{"id":11692,"date":"2019-02-12T22:28:21","date_gmt":"2019-02-12T22:28:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lesguis.com\/wp\/?p=11692"},"modified":"2019-02-12T22:28:32","modified_gmt":"2019-02-12T22:28:32","slug":"tuesday-12th-february-2019-the-good-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lesguis.com\/wp\/?p=11692","title":{"rendered":"Tuesday 12th February 2019 &#8211; THE GOOD NEWS &#8230;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>&#8230; today (because there has been some) is that my new passport arrived.<\/p>\n<p>There was a telephone call this morning asking me if I would be here this afternoon because the courier intended to pass by.<\/p>\n<p>And so having confirmed it, I received a second phone call at about 15:35 to ask me which was the door to my block of apartments. Instead, I went downstairs and a charming lady handed me a big yellow envelope.<\/p>\n<p>So now, being all legal again, that&#8217;s one less thing to think about. That is &#8211; until I lose this one.<\/p>\n<p>For some reason or other, I was still awake and working at 01:30 last night. That&#8217;s usually a recipe for disaster but then again there&#8217;s no point in going to bed when I&#8217;m not tired and when I can carry on working.<\/p>\n<p>Despite that, I managed to wake up when the alarm went off and I was out of bed comparatively early.<\/p>\n<p>A comparatively early breakfast and then I settled down to work. And by the time that I had finished, I&#8217;d finished the blog back as far as <a href=\"https:\/\/lesguis.com\/wp\/?p=11525\" target=\"_blank\">1st January 2019<\/a>. And it&#8217;s not as easy as it might be either because until I fathomed out the depths of this new blog upgrade, the blog was itself inserting all kinds of redundant and surplus *.html code that bears little or no resemblance to the coding that I use.<\/p>\n<p>It all has to be stripped out and while I have a computer program that does that, it strips out everything, including the coding that I want leaving in. And so I have to start again.<\/p>\n<p>As far as the text database goes, I&#8217;m now back almost to the beginning of December. That was, by the way, a heavy month for photos so it&#8217;s going to take longer than it otherwise might.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.lesguis.com\/images\/1902\/1902136.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft\" src=\"http:\/\/www.lesguis.com\/images\/1902\/1902136.jpg\" alt=\"british range rover discovery unloading furniture rue st jean granville manche normandy france\" height=\"204\" width=\"300\"><\/a>I went out and about for my walk this afternoon as usual.<\/p>\n<p>And was treated to the delightful sight of a group of British people blocking off the rue St Jean while they unloaded a trailer of furniture &#8211; because they were too lazy to carry the furniture 50 metres from the car park around the corner.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s this kind of thing that I hate, because it gives all of us a very bad name when they treat the locals with contempt like this.<br clear=\"all\"><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.lesguis.com\/images\/1902\/1902138.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft\" src=\"http:\/\/www.lesguis.com\/images\/1902\/1902138.jpg\" alt=\"beach donville les bains brehal plage granville manche normandy france\" height=\"204\" width=\"300\"><\/a>However, leaving aside a really good rant for the moment, the weather this afternoon was beautiful.<\/p>\n<p>It was sunny and warm (for the time of year) and the sky was quite clear. There was a beautiful view of the coastline all the way along from Donville les Bains down to Br\u00e9hal-Plage.<\/p>\n<p>On the right of the image is of course that old hotel where I saw that miserable apartment that was to let.<br clear=\"all\"><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.lesguis.com\/images\/1902\/1902139.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft\" src=\"http:\/\/www.lesguis.com\/images\/1902\/1902139.jpg\" alt=\"beach plat gousset granville manche normandy france\" height=\"204\" width=\"300\"><\/a>And hardly surprisingly, I wasn&#8217;t the only one out there enjoying the beautiful weather;<\/p>\n<p>As I mentioned yesterday, it&#8217;s school holiday so there were crowds out there strolling along the Plat Gousset and walking along the beach.<\/p>\n<p>No-one actually in the water, though. And I can&#8217;t blame them. It wasn&#8217;t that warm out there.<br clear=\"all\"><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.lesguis.com\/images\/1902\/1902142.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft\" src=\"http:\/\/www.lesguis.com\/images\/1902\/1902142.jpg\" alt=\"thora port de granville harbour manche normandy france\" height=\"204\" width=\"300\"><\/a>And not only that, there was some activity in the port too. Our old friend <em>Thora<\/em> was in the harbour this afternoon tied up at her berth by the dockyard crane.<\/p>\n<p>I could see that she was loaded up with a dozen or so of these enormous gravel bags, but whether or not there was gravel in them I couldn&#8217;t really say.<\/p>\n<p>But whatever there is in there, it&#8217;ll all be off to Jersey in early course.<br clear=\"all\"><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.lesguis.com\/images\/1902\/1902143.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft\" src=\"http:\/\/www.lesguis.com\/images\/1902\/1902143.jpg\" alt=\"place d'armes granville manche normandy france\" height=\"204\" width=\"300\"><\/a>having been up on the top of the walls at the back of the Eglise Notre Dame de Cap Lihou to take a photo of <em>Thora<\/em>, there was a really good view of my apartment building.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s the building on the right there, part of an old military barracks with the parade ground in the middle.<\/p>\n<p>Part of the old parade ground is closed off and is our private parking. You can see Caliburn in his little parking space just there.<\/p>\n<p>The building in the background is now the College Malraux &#8211; the local secondary school. Their playground is the old military sports ground at the back of the College.<br clear=\"all\"><\/p>\n<p>Back here, I had the usual strum on the guitar followed by a coffee. No Christmas Cake because I finished that off on Sunday. And then I started work again;<\/p>\n<p>But not for long though. I was soon tucked up in bed under the covers fast asleep. And there I stayed for about 90 minutes. I wasn&#8217;t asleep for all of that time but it&#8217;s difficult for me to tear myself out of bed.<\/p>\n<p>There was some of that potato and lentil curry left over from the other day. So I added half a leek and some sweetcorn to it to lengthen it.<\/p>\n<p>And followed by tinned fruit salad and that soya cream stuff (almond this week, not coconut) it was thoroughly delicious.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.lesguis.com\/images\/1902\/1902146.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft\" src=\"http:\/\/www.lesguis.com\/images\/1902\/1902146.jpg\" alt=\"night trawler pointe du roc granville manche normandy france\" height=\"204\" width=\"300\"><\/a>Later on after tea I went out for my evening walk. Around the headland tonight, looking at the trawlers coming in with their catch.<\/p>\n<p>And I tried a little experiment. The photos that I&#8217;m taking of various things at night are sometimes coming out poorly because I&#8217;m struggling to set the exposure correctly to stop pinpoints of light being too bright and distorting the image.<\/p>\n<p>So tonight what I did was to set the exposure to where I would ordinarily have set it, and then reduced the ISO by one stop and increased the exposure by a couple of stops.<\/p>\n<p>And it&#8217;s coming out much clearer &#8211; but there&#8217;s still room to go.<br clear=\"all\"><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.lesguis.com\/images\/1902\/1902147.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft\" src=\"http:\/\/www.lesguis.com\/images\/1902\/1902147.jpg\" alt=\"trawlers baie de mont st michel port de granville harbour manche normandy france\" height=\"204\" width=\"300\"><\/a>There was a large collection of lights just outside the entrance to the harbour. It looked as if it might have been a gravel boat such as <em>Neptune<\/em> standing off and hove to, waiting for the tidal gates to open.<\/p>\n<p>But with the photo being much better and clearer than usual now, I could see that it was actually a couple of trawlers having stopped to have a little chat before they came in and tied up to unload.<br clear=\"all\"><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.lesguis.com\/images\/1902\/1902148.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft\" src=\"http:\/\/www.lesguis.com\/images\/1902\/1902148.jpg\" alt=\"trawlers port de granville harbour manche normandy france\" height=\"204\" width=\"300\"><\/a>But the harbour was really quite busy tonight.<\/p>\n<p>There must have been eight or nine fishing boats in the outer harbour either tied up unloading or waiting for an empty berth. And half a dozen more here or hereabouts on their way in.<\/p>\n<p>As I have said before &#8230; <em>&#8220;and you&#8217;ll say again&#8221; &#8211; ed<\/em> &#8230; I would have loved to have been here in the heyday of the port when it would have been packed with Newfie trawlers.<br clear=\"all\"><\/p>\n<p>So now I&#8217;m going to try to have an early night. I probably won&#8217;t sleep, what with having crashed out this afternoon, but I ought to make an effort.<\/p>\n<p>I can&#8217;t keep on going like this.<br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/www.lesguis.com\/images\/1902\/1902137.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft\" src=\"http:\/\/www.lesguis.com\/images\/1902\/1902137.jpg\" alt=\"people on beach granville manche normandy france\" height=\"204\" width=\"300\"><\/a><br \/>\npeople on beach granville manche normandy france<br \/>\n<br clear=\"all\"><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.lesguis.com\/images\/1902\/1902140.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft\" src=\"http:\/\/www.lesguis.com\/images\/1902\/1902140.jpg\" alt=\"beach plat gousset granville manche normandy france\" height=\"204\" width=\"300\"><\/a><br \/>\nbeach plat gousset granville manche normandy france<br \/>\n<br clear=\"all\"><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.lesguis.com\/images\/1902\/1902141.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft\" src=\"http:\/\/www.lesguis.com\/images\/1902\/1902141.jpg\" alt=\"thora port de granville harbour manche normandy france\" height=\"204\" width=\"300\"><\/a><br \/>\nthora port de granville harbour manche normandy france<br \/>\n<br clear=\"all\"><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.lesguis.com\/images\/1902\/1902144.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft\" src=\"http:\/\/www.lesguis.com\/images\/1902\/1902144.jpg\" alt=\"rue st jean granville manche normandy france\" height=\"204\" width=\"300\"><\/a><br \/>\nrue st jean granville manche normandy france<br \/>\n<br clear=\"all\"><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.lesguis.com\/images\/1902\/1902145.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft\" src=\"http:\/\/www.lesguis.com\/images\/1902\/1902145.jpg\" alt=\"night trawler ile de chausey granville manche normandy france\" height=\"204\" width=\"300\"><\/a><br \/>\nnight trawler ile de chausey granville manche normandy france<br \/>\n<br clear=\"all\"><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.lesguis.com\/images\/1902\/1902149.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft\" src=\"http:\/\/www.lesguis.com\/images\/1902\/1902149.jpg\" alt=\"trawlers port de granville harbour manche normandy france\" height=\"204\" width=\"300\"><\/a><br \/>\ntrawlers port de granville harbour manche normandy france<br \/>\n<br clear=\"all\"><\/p>\n<div class='watch-action'><div class='watch-position align-left'><div class='action-like'><a class='lbg-style1 like-11692 jlk' href='javascript:void(0)' data-task='like' data-post_id='11692' data-nonce='fd538c5203' rel='nofollow'><img class='wti-pixel' src='https:\/\/lesguis.com\/wp\/wp-content\/plugins\/wti-like-post\/images\/pixel.gif' title='Like' \/><span class='lc-11692 lc'>0<\/span><\/a><\/div><div class='action-unlike'><a class='unlbg-style1 unlike-11692 jlk' href='javascript:void(0)' data-task='unlike' data-post_id='11692' data-nonce='fd538c5203' rel='nofollow'><img class='wti-pixel' src='https:\/\/lesguis.com\/wp\/wp-content\/plugins\/wti-like-post\/images\/pixel.gif' title='Unlike' \/><span class='unlc-11692 unlc'>0<\/span><\/a><\/div> <\/div> <div class='status-11692 status align-left'><\/div><\/div><div class='wti-clear'><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&#8230; today (because there has been some) is that my new passport arrived. There was a telephone call this morning asking me if I would be here this afternoon because the courier intended to pass by. And so having confirmed it, I received a second phone call at about 15:35 to ask me which was [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4507,1616,8571,7876,11554],"tags":[1104,8699,5381,12027,1302,8595,8750,2560,5565,8581,389,8691,2484,12050,11248,7325,7891,11917,11921,11555,12104],"class_list":["post-11692","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-eric-hall-2","category-france","category-granville","category-place-darmes","category-thora","tag-blog","tag-brehal-plage","tag-caliburn","tag-college-malraux","tag-crash-out","tag-donville-les-bains","tag-eglise-de-notre-dame-de-cap-lihou","tag-eric-hall","tag-france","tag-granville","tag-httpwww-lesguis-com","tag-ile-de-chausey","tag-late-night","tag-leek-potato-lentil-curry","tag-neptune","tag-passport","tag-place-darmes","tag-plat-gousset","tag-rue-st-jean","tag-thora","tag-trawler"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lesguis.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11692","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lesguis.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lesguis.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lesguis.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lesguis.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11692"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lesguis.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11692\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11693,"href":"https:\/\/lesguis.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11692\/revisions\/11693"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lesguis.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11692"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lesguis.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11692"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lesguis.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11692"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}