Tag Archives: sweet potato

Wednesday 7th January 2025 – I HAD NOTHING ON …

… the dictaphone again when I awoke this morning.

That was quite a disappointment to me, because I’d managed to have more sleep than the previous night.

Mind you, seeing as there was no sleep at all on Monday night, anything is an improvement on that, especially a nice, balmy, early … errr … 00:30

The notes, the backup, and the stats were finished at a quite reasonable time, but there’s always some housekeeping to do before I go to bed. And this is where I became really annoyed because what would usually take ten minutes with the big desktop computer took forever with the steam-driven computing of the travelling laptop. The laptop is OK for when I’m out and about, but here at home trying to do some real heavy-duty work with it, it just grinds to a halt.

The day shall be cherished when the new laptop arrives, and when I can finally find someone who can build a decent office computer for me, I shall be delirious … "you mean that you aren’t now?" – ed … It’s disappointing that between all of us, we’ve not been able to lay our hands on one reliable supplier, or worked out a way to have one received in the UK and sent on over here.

Anyway, I was in bed at about 00:30 and fast asleep at about 00:31. No coughing fit or agonising pain in the foot awoke me, so I slept right through until the alarm went off at 06:29.

Once more, it was a struggle to leave the bed, but I made it into the bathroom where I sorted myself out, and then into the kitchen for the hot ginger, honey and lemon drink to go with my medication.

When I’d finished that, I put away the rest of the shopping from last night, and that was a task and a half too. I hadn’t realised that there was so much.

Back in here, there was nothing on the dictaphone to transcribe, as I said earlier, and it was just as well because Isabelle the Nurse arrived.

While she was sorting me out, I explained about my fainting fit yesterday. She’s of the opinion that it might have been low blood pressure, but that would be a surprise because usually, I can withstand some pretty low blood pressure readings, such as the 6.8 of the other week, without any problems.

Once she’d left, I made breakfast. Not a lot, but I managed to finish it today, which makes a big difference. Still nothing to read, so it didn’t take long.

Back in here, I checked my e-mails. And here was a big disappointment. The new laptop, which should be arriving today, is held up at the factory and is still awaiting delivery. The estimated new arrival time is “not known”. After what I said earlier, that is a tragedy.

Instead, I surfed through the internet pages to see what else was on offer. My eyes alighted on a laptop that had much higher spec than the outstanding one, made by a more reputable manufacturer, and for not very much more money, so I bit the bullet. And even as we speak, it’s in the post heading this way.

Although the mail that I received about the other one said that I could cancel it at any time, when I went to cancel that order, it told me that cancellation was “no longer possible”, even though it’s still at the factory. So never mind. When it arrives, it will be going straight back

The next task was to rewrite a couple of sections of code for my web pages. And how much *.html, *.css and *.js have I forgotten? A task that would have taken me ten minutes ten years ago took me a good couple of hours and it’s still not exactly how I want it. This is really sad.

After a disgusting drink break, I rang up Paris to find out what time I’m expected on Tuesday. And when they told me, I went for a lie-down.

After recovering from the shock, I rang up the taxi company
"There is some good news and some bad news for you. The good news is that I have to go to Paris on Tuesday. you have plenty of authorisations left, and it’s for a consultation so I’ll be back the same day."
"So what’s the bad news?"
"The appointment is for 10:30"
"Oh dear – that means leaving at 06:30."
"Probably earlier than that if there’s snow on the ground. We know what happened on Monday"
So I’m being picked up at 06:00. God help us!

There were a couple of other things to do, and then I attacked the next radio programme, which will also be a concert. I edited the soundtrack and remixed it, cutting it down to about 58 minutes, and then dashed off some text for it.

It could have been finished too, except that I was … errr … away with the fairies … "although not in a manner that would have caused the editor of Aunt Judy’s magazine any excitement"- ed …

And properly too.

I was with my youngest sister. Somehow, we’d found our way into a kind of rich man’s home, which was at the top of a very steep hill. He had influential guests to come to see him, all of whom were criminals or crooks or something. When they arrived at the bottom of this steep hill, they would be accompanied up to the house up this really steep roadway by a group of people in some kind of 1950s Rolls-Royce or Bentley that was painted a bright mid-blue. We saw a couple of cars arrive like that. For some reason then, we were discovered, and we had to run. We came to the top of the bank where there was a really steep staircase of, ohh, hundreds of steps. My brother appeared, and he was in some kind of threatening mood, as if he belonged to this place. I looked at my sister, she looked at me, and the clipboard that I had in my hand, I threw it down the stairs, and we both ran hell for leather down the stairs. The clipboard only made a short distance, and then I had to pick it up every so often and throw it further down, and we’d continue running. On one occasion, I almost managed to catch it in mid-air as we arrived where the clipboard as before it had touched the ground. In the end, we reached the bottom, totally out of breath. I said “well, shall we ‘gang wham’ then?” in some kind of Geordie accent. She didn’t understand what I meant at first so after I’d repeated it a couple of times, I said “going home?”. She replied “oh no! You have to take me dancing and dining” and all these kinds of things, to which I laughed and said “I didn’t realise that I was supposed to be looking after you in that way”.

My brother, being menacing and threatening, is nothing new, although he was something of a paper tiger in that respect. However, being conspiratorial with my youngest sister might have been something that we would have done many years ago when she was a child, because she really was a good sport in those days, she grew out of it quickly with the stresses of work, marriage and family, as many people do

The Bentley, or Rolls-Royce, was interesting though, and I can still see it, even now.

Tea tonight was the last of the vegan pie, with mashed potatoes, mashed sweet potatoes, carrots and leeks. It was a struggle to eat it but I managed. And I forgot to have a dessert. But the vegan pie was nice and I’ll make another at the weekend.

So now, if the computer lets me, I shall be going to bed. I hope that this closing-down sequence doesn’t take another two hours.

But seeing as we have been talking about good news and bad news … "well, one of us has" – ed … it reminds me of a conversation that I overheard between a doctor and a patient at dialysis.
"I have some bad news for you and some worse news for you."
"Go on, doctor, tell me the bad news."
"I’m afraid that you only have twenty-four hours to live"
"Good grief! So what’s the worse news?"
"I forgot to tell you yesterday."

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22nd December 2023 – BYE BYE STRIDER!

strider centreville new brunswick Canada Eric Hall photo October 2022Amongst the fall-out from the developments over the last 15 months is the parting of ways from one of my faithful companions.

Strider will be off to a new home as soon as his log book arrives here and I sign it and send it back to New Brunswick’s Motor Vehicle Bureau.

He’s not going far at all, as it happens, but even half an inch is too far to be separated from someone who has served me well for 9 years and God alone only knows how many thousands of miles.

strider ford ranger centreville canadaHe first appeared on the scene in November 2014.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall the disputes and arguments that I’d had with car hire companies in North America who found it impossible to believe that “unlimited mileage” meant that mileage was unlimited and you could go as far as you like.

After 2010 when I’d taken CASEY, THE CHRYSLER PT CRUISER over the TRANS LABRADOR HIGHWAY one of the first vehicles to travel across 1800 miles of the worst roads in the World when the final 300 miles over the Eagle Plateau and through the Mealy Mountains were finally opened, I was on some kind of blacklist.

labrador city 813 kilometres canada september septembre 2017So when someone turns up with a lightweight 4×4 pick-up with off-road pack, how can you say “no”?

STRAWBERRY MOOSE And I found our soul-mate and we set off on our adventures that took us thousands and thousands of miles all down the Eastern side of the North American continent.

And apart from a gearchange linkage falling apart in Québec in 2019, he never gave a moment’s trouble. And even then we still limped home after a fashion.

We’ve been as far north as it’s possible to go by road or trail in Labrador and Northern Québec … "and on several occasions too" – ed … as far south as Georgia in the USA and as far west as several miles beyond Ottawa

But we aren’t going any further. I can’t travel over to Canada any more and it makes no sense having him sit around when someone else can use him.

The total irony of all of this is that his seat is exactly the right height for me with my disability, his brake pedal can easily be operated by the left foot and the cruise control will move him along without using the accelerator.

There’s no reason at all why, if he were over here or I were over there, I couldn’t continue to drive him.

He drinks petrol like it’s going out of fashion though … "well, it is" – ed … being an old-technology V6 4.0 litre, but down at the bottom of my field I have another scrap Transit with a 2.5 diesel engine that would drop straight in.

However, if I were fit enough to change an engine over these days, I wouldn’t need the vehicle in the first place.

"What do you want us to do with the stuff that’s still in it?"
"The only things of interest to me are the Fender bass and the Fender combo amp. Share the rest out amongst yourselves and bin the rest"
Tons of tools, camping equipment, vehicle maintenance stuff, expedition equipment, all gone just like that that. But what can you do?

Here’s hoping that Strider has a good home.

Luckily, I have a good home, and I’m glad to be back in it.

Last night I finally went to bed at 02:30 and with no alarm, I was still awake at 07:15 and up and about by 07:45. There’s not much point in having a lie-in these days.

As usual, it took an age to wind myself up ready for work and I began by unpacking my backpack and sorting out the washing.

And if anyone tried to listen to “The Mountain Queen” and Hein Mars and Paul Weststrate last night or early this morning, I posted the wrong link. I’ve corrected it now and it’s THIS LINK that you want.

Sorry about that.

Armed with a coffee I had a look at all of the papers that I’d brought back. I couldn’t make head or tail of some of them so my cleaner said that she’d come round later to help me look.

And so I went off to listen to the tons of stuff on the dictaphone. Firstly there was a continuation of a dream that I’d had a couple of nights ago. It concerned some kind of exhibition of ancient vehicles or something or other. I was going through my photographs trying to identify the people, the location, the vehicle that they had with them etc. I came across a photo where I recognised the person. He was a radio presenter. It just so happened that at that very moment he came out of the building towards the car park so I ran after him and caught up with him as he was standing by his car. I showed him the photo. he replied “that’s not me”. I replied “the car’s a Rover 90” – it was a red Rover 90. He suddenly said “ohh yes, 1954, that”. I asked “what? The car, the photograph or you?”. He replied “no, the car. The photograph was probably taken in 1974. It’s the car that’s 1954”.

Later on we were spread out on a desk in a laboratory obviously run by this doctor. A girl was going through, counting off so many. When she arrived at the number that she wanted, the person she was standing next to, she pointed out and that person was taken away. She said that she was preparing a table and discussion for, I think, her brother who was obviously the psychiatric doctor. As it happened, the people with me and I were saved. We attracted his attention when we went into the boudoir to be interrogated

And I’m doing it again – dictating into my hand. We were going to have a practice with our rock group so I went round to pick up our singer. She was a young girl, and wore one of these party/ballroom dresses type of the 18th Century when she came out. I had to practically lift her up to climb into the van because it was so high up. I climbed in afterwards. She asked “what’s new?”. I replied “we have a gig on Tuesday”. She asked where so I told her “Nantwich”. We set out from her house and drove, and ended up at the back of Alvaston Hall going over a bridge that had been built to keep the vehicles off what was a prehistoric settlement on the ground. We were heading for the recording studio where our group practised.

And this is really strange (or maybe it isn’t). Talking about Simon House yesterday, and the times that I’ve played the bass to some of those tracks, something came into my head yesterday about a girl at our school. She was 4 years or so younger than us, quite small, long dark brown hair, brown-rimmed glasses and a round face, but she sang and played the violin and piano, and to a really good standard too. I was actually imagining her weaving her web around me playing her violin as I played the bass lines to Damnation Alley or Steppenwolf.

Bizarrely, this isn’t the first time that she has come up in a discussion. In Munich 18 months ago my German friend, who was in my class at school, and I were discussing her and her violin for some reason, and neither of us could remember her name. And I still can’t.

Meanwhile, back at the ran … errr … bed I was in the gold 2000E estate that’s in the barn in Virlet. I was driving to Stoke on Trent. I had to be there for 18:00 but was early. There’s a place that I know where you can park where there’s a good view of the city (if ever there’s a good view of Stoke on Trent from anywhere). I parked on there with about 3 or 4 other cars. It was just underneath a pub. By now the gold estate had transformed itself into a service bus. I was sitting in the seat behind the driver. The door opened and a couple of people came in. One was a young girl. She was obviously waiting for someone but she had her phone and was describing the passengers on board this bus to whoever was on the phone presumably for security reasons. She looked at me and said “there’s an old guy with a small face” so I stuck my head up and said “yes, and extremely handsome” which made her laugh. She moved on to another guy there. She said “he’s the guitarist from the pub”. Another couple of people came on and everyone began to chat. It became quite friendly. Someone asked me why I was there. I replied “I have to be here because I have to be at someone’s front door at 18:00 on the dot and not be early”. They thought that that was an extremely strange command which I suppose it was but if that’s what the person wants, that’s what the person is going to have “so I’m just sitting here killing time”. After a couple of minutes I had to make my excuses and leave. It was time for me to be heading off.

Having done that, I set about photocopying all of the paperwork that I’d received from the Hospital. There was a whole rain-forest of it too, and it all has to be distributed amongst the appropriate recipients.

Anyway, the cleaner came round and we sorted out everything that needed to be sorted out. And then she set off for the Chemist’s.

When she came back and gave me the stuff, I arranged it on my shelf. And now I’m well over into a second shelf of medication.

And do you want to know how much a month’s medication is costing? If you do, then I’ll tell you that it’s €7104:00 and I know because I’ve seen the bill. And my contribution to that is nothing whatever (I almost said “Zero” but that could have been misconstrued).

On top of that I’ve been issued with a tensiometer and a heart monitor.

My blood pressure needs to be measured 3 times a day, morning, noon and night, when I’m sitting calm and comfortable without stress. And when is that ever likely to happen?

The aim is for the blood pressure to be below 14.0/9.0. And when has that ever happened?

There’s to be an injection of this Aranesp substitute every Wednesday by the infirmier ambulant and it has to stop if my blood count rises to 12.0.

And how do we know if my blood count rises to 12.0? That’s because the nurse has to take a blood sample every week. He’ll enjoy that because he can never find my veins.

With the heart monitor, I have to send off the readings and the blood pressure figures every day to the hospital for further instructions – keep on doing what I’m doing jusqu’à nouvel ordre in fact.

There’s another couple of IRMs that needs to be arranged – one for the heart and another for something else that I forget now.

And then there’s the medication. When I walk around in future, you’ll hear me coming because I’ll be rattling. Honestly, I have never seen so much anywhere except in a chemist’s, and then not all the time.

At this rate, sorting out all of this paperwork and medication and keeping all these records, I’ll be far too busy to die.

In between all of this I prepared an order for food and sent it off to LeClerc. It was shockingly expensive today but I’ve bought presents for everyone who has helped me this year, to express my gratitude.

Nothing really exciting because LeClerc’s home shopping isn’t blessed with a great deal of choice. Just boxes of chocolates and also a bottle of champagne for my cleaner. Anyone who comes round tidying up after me thoroughly deserves it.

Tea was a salad with burger and chips, some of which were sweet potato chips – LeClerc’s home delivery won’t deliver less than 1kg of sweet potatoes and I only needed a few hundred grammes for the wellington. And it was all delicious too.

So tomorrow I’m going to start on the vegan wellington. I don’t have everything but I’ll do what I can with what I have. It should be delicious anyway, whatever goes in it. I have all kinds of vegetables to go with it – 7 varieties of different veg in fact.

Yes, there was more broccoli on offer so I bought another one. Once more it’s mostly stalk so I’ll be having broccoli stalk soup again tomorrow.

So there is broccoli and 2kg of carrots to blanch in the morning, and the vegan wellington in the afternoon – if I’m still here after taking my first tablet.

This is all beginning to look rather uncomfortable to me.

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Saturday 26th August 2023 – ONE THING THAT I …

… do like about going to Noz is that fairly often I find some different food that I can eat that will vary my diet quit considerably.

There were some bags of 10 frozen quinoa wafer-burger type things but I’m not really talking about those, but I’m referring more to the bags of 1 kg of frozen sweet potato chips.

My ambition, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, is to continue to make room in my rather over-full freezer but there’s none at all now because a bag of the wafer-burgers and a bag of the sweet potato chips has now filled it to the brim.

And I did manage to fit in another frozen pepper too. They had the small ones at LeClerc today so I grabbed a couple. One is in the fridge ready for Monday and the other one has joined the three that are in the freezer.

So all in all it was a good day today around the shops.

Much better than the night, I have to say, because even though I was in bed fairly early for a change, it took me an absolute age to go off to sleep. And when I did, I awoke a couple of times during the night.

When the alarm went off I was dead to the World and it was a struggle to leave the bed. But after the medication I had a good wash and then headed off to the shops.

My parking space outside Noz was free so I was able to park close to the door which is always useful. And as well as the frozen stuff that I mentioned, they had some sachets of orange zest for adding to cakes and the like so I grabbed a few packets of that too.

LeClerc didn’t come up with anything special today – just the usual stuff. All in all, it wasn’t a very expensive shop today.

Back here I put everything away and then made my cheese on toast and coffee. back in here I sat down and began to think about doing some work but regrettably that was that, and for more than three hours too. Completely dead to the World yet again and I didn’t feel a thing.

While I was away I was off on my travels. I was arguing with a neighbour about some information that she had given me. I thought that it was incorrect and I was upset but she told me that I didn’t need to accept it and that I should have done my own research.

Later on, after I’d managed to come round into the Land of the Living again I transcribed the dictaphone notes to find out where I’d been during the night. Alison and I were in a queue for something. She was being attended to and I was talking to a couple of guys standing behind me, discussing these absurd rules about the airport. It turns out that one of them knew a small girl who was stopped because they wanted to confiscate her aspirins. She insisted that she was allergic to everything else. This was the only brand she could have. After much argument the girl on her own won her case and managed to take her aspirins with her through Security. We thought that that was tremendous so we then began to make a list of things that we’d assemble if we’d had that girl with us and what she could have brought through Customs for us. One of the guys said “we’d have needed to park our car quite close to the airport building in order to carry the stuff off in the end”. Alison turned round, saw and heard us, and asked what we were doing. I tried to explain the story of the girl to her but for some reason I kept on having it all wrong. I couldn’t explain it properly.

And then I was with a former friend of mine last night in an old Ford Transit van driving somewhere around the Potteries. We’d ended up somewhere around the Goldenhill area. We’d been doing a few things and ended up at a petrol station chatting to the owner, a woman. For some reason she gave my friend £1:00. It became time to leave so I said “I’ll say goodbye and go home”. He asked “aren’t you dropping me off?” in a real kind-of panicky way. I replied “don’t be silly. Of course I am but if I were to have a young girl with me I might change my mind”. I had something linked up about the spark plugs. I had 2 spark plugs in holders and plugged the holders into one of the HT leads. I asked him to check that they were working because I would simply swap the HT leads over when I was somewhere convenient to do it rather than take the plugs out and replace them at the side of the road. He could see the spark and said that it was sparking fine. I had a look and sure enough, it was. I’d done something to the mirrors so I couldn’t see out to the back of the van. When we got into the van at the parking place of this garage I asked him to look behind me to check the road for when I pull out. He didn’t understand and had a panic attack about something. He was shouting at me for something or other but I couldn’t work out what. Then I suddenly realised that we were already on the road. What I thought was where we had to cross over in order to leave was actually the other side of the dual carriageway. We would have been driving on this dual carriageway facing the wrong way. I understood his panic attack at that moment but I told him that I wished that he hadn’t shouted like that because it really distracted me. I wasn’t sure myself what was actually happening at that moment.

Having finished those I had a little play around with the radio programme that i’d been preparing in a kind-of desultory fashion over the last few days and then settled down to watch the football – Y Drenewydd v Aberystwyth.

Both teams were bottom of the league not having won a single point so far this season. That’s a strange position for Drenewydd but as I’ve said before, it’s one to which Aberystwyth fans will have to be accustomed.

One bright spark in the Aberystwyth side though is that veteran keeper David Jones, surprisingly released by Drenewydd at the end of last season, has washed up on their shores. It makes a world of difference to find a reliable and competent keeper between their posts.

The game flowed from end to end in a quite exciting game but with relatively few chances. There were probably no more than four or five clear chances throughout the whole of the game but the lack of many clear-cut chances didn’t spoil the game in any respect.

It finished 0-0 which was about right. Y Drenewydd was the better team but were unable to capitalise on their superiority.

One player who caught my eye was Aberystwyth’s young left-winger Luca Hogan. I’ve not seen him before. His match started off quietly but as other players tired towards the closing stages he really came into his own and began to tear them apart down the flanks.

Unfortunately he’s far from the finished article but at his age he can only improve his final ball into the penalty area.

In fact, from what I’ve seen so far this season, crosses, free kicks and corners into the penalty area are pretty depressing and if I had anything to do with it, I’d spend a lot of time working on making some dramatic improvement.

At this level of football it’s one way of putting defences and goalkeepers under a lot of pressure.

Tea tonight was chips in the air fryer, a mixture of potato and sweet potato. They were actually quite nice, especially with the salad and one of the kale burgers that I bought from Noz a few weeks ago.

So now I’m off to bed ready for a lie-in tomorrow. After all of my exertions I’m ready for it too. Having been to Stoke on Trent last night and not meeting up with Zero, I wonder with whom I’ll meet up tonight.

But if not, a good long sleep will do me some good. I hope that I’ll manage it this time.

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Thursday 28th April 2022 – I’M NOT SURE …

yacht baie de Granville Manche Normandy France Eric Hall photo April 2022… what happened today but I’ve been feeling much better than i have done for the last few days.

And so while you admire a handful of photos of all of the maritime traffic that was out and about this afternoon while I was on my post-prandial perambulation around the perimeter of the Pointe du Roc, I’ll tell you all about it.

Even the bit about not only not crashing out during the day but not actually feeling as if I needed to, and isn’t that some kind of progress from the way that things have been just recently?

ch517520 yann frederic baie de Granville Manche Normandy France Eric Hall photo April 2022Mind you, it was quite a turbulent night, as you can tell from thz amount of stuff that was on the dictaphone.

And after the nurse had been (because I had a blood test this morning) and I’d taken my medication I sat down to transcribe everything.

I was looking at apartments and houses last night. There was some kind of robot thing that went through them while I was looking at them, and put them up to let. It seemed that every time I wanted to buy a place it was miraculously transformed into a letting property. The noise that this robot thing made when it roamed through these houses and apartments was really annoying. I couldn’t find a single property to buy without being overwhelmed by this. When I tried to sell a place, again I was overwhelmed by this kind-of robot thing that came along. It was the same with water. I couldn’t have water at the right temperature. It was either too hot or too cold even when there were two different sets of mixing taps draining into a sink. I couldn’t get the water temperature to be right. This thing with these apartments was really stressful in this dream.

trawlers baie de mont st michel Granville Manche Normandy France Eric Hall photo April 2022Then we were back on that ship yet again … “which ship?” – ed … but in an aeroplane now. The little girl and 2 other people on board had hi-jacked it and were preparing to sail off somewhere peaceful where they didn’t have to worry about being kidnapped again

Back in that dream yet again and there were Portuguese waiting down the road for that girl, to ambush her. This brought me on to I was actually at someone’s house when someone pulled up outside. The guy looked out of the window and said “Oh God it’s him”. I asked what had happened. he said that he had picked up someone at the docks when he’d come back over from Europe and was taking them home. When they arrived at a motorway interchange this guy had proposed going one way and the other guy proposed going a different wayto reach where they were going. This had led to something of quite a dispute between the 2 of them, quite a bit of bad feeling. When they met again outside this bungalow they explained the situation. I said that when one is used to going a certain way for 15 years and someone comes along and says to go another way it’s always something of a challenge. They gradually eased the situation between the 2 of them.

trawlers yacht le loup baie de mont st michel Granville Manche Normandy France Eric Hall photo April 2022Finally; we were in North America somewhere. We were standing by this railway line watching these 2 girls running across some land and ended up running to this railway line. Whoever it was who was with me we both looked at these girls but we didn’t recognise them at all. We couldn’t think of why they would want to come to this railway line especially in the fashion that they had done running flat out like that.

So as you can see, the fact that I went the whole day without being tired is something of a miracle.

Another task that I needed to do today was to book my appointment with this Sports Therapist person. So I rang them up and that’s arranged for Thursday 12th May. a moment of destiny amongst so many others, one might say.

trawlers port de Granville harbour Manche Normandy France Eric Hall photo April 2022What I have been doing for some (and by no means all) of the day is to do what I should have done a while ago and updated the notes from when I was in Leuven and Kôln.

It completely slipped my mind that they needed editing and so I made a start. And I actually completed one day before I ground to a halt again.

That was because I had been set another task, presumably to prove that I am worthy, as AS THE OLD SAYING GOES. I need to produce an entertaining itit – init – itinin – initit – timetable for the weekend, seeing as I’m the only one who knows where I’m going (and even that is doubtful).

Anyway, that is all done and dusted now – three days of riotous fun and high living – I don’t think. But there are some hot cross buns going spare if I behave myself, but really there’s little chance of that, isn’t there? Especially considering who else might (if I’m lucky) be there.

There were the usual breaks for breakfast, coffee and lunch. And then, of course, the walk around the headland to which I referred earlier.

people on beach rue du nord Granville Manche Normandy France Eric Hall photo April 2022

And first of all, as usual, is the wander across the car park to look down over the wall to see what was happening down below on the beach.

And as the weather was so nice and there were crowds of people and parked cars all over the place, I expected the beach to be quite busy. And I was right too. There were probably a couple of dozen people down there.

There was quite a bit of beach as well. The tide is on its way in though so it won’t be like that for much longer. You probably gathered that from the crowds of fishing boats loitering around just outside the harbour waiting for the gates to open.

people on bench cabanon vauban pointe du roc Granville Manche Normandy France Eric Hall photo April 2022As I said, there were hordes of people milling around on the paths this afternoon. It was very hard to keep some kind of distance, even more so as I seemed to be the only person out there wearing a mask.

There were a couple of people down there on the bench by the cabanon vauban watching the spectacle going on out at sea because it’s been a long time since I’ve seen so many boats out there waiting for things to happen.

So while they were waiting for things to happen I headed off down the path on the other side of the headland to see what’s happening there – if the multitudes of people would let me pass by.

ch827132 valeque le roc a la mauve 3 chantier naval port de Granville harbour Manche Normandy France Eric Hall photo April 2022When I arrived at the viewpoint overlooking the chantier naval I noticed that there’s a new boat in there.

Le Roc A LA Mauve III looks as if she’s put down roots. She’s still there after all this time. But down there with her is another shell-fishing boat.

She’s carrying registration number CH857132 and that’s not in my list of boats so she must also be new to the area. Luckily I can see what I think might be her name and she may well be called Valeque.

Lots of boats in the outer harbour today as you have seen but it’s impossible to say who they are at this range.

normandy warrior port de Granville harbour Manche Normandy France Eric Hall photo April 2022But we all know who this is, moored up at the loading bay in the inner harbour.

She’s one of two boats, and the fact that she doesn’t have that raised deck at the stern behind the bridge tells us that she is in fact Normandy Warrior, not Normandy Trader.

She must be in port to pick up the swimming pool that’s been on the quayside for a couple of days.

And the company that owns these two freighters is extremely busy. They are recruiting additional sea-going staff and there’s an advert doing the rounds. If only I had a mariner’s watch-keeping certificate I would be home and … errr … well, certainly not dry.

powered hang glider place d'armes Granville Manche Normandy France Eric Hall photo April 2022Before I went inside though I was overflown by the little red powered hang-glider thing or whatever it’s called.

It was on its way back from a trip down to Mont St Michel when it flew past me overhead. Luckily it didn’t have the same effect as the seagull did yesterday morning.

Back here I finished off my itinerary for the weekend and then went to make tea.

That sweet potato made lovely chips in the air fryer and I’ll do that again. Someone mentioned seasoning so I added a pinch of chili powder, a pinch of garlic salt and a generous twist of freshly-ground black pepper and that certainly added something to the mix. I’ll do that again too.

So now I’m off to bed. I have an 06:00 start in the morning, to which I am not looking forward at all. But as it’s the most important weeked for a good many years with a very crucial meeting, I have to do it.

What I’ll have to do is to nip out surreptitiously and hope that the butterflies in my stomach don’t notice.

Not that it’ll make much difference because if things run according to form and past history, I’ll make a mess of it. But nothing ventured, nothing gained.

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