, though, I heard nothing and awoke spontaneously, and there I was, already sitting on the edge of the bed. It was completely bizarre.

Anyway, I went back to bed, and as far as I know, although you can never be sure, the way things are today, I didn’t wake up again until the alarm rang.

When the alarm went off, we had the usual dithering while I tried to find some enthusiasm from somewhere, but eventually I managed to find my way into the bathroom for a really good wash and shave in the unlikely event that I see Emilie the Cute Consultant this afternoon.

Back in here, I listened to what else was on the dictaphone from last night.

I was back wandering around London yet again last night, only this time London turned out to be Crewe. I was roaming all around the shops in the shopping centre and this precinct that they’ve built to replace the old Queensway lot. I was just looking around from shop to shop and was thinking of going over to look at the ASDA and Co-op supermarkets, but somehow I found myself in the hospital. So I went into hospital, right to the top, and wandered around a few wards, then gradually worked my way down. I was still quite high up when I came across the café there. I went in to join the queue in the café and asked them if they could make me a baguette with cheese and tomato but no butter. She went to find all the ingredients, and I ended up with two half-baguettes. She put a load of crudités on them and things like that on them, on the grounds that quite a lot of people hadn’t had their crudités this morning, so there were plenty left over, and because I’d enjoyed her cooking, I could have several of them, which I thought was quite nice of her. I ended up sitting in the Oxford College Students’ Union having my lunch and trying to write up a few notes.

So, back in London yet again. How many times is this? And quite recently we’ve been in a high building just like this hospital building, only then it was a university dormitory.

However, in this dream, Crewe town centre was magnificent, all glass and black metal framing. And the tower block where British Home Stores used to be was raised on a central pole above a two-storey row of shops on the corner and looked from the outside like one black metal inverted rectangle framework with rounded corners, with a huge single glass window. The glass was frosted so you couldn’t see in from the outside, but it looked wonderful.

The nurse turned up early, and he talked about the “race of the café waiters” yesterday in the town as he dealt with my feet and legs. The race, so he told me, is for waiters from the cafés in the town who have to run round a course in the town centre while carrying a tray with a bottle and some glasses on it. It’s hilarious, so I was told.

After he left, I made my breakfast, and while I was eating, I was reading some more of A HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE by Charles Freeman.

He’s keeping out of controversy again today, but still banging the jingoistic drum as loud as he can at every possible opportunity.

Back in here, there were things to do, and then when they were finished, I reviewed the next radio programme and sent it off for inclusion in the stream for Friday.

And then we had the real work.

As I mentioned yesterday, the next radio programme is going to be a live concert, so I was busy looking at the soundtrack. It’s one hour and thirty-eight minutes long, so it needs a lot of hefty editing. After two passes, I have it down to fifty-nine minutes and forty-five seconds But if I want to put in a decent introduction, I’ll have to edit it some more (although I’m not sure how). I probably need a good two minutes to have something like what I want.

When my alarm sounded at midday, I went into the kitchen to prepare myself for dialysis and to have my disgusting drink and midday medication. My faithful cleaner came down to apply the anaesthetic on my arm too, and it’s a good job that she was early because the taxi, which is booked for 13:00, turned up at 12:25 today.

Not that I’m complaining, of course. As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … the earlier I start, the earlier I’ll finish. But today, apparently, it’s not likely to be an earlier start – more a drive around the countryside picking up two other passengers who live miles from anywhere.

That doesn’t bother me either. As I have also said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … since I’ve been going to dialysis with this taxi company, I’m seeing parts of Normandy that I never knew existed.

And so it was today. After picking someone up in the back of St Pair-sur-Mer, we had to go to a remote community called Bouillon where there’s a campsite and where there was a tourist who had to go to the hospital for an appointment. And what a nice village Bouillon is, especially the church that has an apple tree growing out of its tower.

Our taxi arrived at dialysis at about 13:30 and dropped me off before continuing on its way with the other two passengers. I went to weigh myself and found, to my pleasure, that it wasn’t as disastrous as it might have been. And seeing as there was plenty of room to manoeuvre, I persuaded the nurse to add a further 300 grams to the amount to be extracted today so that I would be in advance for Thursday.

By 14:02 I was up and running, and I could turn my attention to the football from the weekend. Today’s match was another one from last Friday – Colwyn Bay v newly promoted Airbus UK Broughton, played in front of a crowd of over four figures.

Airbus already has more points than it managed over the whole season when it was last in the Premier League, and whilst it was rather optimistic to expect the club to win any more in this match, they played really well and limited the Seagulls to a 1-0 victory.

Yet another skilful game with plenty of reasons for the Wingmakers to be optimistic for the forthcoming season.

There was also time to watch some of the game between Trefelin and Caernarfon, but I didn’t see enough to make any worthwhile comment about the match.

For a change, my blood pressure behaved itself, and the nurse only had to come running three or four times when the alarm sounded. That makes a change from just recently.

Surprisingly, a doctor came to see me today just as I was leaving. I told him about the hallucinations, as I had been advised to do by more than one person who thought that they might be dangerous. He asked me if I was bothered about them, but I replied “not particularly” so he told me that he won’t change anything.

He also asked me if I ever had a feeling of being disorientated or not knowing where I was. I replied that I’d had that for years, long before I ever started on these pills and tablets.

When the session was over, I was unplugged quite quickly, and to make matters even better, the taxi was already here and waiting. However, we had to wait for another passenger and then drop her off in Sartilly. Nevertheless, by 18:10 I was back home, where my cleaner was waiting to help me into the apartment and stick a disgusting drink into my hands.

Tea tonight was a taco roll with rice and veg. The stuffing for the roll was made of some dehydrated “minced beef” with kidney beans, onions, garlic and tomato sauce. There was enough for three rolls, so two helpings have gone into the freezer for another time.

Back in here, I made a start on writing the notes, but I ran out of energy. After another tough day at dialysis, I couldn’t keep awake. And so I posted online the notes as far as I had written and went to bed. I’ll finish the notes off in the morning.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about café waiters … "well, one of us has" – ed … I remember someone in a café having a drink of coffee and immediately turning up his nose at it.
"This coffee tastes like mud!" he declared.
"But sir!" replied the waiter "It was ground only half an hour or so ago!"

Thursday 20th August 2026 – I DON’T KNOW …

… what kind of day it has been today. It certainly wasn’t as good as yesterday, that’s for sure.

Yesterday, I was really feeling fighting fit, that’s for sure. It was after midnight when I stopped letting it all hang out and crawled into bed, although I wasn’t feeling tired in the slightest, as I believe I said. And I didn’t go to sleep very quickly either.

But when I did finally go to sleep, it wasn’t for too long. When I realised that I was awake (we’ve talked about this just recently), there was a howling gale blowing outside, not the kind of noise you want to hear when you are trying to sleep.

There was no possibility of going back to sleep with all of that noise going on so I just lay there, gently relaxing, or, at least, doing the best that I could to relax. I remember at one point checking the time, and it was 04:42.

It was round about that point that I must have gone back to sleep, for I was definitely asleep when the alarm sounded at 06:29, and the wind was howling around like mad.

As usual, it took me a while to leave the bed and go into the bathroom to sort myself out and even to have a shave in case I meet Emilie the Cute Consultant this afternoon at dialysis.

Back in here I went to check the window to make sure that everything was in good order, but as soon as I opened it, the howling stopped. When I closed it again, the howling stayed stopped. So I have no idea what was going on. Was I dreaming the noise?

First thing to do was to check the dictaphone and to see where I’d been during the night. However, I needn’t have bothered as the dictaphone was devoid of entries again.

However : –

I’m not sure whether this counts as a dream or not, but I was having another one of those coughing fits that seems to go on for ever, so in the end, when it calmed down, I reached for my emergency supplies. When I was tidying up a while ago, I found a couple of packets of menthol and eucalyptus sweets, and I’ve been taking a couple to bed with me every night for the last few days. Anyway, I reached for one of my sweets, unwrapped it and went to pop it into my mouth. What happened next was that I bit my finger. There was no sweet at all in my hand and no unwrapped paper nearby. If it wasn’t a dream, it was certainly weird

This is a good example of never knowing whether I’m awake, asleep or somewhere in between when I’m lying there in bed. I would have sworn that I really was reaching for a sweet.

My nurse turned up a little later than yesterday. He was talking about not very much and soon left the building, leaving me to go and make breakfast.

While I was eating, I was reading yet more about the bombing of England in World War I. And interestingly, at Poelkapelle in Belgium not so long ago, they came across the wreckage of a Staaken, one of Germany’s giant four-engined bombers nearly as big as a B-29 Superfortress, embedded in the ground. It had been shot down on 21st April 1918.

Back in here, there were a few things to do so I set to work, and then I began to write the notes for the radio programme from yesterday. They were about half-done when I had to knock off, but not to worry, I’ll finish them tomorrow.

At midday I went to prepare my things for dialysis, and then my faithful cleaner put in her appearance to apply the anaesthetic to my arm.

She didn’t stay long today, which was just as well because the taxi came early for me. And not just early but at 12:33. Not that it bothered me because, as I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … the earlier I start, the earlier I finish.

We had to pick up Mrs Dinosaur and also another woman at the health centre in St Pair, and then we could set off for Avranches.

It was 13:30 when we arrived, and by 14:05, I was up and running. However, it wasn’t easy because, once more, there’s a huge excess of liquid. Consequently, I told them to run it for four hours instead of three, and have you any idea just how tiring it is to have the machine going at max for four hours?

Still, it gave me plenty of opportunity to watch the football from this last weekend. The match between Hwlffordd and Penybont was exciting. It was proper end-to-end football with plenty of skill, not like some of the midfield mauls that we saw earlier. Penybont won 3-0, which was expected, but it was good all the same.

And afterwards, I managed to watch some of Caernarfon v Penybont from the weekend before. There’s still a good bit to go, but even so, it looks like another good, skilful game.

There were problems with the machine, or, rather, with me, and the alarm on the machine was constantly going off. A doctor came to see me too, the new relief doctor, and she gave me a prescription for an antibiotic.

There was also a nurse who came by with a questionnaire for me to answer. Honestly, it was like Euston Station in my little room this afternoon.

When it was time for me to be unplugged, the nurse dealt with me straight away. Even better, the taxi was waiting for me too. We had to drop off Mrs Dinosaur but I was soon back home.

My cleaner was there waiting and she helped me into the apartment, and when I was sitting down, she stuffed a disgusting drink into my hands.

After she left, I grabbed a couple of biscuits and came in here. I didn’t feel like making tea so I wrote my notes instead.

Now, I’m off to bed ready for a nice relaxing day tomorrow, I don’t think. And then on Saturday, it’s dialysis again. I’m getting sick of this.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about the World War I bombing of England … "well, one of us has" – ed … a Zeppelin actually flew over Stoke-on-Trent and dropped several bombs on the city.
When I was speaking to a friend, I told him about this.
"What happened?" he asked.
"The bombing was terrible" I replied. "So much so that it caused £140,000,000 worth of improvements."

Thursday 16th March 2023 – DO YOU HAVE …

… any idea just how painful it is to have a needle stuck in your central nervous system in your spinal column?

I do!

And you don’t want to know either. Just sit and hope that it’s something that never ever happens to you.

In fact I must have expected something along these lines because I had another miserable night tossing and turning around in bed not being able to go to sleep. And when the alarm went off at 07:00 this morning I was already up and about.

It didn’t take me long to prepare myself and by 07:30 I was on the road to Avranches. It’s a good job that I was early too because in a daze I missed the by-pass around Sartilly and ended up being stuck in the roadworks in the town centre.

There was plenty of space in the car park at the hospital but there’s quite a long way to walk. It’s uphill too and that’s not ideal for someone on crutches to negotiate.

When I went to check in I found that I had forgotten to bring my wallet with my money and my personal papers with me. However, I’d remembered to bring everything else but surprisingly they didn’t ask me to produce any of it – not even the medication that they had told me to buy for the appointment.

After wandering around the hospital for quite some time trying to find my way I ended up in the Day Hospital where they found me a bed. First thing that they did once I was settled down was to send me off for one of these scans in one of these Stargate time-travelling portals.

It was a Siemens machine so I told them that I’d worked in the past for General Electric but they told me that they had tried those but preferred Siemens.

Back in the ward the nerve specialist came to see me to try to tell me what she was going to do but, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, I told her that I wasn’t interested in knowing. I just signed the “consent” forms and told them to get on with it.

They put some kind of numbing plaster on my lower back, brought me a coffee and then left me to it for an hour or so while the numbing liquid did its work. And then they came back for the real business.

They drew off a couple of CCs of clear liquid which they said they would send away for an analysis and then communicate with the specialist in Granville whom I saw a few weeks ago. He’ll be in touch with me and let me know how we’ll proceed.

They wouldn’t let me go home straight away but insisted that I stay for a while to recover. They sent a choice of food to me and I settled for bread and lentils.

Surprisingly, I’m sure that what they did has done me some good because I seem to be moving a little easier and I could climb into Caliburn’s cab a little better. I’m sure that I’m not imagining this.

On the way home I called at Brico Cash in St Pair. I went to look at the showers that were on offer and ended up having a lengthy chat with one of the guys in the warehouse who gave me the phone number of someone he knows who installs showers. I also called somewhere else to look at showers and they gave me a helpful lead too that I shall be following up at the weekend.

By the time that I arrived home I was feeling rather feak and weeble so having fallen asleep on my chair in here, I ended up going to bed where I crashed out for three hours in a really deep sleep. At the hospital they warned me about this.

Once I’d awoken I had a listen to the dictaphone to discover the night’s activities. I was arguing with my family and friends last night. I had a record player that I hadn’t seen for ages because I’d lent it to some member of my family. It turned up at this family party. I noticed the number of LPs that it had played because there was a counter on it that had reached over 2000. I was horrified by this because I’d hardly ever used it. Bt it was borrowed out of my apartment not long after it was new. Then it was food time – burger and chips. Someone pushed my plate into my stomach. I ended up with all these boiling hot chips stuck to my clothes. I was busy trying to sort myself out but everyone just carried on eating and totally ignored it. I picked up the plate again and half the salad fell off the burger. I made some kind of remark about how I was pleased to see how interested my family was in looking after me, taking notice of how things were going on here. Again they all totally ignored me. Someone else passed me a burger but it was an ordinary one not a vegan one so I couldn’t eat it. Generally I was in an absolutely foul mood in this party.

And then there was something else to do with groups and music, about recording 2 extra tracks for some reason but I can’t remember very much about this because I was in the middle of starting to dictate it when I had a bad pain in my right knee again that totaly distracted me.

Finally I’d been away somewhere for a while and was slowly heading home. I called in at a library, a big modern building for a look round and browse through their second-hand books. I ended up with 3 or 4 books. I thought “should I stay or should I go” but was wondering about how long the parking ticket would last on the car. I decided to go anyway but I had to be home as they’d asked me to cover to drive the taxis the following day. When I walked out of the library I found that the car park was probably about 20 feet below where I was standing and it would be quite a jump down to road level. I wasn’t sure whether I could manage it but I couldn’t see any steps anywhere to take me down so I wondered how I was going to manage now to reach the car park with all the stuff that I was carrying and no way down this 20-foot drop.

Tea tonight was a vegan burger with pasta, veg and spicy tomato sauce. And that went down quite nicely too. I was good and ready for that. Rather a banal meal but I have tons of burgers to deal with following the spate of recent offers at LeClerc.

Tomorrow I have nothing much to do so I might have a relaxing day. I can’t have a day off on Sunday because there will be some fruit bread to bake and some carrots to peel dice and freeze because I’m running out.

There’s also the annual Home Renovation Fair in Granville at the weekend and I’m intending to visit because I want to see what else I can do about showers. I’m determined to find a few more quotations for the shower because, much as the work done by that company whose representative came to see me yesterday is of excellent quality, their price is way out of my pocket.

Friday 12th August 2022 – GONE!

And never called me “mother”!

When I went out this afternoon for my walk, I noticed that Victor Hugo, the Channel Islands ferry boat, has disappeared again. Gone on its travels, probably.

According to the fleet radar, she left at 08:12 and arrived in St Helier at 10:20, which is pretty quick going. And there she sits even as we speak. She doesn’t seem to be in any rush to come back home again.

Here’s hoping that the ferry service starts up again soon.

Something else that is gone! And never called me “mother” either is a certain letter.

This afternoon I have just heaved a rather large shark into the swimming pool by sending a letter of 1573 words to the Hospital’s Director of Medical Services.

Both Liz and Alison, to whom I showed it before I sent it, told me that they reckoned that it was too long. But you know me – never write 100 words when 1000 will do the job just as well.

If the past is anything to go by, which it usually is, the net result of my letter will be “nothing at all” but one can live in hope, even if I end up dying in despair. Some things need to be said, some points need to be underlined and (more importantly) the hospital needs to know in precise detail exactly how I feel.

What they do then is their own affair of course, but at least I’ve done all that I can and I can’t really do any more, much as I would like to. We’ll just sit back and see what happens now. It’s in the lap of the Gods.

But it goes to show the value of keeping a blog, and an indexable, searchable one too because although it took up a lot of time, I could come up with dates, places and resumés of conversations. And it’s that kind of thing that can kill any argument stone-dead before it even starts.

So retournons à nos moutons as they say around here, the alarm going off found me dictating into the dictaphone. So yes, I must have gone off on some travels at some point. And that’s despite a night that was later than it ought to have been.

After the medication I went and had a shower and, because I’m feeling under par due no doubt to having had the ‘flu for Christmas, I cut my hair.

Having dealt wit that I came back in here and, managing to avoid falling asleep, I transcribed the dictaphone notes from last night. I’d gone to the library to look at a book. The Reference Library was extremely untidy. I was searching through the shelves looking for this particular book and laying down one or two others that I might need when one of the workers came past. It was one of the bad-tempered ones and she was saying that the place looked so untidy. She said “get it tidied” to me and presumably one or two other people, members of the public, so I said a few words to her and she said a few words to me and wandered off. In the end what we did was to start to pick up the loose books lying around and stuffing them in the shelves any old how. Of course in libraries there’s a certain order and a certain position to respect, particularly with reference books so we thought that that would give then ten times more work to do when they come to sort it out. A group of us began to talk about this and said how bad it was here. One of them asked me if I’d like to go to the library at Rennes, a young girl, quite nice. I wasn’t sure at first. One of the other people there had been to the library at Rennes with her. She said that she had some spare tickets still so in the end I agreed that I’d go with her. I don’t know why I needed too much persuading to do something with a young girl. The subject came round to religion. I said that I didn’t have a religion which scandalised them so I told them the joke about me walking by a church and God sending down a thunderbolt which they thought was extremely funny.

Telling jokes again in a dream again?

Later on I’d been for a weekend away. I was already in the middle of a holiday. I was in New York somewhere and something had happened and I had to change hotel and had to change the style of the way that I look and the clothes that I was wearing so that I had a completely different look about me. For a couple of days I had to go away to Southport. I found myself standing outside the station and I had all mu luggage – my huge suitcase and my little suitcase, my 2 sacks with all my bedding. I thought “why on earth do I need all of this just for a weekend?” but it was too late. I was there now. I had to be careful about the trains and was wondering how I was going to manage to manhandle all this luggage. I’d gone over there to the station and borrowed a trolley. I put my bags on it and found that it would go up the steps quite comfortably and quite easily. That looked fine. As I reached the top I came to the steps to go down to the other side. These steps were totally different and I thought that this would be totally agonising going down here with all of this. I reached the bottom and found that the 2 bags with my bedding had gone. I don’t remember seeing them fall off. I wondered if someone had taken them. I couldn’t hang around because the train was coming so I took my 2 suitcases and boarded the train. It was crowded and people were moving my suitcases around as they came in and went out. Someone in the end squeezed them in a corner that upset a guy with a musical instrument. His musical instrument was there. The train gradually thinned out so I could rescue my suitcases. He made some kind of gesture to me which I thought might have been friendly but I didn’t know and this train continued rattling on its way to Southend.

Later on it was the graduation of my little girlfriend who worked on Saturdays in the library about whom I’ve talked quite often and I’d been invited which was a surprise. She obviously thought highly of me. Because of the Covid restrictions she could only invite 3 different households and then only 2 people from each household so I felt extremely honoured. We were at the University making all kinds of arrangements. Someone was asking for details about the graduation so I told them basically that there were only 3 households and 2 people from each one. They had a hard time trying to understand it which I didn’t understand. It seemed straightforward to me but I had to tell them probably a dozen times and they still hadn’t understood what was happening. They wanted to know why but it was quite obvious with Covid. We were back in the hall talking about things, talking about computing. Someone asked me if I’d ever used Flash. I replied “God yes I’ve used Flash on games and everything 15 years ago. I’ve certainly used it but I’ve never actually been inside it to see how it works or programmed anything with it”. Then we were talking about 15 years ago and how that was the heyday of the internet when all kinds of private people were making the internet work and it was a really exciting place to be before Corporate took over the internet.

It’s actually quite amazing that I could come out with something like that in a dream. Back 15 years ago the internet was a fun and exciting place to be. In those days small groups of talented individuals were leading the tech revolution. But now they’ve all either sold out, been suckered in or submerged into the Corporate internet world and these days the onlu small groups of individuals remaining are down in the depths of the dark web spending their time waging war on Corporate tech. There doesn’t seem to be the same “Internet Warriors” that we had back then and it’s made the internet a dreary place.

At least I’m still shining the torch for the lost generation of 15-20 years ago of blogs and personal websites and newsgroups. But I won’t be around for long. We need to turn the clock back and reclaim the internet.

Having had a lengthy pause to gather up my thoughts, I sat down and composed my masterpiece. And rather unlike Beethoven who spent 44 years composing and then the next 195 years decomposing, I spent just several hours on writing out my pièce de résistance.

As a result I ended up with a considerably late lunchtime fruit session while Alison and Liz were reviewing “War and Peace”.

Having fixed the typos I printed it out and put it in an envelope, putting the bill from May in an envelope to send back too, and eventually, later than usual, headed out for the town.

As usual, I stopped at the viewpoint on the corner of the Boulevard Vaufleury and the Boulevard des 2E et 202E de Ligne to check the camera.

There’s a good view down onto the Fish Processing Plant from here and strangely, there were no boats tied up playing “musical ships” today. They must all be out and about somewhere offshore earning a living.

But they are certainly expected back sometime soon. If you look down onto the lover level down the ramp underneath the car park you’ll see the tractor and presumably the trailer that it pulls.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that we’ve seen that wandering through the town quite often loaded to the gunwhales with boxes of bouchots.

Yesterday we saw the signs of a fire over the back of the church here in Granville.

Here, it’s the turn of St Pair sur Mer to catch fire. Even though it’s quite a distance away we can see the smoke billowing up from somewhere across the bay there at the back of the town.

And that reminds me. I did have a quick look through the local newspaper this morning but there was nothing at all in it about the fire yesterday. So that’s quite a mystery to me. It’s the kind of thing that you would expect to be reported.

Anyway, I wandered off down towards town.

While we’re on the subject of fire … “well, one of us” – ed … we mustn’t forget what happened here in the old town one Saturday evening a few months ago.

That was when the house in the middle here caught fire and went up like a Roman candle, taking the houses on either side with it.

We saw them weatherproof the houses (not that they needed to have bothered given the weather that we have been having) shortly afterwards and that’s how I found them today on my first trip to town after so many weeks.

It looks as if any talk about repairing them has been put on the … errr … back burner for a while, presumably while the insurance details are finalised.

So while Victor Hugo has sailed off into the sunset – or, rather, sunrise – Marité is back in town.

She’s been absent for the last couple of days having a sail around the bay, usually coming back at the end of the evening long after I’ve been tucked up in bed with my glass of hot Wincarnis.

When I was younger I would go for the Phyllosan that fortifies the over-forties but they haven’t invented anything yet that will sixtify the over-sixties. But never mind. Sony has a product launch in mind for my generation. Soon they’ll be bringing out the Sony Walkframe.

That is something I could use as well as I staggered into town. I made it to the Post Office and posted my letters, having to remind someone in front of me who clearly has more problems then I do that when you’ve bought your price label for your letter, you need to take your letter off the scales, stick the label onto it and stick it in the post box instead of simply walking out of the building.

And you thought that I had problems.

So I dealt with the necessary, exchanging a few pleasantries with the woman in the queue behind me, and then headed for home.

One of the things that I wanted to do was to check the kiddies roundabout.

With that article having been in the paper a couple of weeks ago even though the roundabout has been here for several weeks longer than that, I wanted to make sure that we were talking about the same machine.

So yes, by comparing photos this is indeed the one that came here a while back so I’m at a loss to explain why the local newspaper has only recently picked this up.

It must have been a quiet news day.

The climb up the hill was better than I was expecting – in that I actually did manage to make it home.

It was necessary for me to pause a couple of times to catch my breath and at one of those places I was overlooking Chez Maguie, the Bar Ephemère on the Place Pelley.

It’s still here, despite the best efforts of the residents in the new block of flats in the background to drive out of town everything that disturbs their peace regardless of how popular it might be with the people who were living in the town a long time before they moved in.

It’s quite popular too, with loads of people enjoying a drink. No-one on the boulodrome though. It was far too hot for that.

Round about here I fell in with a neighbour and we had a good chat. Then I pushed on for my final leg.

Before going in for my nice cold chocolate drink I went to look at the beach to see what was happening.

Being later than usual, the tide was well out so there weren’t too many people down there this afternoon. They must have called it a day. A few people here and there in the water which sounded like a good idea.

Back here I had an ice-cold glass of chocolate drink and then had a play around with some photos for a while.

Tea was pie and veg with gravy, in the hope of making yet more room in the freezer. I need beans and peas tomorrow and I’ve no idea where I’m going to put them

Right now, having had a mammoth diet all day of “Eloy” and “Ten Years After”, I’m going to bed ready for shopping tomorrow. And then a nice restful day followed by football on the internet later. The Welsh Premier League starts back up tomorrow afternoon.

And what will my letter to the hospital bring me? I imagine that it will be several weeks before I hear anything, if I hear anything at all. And I don’t think that anything will change. But there’s not much else that I can do. As I have said before … “and on many occasions too” – ed … I can’t keep going on like this.

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?

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.

Saturday 6th November 2021 – I DIDN’T HAVE …

… such a productive day today as I did yesterday. I found it very hard to make a start yet again.

It should actually have been a much better day today because for once I was actually wide awake a 07:15 – 15 minutes before the alarm went off – and I should have taken full advantage of it but once again, being awake is one thing – actually leaving the bed is something else completely.

Anyway I eventually crawled out of bed and went off for my medication.

Back here I ended up deep in conversation with someone on the internet.

In my possession is a very limited-edition copy of David Hill’s AN ATLAS OF ANGLO-SAXON ENGLAND but unfortunately there are several pages missing.

The person with whom I was chatting had been a student of David Hill at Manchester University and had a copy of the Atlas himself so he copied the pages for me and sent them to me, along with several maps showing the distribution of Royal lands in South Cheshire, North Shropshire and the Maelor, my old stamping ground of course, and a copy of his thesis on the Domesday Book entries for that area.

That really was a wonderful gesture and I was very grateful for all of that. It’s restored a little of my faith in human nature.

After breakfast I headed off out to do some shopping. No Caliburn so I went on foot to the local shops in town.

And by the looks of things I wasn’t the only one going out and about this morning. There was a relentless stream of boats heading out to the Ile de Chausey this morning.

That suggests that the gate at the entry to the port de plaisance opened a short while ago and everyone is taking full advnatage.

Of course, some boats are quicker away than others.

This one was right out in the bay going past the Ile de Chausey and by the size of the wake that he’s creating compared to the size of his boat he must have le feu dans ses fesses as they say around here.

On the other hand I don’t believe that the yacht to the right has gone out at that kind of speed. Either she’s been out all night or else she’s come from a non-tidal harbour, if there is such a thing around here

My route today was to go around the headland and down into town that way.

And I hadn’t gone too far along the path before one of the Joly France came around the corner.

One look at the stern is enough to tell us that she’s the older boat of the two. The newer one has a step cut into the stern.

There’s quite a crowd of people on board the boat as well. It’s not the best day to be going out to the Ile de Chausey but at least it’s not raining.

a href=”https://www.erichall.eu/images/2111/21110044.html”> boats heading out to the ile de chausey baie de Granville Manche Normandy France Eric Hall photo November 2021 As I walked down the path and across the car park I could hear this dreadful racket coming from the water and I wondered what it might be.

At the end of the headland I found out that it wasn’t just one boat making a noise but a whole collection of them.

It looks to me as if the whole world is heading out to the ile de Chausey this morning and I’ve no idea why it should be so popular. I haven’t seen anything in the local newspaper.

And while we are on the subject of the local newspaper, the helicopter was scrambled yesterday to rescue two people stuck in a tidal swimming pool but a pleasure boat beat the helicopter to it.

And that’s not all of the water craft either.

As I went down the steps to the bottom I noticed that there were three fishermen setting themselves up on the rocks down there.

And they were having a grandstand view of everything going sailing past them this morning.

And they can consider themselves lucky too. Many people would pay good money to see a spectacle like this and we are all having it for free.

I walked along the path at the foot of the cliffs and that brought me down to by the chantier naval.

We can have a closer look at the portable boat lift and see how sorry it’s looking without her wheels. It must be some kind of serious repair that’s had her holed up like this in the middle of the yard.

But we can do with getting her back on her feet – or her wheels, at any rate. As I have said before … “and on many occasions too” – ed … a proper functioning boat repair yard is vital to the success of the port.

Tanking of the success of the port … “well, one of us is” – ed … there was a small fishing boat unloading as I was walking along the quayside.

It didn’t take her long and, hauling her tender alongside her, she was soon off on her way again.

Her name was clearly visible on the wind deflector over the cabin but it was written in some crazy Gothic script that I couldn’t decipher. And as she doesn’t have an AIS beacon, I can’t check her registration number against my records.

There was something else of interest in the tidal harbour this morning.

What he’s actually doing here I really don’t know. Whether he’s fallen out of a basket from a boat that’s unloading or whether he simply fancies going for a walk is something of a mystery.

But one thing is certain and that it’s very rare for a crab to be left behind by a receding tide. If he doesn’t get a move on, he’ll be on someone’s dinner plate this evening.

Yesterday from up above at the viewpoint overlooking the port I noticed that there was a trawler moored where Marité is usually tied up.

As I was down this way I went for a look to see who she was.

She’s the Saint Gaud, named after a former Bishop of Evreux. There’s a shrine dedicated to him at St Pair sur Mer that used to be a centre of pilgrimage where mothers would bring their babies to receive a blessing.

After his retirement as Bishop he came to live in the Forest of Scissy part of which is today the town of St Pair sur Mer.

Next to her at the quayside is the little Chausey freighter Chausiaise.

She has a sliding top that covers the hold, as you can see. It’s similar to a design that we did in the 1980s for an outdoor swimming pool where the sides and roof slide back underneath one another to make it an open-air one in good weather.

There’s no photo of her in the shipping database and as I maintain the AIS beacon for the port I feel that I’m in some way responsible for the local boats. This photo has come out quite well so it’s now been uploaded to the database.

By the way, up on the city walls just to the left of the French flag is the viewpoint that overlooks the inner port. And that’s the hill that I have to stagger up to go home.

Around the corner I bumped into the itinerant, still going strong. I’ve not seen him for a while so we had a chat and then I went off to buy the lettuce, a baguette, some mushrooms and a couple of peppers. And a can of drink for the journey back.

On the way home I passed round by the market.

All of the smoke that you can see is from the legendary barbecue about which there was so much trouble two years or so ago. He uses charcoal to grill his sausages and the mayor at the time didn’t like the smell or the smoke so she tried to make him convert to gas.

He took her all the way up the heirarchical ladder of appeals and in the end he won his case, so he still used the charcoal. The Carnaval that year was … errr … rather cruel.

But as you can see, the market here on a Saturday morning is quite popular. It certainly pulls in the crowds.

For the first few weeks that I lived here I would come back this way from the shops on a Saturday morning but the first weekend that I tried it after the summer holidays started, I found an alternative route very quickly.

On the way back home I stopped halfway up the hill. Not because I was exhausted but rather because I wasn’t and I had my can of drink to drink before I returned home. It was nice sitting on the wall overlooking the port with a can of drink in my hand.

As I approached my buildiing I bumped into yet another neighbour and she held me captive for 20 minutes chatting about this and that. I reallt do seem to be popular right now and i’ve no idea what I’ve done to deserve that.

As a result it was almost lunchtime by the time that I came back inside.

This afternoon I’ve been working on the arears of the journal, adding in the photos and the dreams from when I was in Leuven last month. Now they are all up-to-date.

And after I’d done that I transcribed some dreams for a couple more days and I’ll be adding them in as I go along over the next while – just in time (presumably) to go into arrears again when I go to Leuven in 10 days time. It’s a vicious circle in which I find myself at the moment.

In the meantime, last night I was with my mother somewhere. I was in one room of the house. There was music on the radio so I was playing along on the bass but on one particular song the bass actually switched on and was really loud. When I looked, one of the potentiometers was glowing red-hot with sparks. I couldn’t get down there to turn off or turn down the sound

There had been a whole new road network opened from after Whitchurch to Shrewsbury and Market Drayton. It was quite late at night and I decided that even though I had things to do I would go to see if after someone had told me something about it. I set off and just as I was coming onto the new bit there was a telephone box so I thought that I’d stop and put all my papers in order because I’d thrown them into the car. I wanted to check on the ferry at 02:30 which was the one that I should have been on but then I couldn’t find my papers. The 2 people sitting in the back, I don’t know where they came from were having a rummage around in the car. Eventually they found something and I found the rest. I was sitting on it. Percy Penguin in the passenger seat read out the ferry booking number to me so I wrote it down. I found that I’d already written it once in my notebook. That meant that I could phone up about the ferry that I should have been on.

I’d been doing a coach tour. I’d had to go out, drive over 300 miles, pick up some passengers and bring them back to the depot and be back by lunchtime. I had loads of things that I’d brought with me, tools and everything and I had to get them into my red Cortina estate. That took me an age to do that. Then I had to set off and drive back home but I had a phone call to make, to ring up my niece in Canada. I parked my car at the side of the road and went to the phone box. The number wasn’t actually the number that I thought it was but it was there written down so I thought that I’d go to dial it. Then I noticed that my bike was missing. The car outside had changed into a bike. I went out to look for it and there were 2 girls there. One was Zero. She had my bike but she had hit something with it. I asked her why she’d taken it. She relied that 2 boys had taken it and had a ride on it but it was some stupid bike without a computer so they’d dumped it so she’d gone on it and gone for a ride. I had to go back and find a phone box and telephone Canada again. She came with me in the phone box. I started looking for my notebook which I eventually found. There was the number written down in it but it was the wrong number. I remembered that the last time the number had changed. I thought that I’m not going to be able to phone up because I only have one 10p. If I dial the wrong number I’m going to lose it and I won’t be able to call her again.

But here I am, stuck in a tiny, confined space like a telephone box with Zero who can’t possibly escape from my evil clutches and I choose that moment to awaken. You couldn’t make up something like that.

As usual I nepped out at 16:00 to go and see the beach.

At the moment the tide is well out as you can see so there was plenty of beach this afternoon. There were quite a few people down there as well this afternoon going for a good walk around .

The weather is quite cool and there’s a little wind, but it’s been windier and colder than this already so it’s not too bad for November. But I imagine that over the next few weeks winter will be starting to get a grip on everything and that will be the last that we shall see of the idlers.

A few weeks ago I posted a photo or two to show that the beach cabins on the Plat Gousset have been taken away for the wonter to protect them from the storms.

Down on the promenade at Donville-les-Bains they don’t seem to be too concerned by that. The cabins are still there.

To the left is that big building that used to be a hotel but is now a block of apartments and flats. I had a look at a room that was to let there not long after I came to live here but it really was in bad condition and I didn’t like it all that much at all.

Back here I carried on work until tea time. Breaded burgers and veg with baked potatoes and it really was delicious. I must admit that I’m eating really well since I’ve been living here.

Now my journal entry is written I’m going to have a little relax and then go to bed. I can’t describe how much I’ve been looking forward to the lie-in tomorrow but the problem will be that having spent all weel working myself up to it, somethign will happen to put a spanner in the works.

We shall see.

Tuesday 7th September 2021 – I’VE HAD A …

… much better and much more productive day today – due almost entirely, I reckon, to the fact that I had a sleep for about 90 minutes or so on my chair this morning not long after I had risen from the dead

As you might expect, it was a struggle to leave the bed this morning when the alarm went off and when I came back in here after the medication, I didn’t do very much in the way of work before I was away with the fairies.

When I finally awoke and came back round into the Land of the Living, I made myself a coffee and then attacked the dictaphone.

Yesterday’s notes were transcribed and went on line, and then I turned my attention to today’s notes.

I’d been on the THE GOOD SHIP VE … errr … OCEAN ENDEAVOUR last night and it was our final day out. We’d all been off looking at something and I was wandering around. Suddenly I had this uncomfortable feeling that everyone else had gone. Not to worry, because these were the days when I could run so I set off at a run back to it. Matthew Swann and a few others were there. Yhey were being quite derogatory about it They asked what had happened and I told them that I had fallen asleep. They had a moan and everything like that. I was quite literally leaping over obstructions, scrambling down hills and so on. But it turned out that it was all like giant beds with blankets and sheets on and I was falling down the side of these giant beds and running up the other side of them, hanging on to the sheets and everything as I went over the top. Every now and again I would bump into someone who knew me. They all were wondering what I was doing, whether I was doing something for a bet or a personal achievement. I explained what had happened, and I was wondering what would happen when I would reach the other side of the island. Had all of the boats gone out to the ship and left me right behind? But I awoke in a night sweat, as I have been doing for the past couple of weeks.

Later on there was something about we were driving somewhere in Germany and retracing our steps back the way we had come. It all started to become confusing when we arrived in a big city. There were all these weird blue and white buses and trams driving around and I couldn’t quite follow the signposts for some reason. I wasn’t even sure where I was supposed to be going. After we had driven out of the city and going into the suburbs I suddenly looked over to my right and saw a couple of shops in the distance that were extremely familiar so I turned round and started to head off that way thinking that if I remember them it must have been from when we came in and therefore it’s that road over there that must be the right one out again.

While I was asleep just now I was driving around Montreal with one of my Canadian friends talking to her. She was asking me all kinds of questions about places in Montreal and its vicinity and I knew none of them. I came to the conclusion that I didn’t know Montreal anything like as well as I thought I did. We were discussing dating sites with someone else. he was wondering about their popularity. I said “well sex is the most important part in people’s lives and people just aren’t meeting up as they used to” which he agreed. I went out anyway, going to post a letter and get some food. In the meantime a bus did a U-turn in the road in front of me and clipped a car that was in front. Another vehicle clipped another car somewhere else. I was driving around finding myself in an area that I didn’t really know at all and wasn’t really sure how I was going to find out anything.

Grabbing another mug of coffee, I went for my Welsh lesson and ended up being rather late because the portable computer chose that inconvenient moment to perform an upgrade.

The Welsh lesson passed really well and then after lunch, because I was feeling very lively, I caught up with an outstanding task. A while ago someone gave me a laptop to fit an Solid State Drive in it,seeing as I have a certain little computer program that means that I can do it without going through any complicated back-up procedure.

It took me quite a while because it’s an old steam-driven computer, dating to at least the year 2000 running an underlying DOS operating system so I had to dig deep into my memory from 20-odd years ago.

It works fine now except that I can’t extract the data files from the old drive because this computer doesn’t have a USB 3.0 port so tomorrow, if I’m feeling up to it, I have a cunning plan that I can use to make things work.

This took me right up to the time that I go out for my walk around the headland this afternoon.

Across the car park I went to look out over the wall down onto the beach to seed the crowds of people down there this afternoon. And crowds there were as well today.

Although there are a couple of people wearing swimwear, walking away from the water, there weren’t any people in the water here this afternoon. And this was surprising because this was one of the nicest days that we have had so far this year

Further out along the coast down at the Plat Gousset, there were even more people on the beach.

Quite a few people in the water too, making the most of the opportunity presented to them by the availability of the water in the medieval fish trap.

Way further out on the beach at Donville les Bains, there are dozens of people taking advantage of the sunny afternoon. Of course, you might well expect this now that the children have gone back to school and the holidaymakers have all now gone home.

There was nothing whatever going on out at sea in the Baie de Granville – no kayakers, no frogpersons and not even any fishermen so I had a very lonely trudge around the headland in the heat.

As I walked around the corner by the old bunker I could see that out in the Baie de Mont St Michel on the other side of the headland that Le Loup, the marker light on top of the rock at the entrance to harbour, was looking splendid today.

The dark line underneath the lower of the two red lines is where the tide reaches and so it gives you a good idea of how high the tide can be.

Out in the background on the beach at Kairon-Plage in between St Pair sur Mer and Jullouville, there seem to be hordes of people this afternoon. More than I would expect so I wonder what is happening there today.

A little earlier I mentioned that there were no fishermen out in the Baie de Granville.

On this side of the headland however there were plenty of people down on the rocks having something of a scavenge about.

With the tide being so far out this afternoon the public part of the foreshore down there is now uncovered so they can have a good forage for the shellfish and other seafood in rockpools that have been left behind as the water recedes.

Judging by the size of the containers that they have, they must be having a good and successful time.

Over the past few months we’ve seen the local fishing boats working out in areas that have previous been unexploited.

Today, right down at the end of the Baie de Mont St Michel close to the Brittany coast, we have a trawler down there this afternoon having a go to see what it can pull up out of the water.

At this kind of distance I can’t see who she is, and I’m not even sure that she comes from here.

So with nothing else happening, I pushed off along the path on top of the headland towards the port.

And down at the viewpoint overlooking the chantier naval I could see that we have had plenty of excitement down there today.

The little trawler Briscard that was nearest the camera and Pierre de Jade, the trawler next to her, seem to have gone back into the water this afternoon.

It didn’t take long for their places to be filled either. L’Omerta, the little shellfish boat that we’ve seen so often sitting on the silt by the Fish Processing Plant, and Massabielle, a trawler whom we haven’t seen before, have taken their places.

It’s all go in the chantier naval these days.

Back here I had my banana smoothie and then had another play with that computer, which took me up to teatime. Taco rolls with the rest of yesterday’s stuffing.

Tomorrow I’m at the physiotherapist’s so I need to have a good relax and gather my strength during the morning. But not 90 minutes-worth.

And while I was typing up my notes, with my other hand I fixed the computer issues that I mentioned just now

Sunday 5th September 2021 – WHAT I SAW …

… down on the beach this afternoon.

As regular readers of this rubbish will recall, it’s my habit to go over to the wall at the end of the car park outside my door and look down to see the activity on the beach.

But today, you’ll need a darn sight more than a good telephoto lens to penetrate this sea-fog that is rolling in with the wind from off the bay and over the headland where I’m standing. There were definitely people down there because I could hear them, but there was no chance whatever of seeing them.

Round the other side of the headland, it’s easy to see whereabouts in the bay is in the wind-shadow of the headland.

The two harbours and the coast down as far as St Pair sur Mer are fairly clear but further on down the coast where there is no wind-shadow the coast is overwhelmed by the sea-fog.

But that’s enough of that for the moment. Let’s go back to the start of the day.

And Bane of Britain strikes again, by somehow having managed to arrange for the alarm to go off at 06:00 this morning. One very unhappy bunny here.

It was about 09:30 when I finally staggered from my stinking pit. After the medication this morning and checking my mails and messages I made a start on the notes for yesterday that I hadn’t done last night.

Strangely enough, it didn’t take me too long to do it and by the time that I stopped for lunch, they had long-been finished.

This afternoon I made a start on pairing up the tracks for the next radio programme – the one that I’ll be preparing on Monday.

That took much longer than it ought to have done because I’ve made a conscious decision that many of the songs that I’ve been choosing are no longer appropriate for the style of programme that I want to develop. Well – they are, but not in the amount that I’ve been using them just recently.

Later on I made another pile of dough for the pizzas for the next three weeks. This one seemed to work really well and I wish that the fruit bread had turned out like that the other day.

By now it was time for me to go out for my afternoon grope around the headland.

This is a view that we have seen on many occasions.

It’s the path that leads along the top of the headland towards the lighthouse, the coastguard station and the semaphore post. But unfortunately today, you can’t see any one of those things with the fog.

Nevertheless, the fog didn’t deter people from being out and about. There were far more people out there this afternoon than you would realise, and you didn’t notice them until you fell over them.

Not just on the path towards the lighthoue either.

My walk took me across the lawn and across the car park down to the end of the headland where there is a good view across the bay. But not today, unfortunately.

We couldn’t see a thing out to sea this afternoon, but there were some people who had made their way down the steps to the little bench in front of the Cabanon Vauban, the old Customs sentry-box. I’m not sure what it was at which they were looking, but I couldn’t see anything special.

They weren’t the only people wandering around off the beaten track in the fog this afternoon.

It will take more than a sea-fog to stop the fishermen going out to practise their art, and sure enough, there is one of them down there.

It’s very difficult to see what he’s actually doing. He has his rod in his hand but I can’t tell whether he is packing up or setting out.

And so I left him to it and headed off along the path on the other side of the headland towards the port to see what was going on down there.

Down at the viewpoint overlooking the harbour, I could see that there was no change in occupancy in the chantier naval. Still the same seven boats that have been there for a couple of weeks.

Over on the other side of the harbour, there was one of the Joly France ferry boats moored up at the ferry terminal. Judging by its small superstructure and rectangluar windows in “portrait” format, it’s the newer one of the two near-identical ones.

As for where her older sister and the brand-new Belle France might be, I really can’t say. But I bet that they won’t be doing any sightseeing trips around the bay or a lap around the Ile de Chausey. And Chausiaise, the little freighter, is in the inner harbour.

From the viewpoint further along the path, I could see into the inner harbour where I noticed that Marité wasn’t there.

She must be out at sea with passengers, and I bet that they can’t be enjoying themselves too much in this weather, with not being able to see what is going on anywhere.

There was also an aeroplane flying around overhead, but of course I couldn’t see it in this weather.

Instead, I went back home and had a banana smoothie. Despite the fog, it was hot, clammy and oppressive out there this afternoon.

Having drunk my smoothie I sat down to check the dictaphone notes but ended up dozing off for about 20 minutes. That still left time for me to find out where I’d been last night.

The first thing that I noticed was that I remarked that I had had an attack of cramp – first time for about ever. I’d forgotten all about this.

But in the meantime, a former friend of mine was speaking to me and telling me what a surprising person I am with all this news that I have that I have never told anyone. he said that he had only found out by accident so I asked him what he was on about. He said that we’d have to go out and celebrate it, all this kind of thing, and I hadn’t really any idea. It turned out that he’d heard someone say “we’d still be up to 15 people if we replace Eric quickly or get a replacement for Eric quickly enough”. “Ohh that!” I said. “I’ve just had an internal transfer in the office and going somewhere else”.

There was somewhere else about a house in Wistaston in Crewe that I was trying to sell but no-one had been to see it for a while. People had asked me why I hadn’t reduced it to sell. I replied that I’ve had it almost 20 years and very very shortly the mortgage will be paid. It’s not in my interest to sell it once the mortgage is paid because it will be increasing in value.

What was that dream about a banana that suddenly awoke me and drained everything away from me immediately? And don’t ask me what that was all about because I don’t have a clue. It’s what I must have dictated but I can’t think why.

Later on during the night I was out with Nerina. There were 4 of us, me, her, another guy and another girl, something to do with me being at the hospital. Nerina had her Wolseley 1300 and the door on it didn’t fit quite properly. While we were walking towards it there was another group of people walking towards us. One of them was joking about how easy it was to steal these cars. he took out a key from his pocket, opened the door, got in and sat at the steering wheel. The guy and I dived in, dragged him out, bent him over the car and had his arms in an arm lock. We marched him into the hospital where someone called the police. The idea was basically to frighten the wits out of him. But this went on and on and in the end I was called forward for my surgery. The boy that had come out before me now had the most beautiful white teeth so I wondered if that was what they were going to do to me. I had to go to wait by this cubby hole where the guy searched through some papers. There were people coming and going and the surgeon was rooting through these papers as well looking for the names. Someone else out of the room where we were had come out and gone past me in a wheelchair and gone into a theatre. I thought that I was going to be here all night with this. I’d told one of the others who was with us that they were in charge about the affair with this boy. I wondered how long it was going to be before they become fed up?.

There was also time to deal with a couple more of the arrears too. I’m hoping that they will be finished quite soon too so that I can update the relevant journal entries.

When that was done I divided up the pizza dough into three, rolled two in oil, wrapped them in greaseproof paper, put them in a plastic bag and put them in the freezer.

The other, I rolled out and put in the pizza tray and left it to proof for a while. And once it was ready I assmebled it and baked it.

Here’s the finished product. It was nice and crispy for a change, one of the best that I’ve made for ages. Quite delicious too.

Now the washing-up is done and the kitchen has been tidied up and it’s all looking quite nice. i’ve finished my journal entry early too so I have a couple of things to do and then i’m off to bed. I have a radio programme to prepare in the morning so I need to be on good form because I don’t want to waste too much time.

EPIC HALL

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