{"id":15382,"date":"2021-12-12T20:18:18","date_gmt":"2021-12-12T20:18:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lesguis.com\/wp\/?p=15382"},"modified":"2021-12-12T20:18:19","modified_gmt":"2021-12-12T20:18:19","slug":"sunday-12th-december-2021-how-long-is-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lesguis.com\/wp\/?p=15382","title":{"rendered":"Sunday 12th December 2021 &#8211; HOW LONG IS IT &#8230;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>&#8230; since we&#8217;ve been overflown by a light aeroplane?<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.erichall.eu\/images\/2112\/21120104.html\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.erichall.eu\/images\/2112\/21120104.jpg\" alt=\"50sa light aeroplane pointe du roc Granville Manche Normandy France Eric Hall photo December 2021\" class=\"alignleft\" width=\"220\" height=\"150\"><\/a>At one time it was regularly every day, day after day, week after week, but we haven&#8217;t been so blessed for quite some considerable time.<\/p>\n<p>But not to worry. Today, while I was out and about on my afternoon walk I heard the familiar sound and looking up, I noticed that at long last, someone had taken to the air while I was out and about on my post-prandial perambulation.<\/p>\n<p>And it&#8217;s an aeroplane that is well-known to all of us. She&#8217;s 50SA &#8211; a light aeroplane whose registration number is not recorded in any database that I&#8217;ve been able to access so regrettably I can&#8217;t tell you anything about her and she won&#8217;t have filed a flight plan for me to trace either.<br clear=\"both\"><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.erichall.eu\/images\/2112\/21120106.html\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.erichall.eu\/images\/2112\/21120106.jpg\" alt=\"helicopter pointe du roc Granville Manche Normandy France Eric Hall photo December 2021\" class=\"alignleft\" width=\"220\" height=\"150\"><\/a>And strangely enough, she wasn&#8217;t the only airborne machine that overflew me this afternoon either.<\/p>\n<p>Someone else had their chopper out this afternoon and it overflew me as I walked along the path on top of the headland.<\/p>\n<p>This is a machine that I don&#8217;t actually recognise and unfortunately I can&#8217;t read her registration number. Black on khaki was never a good colour combination.<\/p>\n<p>She was flashing a strobe light as she flew by overhead and I was lucky enough to capture the flash of the light when I took the photo. And then she cleared off down the Baie de Mont St Michel in the general direction of the Pointe de Carolles.<br clear=\"both\"><\/p>\n<p>It was moving much quicker than I did this morning. Although I was awake at about 09:00 &#8211; which was a surprise in itself &#8211; it was much more like 10:00 when I finally plucked up the courage to crawl out of bed<\/p>\n<p>After the medication and checking my mails and medication, I started work. And me working on a Sunday is an exciting event in itself.<\/p>\n<p>First job was to listen to all three radio programmes that I&#8217;ll be posting off on Monday afternoon. There&#8217;s the one for next weekend of course, and then my Christmas Eve special, and finally the concert that I&#8217;m producing for New Year&#8217;s Eve.<\/p>\n<p>And the latter one is a belter, from Boston on New Year&#8217;s Eve 1976 and you can find out more about that on new Year&#8217;s Eve.<\/p>\n<p>While I was doing that, the first job to be done was to check the recordings that I&#8217;d made last night. They were all reasonable so I posted them off to whoever it is who is undertaking to produce them. Ordinarily I would have done that but I have far too much going on anyway as regular readers of this rubbish will recall and in any case, it&#8217;s not my project.<\/p>\n<p>Second thing was to edit all of the photos from last night. They are all done so I&#8217;ve been playing around with a three-column *.css display in order to show them. This is going to take a day or two to finish because while the display works fine, it needs some tweaking.<\/p>\n<p>And that involves the &#8220;PARETO&#8221; principle, where the first 80% of the work takes 20% of the effort, and the remaining 20% of the work involves 80% of the effort, and that&#8217;s where I&#8217;m at right now<\/p>\n<p>The third thing that needed doing was to transcribe the dictaphone notes from last night. The BBC still had squatters in its roof after several years and had finally received a legal ruling that it could evict them. A man and woman set out upstairs to throw these people out because they weren&#8217;t expecting any particular trouble from them. One person there was wielding a machete and when the woman tried to put her hand on someone the person with the machete chopped this woman&#8217;s thumb off. When I say &#8220;upstairs&#8221; in Broadcasting House it was something like the attic at my house. It wasn&#8217;t anything big or anything like that. There were no more than 3 pr 4 people in there.<\/p>\n<p>Later on we were all moving out of our family home. The family had fallen apart, the parents had separated, all that kind of thing. I found to my surprise that the family home was in my name so I was going to have to sell it and buy somewhere else. My parents &#8211; my father had left home a long time ago and my mother, we don&#8217;t know what was to become of her and we kids had to fend for ourselves. I wanted to put the house on the market but it was a real mass and would take years to tidy it up. I made a start but no-one else seemed particularly keen. A few people came round to interview us &#8211; to find out when was the last time they saw their father. Someone said &#8220;1972&#8221;. It was all really depressing for everyone. A neighbour asked if she could come round and pick up something. I said &#8220;not before 18:00 as I have to go and do shopping after work&#8221;. She said that she didn&#8217;t think that she could make it them so I said that there&#8217;s always another day. She asked about what was happening to all of us. I said &#8220;we&#8217;ll be OK&#8221;. She asked if we were still staying at school. I replied &#8220;no, we&#8217;re all going to have to go out and work on the island but we&#8217;ll manage&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>There were the usual interruptions &#8211; like a coffee in the morning and lunch as usual at 13:00. Porridge and toast with yet more coffee.<\/p>\n<p>This afternoon has been really exciting. I&#8217;ve made my Christmas cake.<\/p>\n<p>After lunch I started to mix everything, making sure this time that I followed the instructions very carefully. And if it will taste as nice as the mixture did when I sampled some, it will really be delicious. This orange-and-vanilla marinade mix that I made seems to have worked a treat<\/p>\n<p>After it went into the oven I came back in here to sit down where I actually dozed off for 15 minutes. Mixing that cake was hard work, harder than I realised.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.erichall.eu\/images\/2112\/21120102.html\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.erichall.eu\/images\/2112\/21120102.jpg\" alt=\"people on beach rue du nord Granville Manche Normandy France Eric Hall photo December 2021\" class=\"alignleft\" width=\"220\" height=\"150\"><\/a>Later on, I went out for my afternoon walk as usual.<\/p>\n<p>First port of call was at the wall at the end of the car park where I could look down at what was happening on the beach.<\/p>\n<p>There wasn&#8217;t anyone down there this afternoon which is a surprise after all of those people there yesterday in the rainstorm. The weather was much nicer this afternoon (which isn&#8217;t, unfortunately, saying much) and there were a few more people out and about.<\/p>\n<p>But not on the beach this afternoon.<br clear=\"both\"><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.erichall.eu\/images\/2112\/21120103.html\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.erichall.eu\/images\/2112\/21120103.jpg\" alt=\"ile de chausey baie de Granville Manche Normandy France Eric Hall photo December 2021\" class=\"alignleft\" width=\"220\" height=\"150\"><\/a>There wasn&#8217;t anything at all going on in the Baie de Granville this afternoon.<\/p>\n<p>Not a single boat of any description out there as far as I could see. And I could see a little better than I could over the last couple of days and, again, that&#8217;s not saying all that much either.<\/p>\n<p>The Ile de Chausey was plainly visible this afternoon even if it was all grey and depressing. We could see the houses out there on the island and that makes a pleasant change too from how things have been just recently.<\/p>\n<p>It was round by here that I took a photo of the light aeroplane that overflew me, and having done that I pushed on along the path.<br clear=\"both\"><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.erichall.eu\/images\/2112\/21120105.html\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.erichall.eu\/images\/2112\/21120105.jpg\" alt=\"yacht baie de mont st michel Granville Manche Normandy France Eric Hall photo December 2021\" class=\"alignleft\" width=\"220\" height=\"150\"><\/a>Out in the Baie de Mont St Michel there was a yacht manoeuvring around.<\/p>\n<p>And that&#8217;s the first pleasure boat that we&#8217;ve seen out there at sea for a good while too.<\/p>\n<p>It first came to my attention as I was walking down the path and across the car park towards the end of the headland. I&#8217;d been hoping to catch some people relaxing on the bench at the end of the headland but once again there wasn&#8217;t anyone down there.<\/p>\n<p>No fishermen down there on the rocks either &#8211; it&#8217;s been a while since we&#8217;ve seen any of them either.<br clear=\"both\"><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.erichall.eu\/images\/2112\/21120107.html\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.erichall.eu\/images\/2112\/21120107.jpg\" alt=\"waves on sea wall port de Granville harbour Manche harbour Normandy France Eric Hall photo December 2021\" class=\"alignleft\" width=\"220\" height=\"150\"><\/a>From there I walked off along the path on the other side of the headland towards the port.<\/p>\n<p>The sea didn&#8217;t look all that rough this afternoon despite the almost-complete absence of sea-going craft so I waited for a few minutes to see what the waves were going to produce, to replace the miserable effort that I&#8217;d taken yesterday.<\/p>\n<p>It must have been about 10 minutes that I was standing there waiting for something rather dramatic but in the end I wandered away, somewhat disappointed in what I&#8217;d seen.<\/p>\n<p>Mind you, I bet that the person walking on top of the wall was rather pleased that nothing happened.<br clear=\"both\"><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.erichall.eu\/images\/2112\/21120108.html\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.erichall.eu\/images\/2112\/21120108.jpg\" alt=\"waves on sea wall port de Granville harbour Granville Manche Normandy France Eric Hall photo December 2021\" class=\"alignleft\" width=\"220\" height=\"150\"><\/a>And as I walked away, further on down the road, I head a tremendous crash against the sea wall.<\/p>\n<p>Luckily I had the camera ready so I was able to take full advantage of the aftermath and took a really good photo of the wave subsequently soaring up over the sea wall.<\/p>\n<p>Back here I made another coffee and spent some time giving a good roll to the pizza dough that I&#8217;d taken out of the freezer earlier.<br clear=\"both\"><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.erichall.eu\/images\/2112\/21120109.html\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.erichall.eu\/images\/2112\/21120109.jpg\" alt=\"vegan pizza vegan christmas cake place d'armes Granville Manche Normandy France Eric Hall photo December 2021\" class=\"alignleft\" width=\"220\" height=\"150\"><\/a>When the pizza dough had risen sufficiently I assembled my pizza and when the time was up on the cake I took it out and put the pizza in.<\/p>\n<p>The cake wasn&#8217;t cooked enough on the bottom so I put it back in while I ate my pizza. The pizza was delicious but the bottom of the cake still wasn&#8217;t cooked so I put it in without the dish &#8211; just on the baking paper.<\/p>\n<p>And that was when I realised that the baking paper isn&#8217;t as fireproof as I thought. But at least the bottom is properly cooked now.<br clear=\"both\"><\/p>\n<p>So while that&#8217;s cooling, I&#8217;m going to bed. I have a 06:00 start in the morning to prepare another radio programme for the future and I need to be completely on form for that.<\/p>\n<p>Not that that is ever likely to happen though.<\/p>\n<div class='watch-action'><div class='watch-position align-left'><div class='action-like'><a class='lbg-style1 like-15382 jlk' href='javascript:void(0)' data-task='like' data-post_id='15382' data-nonce='4f76f79927' 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-15382 lc'>0<\/span><\/a><\/div><div class='action-unlike'><a class='unlbg-style1 unlike-15382 jlk' href='javascript:void(0)' data-task='unlike' data-post_id='15382' data-nonce='4f76f79927' 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-15382 unlc'>0<\/span><\/a><\/div> <\/div> <div class='status-15382 status align-left'><\/div><\/div><div class='wti-clear'><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&#8230; since we&#8217;ve been overflown by a light aeroplane? At one time it was regularly every day, day after day, week after week, but we haven&#8217;t been so blessed for quite some considerable time. But not to worry. Today, while I was out and about on my afternoon walk I heard the familiar sound and [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[44,4507,1616,8571,7876],"tags":[14805,8797,8741,4834,13133,212,2560,5565,8581,5456,8691,7891,11158,11947,886,5164,13260],"class_list":["post-15382","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-dream","category-eric-hall-2","category-france","category-granville","category-place-darmes","tag-50sa","tag-aeroplane","tag-baie-de-mont-st-michel","tag-beach","tag-bouquet-granvillais","tag-dream","tag-eric-hall","tag-france","tag-granville","tag-helicopter","tag-ile-de-chausey","tag-place-darmes","tag-pointe-du-roc","tag-rue-du-nord","tag-vegan-christmas-cake","tag-vegan-pizza","tag-yacht"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lesguis.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15382","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=15382"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lesguis.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15382\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15383,"href":"https:\/\/lesguis.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15382\/revisions\/15383"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lesguis.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=15382"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lesguis.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=15382"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lesguis.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=15382"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}