![\"men](\"https:\/\/www.erichall.eu\/images\/2106\/21060027.jpg\")
<\/a>But I’m not just talking about commercial fishing, I’m also talking about fishing with rod and line, whether it’s from the rocks down below the Pointe du Roc or from an open boat anchored just offshore.<\/p>\nAnd so today we have a pile of fishing boats anchored offshore with people on board casting their lines into the sea. More in hope than expectation, I have to say because as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, we have yet to see anyone actually pull a fish from the water using rod and line, despite over four years of trying.<\/p>\n
One of these days we’ll be lucky, and we will see someone pull something from the sea that isn’t an old boot or a bicycle wheel, but I’m not holding my breath.
<\/p>\n
You’ve all probably been holding your breath wondering how I coped with the alarm going off again at 06:00 after all of my vicissitudes yesterday.<\/p>\n
The answer is that I leapt from my bed with alacrity at the sound of the first alarm, and then went for my medication. And as I explained earlier, that’s no light task because these days there’s so much of it.<\/p>\n
And then, after the medication, I made some bread dough. Just because I’m ill doesn’t mean that I don’t have to eat. One lot of normal dough for the bread for my butties and another lot for my fruit bread with everything in it. Including yeast, unfortunately, because I think that my sourdough has died due to my rather long stay in Leuven.<\/p>\n
Today’s task was to finish off the three radio programmes that I was half-way through. That meant<\/p>\n
- \n
- editing the third lot of recorded speech<\/li>\n
- cutting it into fragments representing each pair of tracks<\/li>\n
- joining up the pairs of tracks with the speech to make a radio programme of sorts<\/li>\n
- working out how much time is left to make up an hour<\/li>\n
- knocking off 45 seconds for some speech to introduce the track<\/li>\n
- choosing an appropriate track that fits the length<\/li>\n
- adjusting the sound balance and volume<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
When that’s done the next steps were<\/p>\n
- \n
- writing 45 or so seconds of text to introduce the final track of each of the three programmes (one line of text on my text editor is equal to about 17 seconds of speech)<\/li>\n
- recording same<\/li>\n
- editing same<\/li>\n
- adding each bit of text onto the end of the last bit of text already on each programme<\/li>\n
- adding the final tracks<\/li>\n
- editing it all down to fit the hour time slot.<\/li>\n
- Saving each one<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
As you can see, I had my work cut out, but I actually finished it all by lunchtime.<\/p>\n
And that includes taking a lot of time out to organise the baking.<\/p>\n
By about 10:00 the bread dough had had enough time to rise up so I gave them their second kneading , shaped them and put them in their moulds. And while I was at it I made some apple crumble for the rest of the week’s puddings. And how I wish that I had a bigger oven because I had to mess about with a collection of various containers in order to make everything fit in.<\/p>\n
Round about 11:00 I switched on the oven and when it was stinking hot I put in the food.<\/p>\n
![\"home](\"https:\/\/www.erichall.eu\/images\/2106\/21060021.jpg\")
<\/a>And here are the finished objects, all nicely cooked and ready to be eaten.<\/p>\nAt lunchtime I tried a few slices of the ordinary bread. And it was lovely, soft and delicious with the last of the spicy hummus from Leuven. And that reminds me – the last of the spicy hummus. That means that my task for tomorrow morning will be to make another big load of hummus. It’s been a while since I’ve done that. I might even make another load of ginger beer too.<\/p>\n
This afternoon I came in here to make a start on transcribing the dictaphone notes – something that I’ve let go for the last couple of weeks. But as you might expect, no matter how perky and chipper I was feeling this morning (which really surprised me) I promptly crashed out. And I didn’t awaken until 15:50.
<\/p>\nWhatever happened to these 10-minute power naps that I used to take?<\/p>\n
![\"lorry](\"https:\/\/www.erichall.eu\/images\/2106\/21060022.jpg\")
<\/a>And so eventually I staggered outside, just in time to see some activity in this little builder’s compound just outside my front door.<\/p>\nThe other day we saw them taking digger-loads of stone and gravel out of one of the containers that was dumped here, and it seems that now they have finished with it because the skip hire lorry came round to load up the skip and take it away to wherever skips go to when they are no longer required.<\/p>\n
It’s this kind of thing that makes me wonder if the activity that we have seen around the Rue St Michel in the old walled city is finally drawing to a close. After all, they’ve been at it long enough.
<\/p>\n![\"people](\"https:\/\/www.erichall.eu\/images\/2106\/21060023.jpg\")
<\/a>One of the things that I usually do these days is to keep an eye on the beach to see what is happening there.<\/p>\nSo off I trotted down to the end of the car park to look over the wall. And while there wasn’t all that much beach to be on at the Rue du Nord due to the tide coming right in right now, some people had managed to find a cosy and comfy little spec down there.<\/p>\n
The weather wasn’t actually the right kind of weather for me to be down there sunning myself. The hot windless weather that we had the other day seems to be a thing of the past. It was quite cool out there and there was quite a wind today.<\/p>\n
Wouldn’t it be nice if summer were to come back?
<\/p>\n![\"man](\"https:\/\/www.erichall.eu\/images\/2106\/21060024.jpg\")
<\/a>Just now I talked about men out there fishing from their open boats anchored just offshore.<\/p>\nHere’s a prime example – a solitary man in a little cabin cruiser thing casting his line into the water in the hope of catching something interesting, and presumably edible, from the sea.<\/p>\n
Where he’s fishing is just off one of the rocks at the foot of the cliff here on the North side of the headland, so I hope that he has a good anchor or mooring post because he’s in danger of being blown by the wind and driven by the tides right onto that rock just there. And that will give him a rather nasty awakening.
<\/p>\n![\"labyrinth](\"https:\/\/www.erichall.eu\/images\/2106\/21060025.jpg\")
<\/a>One of the things that I read about in the local paper this morning was that someone had gone berserk with a lawnmower on the lawn up by the lighthouse. And so obviously I was eager to find out what was going on.<\/p>\nThe local council is not mowing the lawn up here, except on the approved paths. The idea is to give something of a more natural habit to encourage wildlife like butterflies and bees and other sorts of things, an idea with which I concur wholeheartedly.<\/p>\n
But someone has come by with a lawnmower – whether they had permission or not was not made clear – to create some kind of artistic labyrinth in the grass.<\/p>\n
It beats me why they would want to do that because it totally defeats the purpose of the natural habitat. Animals normally running around beneath the level of the top of the grass would now be exposed as they moved from one patch to another, and we’ve already seen on several occasion the birds of prey that loiter around here.
<\/p>\n![\"trawler](\"https:\/\/www.erichall.eu\/images\/2106\/21060026.jpg\")
<\/a>We’ve seen enough of small boats out at sea fishing with rod and line in the hope of catching something decent for tea, so it’s high time that we turned our attention to some of the larger stuff.<\/p>\nThis trawler was plying its trade out there in the Baie de Mont St Michel and I had noticed it in the distance. And as I came down the path and crossed the car park I noticed that by now it was heading for home, presumably with her work finished for the day.<\/p>\n
One would think that she was carrying a good catch home with her this afternoon because she has a couple of seagulls hovering around her. The fishermen will already be busy gutting the fish and throwing the entrails overboard I suppose, and that will attract the birds. Regular readers of this rubbish witnessed this when we were in Greenland a while back<\/p>\n
There are rules and regulations about throwing stuff overboard from ships but food products are not included in the ban, because of course that provides food for other marine species.
<\/p>\n![\"wild](\"https:\/\/www.erichall.eu\/images\/2106\/21060028.jpg\")
<\/a>Now isn’t this beautiful?<\/p>\nJust now I talked about the local council stopping mowing the grass around the Pointe du Roc in order to encourage the local wildlife. It seems that it’s not just fauna but flora too and we now have a beautiful patch of wild flowers springing up at the side of the path around the headland.<\/p>\n
This is the kind of thing that will encourage the birds and the bees to come and loiter around here. It certainly cheered me up. With a spring in my step, I pushed on along the path to the viewpoint overlooking the port.
<\/p>\n![\"trawler](\"https:\/\/www.erichall.eu\/images\/2106\/21060029.jpg\")
<\/a>Once more, there have been dramatic changes in the chantier navale<\/em> since the last time that we came this way<\/p>\nWhere there were four boats before, now there are two. The customs launch and the fishing boat have now gone back into the water. All that we are left with (for the moment at least) are the trawler Hera<\/em> and that strange wooden craft that looks as if it’s seen better days.<\/p>\n
There wasn’t much else going on anywhere around the port so I headed for home. This afternoon I fancied a nice hot coffee rather than a cold drink. It was that kind of weather and in any case, I needed waking up again.
<\/p>\nNow was the time to attack the dictaphone. I started by seeing where I’d been to last night and, more importantly, who had come with me. In fact I had a visit from Heidingauq last night – her first so welcome to my nightmare. And she can come and visit me any time she likes. I started off living in a new house that was very similar to Winsford except that the stairs were different. I met this guy who lived in the neighbourhood and we’d been chatting and I invited him into the house for something but I can’t remember what it was. He came in with his wife and then they left. I noticed that they had left the door open so I went down to see. There was something going on outside so I went to look. It was a football match between a girls’ team from the area and another team. The girls were well-beaten, 3-9 or something like that but they had sent a note to say that they would like to play this team again. It was all a really big friendly atmosphere. They had put lights on and there was some guy doing the lights. Who should be there but Heidinguaq so we had a little chat. We started to talk about music and I suddenly had a brainwave. I dashed into the house and got my acoustic bass and my acoustic guitar. I came out and gave the guitar to Heidinguaq. She said “ohh shall we do a song? We’re going to do a song for you”. Then she found out that the guitars were out of tune so she had to retune them. This was what we were doing and the guy doing the lights had to go along to put a new light bulb in, to fetch one from my house. he asked “is that your dad?”. I laughed and said “no, that’s not my dad, that’s my house. I live there. I own it”. She said “my dad had a name for people like that” but she couldn’t remember what it was. She added “my dad says whatever you do, do it well, but do it with your honour” and I was trying to find out what the hidden meaning in that was when I sat bolt upright wide awake. It was rather a feverish awakening as well.
\nI stepped back into this dream as well later on (something I haven’t done for a while). Later on there was a knock on the door. It was Heidinguaq. She wanted something so I gave it to her and she wandered off again. A while later she knocked on the door and I opened it. She came in this time. We chatted and in the end she was helping me do the dishes which I thought was very nice of her. She asked about frogs legs. I said “never mind that. I’ll get a bottle of champagne. I produced this bottle of champagne out of my stock.<\/p>\nAnd I’ll tell you something for nothing, and that is that I do have a bottle of champagne in stock ready for if ever she, or TOTGA, or Castor does come round to my house.<\/p>\n
Having dealt with today, I turned my attention to the backlog. And before guitar practice there was time to bring up to date THE FIRST OF THE ENTRIES FROM MY TRIP TO LEUVEN<\/a>.<\/p>\n
The guitar practice didn’t go how it was supposed to because I seem to have lost the knack and I can’t sing any more. I would have thought that with these stitches still in I would have had no problem reaching the high notes but apparently it’s not the case. And my co-ordination has gone too. I despair.<\/p>\n
Tea was taco rolls with the leftover stuffing from the other day, followed by a delicious home-made apple crumble with delicious home-made custard. Whatever else that might not be going right, at least I’m eating well. Good food too.<\/p>\n
But now it’s bed time, later than I was hoping but it can’t be helped. But fancy one of my Inuit friends from the far north of Greenland putting in an appearance. Things really are looking up. Maybe this is the sign of something good about to happen. We can always live in hope.<\/p>\n
