{"id":13789,"date":"2020-11-10T23:57:03","date_gmt":"2020-11-10T23:57:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lesguis.com\/wp\/?p=13789"},"modified":"2020-11-10T23:57:09","modified_gmt":"2020-11-10T23:57:09","slug":"tuesday-10th-november-2020-what-a","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lesguis.com\/wp\/?p=13789","title":{"rendered":"Tuesday 10th November 2020 – WHAT A …"},"content":{"rendered":"

… bad day this was today.<\/p>\n

But I could console myself (although it isn’t appropriate to do so) in the fact my day was nothing like as bad as that of some people.<\/p>\n

And therein lies the root of it all. Just as I was going to bed last night, one of my dearest friends came on line for a chat and to tell me the news that she has contracted Covid, and is in isolation in a separate room in her own home away from her family.<\/p>\n

We ended up talking to each other until about 03:00 about this and that until she decided that she needed to go to sleep. And so no chance of my waking up at 06:00. 09:20 was a bit more like it, and then I would have stayed in bed until later had I had the choice.<\/p>\n

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that I don’t have too many friends – I go for quality, not quantity – but that’s now two of them, in widely separated parts of the World who are suffering. These are probably going to be the first of many. This virus is coming too close for comfort and I’m not sure how the rest of us are going to escape.<\/p>\n

And as I write this, I discover that another two friends of mine suffered from it too, but right at the beginning of the outbreak and so they didn’t really publicise it like people would subsequently.<\/p>\n

Anyway, with my running late, I had to prepare for my Welsh class, which took longer than it ought, and when the computer, when I switched it on to connect to the Zoom site decided to perform an upgrade. I had a feeling that it was going to be one of those days.<\/p>\n

Our teacher didn’t help much either. She took us all the way through the course, all 2.5 hours of it, without a single break and my head had turned to jelly a long time before the end of the class.<\/p>\n

After lunch, and more of my delicious bread, I had a listen to the dictaphone.<\/p>\n

During the night we had been watching some kind of report on the economy in north-east France, an industrial town, about the father of a family who worked on a railway siding that served a couple of factories and how things had already been difficult when they had closed the line for a while to replace everything but now they were talking about the factories closing down with people changing habits by buying from abroad etc. They were saying what a hard time people like this father were going to have, yet there he was. He had 8 children and living in some sort of primitive conditions with a tin bath. he was saying that by the time the 8th child got into the bathwater it was pretty black. It would be even worse by the time all of this work had been going on with the dust and everything that it was creating. My friends and I appeared to have very little sympathy for him because he seemed to be one of these people who was stuck in a routine and had a total lack of imagination. All he could do in his spare time was to just breed children<\/p>\n

With one or two other things that needed some attention, it was soon time to go out for my afternoon walk<\/p>\n

\"cloud<\/a>Looking out across the bay I saw what can only be described as a “mariner’s delight”. And any ancient mariner – and, indeed, a few modern ones too – will tell you about these.<\/p>\n

A clear but moisture-laden air is blown across the sea by the wind and then hits the coastline. To cross the coastline the air has to rise up and the change in temperature and pressure causes the moisture to condense.<\/p>\n

It’s a sure sign of land ahead and mariners throughout the centuries will have their eyes glued to the horizon looking for these cloud banks as they cross vast expanses of water.<\/p>\n

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that WE SAW A BEAUTIFUL ONE<\/a> when we were in Labrador in 2010.
<\/p>\n

\"joly<\/a>While I was peering out to sea I saw movement on the water over by the Ile de Chausey and it was heading my way.<\/p>\n

And so I carried on walking, knowing that it was drawing even closer to me as I advanced along the footpath. Of course I had a really good idea of who it might be but nevertheless I took a photo of it for closer examination<\/p>\n

Sure enough, I was perfectly correct, not that there was ever any doubt. Our old friend Joly France<\/em> is on her way back from the islands accompanied by a squadron of birds of some description.
<\/p>\n

\"sun<\/a>Round on the point at the headland and I had a look out to sea westwards towards the Brittany coast.<\/p>\n

The weather is completely different here as you can see. It’s almost completely overcast. There are a few obvious gaps in the cloud cover and the bright sunlight is coming streaming through them onto the surface of the water.<\/p>\n

This is the kind of thing that is well-worth a photo. It has produced quite a surreal effect over there and that kind of view would be almost impossible to reproduce artificially. Nevertheless it would have been nice to catch a trawler or something in the sunlight.
<\/p>\n

\"joly<\/a>By this time, Joly France<\/em> had caught up with me and had come around the headland into the Baie de Mont St Michel.<\/p>\n

It’s the older one of the two Ile de Chausey ferries. You can tell that bu the fact that the upper deck superstructure is larger than on the other one and the windows on the main deck are more square than deep-rectangular.<\/p>\n

But even with confinement it seems that the ferries are still working. As yet I’m unconvinced of the wisdom of that decision as it will merely entice second-home owners and tourists out to the island, taking the virus with them.<\/p>\n

With this virus, which has a shelf-life of two days, the only hope of beating it is for a complete lockdown for a couple of weeks. Half-hearted measures aren’t going to be of any use whatsoever.
<\/p>\n

\"normandy<\/a>Leaving Joly France<\/em> aside for the moment, I wandered off along the footpath to the viewpoint overlooking the harbour to see what was going on.<\/p>\n

And we have a visitor in port today. Normandy Trader<\/em> is here on one of her runs from Jersey and back again. But she’s not moored in the usual place for loading and unloading. She should be underneath the crane that’s round to the left out of shot.<\/p>\n

All that I can think of is that maybe Thora<\/em> was in port too and had needed the crane for loading and unloading but I must have missed her. It can’t be because of Chausiais<\/em> as she was moored up at the ferry terminal.
<\/p>\n

Back here there were still a few things to do and so I never did get round to doing what I had planned to do today. But I had a good and enjoyable session on the guitars his evening – more Bowie stuff again on the bass followed by some Creedence Clearwater Revival, and then another 30-minute concert with the acoustic 6-string.<\/p>\n

And my singing is improving too. But before anyone gets excited about it, just let me say that it couldn’t get any worse.<\/p>\n

Tea was an aubergine and kidney bean whatsit out of the freezer, followed by pineapple and vegan vanilla ice cream with chocolate sauce. There’s actually some room in the freezer now too, which is a surprise.<\/p>\n

Just as I was about to go out for my walk, the telephone rang. It was Rosemary who wanted a “quick chat”. And we excelled ourselves tonight with a ‘phone call that ran on for a grant total of 2 hours and 50 minutes. That must be a new record, especially as during the chat I was also conducting two discussions, one with Liz and the other one with TOTGA, on the internet at the same time.<\/p>\n

Not that that’s a problem, because no-one ever knows what I’m talking about so it doesn’t ever make any difference however many people I’m talking to.<\/p>\n

But having sorted everyone out, no matter how late it is, I’m off to bed. But I can’t go to bed without mentioning one final thing.<\/p>\n

As regular readers of this rubbish will recall, the question of Brexit has affected many of us who left the UK to seek our fortunes in the Real World. It’s caused all kinds of distress and dismay and we are all having to cope with it as best we can, jumping through all kinds of hoops to ensure that we can keep our homes and our livelihoods here.<\/p>\n

Between us all, some of my friends and I have been obliged to apply for (and be granted) Permanent Residency in France. Others of my acquaintance from the UK have now obtained Canadian, Irish, Belgian and German nationality, and probably a few other nationalities too.<\/p>\n

And so today it’s “hats off” to Grahame, a regular reader of this rubbish who has proudly told me that he is now an official Austrian citizen. Well done you.<\/p>\n

When I think of the talent that the UK is losing, just among my own circle of friends, by this stupid, reckless decision no wonder the country is in such a mess.<\/p>\n

And that reminds me – if you want to say tell me something, exchange points of view or simply say “hello”, there’s a contact button on the lower right-hand corner of the screen.<\/p>\n

Send me a message and let me know that you are here.<\/p>\n

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… bad day this was today. But I could console myself (although it isn’t appropriate to do so) in the fact my day was nothing like as bad as that of some people. And therein lies the root of it all. Just as I was going to bed last night, one of my dearest friends […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[44,4507,1616,8571,10941,10714,7876],"tags":[349,8741,8725,13169,1861,8996,10688,14054,4570,1305,212,2560,5565,8581,206,8691,10942,230,2484,261,3293,10715,7891,288,11555,8309],"class_list":["post-13789","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-dream","category-eric-hall-2","category-france","category-granville","category-joly-france","category-normandy-trader","category-place-darmes","tag-aubergine-kidney-bean","tag-baie-de-mont-st-michel","tag-brittany","tag-chausiaise","tag-clouds","tag-computer-issues","tag-cotentin-peninsula","tag-creedence-clearwater-revival","tag-david-bowie","tag-dictaphone","tag-dream","tag-eric-hall","tag-france","tag-granville","tag-httpwww-erichall-eu","tag-ile-de-chausey","tag-joly-france","tag-labrador-2","tag-late-night","tag-liz-terry-messenger","tag-mandy_m","tag-normandy-trader","tag-place-darmes","tag-rosemary","tag-thora","tag-welsh"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lesguis.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13789","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=13789"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lesguis.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13789\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13790,"href":"https:\/\/lesguis.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13789\/revisions\/13790"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lesguis.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=13789"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lesguis.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=13789"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lesguis.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=13789"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}