{"id":12836,"date":"2019-11-28T22:31:02","date_gmt":"2019-11-28T22:31:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lesguis.com\/wp\/?p=12836"},"modified":"2019-11-28T22:31:05","modified_gmt":"2019-11-28T22:31:05","slug":"thursday-28th-november-2019-i-missed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lesguis.com\/wp\/?p=12836","title":{"rendered":"Thursday 28th November 2019 &#8211; I MISSED &#8230;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>&#8230; the second alarm call YET AGAIN &#8211; and I&#8217;ve no idea why because it&#8217;s quite clearly programmed in.<\/p>\n<p>And so when what I thought was the second alarm call went off and I glanced at my fitbit and saw that it was 06:20, no-one was more disappointed than me.<\/p>\n<p>There I was, deep in the arms of Morpheus and I wasn&#8217;t alone either, because the Girls from Uummannaq were in there with me.<\/p>\n<p>What was going through my mind was a quote from the report of Vaino Tanner, a Finnish anthropologist who had studied the Inuit in Labrador and reported, in his book  \u201cOutlines of the Geography, Life and Customs of Newfoundland-Labrador\u201d of 1944 that inuit girls &#8230;<\/p>\n<ol>\n<li>&#8230; are the hardest-working of all of the Inuit people (and then goes on to list all of the household tasks that they are expected to do in the home)<\/li>\n<li>&#8230; are very keen to marry settlers of European descent<\/li>\n<li>&#8230; have an extremely sensual nature<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p>There he was, wondering how he found out all of this, and there I was, about to put Point 3 to the test (and wondering how Tanner discovered that particular point) when, with sitting bolt upright like that, it all immediately disappeared from my mind.<\/p>\n<p>So having had a disappointing medication and breakfast followed by a shower, I attacked the dictaphone notes, totally forgetting that I was supposed to be going to LIDL.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.lesguis.com\/images\/1911\/1911333.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.lesguis.com\/images\/1911\/1911333.jpg\" alt=\"jcb pallet lifter rue st jean granville manche normandy france\" class=\"alignleft\" width=\"220\"><\/a>Eventually, it clicked with me, so I dressed and made a hurried exit.<\/p>\n<p>Stepping out into the street, I was nearly flattened by a JCB pallet lifter that was in something of a hurry going down the street.<\/p>\n<p>And when I expressed the fact that I had almost bee flattened by this thing, al of my friends expressed their regret.<br clear=\"all\"><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.lesguis.com\/images\/1911\/1911334.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.lesguis.com\/images\/1911\/1911334.jpg\" alt=\"unloading plasterboard battens rue st jean granville manche normandy france\" class=\"alignleft\" width=\"220\"><\/a>They&#8217;ve been working on another house here in the old town, this time in the rue St Jean, and they&#8217;ve had a delivery of metal plasterboard struts.<\/p>\n<p>Our pallet lifter was on his way to lift them into the house, blocking the entire street as he did so, much to the dismay of all of the motorists.<\/p>\n<p>I, however, had a delightful five minutes watching him have all kinds of problems trying to unload the pallet, with part of the metal struts wedged under the load bar of the pick-up.<br clear=\"all\"><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.lesguis.com\/images\/1911\/1911335.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.lesguis.com\/images\/1911\/1911335.jpg\" alt=\"clouds over granville manche normandy france\" class=\"alignleft\" width=\"220\"><\/a>The weather was looking rather miserable today and was on the point of rain.<\/p>\n<p>Over there you can see a nice storm cloud hovering over the town right where I&#8217;m heading, and with the rays of the sun shining somewhere else.<\/p>\n<p>There was this feeling that it was not going to be my day today.<br clear=\"all\"><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.lesguis.com\/images\/1911\/1911336.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.lesguis.com\/images\/1911\/1911336.jpg\" alt=\"storm waves plat gousset granville manche normandy france\" class=\"alignleft\" width=\"220\"><\/a>While the wind had dropped considerably from the previous few days, you would never have thought so by looking at the waves down there.<\/p>\n<p>The tide is quite a way out still as you can see and yet we already have something crashing down on the loading ramp at the Plat Gousset.<\/p>\n<p>The amount of energy there is in the sea and yet there are some people who don&#8217;t want to harvest it.<br clear=\"all\"><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.lesguis.com\/images\/1911\/1911337.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.lesguis.com\/images\/1911\/1911337.jpg\" alt=\"fibre optic cable laying roadworks place marechal foch granville manche normandy france\" class=\"alignleft\" width=\"220\"><\/a>Down in the Place marechal Foch I had better luck.<\/p>\n<p>The workmen were there today and they didn&#8217;t run off when I approached them like they did yesterday, so I was able to talk to them.<\/p>\n<p>And I was right. It&#8217;s more fibre-optic cable trunking going in. And they don&#8217;t have a clue as to when the system will be going live. After all, it&#8217;s only been about two years now. There&#8217;s no hurry<br clear=\"all\"><\/p>\n<p>Having said that, I hurried, right up the hill at something of a good pace all the way to LIDL. And I can tell that I&#8217;m doing better because I was talking to myself all the way up. if I can do that, I can&#8217;t be too out of breath.<\/p>\n<p>At LIDL there was nothing special that I needed so I just bought a few bits of fruit and veg, some drink and some boxes of rice. I&#8217;m on my last box of that so I need supplies.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.lesguis.com\/images\/1911\/1911338.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.lesguis.com\/images\/1911\/1911338.jpg\" alt=\"old cars jaguar xj8 granville manche normandy france\" class=\"alignleft\" width=\"220\"><\/a>But how about this that I bumped into on the way home? You don&#8217;t see too many of these about and I haven&#8217;t seen one for ages.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s a Jaguar XJ-8 2+2 coup\u00e9, and the reference to the &#8220;8&#8221; in the model name relates to the fact that it&#8217;s powered not by the standard 6-cylinder or v-12 engine but by a V8 engine.<\/p>\n<p>These were launched in 1997 as a kind-of replacement for the XJ-S but because of the reputation that the earlier vehicle had, they just never caught on at all and as I have said, I haven&#8217;t seen one on the road for years<br clear=\"all\"><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.lesguis.com\/images\/1911\/1911339.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.lesguis.com\/images\/1911\/1911339.jpg\" alt=\"normandy trader marite port de granville harbour manche normandy france\" class=\"alignleft\" width=\"220\"><\/a>Having fought my way through the town and stopping off for my  <em>dejeunette<\/em>, I headed on back home again.<\/p>\n<p>And peering over the wall, I noticed that our old friend <em>Normandy Trader<\/em> is back in town again. She must have sneaked in on the early morning tide.<\/p>\n<p>Of course she would, wouldn&#8217;t she, when I&#8217;m running so late that I don&#8217;t have time to go down to say &#8220;hello&#8221;<br clear=\"all\"><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.lesguis.com\/images\/1911\/1911340.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.lesguis.com\/images\/1911\/1911340.jpg\" alt=\"young cat rue des juifs granville manche normandy france\" class=\"alignleft\" width=\"220\"><\/a>That wasn&#8217;t all of the excitement in the rue des Juifs either.<\/p>\n<p>Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that yesterday I encountered a young black cat in the vegetation up on the city walls. Today, it was the turn of this very young tabby and white to make my acquaintance.<\/p>\n<p>We had quite a chat too for a few minutes before it went off to do some more exploring.<br clear=\"all\"><\/p>\n<p>There was half an hour or so to go before lunch so I attacked some more dictaphone stuff. And by the time that I knocked off, I was down to just 59 outstanding entries.<\/p>\n<p>Mind you, the ones that I attacked today (and will be doing for the next few days) are the ones when I was slowly reaching a crisis point and they make rather grim, if not gruesome listening.<\/p>\n<p>There was all kinds of turmoil going on in my head round about this time and that much is clearly evident in what was going on during the night.<\/p>\n<p>After lunch, I started to attack the web pages, to carry on with the updating. By the time I was ready to go for my afternoon walk, I had done 13 of those.<\/p>\n<p>That may not sound like much compared to yesterday, but there were plenty of distractions going on while I was trying to do it and I was lucky that I did that many.<\/p>\n<p>By now we were in the middle of a rainstorm but I didn&#8217;t let that deter me.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.lesguis.com\/images\/1911\/1911341.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.lesguis.com\/images\/1911\/1911341.jpg\" alt=\"fishing boats english channel granville manche normandy france\" class=\"alignleft\" width=\"220\"><\/a>Out in the English Channel towards jersey I could make out something moving in the gloom so I tok a speculative shot to work on when I returned to the apartment so that I could see what it might be.<\/p>\n<p>And it&#8217;s another bunch of fishing boats out there doing what they do best, and i this weather too!<\/p>\n<p>However, I&#8217;m absolutely certain that we haven&#8217;t seen this much activity out there in preceding years. It seems to me that things are changing, and changing quite rapidly too, in the fishing industry.<br clear=\"all\"><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.lesguis.com\/images\/1911\/1911342.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.lesguis.com\/images\/1911\/1911342.jpg\" alt=\"trees pointe du roc light beacon baie de mont st michel granville manche normandy france\" class=\"alignleft\" width=\"220\"><\/a>Further on around the headland and, as Bob Dylan famously sung, &#8220;you don&#8217;t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows&#8221; around here.<\/p>\n<p>The tide is right out now as you can see. if you look at the beacon there between the trees, that&#8217;s almost totally submerged when the tide is fully in.<\/p>\n<p>As I have said before &#8230; <em>&#8220;and on many occasions too&#8221; &#8211; ed<\/em> &#8230; we have the highest tides in Europe right here on the coast.<br clear=\"all\"><\/p>\n<p>But the rain is now closing in again quite quickly and I have a feeling that I&#8217;m about to get the lot of it.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.lesguis.com\/images\/1911\/1911343.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.lesguis.com\/images\/1911\/1911343.jpg\" alt=\"storm pointe de carolles baie de mont st michel granville manche normandy france\" class=\"alignleft\" width=\"220\"><\/a>Look at that storm brewing up over the Pointe de Carolles.<\/p>\n<p>That triangular lump just there by the way is part of one of the old bunkers that formerly formed the Atlantic Wall.<\/p>\n<p>After the War they tried to demolish the bunkers and so they packed the first one with explosive.<\/p>\n<p>With the force of the explosion they managed to break every window in Normandy, Brittany and the Channel Islands but as far as the bunker went, they managed to move a hatful of concrete about half an inch.<\/p>\n<p>They decided then to give it up as a bad job.<br clear=\"all\"><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.lesguis.com\/images\/1911\/1911344.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.lesguis.com\/images\/1911\/1911344.jpg\" alt=\"normandy trader port de granville harbour manche normandy france\" class=\"alignleft\" width=\"220\"><\/a>By now it was pelting down again so I didn&#8217;t hang around for long. I headed for home.<\/p>\n<p>The <em>Chantier Navale<\/em> had its usual complement of boats so I didn&#8217;t stop to take a photo, but <em>Normandy Trader<\/em> was still at her berth by the crane so I took a quick photo of her.<\/p>\n<p>And then I came back to the apartment, where I spent some time working on my &#8220;Girls of Uummannaq&#8221; web pages<br clear=\"all\"><\/p>\n<p>There was some curry left over from the other day for tea, but not a frightful lot of it so I added a small potato and some spinach. And it was just as delicious.<\/p>\n<p>For pudding, I had realised that I&#8217;d had some soya coconut cream stuff open for quite a while so I thought about that with my pineapple. But it looked rather dubious to me so it went don the drain and I had blackcurrant sorbet instead.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.lesguis.com\/images\/1911\/1911345.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.lesguis.com\/images\/1911\/1911345.jpg\" alt=\"storm waves plat gousset place marechal foch granville manche normandy france\" class=\"alignleft\" width=\"220\"><\/a>Out and about in the dark I thought that I was alone until I was barked at by a dog, with its owner standing in a deep shadow. It&#8217;s a good job that I wasn&#8217;t doing anything that I wasn&#8217;t suposed to be doing.<\/p>\n<p>But it was dark down there tonight. They had switched off the lights on the Plat Gousset so although the waves were beating down on the sea wall, you couldn&#8217;t see them.<\/p>\n<p>Nevertheless, I did my best<br clear=\"all\"><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.lesguis.com\/images\/1911\/1911346.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.lesguis.com\/images\/1911\/1911346.jpg\" alt=\"night rue lecampion granville manche normandy france\" class=\"alignleft\" width=\"220\"><\/a>Not so much of a problem in the town though.<\/p>\n<p>The upper floors of the buildings on the south side of the rue Lecampion for some reason mooked quite good this evening, very well illuminated by the street lights.<\/p>\n<p>So much so that I couldn&#8217;t resist a photo. And I do like the shadow effect on the stone walls.<br clear=\"all\"><\/p>\n<p>No-one about tonight so I had a good run, making half the way up the ramp at the end of my little track. One day I&#8217;ll measure it and see how far it is. It&#8217;s only about 300 metres, I reckon, if that.<\/p>\n<p>Minette the old black cat was there on her windowsill so she let me give her a little stroke. It seems to be my lucky period for cats right now, although i&#8217;m not sure why. I probably smell of fish.<\/p>\n<p>So tomorrow I&#8217;m having a day at home. For once I don&#8217;t have to go anywhere, but nevertheless I still have a lot of work to do.<\/p>\n<p>To do some information files for my projects for a start. And once they are done, I can tell you all about it.<\/p>\n<p>So there are one or two other little things that need to be done tonight and then I&#8217;m off to bed. I&#8217;m hoping that I can slide back into the arms of Morpheus and carry on my experiments from last night.<\/p>\n<div class='watch-action'><div class='watch-position align-left'><div class='action-like'><a class='lbg-style1 like-12836 jlk' href='javascript:void(0)' data-task='like' data-post_id='12836' data-nonce='16ce856f7d' 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-12836 lc'>0<\/span><\/a><\/div><div class='action-unlike'><a class='unlbg-style1 unlike-12836 jlk' href='javascript:void(0)' data-task='unlike' data-post_id='12836' data-nonce='16ce856f7d' 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-12836 unlc'>0<\/span><\/a><\/div> <\/div> <div class='status-12836 status align-left'><\/div><\/div><div class='wti-clear'><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&#8230; the second alarm call YET AGAIN &#8211; and I&#8217;ve no idea why because it&#8217;s quite clearly programmed in. And so when what I thought was the second alarm call went off and I glanced at my fitbit and saw that it was 06:20, no-one was more disappointed than me. There I was, deep in [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[44,4507,1616,8571,46,8858,10714,281,7876,10831,13247],"tags":[2388,8741,6968,8668,1305,212,2560,10876,8486,5565,8581,206,13249,13248,230,3182,5286,1731,8860,10715,5370,7891,10837,11917,11560,286,12038,11921,3548,462,5379,12104,11825,8242],"class_list":["post-12836","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-dream","category-eric-hall-2","category-france","category-granville","category-lidl","category-marite","category-normandy-trader","category-old-cars","category-place-darmes","category-place-marechal-foch","category-rue-st-jean","tag-atlantic-wall","tag-baie-de-mont-st-michel","tag-black-cat","tag-cat","tag-dictaphone","tag-dream","tag-eric-hall","tag-fibre-optic-cable","tag-fitbit","tag-france","tag-granville","tag-httpwww-erichall-eu","tag-jaguar-xj-8","tag-jcb","tag-labrador-2","tag-lentil-mushroom-potato-curry","tag-lidl","tag-lie-in","tag-marite","tag-normandy-trader","tag-old-cars","tag-place-darmes","tag-place-marechal-foch","tag-plat-gousset","tag-pointe-de-carolles","tag-rainstorm","tag-rue-lecampion","tag-rue-st-jean","tag-running","tag-shower","tag-storm","tag-trawler","tag-uummannaq","tag-vaino-tanner"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lesguis.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12836","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=12836"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lesguis.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12836\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12837,"href":"https:\/\/lesguis.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12836\/revisions\/12837"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lesguis.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12836"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lesguis.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=12836"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lesguis.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=12836"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}