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Saturday 31st January 2025 – BROCCOLI STALK SOUP …

… is back on the menu … "PERSONSu" – ed … for Sunday lunch.

LeClerc has made a delivery this afternoon, and one of the options on special offer was a head of broccoli at €0:99. Consequently the head has been divided into its individual florets, blanched and is now in the freezer freezing. The stalk is being kept out of harm’s way in the fridge, along with about half a litre of water in which the broccoli was blanched. That will come in handy for making the soup.

While I was at the Dialysis Centre yesterday I reviewed my LeClerc shopping list, added a few things, subtracted a few things and prepared it ready for blast-off.

After I’d finished my notes last night and backed up everything (now that I’m having to take two back-ups) I reviewed my shopping list once again to make sure that I had everything that I needed, adding a few things and subtracting a few things and prepared it ready for blast-off.

Consequently it was another late night last night. But not because I was going over my shopping list. In fact I probably would have found something else to do instead to waste the time.

Once I’d finished everything I didn’t loiter about though, and was in bed quite smartly. If only I could show this kind of motivation when it matters

Once in bed it took a while to go off to sleep but once I was gone, I was gone. I seem to be having a few deep sleeps these days. I wonder if one of the medicine that I’m taking in the evening has this deep-sleep effect. I’ll have t look at the side-effects and if so, I’ll have to go back to taking it in the morning, whichever it is..

When the alarm went off I fell out of bed and wandered off into the bathroom for a good wash and scrub up, and then into the kitchen for the morning’s medication. This is really getting on my nerves right now but there’s not too much that I can do about it.

Back in here I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. No sign of Moonchild, or any of the other Fearsome Foursome for that matter, which is a shame, of course. But anyway I’d been in hospital. I was in a ward. I was lying there. Something that I’d been doing had been giving me some kind of exercise so I was quite tired at one point. A doctor came in to examine me and asked me to sit up. Sitting up was at first extremely difficult. In the end I managed to sit up and he could examine me. But this brought back some memories of a few other people who had been in my ward a little earlier but I can’t remember very much as to who they are and why they came.

Never mind not remembering who came in beforehand, I can’t even remember this dream – not at all. As regular readers of this rubbish will recall, I’m usually in a deep sleep when I’m dictating, but even so, when I’m transcribing, something awakens in the back of my mind about what had gone on. But not in this case. Hospital dreams though are two-a-penny. It is after all where I spend most of my life.

Later on I went back to sleep at some point … "you didn’t even know that you’d been awake" – ed … and there was a story about a nine-year old girl who had been found dead in a hospital in a bath in her own particular ward. They were wondering why this had happened but that was all that I remember of this.

Like I said, hospital dreams are two-a-penny

There was also something about being at a concert somewhere where a friend of mine was playing drums. He had a black pearl basic drum kit with faces of native Americans painted on the skins. The drums were far too loud and were drowning out everything else on stage, but I wondered later whether that might have been due to the position of the monitor mikes that were picking up more of his sound to relay to us in the wings.

That’s not all either, but you wouldn’t thank me for telling you the rest, especially if you are eating your meal right now.

There was a friend of mine who had a drum kit like that, and it is he who figured in this dream. But he wasn’t known for his loudness when he played so I can’t think why he would be drowning everyone else out. As for sitting in the wings, for several years I did help a guy who was a sound engineer at concerts. He had all of his equipment but couldn’t drive, and I had the traditional Ford Transit and could help lift the gear. And, of course, slip a discreet C90 into the tape head on the mixer desk.

And that reminds me – on the music site from where I obtain most of my equipment, they had a lovely budget-priced table-top mixer with USB and Micro SD capability. Get thee behind me, Satan!

It’s Isabelle the Nurse’s last day today for a while. She’s off to the ski slopes tomorrow morning, lucky person. And there’s no room in her suitcase for me. Ahhh well!

After she left, I made breakfast and read my book. The three guys who investigated the Eddisbury Hillfort are now comparing it with a few others, notably Hembury and Cadbury.

Because of similarities in the construction and reconstruction of the three hillforts they are able to give some kind of date for the commencement of the major fortifications. They put it at something round about 400BC, which corresponds with the arrival of the Celtic people. Presumably the forts are built by the Belgae to defend themselves from the Celts, or by the Celts to defend themselves from counter-attack

There are subsequent stages of abandonment, with reoccupation and repair, indicating that there were a few really turbulent moments in the next few centuries. Unfortunately, the absence of any written record makes it difficult to date anything or to give some kind of coherent history.

But there is one interesting fact that comes out of all of this. There are, generally speaking, several types of hillfort. Despite being in a zone where the “Northwestern” design is most common, Eddisbury bears a much more startling resemblance to the hillforts of Southwest England. So what was happening here?

The person who excavated Cadbury in the 1970s was called Leslie Alcock and regular readers of this rubbish will recall that in an earlier version of this rubbish we talked about Leslie Alcock’s book while I was reading it. His work has subsequently been amended by later research and I managed to track down a copy.

At least, I tracked it down to where it was stored. And you’ve guessed it – at Cambridge University Library and they want me to pay £19:00 to read it. I shan’t go into a rant this time though. I shall just sit and seethe quietly. If I had a spieen I would vent it.

Back in here I had a ‘phone call from Paris asking how I was. I told them that they ought to be telling me how I am, seeing as they have the results and I don’t. But the specialist is away on holiday this week so the results might be a few days.

They also told me that I will have an appointment soon.

"Days? Weeks? Months?" I asked

"Certainly not months" I was told. So expect an appointment in July some time.

Today I’ve been editing a rock concert. There’s a reasonably famous concert that was recorded live for an LP back in 1982 but it’s a little-known fact that the group did a dummy-run of the concert a week or so earlier.

What’s even less-well-known than that is that the concert was recorded, which is significant for the fact that one of the tracks that they played lasted almost 50 minutes in the first concert, and cut down dramatically in the second that was recorded onto the LP.

The reason why was that some of the changes within the track were so difficult that they kept on fluffing them at the practice conference, so they decided to leave them out. Unfortunately, this tape that I have has passed through a couple of hands before it came my way and a few people have had a play at editing it to leave out the fluffed parts and make a seamless concert, but they haven’t done it so well and each subsequent editing has made it worse. The bits that were cut out have been lost a long time ago, so I’ve been trying to create a seamless concert with what I have.

It wasn’t easy but I’ve managed it and it doesn’t sound too bad at all compared to how it was when I received it. In fact it sounds quite good and I’m reasonably pleased with it. And if anyone wants the 24 seconds in total that I cut out, I still have them.

Having done that, I began to write the notes. And for a concert that runs for 58:27, I don’t need much in the way of notes. Just 1:33 which at 17 seconds per line, works out at five and a half. Well, it did when I went to school. Heaven alone knows what it is now.

There were the usual interruptions. There was lunch of course, when I realised that I hadn’t sent off my LeClerc order, and then my cleaner who interrupted my lunch. So once the dust had settled I had to attack the LeClerc stuff. I have to eat. So I added a few things, subtracted a few things and off it blasted

There was Christmas Cake break, and there is some Christmas cake being left until Sunday, which is quite handy, I suppose because I can plan something else to make then if necessary. If not, it’s back to the crackers and hummus

But before the Christmas cake there was LeClerc. “After 17:00” was my delivery slot so he turned up at 16:10. "In a rush to get off for the weekend, are we?"

All of that had to be put away and the broccoli blanched. And now, after several weeks of calm, the freezer is full again. Full to the brim.

There’s not much left now to do for the notes of the concert, so I’ll finish that off tomorrow morning ready to dictate tomorrow night. I went for tea instead.

Tonight’s tea was chips and vegan salad with the other half of that strange vegan thing from a couple of weeks ago, followed by apple cake and caramel soya dessert. That should keep the lupus from the porte as they used to say in Ancient Rome.

Yes, with all of this stuff I’ve been reading about Julius Caesar and T Rice Holmes’s showing-off, it’s rekindled the Latin that I haven’t learned or used since school. Whatever next? Puer amat mensam I suppose.

But before I go to bed, seeing as we have been talking about Satan … "well, one of us has" – ed … I was talking to someone who asked me if I knew about the dyslexic devil-worshipper
"Was he the one who didn’t believe that there was a Dog?" I asked, smart @rse that I am
"That’s right. Him" said my friend. "He ended up selling his soul to Santa"

Tuesday 11th August 2020 – I’VE BEEN SPENDING …

… my money yet again.

While you lot admire some photos of people having fun in the water in the Englischer Tur, regular readers of this rubbish will recall that I have been on the lookout for a new acoustic guitar.

My current one was a £25:00 special of no quality or finish or anything, and rather disappointing all round, and so one of my reasons for being in Germany was to visit the large music shops to see whether there was anything that was more suitable.

Thomann’s had been very disappointing so I was hoping for better luk back in Munich. That was the plan for today.

Anyway, this morning I was wide-awake quite early (Hans’s sofa really is comfortable) and attacked the paperwork.

Heidinnguaq, my Greenland Inuit friend appeared on one of my voyages last night and we’d met as she was doing something as a kind of student so I’d recruited her for my travel company as receptionist, called Heidi, we changed her name to Heidi and she was working there. No matter how I tried I couldn’t make our work relationship into a personal relationship unfortunately. On one occasion we were walking towards the canteen to go and have a meal and she said “I’ll see you back at the office at 13:30 (it was now 12:50)”. I said “yes OK, or you can come and have lunch with me”. “Oh no” she said “you can go and have your lunch in here” she said, pointing to one of the dining rooms. “It’s a smoking one and you can make a mess if you like”, something like that to do with smoking and so on. Definitely doing everything she could to keep me at arms’ length, and I can’t say that I blame her. I would keep a good distance away from myself if only I could.

Later on there was a murder case involving some Chinese people. All of the papers and all of the evidence had been stuffed in an old blue minibus. People had broken into this minibus and started to search through the contents. This was clearly not right and I was wondering why they hadn’t sent the boxes to something like Iron Mountain, something like that. I was wandering around back at my office, getting in arrears again at work and doing some stuff that I didn’t really like. Someone was doing a survey on food and found that we only had something like 81% of food that we needed to survive. I was trying to think of ways to cut down on different things and how to make the food go further which involved taking more care about it but every time I mentioned cheese there was some cheese about someone would say “well so-and-so hasn’t had his cheese yet. Do you want some cheese?” Of course that wasn’t my plan at all because I didn’t want to give it away gratuitously like that. I wanted to keep it. There was some pie left over and I thought that I’d put it in a safe in the spare room but when I went to pick it up this guy there said “oh so-and-so hasn’t had any pie yet” and started to ask around who wanted more pie, whereas I was going to put it in a room and serve it up at tea later that night. I was thinking that there will have to be some really drastic economies of food if we were all going to survive. We can’t afford to waste it all and give it away like this.

Hans appeared at some point and made coffee, and we had a good chat.

Later, we headed out across the road to the cafe where they do very reasonable breakfasts. I had a couple of delicious German bread rolls with jam.

Off into town now. Caliburn took us to the main-line railway station in town and to catch a train for Munich.

The train that pulled up to take us was one of the lightweight Class 423 units buolt by a consortium including ABB, Adtranz, Alstom and Bombardier specifically for the suburban networks of many German cities during the early years of this century, the first ones actually entering service in 1998.

Clean, tidy, comfortable and quiet, it whizzed us into the city and at the rather appropriately-named Moosach station we alighted and took the Metro down to the Olympic Park. At the big shopping complex near there is A place called Just Music, one of the largest music shops in Germany.

Here, they did EXACTLY what Thomann’s should have done the other week. A salesman listened to what I was telling him about my requirements, sorted out half a dozen guitars, put them in a little room with me, and then left me to it.

After about half an hour I’d whittled the choice down to two and following a lengthy discussion with Hans and the salesman I finally made my choice. So I paid up and left the guitar there for later collection.

We then headed off back to the underground for a train (and a bus) back to the city centre.

We were planning for a mega-ramble around Munich today to see some of the sights and we started today at the Karlsplatz.

Mind you, it’s not everyone who knows it as the Karlsplatz, not even on some occasions the announces on the Underground system. Charles Theodore, the Elector of Bavaria after whom it was named was not very popular with the locals and the story goes that when he died in 1799, the locals held a party that went on for several days.

The locals call it the Stachus, which apparently was the name of a bar that once stood on ths site.

In winter, by the way, the fountain is switched off and it becomes a skating rink.

Probably the most impressive building in the Square and one of the most impressive throughout the city is the Karlstor, or Charles’s Gate.

It goes without saying that being an important city in medieval times, there were fortifications here that included a city wall – or maybe I should say “walls” because like most cities back in those days, rapid growth led to several concentric rings of walls to protect the expanding town.

The Karlstor, originally known as the Neuhauser Tor, is one of the very few surviving structures from the sesond generation of city walls erected in the latter part of the 13th Century and was certainly in existence in 1302.

But what we see today isn’t the original. The original was used as a munitions store and in 1857 the munitions exploded, destroying the gate. In the 1860s the gate was built and it’s quite different now from how it used to be.

We walked on into town down the Neuhauserstrasse, stopping for a cold drink on a terrace where we could admire the Burgersaalkirche on the corner of the Kapellenstrasse.

To give it its full name, which is a bit of a mouthful, it’s the Bürgersaalkirche Marianische Männerkongregation Mariä Verkündigung am Bürgersaal, or “Citizens’ Hall Church of the Men’s Congregation of the Annunciation of Mary at the Citizens’ Hall. It’s a Catholic Church then, which is quite evident as Southern Germany and Bavaria in particular is a Catholic region.

It seems to have been at first a Civic Hall when it was built round about 1710 and became a church in 1778. Within it is the grave of Father Rupert Mayer, a Jesuit priest who was a firm and outspoken opponent of the Nazi regime but was spared execution by virtue of his popularity and also by the fact that he had won the iron Cross for bravery as a regimental chaplain in World War I during which he lost a leg while administering the last rites to soldiers in the Front Line in December 1916.

A little earlier we were at the karlstor at the west end of the city. We have now walked all the way through the centre and are now at the Isartor, the gate near the River Isar.

When the second circle of city walls was built between 1285 and 1337, this gate was added to control entrance to the city. The tower was built first and the two flanking towers later when the moat was created.

Unlike the Karlstor, the Isartor is pretty much as it would have been when completed. It is said that the restoration taken place in the 1830s followed the original plans, as were the repairs after the end of World War II during which it was heavily damaged.

Hans had saved the best until last. It took quite a lot of finding but in the end Hans led me to the Asamkirche.

For this we have to turn the clock back once more to our favourite period of Munich Architecture and head for the years 1733-1746 and the Baroque period.

A couple of brothers, a sculptor named Egim Asam and his painter brother Cosmas wanted their own private church and so they bought four houses in the Sendlingerstrasse. Having done that, they set to work to create a veritable masterpiece to showcase their individual talents.

Although it’s known by the locals as the Asam Church, Its official title is the Church of St Johann Nepumuk.

Because it’s a private church, they didn’t have to conform to any established design and so could pretty much as they pleased. And for that it has some delightful little quirks. You’ll notice (or maybe you won’t) that the altar in the church is to the west, not to the east and Jerusalem which is traditional.

It’s said (and I have to say that I didn’t check) that the altar was so positioned that Egim could see it through the window of his house.

Another little quirk is that it’s symbolically on three levels.

The lower third is for the congegation and is dark and sombre to represent the suffering of the world. The second section is in blue and white and is reserved for the Royal Family of Bavaria and whoever might be the Holy Roman Emperor.

The third part, right up in the roof with all of the wonderful illuminated paintings is reserved specifically for God. The fresco up there is called “the Life of Saint Nepomuk” and is said to be an example of the apogee of the talent of Cosmas Asam.

The story goes that despite it being a private church and built to please the Brothers Asam rather than the church authorities, the neighbours were not very co-operative and insisted that it become a public place of worship and it’s for that reason that we are allowed in today.

And we are lucky to see it too because although damaged during the blitz of Munich in 1944, it survived without suffering very serious damage. Imagine a group of modern-day artists and sculptors trying to reproduce all of this?

In conclusion, I have seen some very opulent churches in my time – many that hardly correspond to the idea of “give all thou hast to the poor”, but this one outdoes them all

While we’d ben on our walk to find the Asam Kirche, we’d seen and interesting building away in the distance so we went to see what it was.

It turns out that it’s the Munich City Museum, in the Sankt Jakobs Platz. Ordinarily we would have gone for a wander around inside but with it being so hot, we’d sat for 15 minutes or so by the fountain just outside to cool down, and by the time we realised what time it was, we had to clear off.

Also in the square was a hideous concrete Brutalist structure that I didn’t photograph, considering that it was of no architectural merit whatever. I found out later that it was the Bavarian Jewish Museum.

Anyway we hurried across town to the Munchener Freiheit where we had arranged to meet Ulli on the way and stopping for a drink and a chat. I like Ulli.

Having done the socialising bit (after all the time that it took to find Ulli too) Hans and I threaded our way through the back streets to the English garden to see the swimmer and the surfers (and I am not making this up, as you have already seen).

We’re back in the days of the unpopular Elector Charles Theodore again. In an attempt to win back some popularity amongst the people after his failed attempt to sell them and their lands to the Emperor of Austria, he decided upon a series of civic imrorvements.

In 1784 he engaged the services of Sir Benjamin Thompson, a Loyalist American who had fled after the American Revolution, to undertake a modernisation of his army, and one of Thompson’s suggestions was a garden.

Although one of the aims was to make a public open space, its real purpose was to train the military in agricultural practices so that they could be loaned out to perform civilian work during times when the Army wasn’t fighting

Gradually, the military importance faded and the civilian leisure use of the park increased and under the direction of Friedrich Ludwig von Sckell who assumed responsibility of the Gardens in 1804, the Gardens adopted their current form

This building here is the Monopteros, built on top of an artificial hill that was created using leftover rubble from the renovations of the Royal Palace. There had been a wooden temple nearby but this had weathered away and so in 1836 they erected the hill and this stone temple of 10 columns, designed by Leo von Klenze.

The dome is actually made of copper, although you wouldn’t think so from here.

It’s not just the mound that’s artificial in the park. The river that runs through here and the waterfall are too.

The river is called the Eisbach, which means “Ice Stream and runs for about 2 kilometres through the Gardens, and the waterfall was created here in 1815. It’s an ideal spot to come and soak up the shade on a stifling hot day and to admire many of the wonderful sights that nature can create.

Hans and I remained here for quite a while resting out of the sun and contemplating the scenery.

The Eisbach lives up to its name because it really is cold. I’m told that the temperature doesn’t exceed 15°C although of course I have no intention of finding out for myself.

Officially, swimming isn’t allowed but as the river is about the fastest that I’ve ever witnessed and the police would stand no chance whatever of catching the people who are flouting the law. They might just fish out a few of the bodies because there have been a number off atalities in there, people succumbing to the cold or to the speed of the river.

It’s not for me, of course. If the water isn’t at 37°C I’m not interested at all in it.

So we went off to watch the surfers, who you saw earlier.

Surfing first started here in the early 1970s, much to the dismay of the local authorities who tried to stop it. However, various forms of action by interested parties succeeded in reversing the Council’s decision and in 2010 it was afficially permitted and since then, surfers have enhanced the waves by using artificial devices.

We watched them for a while and noticed that they didn’t seem particularly proficient in what they were doing. I suppose that you can’t expect too much in an inland site like this.

Kayakers sometimes have a go at the waves too although they are not made welcome by the surfers and there have been confrontations between the two groups.

Later on, we went back to the music shop to pick up the guitar, and our walk concluded with a trip to the Munchener Freiheit and the Indian café there where I had another bowl of their delicious curry. And then it was time to come home. And hardly surprising – I’d walked 14kms today in the heat.

The guitar is beautiful. It’s an Ibanez softwood acoustic with a beautiful tone and sound, a nice deep bass and a good low action. I’m really pleased with this one. We had a play on it for an hour or so and then one of Hans’s friends phoned us up. Our evening concluded with a session in the beer garden.

Tonight is another night on the really comfortable sofa. And I’m going to make the most of it because there are apparently some Celtic remains in the vicinity that have recently been discovered. Tomorrow’s plan includes a little visit of the site to see what we can see.

And with my interest in that kind of thing, it should be good. My career has been in ruins for quite some considerable time.

Tuesday 4th August 2020 – STRAWBERRY MOOSE …

… has Czeched in to his latest accommodation.

It’s not the first tile that Strawberry Moose and Caliburn have visited the Czech Republic. We were here IN MAY 2015 when we took the short cut from East Germany and Colditz Castle to Munich.

This time, we’re going to spend a few days exploring the town of Karlovy Vary, or Carlsbad as it was called in its days as a city of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

We’re installed in our hotel already but we haven’t had a chance to visit the town yet because after the horrible night that I had had last night, I crashed out as soon as I sat down on my bed.

But returning to the beginning, having crashed out earlier yesterday evening, I awoke at about 23:00 and then I couldn’t go back to sleep again for hours. I remember seeing 02:30 come round, and probably a few other times as well.

Nevertheless, I was up at something reasonable, like 06:30, feeling like death again.

There was a pile of paperwork to do, such as transcribe the notes off the dictaphone

There was something going on like an exhibition or a fete or something. I was wandering around somewhere and i’d come across some old shoes of children and I’d stacked them somewhere to hide while I attended this fete. On the way back it was dark and I had awful difficulty finding them. In the end I found them and walked on home. It was a really steep slope and I walked up with someone else. A third person said something like “this is the right place to be to give yourself an alibi. They hadn’t known that I had only just got there. I said “no” and something about how I know people here so I could get down the front. I walked up this really steep slope with this woman. In the dark I had to grope around and eventually found the pile of shoes that I’d hidden. I walked on through this village and this guy accosted me and said “where are your shoes? Why haven’t you your shoes on?” I though to myself “God, is that the only thing he’s noticed?” I felt like giving him a right mouthful then I suddenly realised that I’d dropped some of this pile of shoes so I had to go back and get them. I walked back and retraced my steps and eventually found them. Then I put on some trousers and started to walk back thinking that I’d put on my trousers but I’m not putting on my shoes just for him. If he asks anything I’ll show him these shoes that I have in my hand that I’d now found all of. I also had a box and it was a matching mother and daughter swimsuit that I was going to give to someone. When I got to where I was supposed to be going with all these things they looked at this box and said “God I hope that they can get that in their luggage”. I was thinking that they could always undo the box and take the things out, can’t they?

Next task was to download the files off the dashcam. For some unknown reason the data cable wouldn’t work and I had to dismantle the machine to take out the SD card and insert it in the laptop. It took so long that I ended up with the hotel cleaner banging on the door.

Eventually I found myself back on the road again, heading north.

My first port of call was at Thomann’s at Burgebrach. As regular readers of this rubbish will recall, my acoustic guitar is a cheap and nasty £25:00 cheap thing and after trying to play it at home more regularly than ever I used to, I’ve decided that I want a new, decent one.

Thomann’s is usually said to be the place to go but actually it was something of a disappointment. They didn’t have available what I wanted and the labelling and pricing system of the guitars on display is such that you need to be a contortionist with a magnifying glass to read the prices.

Furthermore, the stock isn’t labelled to tell you what kind of guitar it is.

As for the staff, they seem to be another lot of minimum-wage shelf fillers rather than assistants and have no idea how to engage with the customers. No-one seemed to be interested in talking to me and when I finally grabbed hold of a sales person, he didn’t seem in the least bit interested in my story.

In the end, having driven all the way there, I drove away empty handed, full of disappointment.

At Burgebrach I’m only about 180 kms or so from the Czech border. At the moment the borders are still open but they won’t be for long, so Strawberry and I went for a drive. It’s been five years since we’ve been there.

And despite the short distance, it took an age to get there. The roads are narrow, steep and winding and full of lorries and tractors trying to negotiate them. At one stage we passed a speed indicator that showed that we were travelling at all of 12 kph.

When we arrived at the border we found it unmanned so we just drove straight through. Unfortunately there was nowhere to stop to take a photo of the border sign. We had to drive on to the first village before we could stop.

The village where I stopped was called Kyjov.

It’s not to be confused with the town of the same name that’s to be found in the centre of the country. This is a small village about 6 or 7 kilometres from the frontier with Germany, not too far from Planá in the region that used to be the Sudetenland.

The contrast between the rich West and the poor East is very apparent as soon as we cross over. It brings back all kinds of memories of times past when I used to come over what was the Iron Curtain 30 and 40 years ago. The modernisation of Eastern Europe is a very slow process.

The fuel in Caliburn started to run low so I took a deviation into the town of Marienbad, nowadays called Mariánské Lázne, and fuelled up there, seeing as fuel was cheaper here than in the West.

From Marienbad I pushed on to the north-east and ended up in the town of Becov nad Teplou.

This was a very interesting place to stop, and for several reasons too, one of which was this gorgeous Tatra lorry. Eastern European vehicles have always held a fascination for me but unfortunately these days it’s very rare to see one running around. Everyone seems to prefer Western vehicles.

Eastern vehicles were heavy, primitive and rather difficult to drive but they were built to last for ever and easy to maintain. There would still be swarms of them on the road today had they not become unfashionable after the fall of the Iron Curtain.

it wasn’t just the Tatra lorry that caused me to stop here at Becov nad Teplou. This magnificent building is enough to stop anyone in their tracks.

This is the Hotel Central and looking at it, it’s very hard to believe that at one time it was a luxury hotel. It was built for someone called Georg Rohm in 1876 and sold to a Maria Schmidt in 1892. She sold it on to someone called Franz Bachmann in 1901.

At the end of World War II Bachmann and his family, being of German origin, were expelled from Czechoslovakia and it was used as barracks by Red Army soldiers. After they left it was used as a barracks for miners and they stayed here until the mid-50s.

After being empty for a while it was restored by volunteers and became a Post Office and cafe but the economic situation in the country after the end of Communism meant that there was no money to maintain the buiding and it deteriorated rapidly until it reached the state in which it currently is.

And that’s a tragedy because it’s a beautiful Art Nouveau building with some wonderful features.

Over the road from the hotel is the local railway station. It’s on the line between Karlovy Vary and Mariánské Lázne (the old Marienbad) and I was lucky to find a pile of railway equipment hanging around there.

Over on the far side of the station were these two diesel multiple units with notices that they will be travelling to Mariánské Lázne.

Not knowing all that much about Czech trains, I reckon that these are two CSD class M 152.0 units coupled together. And if so, although they don’t look like it, these are quite elderly, having been built between 1976 and 1982 by Vagonka Studénka, a company which these days is part of Skoda.

They have undergone two series of modernisations, the latest being 2018, so it looks as if Czech railways is planning to have another 15 years of use at least out of these.

And this is another one of the CSD Class M 152.0 multiple units, all on its own this time.

This one is in the livery of Czech Railways rather than in the livery of a private operator and carries the logo “Regio Mouse” which is a marketing name given to these little trains running on the small local lines of the Czech Republic.

It’s a shame that I wasn’t able to go over and look inside them to see the interior. However I have seen a photograph of the inside of an unmodernised unit and they are quite primitive and basic, very 1970s in fact. I wouldn’t fancy the idea of going on a long-distance journey on one of these. They remind me of Crosville buses from the 1960s.

It made me wonder what the interior of a modernised unit would be like.

This multiple unit is a much more modern unit.

It’s a Siemens Dueweg Regio Sprinter of the type that was built in Germany between 1995 and 1998. They are quite lightweight and were designed to replace trams and city buses on longer tram routes, and are a great favourite in Europe to run on reopened railway lines.

And it’s for that reason that the Czech Railways have bought some, and called them the AŽD 654 . A large number of railway routes were closed to passengers due to the financial crisis of the early 1990s and a few of them have been subsequently reopened, some being worked by these train sets.

Back in Caliburn I set off from here into the mountains for my destination, Karlovy Vary. A town better known to travellers of 130 years ago as Carlsbad, it was the place to be back in those days, the principal spa town of the Austro-Hungarian Empire where all of the rich and famous “came to take the waters”.

My hotel is a few miles outside the town in the small town of Brezova.

And don’t be fooled that it’s only shown in the advertisements as a short distance away from Karlovy Vary. That distance is measured in a straight line. But in actual fact to reach Karlovy Vary from here you have to go in a tortuous winding direction following the path that the River Tepla has carved through the mountains.

And here’s my hotel – the Hotel St Michael here in Brezova.

It’s quite a beautiful hotel but it’s seen better days, that’s for sure. It would have been splendid back in the days of glory of the Austro-Hungarian Empire but like everywhere else, it’s rather tired these days, just like me in fact.

After my rather busy day I’m quite exhausted and tired. I’ve smuggled my food and slow cooker into the hotel and made myself some tea, and then crashed out for a while. Now that I’m awake, I’m off to bed for a really good sleep, I hope. Tomorrow morning I shall go for an explore of Karlovy Vary.

Thursday 16th April 2020 – I COULDN’T KEEP IT UP …

… this morning, which id something of a shame.

Having done so well this last couple of days, I couldn’t beat the third alarm today. I missed it by about 10 minutes.

Mind you, I didn’t have the early night that I was hoping for last night. I was listening to music again and so enjoying myself, I split up a Louis de Funes soundtrack to extract some more soundbites for my radio shows.

Definitely my favourite French comedian, Louis de Funes, and he deserves to be my co-star on the radio.

So where did I get to during the night, After the medication I could go along and find out.

I was going some kind of post-dated ad for the end of the month – the old men wanted it for some project or other. I’d get them to sign in and anyone who sends me any connections will have a reward because of it. But I was with Nerina for some part of the time.
Later on, a group of us was going skiing. We were all sitting around waiting for the bus to come and pick us up. I had all of the stuff to hand out to everyone for them to take their possessions. But some of the stuff, some of the people couldn’t carry. My brother was lucky – he just had a suitcase there and a guitar. I said “there’s no guy ropes or anything with this”. he said “yes that’s fine, not a problem. It turned out that all the stuff like that was in my suitcase and I’d got tons and tons of stuff like this. Mine was just really really heavy. There was someone who might have been Nerina but I’ve no idea who it was who didn’t have very much either, and someone else who might have been one of my sisters who didn’t have plenty. We were all there with all of these things and there was tons of it all told. I was wondering how on earth we would manage to get all of this onto a bus or a train, however we were going. Each person was responsible for his own but that’s not going to be right with all of the stuff we have. It’s just escalating all of the time out of hand like this
Later still I was just about to go off on a trip with Stuart Graham, the Honda motorcycling racing specialist and tuning guy who lived near Nantwich but just as I was getting ready to go off the alarm rang and put an end to that.

There was much more than this going on too but as you are probably eating a meal right now, I’ll spare you all the gory details.

After breakfast it was digitalising the cassette collection time. Another four albums have bitten the dust this morning but, once again, they are four albums that I won’t beusing in the radio projects, for a variety of reasons.

And it made me realise that there are a pile of albums that I no longer have and I don’t understand that at all. And bearing in mind what they are, I have an idea where they might be. But I’ll never have them back now. Ahhh well!

But the splitting was reasonably comfortable and reasonably rapid, but somehow I’ve ended up with two *.mkv files, which is what I’ve been trying to avoid.

A shower and general clean-up was next. And I weighed myself too. And after all of this running and so forth I’ve … errr … GAINED 800 grammes. It looks as if my scales are as reliable as the blood machine in Castle Anthrax.

A shooping trip to LIDL was called for next.

And I was right about something else too. Starting on Tuesday earlier this week I’d been hearing strange noises coming from the port and I’d been thinking to myself that it sounds as if they have restarted work on the pontoons.

And that certainly seems to be the case. The big crane on the floating pontoon has one of the large supporting pillars in its evil clutches over there.

And when I came back from the shops later on, they were hard at work on the pontoon.

You can see the piledriver up there, supported from the big crane, pounding away at the pontoon support and driving it firmly into the bed of the harbour.

And just think how much easier it would have been to have done this work two years or so ago when the harbour was drained and they were reinstalling the new harbour gates. What an effort they would have avoided had they done it then.

But in the meantime, my attention was distracted by the excitement going on down at the bottom end of the harbour.

You can see Marité there of course, but you’ll also see a pile of large bags of building material. That would seem to indicate that either Thora or Normandy Trader is on her way to port.

We haven’t seen either of them for a few days, but that’s not to say that they haven’t been here. With us in detention à domicile like this and only being allowed out briefly, and with the rapid turnover that the ships seem to be enjoying these days, it’s not impossible that I’ve missed them.

Onwards towards LIDL and in the rue Couraye I came across something interesting.

There have been reports from all over the world about the disinfecting of the streets that receive heavy use. Here in Granville most of the banks and important local shops are situated in the rue Couraye and here they are out spraying the street.

It’s quite possible that the speech by the President the other day has galvanised them into action.

There’s also a story that the town council has ordered 20,000 masks from a local clothing manufacturer to distribute to the population. This ending of the detention à domicile on 11th May might actually be a possibility.

At LIDL tomatoes were in very short supply and those that they had were expensive. In fact I spent a lot of money there, but much of this was on new cooking supplies. They had some new tart cases and stuff like that today.

On the way back, I discovered that La Mie Caline had reopened, so I bought a dejeunette. Things really are slowly returning to normal, bit by bit.

There was an article in the local paper this morning that the amount of fish products landed here during the month of march had fallen by 30% or so.

That’s certainly some kind of clear evidence that fishing is continuing despite the crisis, albeit in reduced numbers. And as I walked up the hill in the rue des Juifs there was a delightful nautical danse macabre in the harbour.

One fishing boat was on its way in and another was on its way out, and they were having a nice little waltz around each other.

After lunch I started on the remains of the two radio projects that I hadn’t finished. I’d chosen the final tracks and edited them last night so it was just a case of writing the text, dictating it, editing it, merging it into place with the final track and then editing it all down to one hour for each project.

That took me up to about 16:15 to do them both, and I could have done it quicker too except that I … errr … relaxed for a while.

And then, until 18:00 I had some “me time”. I deserve some. And one of the things that I did was to order a new computer hi-fi system.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that the one here has its problems and seeing as I spend so much time these days listening to and editing music and so on here, I ought to have some decent stuff.

And so I ended up in discussion with a musical equipment wholesaler and we’ve worked out a package. There won’t be much change out of €300 for what I’ve ordered, but I’ve had this hi-fi here for at least 18 years and it’s due for a change.

After the hour or so on the guitars, I made tea. Now that I had bought an aubergine I made myself an aubergine and kidney bean whatsit – and forgot to use the mushrooms that were left. I had some of that for tea and there are four helpings left for the freezer. I need to build up the supplies again.

The apple pie was delicious too, with the last of the coconut soya cream. But there’s that lovely banana sorbet for the next couple of days to take my mind off things.

Later on I went out for my evening activity.

There was a really beautiful red sky in the distance and by the time that i’d run up to the top of the hill (and that had me in agony) it was lookign even better, with the sun just peeking through the sky over the Ile de Chausey

It looked absolutely wonderful with the cloud just there like that, in exactly the right place.

And so I carried on with my perambulations while I recovered my breath.

And regular readers of this rubbish will recall that we have recently been discussing fishing activity deep in the Baie de Mont St Michel. There’s another fishing boat out there this evening – not the one to the left of the photo which seems to be heading into port, but the one to the right.

That one is farther out, deeper into the bay and has its workign lights switched on, so it would seem to be actively working out there.

But by the time that I’d gone round to the other side of the Pointe du Roc, the sun had sunk below the horizon.

And here I’m presented with one of the most extraordinary sights that I’ve ever seen, and I’m glad that I had the big NIKON D500 with me to photograph it. The way that the sun is reflecting on the cloud above it behind the Ile de Chausey is just like the light of a theatrical backdrop and I’ve never ever seen this effect in real life.

It was totally spell-binding.

And I wasn’t the only one out here tonight enjoying the sunset either.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that I’ve mentioned on previous occasions that we are seeing more and more people flouting the regulations about staying in and so on. We had a fair crowd out in the streets today, and here’s someone who has passed the security barrier to go down to the little cove there to watch the sunset.

Still, I suppose that the sight was well worth it.

With my usual two stops for a breather, I ran all the way home from here.

But in one of the breaks I had a little diversion to look at what they had been doing in the harbour today. And they have indeed stuck another pontoon support pillar into the ground.

Not all the way down, so presumably they’ll be back to finish it tomorrow and to install the rest. Obviously the local council isn’t worried too much about this virus.

So I’m off to bed, later than I intended. Tomorrow, with no radio stuff to deal with for the first time since I don’t know when, I can make a start of a few of the arrears that have been building up.

And aren’t I looking forward to that?

Saturday 4th April 2020 – ANOTHER DAY …

… when I’ve been nothing like as productive as I ought to be.

And that’s a shame because it all started so well too. I comfortably beat the third alarm to my feet and after the medication I attacked the dictaphone.

Once again, the excesses of the couple of nights just recently seem to have been curbed. But while the quality seems to have been cut down, it’s done nothing the stem the emotion.

Last night I was in hospital and that I was going to have an operation. It was an appendicitis operation but it was on my throat of all places. Af course these were strange times with all kinds of different people having all kinds of different things wrong with them because of this virus and I couldn’t get into the hospital at all, but in the end they let me in. I’d been on board a ship which may or may not have been The Good Ship Ve … errr … Ocean Endeavour going round the Far North of Scotland and they had given me some gas anaesthetic. They clamped it over my nose and mouth and started to feed me the anaesthetic and I wasn’t going under. I was just sitting there looking at them, that kind of thing. They got a teddy bear out and started to play with this teddy bear to try to distract me but that didn’t work. In the end they simply turned up the gas until the gas was full on. Eventually I managed to pass out. Even though I was unconscious I could hear them moving all the knives, equipment and everything around. I was absolutely dreading what was going to happen next and this was another occasion where I actually awoke myself in order to avoid it.

There have been one or two like that just recently where the situation has been such that I’ve been obliged to awaken myself to avoid it. I’ve often said … “on many occasions” – ed … that the whole idea of hospîtals and surgery and all of that kind of thing is something that I can’t stomach.

What I’ve been going through this last four years or so, with hospitals, operations, tubes and pipes and all that kind of thing is my worst nightmare and there are medical actions that have been proposed to me that I’ve turned down flat because I couldn’t even stand the thought of them, not the action.

It’s the law in France that any surgical intervention, no matter what, has to be explained in precise detail to the victim and his or her consent obtained. When they wanted to do stuff to me I flatly refused to hear what they wanted to tell me and there was something of a stand-off.

In the end they had to prepare a document to the effect that I would give my consent to the operation but I didn’t want to hear anything about it. They weren’t sure just how that would stand up in Court if it came to that, but that’s all that they were getting from me.

After breakfast I made a start on the digitalising of my album collection. No major issues today except that one of them took a good while to deal with. And Rosemary rang me up in the middle of it all for a good chat.

As a result of all of this, I was late going for my shower and even later going out to the shops. No queue when I arrived (there was when I left) and I was able to buy most things that I needed.

No small tins of kidney beans and still no pizza bases. No pizza flour either, so I bought some ordinary flour and I’m going to have a go, once I’ve used the last base in my stock this weekend, to make a pizza base. I have yeast, salt and oil and I can’t think what else I might need.

But years ago, I used to buy flat round bread in Belgium, slice it horizontally rather than vertically, and use that as a pizza base. There’s always a way, and I seem to remember that the bread base worked quite well.

There was ice cream that needed to be bought but I baulked at the price that LeClerc wanted for the Alpro stuff. However, they had a tub left of that delicious banana sorbet.

Back here, Laurent had returned to me his comments on our project so after a little bit here and there I could send it off for consideration. We then ended up in a discussion about the audio diary that we are keeping.

In between all of this, I was speaking to someone on the internet. As regular readers of this rubbish will recall, the hi-fi that’s connected to the computer is in the process of giving up the ghost. 18 or so years, 6 of which were being stored in a damp shed, hasn’t done it any favours.

I’m not going to waste my money on any cheap stuff, seeing as how much time I spend here and the kind of work that I do, so I’ve been talking to a specialist place in Germany about what I need to have some really decent desktop quality.

Eventually I was able to turn my attention to my own radio projects, but not as much as I could because I ended up … errr … relaxing for a while. And a proper, deep relax it was too and that was quite depressing.

As a result I ended up not even finishing one, never mind both of them. So although it’s against my principles, I’ll have to work tomorrow – my day off.

After the session on the guitar, I made myself some tea. Saturday night so it’s usually a meal out of a tin, but the way things are, I’m not doing anything with my tins right now.

But I have plenty of vegan burgers which are quick to cook and anyway, I believe that some vegan burger mix is heading my way in the post sometime. So pasta, veg and tomato sauce with a vegan burger it was too.

The last of the apple pie and the last of the Alpro soya ice cream. Tomorrow, it’s the day that I cook a dessert and I haven’t had rice pudding for a good while, so I reckon that we’ll have a rice pudding for the next few days.

That was the cue for me to go off for my evening walk.

It was still light out there, but the sun was quite low in the sky. I ended up with this beautiful image across the day of the sun shining directly into the windows of this building on the hilltop across the bay at the back of town.

It would have been a beautiful sunset tonight, but we had a good one last night and I don’t want to clutter things up with too much of the same photograph.

It’s hard enough as it is for me to find things of interest in the time that I’m allowed out. I mean – we haven’t had a “pathetic parking” photo for weeks.

But returning to the sunset, there were all kinds of people out there enjoying it. Almost every secluded nook and cranny had a couple of people in it, keeping out of the way of their neighbours and, I imagine, out of the way of any surveillance.

What a state in which we are living. We are told that it is for our own good, which is probably correct right now, but it’s also correct to say that it’s usually been a war or a violent revolution that has been required to take back control from a fascist once he’s laid his hands on it.

The easiest way to control a population is to frighten it. It was a principle of the Nazis expounded by Goering. At the moment, the people don’t need any more frightening in order to let themselves be controlled, but it’s going to be interesting to see what steps the Governments will be taking in the future to control the population in this measure.

How many more virus scares will we have once this one is out of the way?

Talking of scaring people, anyone who had the wind put up them by the Hitchcock film THE BIRDS won’t have enjoyed what’s been happening in the old walled town just now.

Whatever is going on I really don’t know, but the seagulls are becoming a lot less nervous of people and are clamouring around so much more. In fact there was quite a flock of them this evening circling around above the old town this evening.

Whoever was out there walking this evening, I hope that he was wearing a hat. These gulls have an accuracy that would put Bomber Command to shame

And keeping up with the routine, I managed all four runs tonight and, much to my surpise, they weren’t difficult. In fact, I overran the first by about 30 metres and had it not been uphill I could have carried on..

And I’m glad that I’m doing it because of that 800 grammes that I had gained, I’d lost 400 since Thursday.

And that reminds me of the time That Nerina told me that during a certain two-week period she had lost 2kgs.
“Keep it up, darling” I urged. “At this rate, by Christmas you’ll be gone completely”.

On that point, I’ll clear off. It’s Sunday and I can have a lie-in. But I’ll have to work, I suppose. These things don’t get done themselves, do they?

Friday 29th November 2019 – IT’S A LIE!

I don’t care what Percy Penguin has to say about it. I do NOT snore in my sleep. Not that she would ever know because whenever we were together late at night, sleep was not the subject that was ever on my mind.

But how do I know that I don’t snore? The answer is that this morning I spent four hours listening to myself sleeping.

Well, okay. Not exactly listening, but examining a voice file with the aid of a graphic sound analyser program, and I could see three minutes of dictation, a thump when I fell asleep in mid-dictate, and then four hours of silence apart from the odd turning-over in my sleep and the odd banging of the headboard.

Yes, I’ve finally reached the marathon four-hour dictaphone *.mp3 file and it is indeed, just as I suspected, a mistake.

We almost had a mistake this morning too. I was positive that I had dictated the details of a nocturnal ramble into the dictaphone, but something made me check, even though it was the middle of the night, and I found that I hadn’t. Dreaming that I was dreaming again.

But luckily I could remember a lot of it and so I dictated it on the spot. And I’m really curious now to know what else I have been missing, that I dreamt that I had dictated.

But anyway, last night we were in the High Arctic last night on a ship that might or might not have been The Good Ship Ve … errr … Ocean Endeavour. We were doing some kind of research project and our group was involved in doing some kind of research project in respect of birds. So we were being pretty serious about this and some of us were out on the pontoon and they were looking at all these birds like crows and raven in the water with their beaks open and studying them. It was obvious that there were a few people not intent on doing anything and were just lounging around. of course we were pretty serious and after I had been onto the pontoon to see what was going on I had to get back on board the ship and there were a load of people queueing trying to get on so I mimed as if I was whipping them on which made everyone laugh, those who were lounging around. Eventually I got back on board and had to start to work, and remembered saying “come on, let the dog see the rabbit” when I was trying to get on board the ship. And what I remember was that there were loads of weeds around floating in the water , it was pretty close to shore. Someone was counting the animals and one of our group said that she had seen a moose or something. And she had also seen a Clayton diesel locomotive. I asked “where did you see that?” so she said that it was just after we had left Hvalsey to head down here. I thought that I can’t remember seeing this, or even hearing about it. But I decided that I would leave it to stand anyway

So whatever that was all about, I really don’t know.

The alarm went off at 06:00 as usual and this morning I definitely heard the second alarm, no mistake. But instead of leaping out of bed I somehow managed to go back to sleep yet again and the third alarm awoke me.

Today though, I was out of bed rather smartish and had an early medication and breakfast. And then I set down to work on the dictaphone notes as I had been promising myself.

By the time that I stopped for lunch, I was down to just 47 left. That’s been some quite dramatic progress today.

However, the morning was not without its interruptions. Three more parcels of this mega-order that I mentioned the other week turned up today.

Two of them I have yet to unpack, but the third one I did.

When I was In Montreal in September I was playing about on a five-string bass guitar and that pleased me greatly. A few weeks later, I was having another play about, only with a fretless bass. And that pleased me just as greatly.

So when I was browsing around on the internet a few weeks back I came across a vendor who was selling a new but shop-soiled (I reckon that it’s a product return) 5-string fretless bass for a price that can only be described as “democratic”.

It’s not very often that I treat myself to extravagant expenditure, but I did the other day and I don’t regret it for a moment.

Not a patch on the Gibson EB3 of course. That will always be a special machine, but this one will do nicely as a supplement.

On that note, seeing as we are talking about music, I headed for town and my dejeunette for lunch. Down to the fish processing plant and across the path on top of the harbour gates.

Nothing much going on in there at all, but one thing that for all the time that I’ve been going in and out of the harbour, I have never noticed this cock before.

That’s not like me at all, is it?

On the way back I stormed up the hill like there was no tomorrow. I don’t understand that at all. Fighting fit for lunch, I was.

And after lunch, I made a start on the data files for my projects. That’s taking me longer than I thought die to having to redesign it a couple of times and also … ahem … editing the wrong base file. I wondered why all of these amendments that I was trying to make didn’t work.

As usual, I stopped round about 15:45 to go for my afternoon walk around the headland.

The weather was astonishing though out there. There were a few clouds about but the sky was so clear that you could see for miles.

Over there that is the town of Paimpol I reckon, with the Phare de Paon and the Chapelle St Michel clearly visible. And all of that is about 80kms away, I reckon, from here.

The camera and the lens did well to pick up all of that.

Much closer to home is the town of Plenevon. Over there to the far right near where that hill thing is.

That’s a mere 60 or so kms from there I’m standing, and you wouldn’t think so either but it’s amazing what a little “crop, enlarge and sharpen” can do.

The camera even managed to pick up a little fishing boat half-way across the water.

Now this is much more like it.

That’s the Pointe de Grouin just there and the Ile des Landes. Behind it is the entrance to the port of St Malo and on several occasions we’ve seen Pont Aven, the big Brittany Ferries ship, come sailing out of there.

It’s a shame that she’s not there right now though because it would have made a spectacular photo. You’ll have to make do with half a dozen small fih=shing boats instead.

We’ve had photos innumerable of Cancale across the bay, night as well as day. That’s about 25 kms away from me.

But what makes this one so special is that we’re having another one of those “sunlight streaming through a gap in the clouds” moments as we have done on a regular basis just recently.

It really is as good as floodlighting if you ask me, and probably better than some recent examples that we have seen.

It wasn’t just Cancale that was receiving the benefit of the sunlight either.

Down the coast at Jullouville about 10kms away the big building right on the shoreline was also receiving the benefit of the sun, right full-on into the windows

That must certainly have been something quite spectacular for those people in that large room there.

No change of visitor at the Chantier Navale so I came home. And I had a few things to do on the internet that took up a lot of my time.

But I did stop for tea – another frozen aubergine and kidney-bean whatsit. Only 5 left now so soon I can start to think again about cooking mega-curries.

Outside for my evening walk, it was raining quite heavily. But I did press on nevertheless although I didn’t stop for photos. However, I did manage my run and made it halfway up the ramp at the end. I’m definitely geting fitter.

Football on the Internet tonight. Caernarfon v Cardiff Met in the Welsh Premier League. We had a brief discussion about the possible score and someone reckoned 2-1 to the Cofis. And at the end of the match I asked him if he had a recommendation for the 3:30 at Kempton Park.

Caernarfon did indeed win 2-1 and it was the correct result too. But it was a very quiet match with nothing much of any excitement, which is a surrpise where Caernarfon is concerned.

It was bogged down in midfield for much of the match with very few chances for either team. In fact all that really happened was that each side scored a breakaway goal from a loss of possession in midfield, and the winner was a tap-in following up a saved penalty.

The number of chances that they had, apart from those, you could count on one hand although Will Fuller in the Met’s goal was busier than Alex Ramsey up at the other end.

It’s very late now because I’ve been dawdling, so I’ll go to bed for the few hours of sleep that remains.

Shopping tomorrow plus dicaphone notes and project files. And then the cycle will start again.

Friday 8th November 2019 – IT REALLY WAS …

… beautiful out there in the Baie de Mont St Michel this afternoon.

And you can tell that from this photo. Plenty of sunshine out there on the water, the Brittany coast (18 miles away if you are interested) in the background, and the yacht sailing with the wind.

Not to mentioned being photo-bombed yet again by another blasted seagull. Although I do have to say that it adds a certain extra something to the image.

But never mind that – I had some tissues and I was wearing a hat.

Mind you, I’m surprised that I managed to actually see anything of the daylight today. Despite promising myself an early night, I was still up and playing the guitar at 01:30 this morning.

And even more surprisingly, I managed to beat the third alarm out of bed, even though I was feeling like something that had been dragged through the cat flap.

Plenty of time for me to go off on a nocturnal ramble too. And a big “hello” to Castor and Pollux who came to join me on my journey, which was yet another one of a long line of tumultuous journeys riddled with turmoil. I’d had a big row with Castor and Pollux so they weren’t really speaking to me. And so I was in the dining hall and I was at a table hoping to catch a glimpse of them because I knew that they would be coming out very soon. In fact there were all these cars already up the street – there must have been 1,000 of them parked up there waiting for the everyone to come out. I couldn’t find which car had come for them and I knew that he would get there early so that he would be close to the gate but I didn’t have a clue. But there in the refectory I was sitting there at a table I suddenly saw them all with about 2 or 3 other people around them. And I sort of half went over to chat, and half didn’t and I couldn’t make up my mind what to do. In the end I went back to my seat. Just then a teacher appeared with a pile of stuff. She was looking for a girl called Kenneth. She had had some work and gave it to this girl called Kenneth and told her something. There was also some more work and I thought that it was for some other person but it turned out that it was for her as well. So the teacher gave her these three loads of work that needed doing, and that was when I awoke. One thing that I did notice was that Castor and Pollux and the other people with them were having quite a good amount of fun and I was terribly jealous in this sense because I wasn’t in there having the fun with them.

Things are really getting at me these days, aren’t they?

We had the usual medication and then breakfast, following which I attacked the dictaphone notes. And what with a few interruptions, I’d transcribed 9 by the time I knocked off.

One of the interruptions was the parcels delivery man. Another load of stuff has come, part of which was the 40-watt amplifier for the guitar. I forgot to photograph it so I’ll do that tomorrow.

Before I could allow myself lunch, I went for a walk. Down the steps, along the rue du Port and back up the rue des Juifs.

No groups of tourists today. Instead, we had groups of fishing boats coming in to harbour on the turn of the tide.

They did well to dredge out that little channel there at the foot of the quay. Those boats that only have a shallow draught can come right in even though there’s a long way to go before the tide fills the outer harbour.

For lunch, I had one of the containers of soup that I made yesterday. And I don’t know why but it doesn’t taste as nice as any one of the others that I have made. That’s not to say that it’s bad of course – just not as good.

This afternoon I’ve been playing the guitar and dealing with the web site amendments. And although the site isn’t half-done as yet, there are a couple of bots even as we speak trawling their way through the revised pages

At 15:45 we had the usual stop for our afternoon walk in the glorious sunshine – even though it was still rather windy out there.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that Thora has been in port for the last day or two. But as I was going out, so was she. Braving the stormy seas off the Ile de Chausey on her way back to the Channel islands.

You can see the spray out at the bow of the ship as the waves go slamming themselves into the hull. Even though the wind has died down somewhat, there’s still a great deal of force left in the sea.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that back earlier in the year I had a guided tour of one of the old bunkers of the Atlantic Wall. Some group of volunteers has taken them over with the aim of starting a museum of sorts.

There was a large lorry fitted with a hiab parked outside the bunker so naturally I went to see what was going on.

It’s difficult to see of course, but certainly something seems to be being delivered. So it looks as if whatever they are doing, it’s now starting to make progress.

And good luck to them too.

We weren’t the only people out there enjoying the good weather either.

The guys from the Sailing School were out there in the bay too, presumably giving sailing lessons. One of these days I’ll go down to make further enquiries.

Back in the apartment I made a start on my Project n°3. I want to get ahead as much as I can and build up a stock for future reference.

One of the things that this involves is to cut soundbites out of a collection of clips of Louis de Funes. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that I was always doing that out of old British radio shows, but this needs to be done in French.

Tea was pie with veg and gravy followed by, seeing as I had the oven on, a rice pudding. The pie was one slice of that which I made just before I went away and it was absolutely delicious.

This evening I took my walk around the walls rather earlier than usual. Nevertheless I was still all alone on my walk and wasn’t disturbed at all.

Some of my night photography didn’t work at all, but one or two others have come out rather well, such as this one of the town with Kairon-Plage in the background, slightly to the right of centre.

Once more , it’s a hand-held shot with the monopod, so it’s not too bad, I reckon.

This one of the trees in the Square Maurice Marland has come out really well and I quite like this. In fact, I took a couple of good photos today.

This is actually round about the end of my running strip, and I made it this evening halfway up the ramp before I ran out of wind.

But I think that that’s about as far as I’m ever going to get. I don’t seem to be able to push on.

I was wondering if maybe I were to start at the ramp and run anti-clockwise, that might be better and I might go farther.

Yesterday I said that I might stay out with the tripod when we have a nice night, and it was certainly a nice night tonight.

But there was football on the internet – Aberystwyth v Bala Town in the Welsh Premier League.

The score was 5-0 to Bala, and you might be thinking that this was a really one-sided game. But that’s far from the truth. Bala’s second goal was scored from a breakaway following a sustained period of Aber pressure.

But the fourth goal made me weep. How many times have I said to defenders to stop messing about in defence with the ball and clear it upfield quickly?

Sure enough, Aberystwyth were mssing around with the ball just outside the penalty area for a couple of minutes and inevitably, because you can guess what happened just as easily as I can tell you, they needlessly lost possession.

The fifth goal too was extremely unfortunate. Roberts in the Aberystwyth goal made an excellent save, the ball hit the crossbar and could have gone anywhere. But of course it has to drop right at the feet of Chris Venables and he’s not going to miss sitters like that from three yards out.

So now I’m off to bed. Still no Caliburn so I’ll be walking to the shops tomorrow.

But before I go, I was hunting around in the Al Stewart lyrics that I have had for probably 40 years, looking for the source of the quote “spaghetti, two forks, one plate” when I came across these lyrics –
“And so as she slept and the pure morning crept”
“Through the windows to take her away”
“I thought you can’t make people be what you want them to be”
“I could see my self nailed to a dormitory tale”
“Of a holiday night’s escapade”
“And just yesterday she had seemed like a woman to me”

“And so like a child with the sleep in her eyes”
“Where the sadness of age had once been”
“She left on the plane with a “See you again” and a smile”
“And I couldn’t say what I had won or I lost”
“Or even just what I had seen”
“But when I’m alone I just think of her once in awhile”.

Remind anyone of anything?

fishing boat out at sea english channel granville manche normandy france

thora english channel granville manche normandy france

workmen unloading cargo bunker atlantic wall pointe du roc granville manche normandy france

granville by night manche normandy france

Thursday 31st October 2019 – I DIDN’T …

… manage to get out for my evening walk/run tonight.

Just for a change I’d managed to be ready quite early so that I could make the most of it, when Rosemary rang. One hour and 35 minutes we were on the phone and so that was really that. I can’t go for a walk at 22:00

And so, all in all, it was a good job that I’d had my long walk up to LIDL today.

Not this morning though because I was doing other things this morning. Like sleeping. I didn’t leave the bed until about 09:30 this morning.

And it wasn’t my fault either. There I was planning to go to bed and have a nice early night last night, and just as I was about to switch off the computer, then Hawkwind Live Chronicles came onto the playlist.

The best album I’ve heard for a long time too so I stayed awake to listen to it. All 1 hour and 25 minutes of it.

And as that ended, then Ocean by Eloy came on. The second-best album I’ve heard in a while. So I stayed up and listened to that.

What with one thing and another, it was eventually 03:05 when I switched off the computer and went to bed.

Mind you, it wasn’t completely wasted time because I’d done some work updating the web pages during that time.

A late start meant that everything else, like my shower, was late too. And before I hit the streets I had to organise the rail tickets for Belgium and print them all off so that I had them to hand.

First stop in town was at the bank. I needed to pay for what I purchased yesterday and as the money is going abroad it needed to be done quickly and, more importantly, correctly. Hence the bank.

Second stop was at the railway station. I know that I’m trying to go paperless these days but I would feel a lot better with the tickets actually in my hand, so I printed them off at the machine there.

Finally I made it t LIDL but I didn’t buy all that much. However they did have a range of vegan blackcurrant sorbet so in a gesture of solidarity I bought one. What I didn’t buy though was garlic! Sold out! And that’s a shock for me because a kitchen without any garlic isn’t a kitchen at all.

On the way back to the apartment I took a diversion via the docks to see the new boat. And she’s not a new boat at all but our old friend Aztec Lady back from her summer season at Svalbard I must remember one of these days to find out more about her voyages.

After lunch I tackled a job that I have been putting off for a week or so – and that was to freeze the carrots. Only just in time too because they were on the turn. But they are all peeled, diced, blanched and in the freezer.

And what was left (there were too many for the saucepan) I made a carrot and coconut soup, I was rather too extravagant with the powdered ginger and it’s rather overwhelmed it. Still, it’s in now and you can’t take it out.

While that was going on, I had a go at tidying the freezer. And there is tons of stuff in there. Enough pies to sink a ship for a start, and a second set of four frozen aubergine and kidney bean whatsits that I had forgotten that I had made. So for the next two months it’s pie one night and kidney bean and aubergine whatsit on another before I even start thinking about the rest of the meals.

Last night before going to bed I’d checked Caliburn’s battery. 14.0 volts and the “fully charged” light was on, so I had unplugged it. This morning when I checked it, it was showing 12.9 volts (which is good) and this afternoon, 6 hours later, it was still showing 12.9, so it’s not losing any significant charge. I coupled it up to Caliburn and he fired up immediately into life, so at least I can take him for his controle technique on Tuesday and be back on four wheels by the end of the week.

Having done that, I went for my afternoon walk. And on returning I found that somehow I have contrived to manage to lose my fitbit. And that’s before the new bracelet has arrived too, for which I pad a shed-load of money. No idea where I lost it either. It’s probably fallen out of my pocket while I was walking around, in which case it’s probably gone for good.

These days I seem to be making far too much of a habit of losing all my possessions. I’m not sure what’s going on but I definitely seem to be breaking up.

Back at the apartment I had a little doze for 10 minutes and regular readers of this rubbish will be the first to remark that this is the first time in about a week that I’ve crashed out. That’s definitely progress of some kind.

But once back on my feet I tackled a few of these marathon dictaphone entries. Five of them in fact and that might sound reasonable, but the mega 20-minute one is next on the list and I need to be on form for that. So that’s a job for tomorrow morning, I reckon.

Tea, was as promised, the burger on a bap. delicious it was too, even though it was interrupted by two young girls trick-or-treating. Luckily I have a sweetie-jar here so I was able to hand out some goodies. They aren’t getting their hands on my grapes though. That’s the one good thing that I’ve found about going out for small amounts of shopping several times per week – tha it means that I can buy several loads of grapes.

As I’d used the last of the coconut soya cream in the carrot soup, I went for the blackcurrant sorbet to go on my fruit salad, only to find that I’d forgotten to put it in the freezer. “That was an expensive way to get a storage container” I mused, but it hadn’t actually defrosted too far.

So Rosemary on the phone, and now bed-time. No guitar today, and no web-site amendment either. I’m falling behind again and I need to get on top of things. It’s too late for an early night too.

I really must get myself organised.

Wednesday 30th October 2019 – YET ANOTHER DAY …

… where I didn’t manage to fit in my morning walk. And you wouldn’t have gone either if you had had the rainstorm that we were having.

And for a change, I actually did manage to see the morning. Because while I didn’t actually manage to beat the third alarm, it was pretty close.

So with an early rising and an early breakfast, we had an early start to work. And by the time that I knocked off for lunch I had amended 38 pages of my website to bring it up to date with the newt coding.

That’s some going, I’ll tell you.

After lunch, I took the opportunity to book my accommodation and travel for Leuven. And to my surprise, there has been a change of horaire for the departure. Instead of 09:05 it’s now at 08:24.

And what with one thing and another, because of that I can arrive in Brussels half an hour earlier on a train via Lille.

So something good has come out of it.

But the journey back is going to be a little … errr … tight. I shall have to run.

Accommodation in the usual place at the back of the nick. I must practise.

The afternoon walk in the wet around the headland and much to my surprise there were a few others out there too. Nothing much going on, although there’s a new boat in the harbour. I shall have to go down to the port tomorrow to see who she is.

And I have to go to the bank tomorrow too and pay some money. I’m spending my dosh again and I’ll tell you what on in due course. But the new me is treating himself to a few important things, including something that he has been promising himself for years.

Later on, I hit the dictaphone notes and did no fewer than 11. “Impressive stuff” you might say, but that’s being rather disingenuous. Some of them were only quite small, and there’s one of 20 minutes in the pipeline for tomorrow and it looks as if most of it is actual talking too.

So that’s my work cut out for the afternoon. I’m glad that I’ve been getting ahead.

Tea was some of the remaining pepper stuffing, mixed with kidney beans and rolled into some tacos. With rice and vegetables, it was delicious.

There’s more for tomorrow too but I think that I’ll go for something different like a burger on a bap and have more tacos on Friday.

Still raining tonight but I went for a walk – and a run too seeing as there was no-one about. I’m going to try to keep this up. I may not be able to run the miles as I used to, but I ought to be doing more than I am and not throw in the towel.

And I won’t now either. It’s early so I’m going to carry on working on the web pages.

And a big “hello” to both Castor and Pollux who were there or thereabouts at some point during the night.

EPIC HALL

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

Tag Archives: www.thomann.de

Saturday 31st January 2025 – BROCCOLI STALK SOUP …

Tuesday 11th August 2020 – I’VE BEEN SPENDING …

Tuesday 4th August 2020 – STRAWBERRY MOOSE …

Thursday 16th April 2020 – I COULDN’T KEEP IT UP …

Saturday 4th April 2020 – ANOTHER DAY …

Friday 29th November 2019 – IT’S A LIE!

Friday 8th November 2019 – IT REALLY WAS …

Thursday 31st October 2019 – I DIDN’T …

Wednesday 30th October 2019 – YET ANOTHER DAY …

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