… has been today.
They say that he only comes once a year, and when he does, he fills your stocking. Well, he certainly filled one of mine with what he brought today and he’ll be coming again because this is parcel n°1 of 5 … “actually parcels n°s 1 and 2 of 6” – ed.
What is happening is that I’m fed up of saying that I’m going to be doing something and then for one reason or another not doing it. I want to be pushing on … “or pushing off” – ed … and getting these things done, and having the correct equipment to do it too.
The acoustic guitar that I have here is a cheap £25 guitar that was left over from a music festival years ago and isn’t up to very much. This guitar is actually reasonably cheap but it has a good spec and that’s important.
This, and the concert ukelele that I bought too should keep me out of mischief for quite a while, if that’s going to be ever possible.
Talking about being kept out of mischief, I must have been kept out of mischief last night because I don’t remember a thing. It was a late night again, due to listening to music of course, and once more I managed to make it out of bed before the third alarm went off.
With no dictaphone notes to transcribe from the night, I had a quick go at one or two of those until the medication worked and I went for breakfast.
When I woke up this morning it was raining pretty heavily but by the time that I’d finished having a shower, the rain had stopped so I headed off to LIDL.
For a change I didn’t buy anything exciting there and the bill was quite reasonable for a change. But there was something that I ought to mention. Regular readers of this rubbish will remember the blackcurrant sorbet that I bought the other week. They had some raspberry sorbet today, in a larger container and cheaper than the blackcurrant. There’s some of that in the freezer here now.
O the way out to LIDL I’d had my usual glance down in the harbour to see what’s going on.
And we have a visitor here today. A regular visitor in fact – our old friend Thora. She’s come in from the Channel Islands presumably with a load of something to drop off, and she’ll be picking up stuff to take back with her when she leaves.
Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that I had a conducted tour around her predecessor, the Grima but I’ve not managed to set my foot on board Thora yet.
One of the … “many” – ed … things that I have forgotten to mention is that yesterday on one of my walks I surprised a group of tourists being shown around the old town.
Today, there’s yet more of them. I encountered this party in the rue des Juifs admiring the architecture.
And so with all of these people around, I wonder what’s going on. I’m not used to crowds at all.
Back at the apartment after LIDL, I was treated to the most glorious sight of this magnificent rainbow just offshore.
A couple of my fellow residents were admiring it too, and just at that moment the heavens opened so I fled inside.
But that’s quite unusual for me, isn’t it? Usually the weather waits for me to leave and then soaks me all the way to the shops.
And talking of going all the way to the shops … “well, one of us is” – ed … I strode out there, strode all around the shop and then strode all the way back without stopping for a rest.
And so I’m not quite sure what’s going on. Maybe it’s with having lost this weight and maybe it’s with starting to go running again, but I’m feeling much more like it these days than I did before.
Up until (a rather late) lunch I cracked on with the dictaphone entries and by the time I stopped for my butty I had done 13 of them. Some of them were admittedly quite short but one or two of them weren’t.
After lunch I had a good play with my new toys and then attacked the web page updates. And by the time I was ready to go for my afternoon walk I’d amended 19 of them.
Mind you, I might have been ready to go for my walk, but I don’t think that the walk was ready to go for me.
There was a huge rainstorm going on out there that had totally enveloped the Ile de Chausey and knowing my luck, it would normally be heading in my general direction to have a go at me too.
But for some unaccountable reason it stayed put over there and treated the Ile de Chausey to a good dreanching.
The wind has died down now. It’s merely gale force.
We still have the heavy seas rolling in off the Atlantic, although nothing like as impressive as the heavy rollers that we saw the day before yesterday.
They were nevertheless still crashing down with some kind of fury on the rocks down here at the foot of the Pointe du Roc. It looks as if this storm is here to stay.
Back at the apartment yet again, and this evening I busied myself making a huge load of hummus. Basically, its 50% chick peas, 25% sesame seed paste, and 25% everything else like chick pea liquid, olive oil, garlic, black pepper, sea salt, and all whizzed up into a purée in the whizzer.
Finally, add a pile of olives and some fenugreek, and whizz it just enough to break up the olives, not to totally liquidise them. And then stick it in little pots one of which went in the fridge for use and the rest went in the freezer.
And it’s wicked.
But beforehand I’d peeled the carrots that I’d bought the other day, diced them and put them on to boil with some ginger, coriander and bay leaves.
When I’d cleaned the whizzer after the hummus, I put the carrots in (taking out the bay leaves of course) with some of the liquid, added some coconut cream and then whizzed that up into a delicious carrot soup.
That’s in the fridge now and that’s going to be lunch for the next day or two, with the leftovers going in the freezer.
Tea was the rest of the curry from the other night and it was delicious too. Even better than the night that I cooked it.
On my evening walk this evening the sky was perfectly clear out to the north, and you could see for miles.
There was a red light out there on the horizon flashing occasionally. It’s probably a marker light on the Channel Islands but I took a photo of it anyway and enlarged it.
You can’t see too much on the photo but cropping it out and enhancing it a little, it’s either a multiple light, I’m picking up the reflection off the sea, or else it’s that the camera was shaking around.
Not shaking as much as the guy who I surprised though. He was muttering about this “lousy sh**ty weather” so I crept up behind him and said “i quite agree”.
I bet that he went home to change his underwear.
It was such a good night that I had a good mess around with the camera taking a few night shots.
Nothing particularly serious – just messing around to have a little fun and games while I was at it. I didn’t have the tripod with me, just the monopod, so the images aren’t anything like as sharp as they might be.
To see what the quality was like, I’d left the ISO setting fairly low and was using a very slow shutter speed.
The view around the other side of the walls looking out across the town was pretty good too so I took a few photos of out there too.
What I’ll have to do is to wait for the wind to die down (if it ever does) and on a clear night like this, come out with the tripod. There were some good images that I took last year when i was practising.
And I managed my run too. I made it to my marker just about, and my lungs were bursting but I’ve got to push on and do somethign about my activity level.
Today I’ve done 110% of my daily activity and in the first week of November I’ve run for 26 minutes. I don’t think that I’d managed that much in total since my illness so things are looking up.
So it’s another late night and I’m listening to (and playing) music. I hadn’t realised just how bad that acoustic was until I started to play with this new one and I’m quite happy. But it got me going, I suppose and learning on a bad machine makes it so much more interesting and exciting to play on something much better.
So on that note, seeing as we are talking about music, I’ll leave you all alone.
I wonder what tomorrow will bring?
thora port de granville harbour manche normandy france
night donville les bains granville manche normandy france
night brehal plage granville manche normandy france
night place d’armes granville manche normandy france
night granville manche normandy france
night granville manche normandy france
night granville manche normandy france
