Tag Archives: mars hill road

Friday 22nd March 2024 – I’M NOT HAVING …

… much luck with my footfest this weekend. Cymru’s Under-21 match against Lithuania isn’t being streamed on a foreign carrier either tonight.

It’s just my luck, after last night’s stunning victory of the senior team against Finland following on from Cymru’s “C” team against England on Wednesday night. I was really looking forward to some football tonight. Watching Stranraer slump to a controversial 2-1 defeat to Elgin City on the swamp that is Stair Park was hardly any compensation

It’s been a really long time since I was at Stair Park – almost 50 years in fact. I was coming off the ferry from one of my trips to Northern Ireland when I saw crowds (well, perhaps not “crowds”) of people heading all in one direction, all wearing blue and white scarves. So I had to follow them to see what was going on, as if I didn’t know.

It’s so long ago now that I can’t remember who they were playing. Probably someone like Arbroath or Montrose or something. And as I don’t have my photos here from that period, I can’t even tell you the colours. But one thing that I can tell you is that the ground hasn’t changed one iota in that time. It still looks the same as it did back then.

Mind you, that’s a relief. The Taylor Report swept away many traditional football grounds and with football attendances in Scotland being what they are, we were left with far too many of these modern, soulless one-sided wonders with “room to build the other three sides when attendances improve”.

Yes, quite.

The problem in Scottish football can be summed up in two words, “Celtic” and “Rangers”.

Regular readers of this rubbish in one of its previous versions will recall that I stood outside Albion Rovers’ ground in Coatbridge where the average attendance was about 300 watching busload after busload of people wearing green and white or blue and white scarves all heading into Glasgow.

And then I was at Broadwood in Cumbernauld once watching a game between Glasgow Rangers reserves v Celtic reserves, both teams full of players that would have been a boon and an asset to any other club in Scotland. Rangers and Celtic had signed them not because they needed them but because they didn’t want any other club to have them and become a competitive threat.

And absolutely nothing whatever has changed, except that Albion Rovers have been relegated from the Scottish pyramid into the Lowland League. But as former Spurs manager Terry Venables once famously said, "if history repeats itself, I should think we can expect the same thing again"

However, I digress … "again" – ed

Last night was another one of those nights where I couldn’t tear myself out of my chair and into bed. It was something like 01:30 when I finally moved a muscle and set about doing my nightly chores. I’ve absolutely no idea what’s happening to me right now about this.

Anyway it was another really deep sleep like last night where I can’t remember a single thing until the alarm went off

When it awoke me I really was dead to the world and I had quite a battle to raise myself from the dead. They talk about “the quick and the dead” in Biblical terms but there was nothing whatever quick about it.

First thing was to check the blood pressure. 15.9/100, pretty similar to last night’s 16.0/10.1, taken when I was feeling rather stressed out trying to exert myself to go to bed. So what was winding me up during the night?

Anyway I wandered off into the kitchen to sort out the medication. I’m beginning to run low on certain things again – just supplies of a few of the tablets for a couple of weeks. I need to keep an eye on everything to make sure that I don’t run out.

Next task was to make the bread. And I put a lot of thought and effort into this lot and tried my best to knead it correctly, which is not easy.

After that I went for a good wash, scrub up and shave and all of that kind of thing, as well as washing to shorts that I’ve started to wear in bed. But I didn’t get as far as I would have liked because for once in his life the nurse was here early.

When he came in, he saw the bread buns slowly rising, said “oh look, bread!” and poked one, which promptly sank

He eventually managed to find a vein and extract some blood. And I’ve had the results already. The red blood count is slowly rising, which is no surprise given the amount of stuff they are injecting into me every Wednesday, but so is the carcinogenic protein. It should be between 59 and 104 and it’s increased from 267 to 275.

So if the red blood cells are increasing, what is the protein attacking? The answer is that it’s now attacking the platelets. They should be between 140 and 380 and they have decreased from 108 to 92. That would seem to indicate that the cancer is now moving into my bone marrow.

So what’s the next move going to be? Someone will tell me something in due course, I imagine.

Having switched off the heating in the apartment, I checked the bread again and it had risen really well and for once I was impressed, especially as I’m making hot cross buns on Sunday and I need some confidence and encouragement.

The bread baked perfectly too, lovely and soft. It made some really nice cheese on toast and there is bread for the next couple of days too

Later on today I went to pay the Property Taxes on my place in Canada. I tried for an age unsuccessfully to log into my bank account, only to discover that I was trying to access Scotia Bank Trinidad and Tobago rather than Scotia Bank Canada.

Once I’d found the correct bank, everything went really smoothly. I do like how easy it is to make payments and so on in the Canadian banking system

It’s not so easy making payments on-line in France to the French Government.

The French Government has at long last started a system of on-line payments where you can pay your bills via internet rather than sending a cheque. I went to set it up for me this afternoon, but it’s not easy.

The logical way to organise payments is to index everything by reference to a person’s identity card number, so you can log in, see your account, see what’s owing and pay it off all at once with just one payment.

Instead, everything is indexed by invoice number, so if you have more than one bill to pay, as I did, you have to log in more than once, entering all of your details, including card details, more than once, and it takes an age.

What makes life even more complicated is that it asks you to enter certain details from the invoices into certain boxes on the computer screen, and the names don’t correspond. You have to use some intuitive guesswork to figure it all out.

But what am I going to do about my place in Canada?

it was an inspired decision to buy it because all you need when dealing with Canadian administration is a Property Tax Assessment. I could open bank accounts, buy pick-ups, obtain insurance, have mobile phones, all of that, simply on production of a Property Tax Assessment and it eased my passage (if you’ll pardon the expression) around Canada.

But I’m never going to use it now and it’s just going to sit there with the apples falling off the trees year after year until the cows come home unless my niece goes up there to pick them up.

But while we’re talking about Canada … "well, one of us is" – ed … I wonder how Strider is getting on with his new owners. We travelled miles together, him, me and STRAWBERRY MOOSE. I hope that they are looking afer him.

And that reminds me – I told my niece to dispose of most of the stuff that was in there – tools, camping gear, expedition equipment and so on – but there was a Fender bass and amp in there that I used that I wanted her to keep for me. I need to think of a way of bringing them over here.

The cleaner came round this afternoon for her Friday cleaning spot, bringing my mushrooms and tomatoes with her. I retreated into my bedroom while she was here but I actually had a fall while I was in the bathroom. Luckily the chair was in my way and I fell onto that, otherwise it could have been nasty

There was some stuff on the dictaphone too, surprisingly. I had several Ford Corsairs in my drive last night. One of them was driven away and I can’t remember where it went. Someone else borrowed a set of my number-plates but hadn’t brought them back and I was becoming rather concerned about that. Anyway there was some more car-swapping that needed to be done. I had to bring another Ford Cortina into my drive. That was parked in Gainsborough Road so I had to go down there to it, start it and bring it back. That was a Safari Beige colour but I was thinking that if I were to paint it blue I could put on the number-plates that this guy had borrowed because they belonged to a blue estate. I could make a set of plates but what would be the position if someone saw both vehicles, mine and the one on which presumably the guy had put the plates, and noticed that there were two vehicles with the same set of plates? What would my neighbours say if I were to turn up with yet another car after I’d just had one taken away somewhere? I got into the Cortina Estate. The clutch was right down on the floor and it was difficult to start. I thought that I better hadn’t leave vehicles lying around for so long without actually starting them up otherwise I’m just going to make myself a lot of problems

This is something of a recurring dream, isn’t it, having Cortinas scattered all around the town. It’s just like in real life when I actually did, including a beige Cortina estate and a blue one too.

But swapping over number plates from one car to another? And VIN plates too? I look back on those years with amazement and wonder how on earth I managed to keep clear of some serious trouble. Six months at Her Majesty’s Pleasure would have been nothing. I had to stop and leave the country because those years were catching up on me rather rapidly

My excuse was though that when you are up to your neck in alligators, it’s hard to realise that you are really trying to drain the swamp. Taking drastic and rapid steps to solve short-term issues can lead to some really long-term problems further down the line.

It’s a surprise though having Ford Corsairs around the place for a change. I didn’t think that it would be too long though before a Cortina or two appeared.

So this afternoon I’ve chosen some more music for another radio programme and began to pair it off before tea but I ran out of time, mainly due to going away with the fairies for an hour or so. And miles away too, it has to be said.

But tea was lovely – the last Kale and Quinoa burger from Noz, and I’ll have to find a way of making those because they were nice, especially in breadcrumbs.

Last of the home-made mayonnaise too, although it might not have been had I used a more convenient container. Still, you live and learn.

However, the mayonnaise was an unqualified success. It was too thick and I’d used too much garlic, but those are minor problems. The principle was perfect and tomorrow, I’ll make some more, having learned from my first batch.

So what with that and making hot cross buns on Sunday it looks as if I’m going to be in for a busy weekend. And it’ll do me good right now because I seem to be doing too much of nothing right now.

So what else can I make while I’m at it? I shall have to pick Liz’s brains, and I’ll welcome any suggestions from anyone else too

But before I go, the story of my mayonnaise in the wrong bottle reminds me of that aerosol that came onto the market in the 70s. The publicity for it went something like "enough paint to cover 70 square metres of panelling"
And someone wrote underneath the advert "and enough propellant to get just about a quarter of it out of the can"

Thursday 15th February 2024 – I REALLY DON’T …

… know what’s happening to me right now.

Once again, I was absolutely flat-out this afternoon, sleeping quietly on my chair for a good 90 minutes. And nothing whatever disturbed me, not even a message on the ‘phone from Rosemary, and regular readers of this rubbish will recall the racket that this ‘phone makes whenever I receive a message or ‘phone call.

It was just like yesterday in fact, where I was well away with the fairies on the way home from Paris.

One thing that I can’t blame is tiredness. Just for a change I was in bed early and actually had a comfortable night’s sleep without waking too much.

Mind you, I could have done with another couple of hours when the alarm went off. It took me several minutes to work out what was going on (and that’s not unusual, is it?). What I mean by that is that I had the impression that there were several beds in here with several people, and a whole series of alarms was going off to awaken different people. I had a hard time believing that my alarm call was real.

But anyway I slid eventually to my feet and went for the blood pressure machine. 17.2/10.6 this morning. But as for last night’s, where did I record the figures? They aren’t written on my little booklet thing where I record them so I don’t have a clue.

They’ll turn up one day so I left them to it and went for my medication. Tons of it as usual and it’s really becoming quite ridiculous, but never mind. 10 tablets or powders in the morning and 5 at night before I go to bed is where we’re at right now.

Back in here I had a listen to the dictaphone to see where I’d been during the night. I was having a dream last night about the words dim ond da – that’s “not but good”, messing around with them, trying to fit them into different sentences that I’d written. Then we came across some of the radio notes that I’d written and just dictated. I decided that they were horrible and needed amending. I added in some bits but they were even worse, but then I couldn’t remember how to return to the original. That confused me for quite some time. When I did, I found that I’d still missed some out. Nevertheless the programme sounded better but there were so much more that I could do with this particular programme that I thought that I was going to start to rewrite it and dictate it again but that would have to be something that would have to be done later and not now.

And there have been more than just one or two occasions where this kind of thing has happened in real life when I’ve been writing a radio programme or editing a website, ending up forgetting all kinds of important things that I had included and somehow seemed to have managed to wipe out some important stuff that I really wanted to include.

This was another night where I was with my former friend. We were chatting to two other people whom we knew who we’d met some time previously. We’d arranged for this meeting so they came round . We showed them how to climb into my attic up the electric cable but the guy’s girlfriend was afraid to do it so my former friend’s wife stayed down with her and the other four of us climbed into the attic which was full of rubbish as usual. We spread ourselves out to make ourselves comfortable to talk. This started in the attic but ended up standing in Nantwich Road by the old police station. We were as usual discussing cars. My ex-friend was talking to him about several cars including one with a particular registration that would suit his wife but not while they were living in Porthcawl because it was a dangerous place to be apparently, according to him. I was talking to the other guy, telling him that I was having to dispose of some of my cars because I’d sold my house and had nowhere to keep them. I was renting a warehouse at the moment but that was precarious. However there was also a car that I wanted to buy, a yellow Ford Zephyr 6. While this was all going on there was a road rally taking place and all these old historic cars were going past. While I was talking to him about that particular one, I could hear something going past running on 5 cylinders instead of 6. It was this Zephyr so I pointed it out to him. I told him the story about how the driver had taken it out for a run 2 weeks ago but the insurance wasn’t correct at the time and he’d had a collision with a police car. As the policeman was looking round his car and preparing to nab him for no insurance, there was another bigger accident immediately right by them. The policeman went over to that and waved this guy away which was probably about the luckiest break that he’d ever had in his life

These days I seem to have a thing about Ford Zephyr 6s. There was one in my dreams a couple of nights ago and I’m sure that there have been others. They are MkIII Zephyrs, the kind that my father had in the late 60s and early 70s. Lovely, comfortable roomy cars with plenty of woomph.

A couple of nights ago I mentioned the one that I had – a MkIV model – that caught fire after a Jethro Tull concert in Manchester.

However, the story about “no insurance” rang a bell with me. When I was living in Winsford I bought a Rover 2000 at the auctions at Prees Heath and took a chance on driving it home. It goes without saying that I was pulled over by the police and asked for the documents for the car, like the MoT and the … errr … insurance.

Not having any of course, I pleaded ignorance and so was given the dreaded white slip “to produce your documents at your nearest Police Station within 5 days – or else …” – “or else” being anything from a slap on the wrist to three months at Her Majesty’s Pleasure, and in my case, it would be nearer the latter than the former. The Cheshire Constabulary and I didn’t get on very well.

Two days later I had a phone call – “this is PC Grindlay here. I stopped you the other day in that Rover. I forgot to write the date on the copy of the white slip. You will write it on for me, won’t you?”.
“Of course I will” I said, lying through my teeth. I could just picture the scene in the Nantwich Magistrates’ Court. “Five days from WHAT date, Your Honour?”.

But to be on the safe side I promptly put the Rover through the auctions at Queensferry so that someone else, presumably in North Wales, would have more headaches than I would.

Queensferry Auctions was quite fun though in the old days. Having little money we once bought a Citroen Dyane from a scrapyard for £25, drove it to Queensferry and put it through the auctions where it fetched £35. A few of those used to keep us going when we were hard-up

Another thing that we used to do when we were broke was to wander round the scrapyards and take the back seats out of cars. You’d be surprised at the amount of money that had slipped unnoticed out of people’s pockets.

It wasn’t just money either – all kinds of things were “salvaged” including, on one occasion, a really complicated food tester with temperature probe.

Anyway, I digress … "again" – ed

Once I’d returned to the Land of the Living I started on the notes for the radio programme. There were several that I hadn’t written so I worked my way through them and now they are all ready for dictation on Saturday night. Hopefully all of the Carnivalers will have gone home by then and we’ll go back to being quiet again.

THis afternoon I was doing paperwork. It was the middle of October when I last filed away my papers so there were piles here in all kinds of heaps all over the place.

Anyway, they are now all sorted away, bills paid, actions taken and quite a few filed under CS. The place is looking much more like home now in my bedroom/office.

My cleaner came round too. Yesterday I’d given her the prescription that I’d had from Paris and she’d been this morning to the chemist’s. Now you can’t move around here for medication.

Then there was another task that needed doing now that it was after 09:00 in North America.

My Canadian bank card expired in March last year and of course I hadn’t been to North America this autumn and so didn’t have the new one.

After six months I had the dreaded “your account is now placed in suspense” notice so that was that. And then I had a letter from Service New Brunswick about paying my property taxes on my place there, which, with a suspended bank account, will be extremely difficult.

Consequently I had sent my niece along to ransack my mailbox and she found it under a pile of rubbish, and she posted it to me – the card, not the rubbish.

Now I needed to unfreeze the account and that was not the work of five minutes either. I shudder to think how much the ‘phone call will cost me at the end of the month but it needed to be done. So now my Canadian bank account is working, my bank card works, and the letter from Service New Brunswick wasn’t even the demand for payment in any case.

But buying that place in Canada was an ace of a move. No-one asks for Visas, your right of residence in Canada, that sort of thing in Canada. You can buy cars, take out insurance, open bank accounts, have mobile phones, absolutely everything as long as you can produce a property tax certificate.

As regular readers of this rubbish will recall, I’ve blagged my way through all kinds of situations that would have forestalled many other people, thanks to my little piece of Canada. I might have the noisiest, most mentally-unstable neighbours in the World on my southern border, but so what?

After that I went for my hot chocolate and then came back in here ready to work but as I mentioned earlier, I went off with the fairies instead. And I can tell you where I ended up too. I’d been running some kind of football training sessions for boys and girls. I’d heard a complaint that two boys had been overheard saying that they couldn’t wait to see a certain girl use the toilet again so I went to check and was confident that no-one using the toilet could be seen from outside. The rumours continued so I arranged for a piece of white canvas to be fitted to block the window arranged in such a way that it would shield the toilet but still allow light in. I was sure that there could be no possibility of anyone being seen from outside but the rumour gained ground again, I checked the toilet and was confident, so I didn’t really know what I could do now apart from bricking up the window. And I wasn’t convinced that that would stop the rumours either.

Tea tonight was that vegan sausage-meat patty with baked potato and a tin of mixed peppers that I’d found on the shelf. I felt rather like Mr Carmichael and SUPPER WAITS ON THE TABLE INSIDE A TIN.

The patty wasn’t a success. Not that it didn’t taste nice, but that in the fridge it hadn’t really kept its shape and consistency. But never mind – it was a rather ad-hoc thing using up some left-over stuffing. I’ll just have to work on it and improve my technique.

So right now I’m going to work on my sleep and improve my technique there. Having felt like Tommy Cooper this afternoon and "I knew a man who dreamed that he was awake, and when he awoke, he was!", I want to dream of nicer things.

However, rather like Barbara Follet, "my dreams are going through their death flurries. They are dying before the steel javelins and arrows of a world of Time and Money" and that will be the end of the World if that does happen. It’s only my dreams that keep me going these days

And as Dietrich Bonhoffer said "the only fight that is lost is that which we give up" so I’ll go and fight the good fight in bed right now.

See you all tomorrow.

Friday 31st March 2023 – MY SAUSAGE …

… chips and beans for tea was delicious. Now that I have some melting vegan cheese, and more importantly, now I know where I can find some more without any effort, I added some cheese to the beans while they were cooking and that made an impressive difference.

The air fryer struck again. Cooked my sausage and chips to perfection. And later on, seeing as I found some more frozen apple pie in the freezer, it defrosted and crisped up my slice of apple pie.

And rummaging around in my box of cooking accessories, I found a shallow porcelain pie dish tested for use in the oven that fits nicely in the basket of the air fryer.

Things are looking up!

There are several other things that also seem to be looking up too.

Firstly, I had another better night of sleep. I was late going to bed and it was a real struggle to awaken but I even managed to beat the first alarm this morning, never mind the second one.

That’s a surprise in itself because although it wasn’t anything as like as restless as it has been in the recent past, I still put in a god few miles while I was asleep. The subject of Lonnie Donegan came up in a discussion between me and several other people. It brought out the fact that after he’d finished with a musical career he’d gone into the motor trade. He’d bought a ruined garage somewhere and had started to work from it. I was hoping that there might have been something going here for me but no-one said anything so I made a few enquiries of my own. I was pointed in the direction of where he might be. I turned up there and it was an ice speedway race taking place on an ice rink somewhere in south London. He was actually racing in it and won, which of course cheered everyone. Then there was something about music. One of the guys in it was called Kenny Driscoll whom I know from “Lone Star”. We were talking about some kind of jazz group that was involving him and someone else well-known was looking for an over-dub guitarist for making albums of the live concerts they were doing

There was something else involving music but I can’t remember very much of this except that it involved some kind of guitarist who was fleeing from justice. They had him surrounded. It went on from there but I can’t remember very much but one of the tracks on the album that he was recording was called “A State of Bohemia”. Someone interpreted it to mean that they were living some kind of uncomplicated life. It was really quite funny because they didn’t know, although most people did, that Bohemia was the name of an ancient State in Central Europe now part of the Czech Republic (and I’m impressed that I knew that in the middle of a dream) but there is lots more to this dream than this but I can’t remember it

And then I was driving taxis in a new town last night. It was a town about which Nerina or whoever the woman with me was knew something about. She showed me a couple of places that she had visited when she was at University there. We had a new driver starting as well. We gave him a run-down of what to do and what we expected of him then we set off. The first job was that we were going to the same place but picking up from different places so we met up and went together in the end. This person paid for both taxis. It came to £2:50, £1:10 for me and £1:40 for him. It had to be split up but for some unknown reason the maths were extremely complicated. I was scratching my head about this because I knew the answer straight away but I didn’t want to say it in case everyone thought that I was trying to cheat someone. We were talking about whether we’d be busy or not but on the way into dropping off these passengers we’d seen queues at almost every taxi rank so we expected that we would have a really busy night. For some reason I wans’t in the mood to be busy. It was very difificult when there were just 2 of you and one was a new driver.

Something else occurred as well. The place was untidy so I asked the family if they would halp me tidy it. One thing was an enormous pile of books with books all over the floor. Their response was a quote from Churchill about “you should find books everywhere in a house and that’s a good sign if there are”. I thought that that was typical with no-one coming round to help me out.

Finally I was out last night somewhere in the Home Counties. There was a group of people who had gone to meet someone. They had an Avengers-like plot trying different pulls on them to see which was the most efficacious in killing them. They lured someone down to a quiet remote cul-de-sac in the countryside. They person whom they were supposed to be meeting wasn’t there so he stopped a passer-by who happened to be one of these secret agents who planted this thing on him and gave him directions as to where he ought to ben which of course were false. He set off with the idea that he’d die. I’d observed this so I wanted to get out of there as quickly as possible. I got into my red Cortina estate and reversed out of the side street. I hadn’t noticed this traffic island. The rear of the vehicle went up on it and stuck so I gave it some extra revs to take me right over. There was a car coming behind me, one of these horrible yellowy-green 1100s. I hit it and said “oh God! Here we go again”. I pulled up on the side of the road to go to talk to the guy but he just turned his car round and drove away. I wondered what to do next – do I sit there and wait for the police or wait for him to come back or do I go and risk being prosecuted for driving away from an accident. I really had no idea.

So Nerina was there last night, but also so were members of my family (well, Nerina is a member of my family too but you know what I mean). It’s been a good few days since TOTGA and Zero have put in an appearance and my other favourite girl, Castor, seems to have dropped off the radar now. She’s not been around for ages.

It all reminds me of “I’ve been having bad dreams
Well maybe tomorrow when I’m hungry baby
I’d beg for you, what’d I say steal and borrow
Would you help me
Really help me, really help me
To run down the road
Would you be with me”

But not even STEVE MARRIOTT can conjure up Zero, Castor and TOTGA for me.

Anyway, nostalgia ain’t what it used to be, so live for the present!

After the medication and checking my mails and messages it took me a good while for me to come to my senses and once I’d had a rather later-than-usual mid-morning coffee I started work.

First thing to do was to pay the property taxes on my place in Canada. I had high hopes for that piece of land, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall and was out there getting quotes for log cabins and the like, only to be struck down by a thunderbolt back in late 2015.

The fact that I’m still going is a tribute to the medical staff at Leuven but how I would have loved not to have had to involve them in my projects.

Wouldn’t things have been different? But then I wouldn’t have made it to the Arctic and I wouldn’t have met the Vanilla Queen (who dropped off the radar a long time ago) and Castor.

Second thing was to pay my cleaner. I also had to leave her my niece’s details for when I’m in hospital if the necessity should ever arise. And of course I have a different phone to the one that I used to take with me to Canada so I had to hunt down all of the details and check with her that they were still correct.

During one of the pauses I had a shower too. The physiotherapist was to come round this afternoon and I wanted to be nice and clean for him. And climbing into the bath to take a shower is no longer an issue, which is good news. This physiotherapy is working.

The rest of the day has been spent writing notes for the radio programmes, which are now all done, writing out the details of my trips during the night, and also converting and remixing a couple of soundfiles that I tracked down the other day.

A little earlier I mentioned that there were a couple of other things that seem to be looking up. The second one is that the physiotherapist is as pleased with my improvement as I am and reckons that he can see a time when I’ll no longer need the therapy.

That’s not to say that I’ll be cured, of course. What he means is that if I keep up the exercises as I seem to be doing, then I won’t need him to supervise me.

He’s given me a few more exercises to do and a list of things that I need to buy at the sports shop tomorrow. And as of next week he’s only going to come once a week, Friday morning, to check on my progress.

That’s interesting, to say the least.

Tea was delicious as I said just now, and the apple pie with soya cream finished it off nicely. One more slice of pie left, as far as I could see, so that will bite the dust tomorrow.

While we’re on the subject of tomorrow … “well, one of us is” – ed … I’m out shopping if the wind has died down. It reached 110kph this morning but hopefully it will blow itself out at some point.

That’ll be something for me to think about while I’m in bed, and I’m going off there right now. Goodnight.

Monday 16th January 2023 – AND IN OTHER …

… exciting news today, when the alarm went off at 06:00 this morning I was busy adding the final touches to the radio programme that I was planning to prepare today.

Despite having gone to bed at the early time of 22:00 last night, at 02:28 I was still wide-awake and unable to go to sleep.

A short while later, still wide awake, I arose from the dead, made myself a coffee and by 03:00 I was sitting at the computer working on the radio programme. There’s no point pretending that I’m trying to sleep.

So by the time the alarms went off I was up and running and raring to go, so the first place I went to was the bathroom where I had a shower. I was hoping that maybe the nurse would come round and inject me and I need to be something like clean.

With no sign of the nurse though, by about 10:30 I was pretty well gone with the wind and I went to bed, where I slept for a couple of hours. I went off ona little wander here and there while I was asleep. I was somewhere in the country. There was a neighbour who was bad-tempered like the one who lives in Virlet. I was wandering around outside and saw that he had a lot of animals there. I walked that way to see what they were. He had a really vicious sheepdog thing that snarled and growled at me, pulled on his lead so I turned round and walked away from there

Rosemary had sent me a message while I was asleep so we had a good chat for a while once I awoke, and then I went for some more coffee and some food. It’s been a long day already.

During the afternoon I was extremely busy. There were some issues with my property in Canada that needed attention so I had an exchange of e-mails with the Provincial Government in New Brunswick. It’s nice to see someone who is quick and efficient.

Another thing that I’ve been doing is to shuffle some money around from one place to another. I have a feeling that I’m going to need to lay my hands on some money at some point in the future and as I’ve not touched my holiday fund since I went to the High Arctic in 2019 I need to bring it closer to home.

That’s not as easy as it might sound either and I had to rely on Rosemary to give me a little hand with one or two things. I’ve also had to send out a pile of e-mails to shake some people up and tell them to extricate their digits too.

One of my plans was to go outside to see how Caliburn is doing. But we’re in the middle of a hurricane right now. Just after 06:00 this morning a gust of wind of 162 kph was recorded. I made it outside with some rubbish to put into the bin but that was all that I was going to do because the wind was still roaring and quite literally it was blowing me over. I’m not as strong on my feet as I might be and I was nearly bowled over a couple of times so I came back in. I’ll have to have another go at some other time.

Tea tonight was a delicious stuffed pepper, with plenty of stuffing left over for my taco roll tomorrow. But with a Welsh lesson, the Social Services coming round to see me and then the physiotherapist, will I actually have time to eat it?

Friday 21st September 2018 – I MADE IT …

… outside today.

Strider and I were reunited at long last and we went for a good blast up the road.

Mind you, I didn’t feel much like it. Another miserable night waking up several times and each time the nocturnal ramble in which I was travelling disappeared into the ether before I could grab the dictaphone.

I vaguely remember ships but that’s about all.

With Ellen now being supernumary it means that Rachel has to open up the office at 08:00. I didn’t realise that of course so when I finally drifted into the kitchen at 07:50 Rachel was on the point of drifting out.

And so I drifted back to bed again, but having first checked the availability of the shower. And Hannah told me that there were some new products to try.

10:30 is a much-more realistic time to raise myself from the dead and so coffee and toast brought me round somewhat. And then I went for my shower.

In the shower I find the coconut (because I love coconut) shampoo, the strawberry (in honour of my Recent Travelling Companion) shower gel and the vanilla (because it was nearest) soap for shaving.

I now smell like a rather bizarre dessert – something that brought a great deal of ribald comment from some (erstwhile) friends.

But I suppose that it’s better than smelling like a badger.

Hans suggested a topping of whipped cream. He would gladly do the whipping, and I replied that it would be OK as long as he found someone nice, young, friendly and female to lick it off me afterwards.

Rachel had ordered on-line the licence tags for Strider but they had never arrived. I bet my mortgage that they were in my mailbox up on Mars Hill Road so I took Strider off for a drive. And on a few occasions I forgot just how light his back end is.

And Strider has acquired not only a block heater but also a really good and new tow bar and attachments.

Arriving at the battery of mailboxes I had a nervous 5 minutes when I couldn’t remember which box was mine. I ended up having to empty out Strider until I found my mailbox contract.

The tags were in there, as was a letter telling me that I had been pre-approved for a life assurance policy, without a medical. If only they knew …

Back at the mill I had a chat with Rachel and Bob and then Strider and I headed off to Woodstock.

And by the time we got to Woodstock we were half a million strong so it was pretty crowded inside Strider, I can tell you.

First stop was Service New Brunswick. I pay my property taxes on Mars Hill by direct debit but I had received a bill. Turns out that there had been a revaluation and a subsequent refund, but they had refunded the wrong amount. So I needed to pay some back.

Subway for lunch and then Atlantic Superstore and Sobey’s for supplies. I’m running out of stuff in Strider. I remember emptying him out last year.

Tim Horton’s for a new coffee mug and a coffee, and a very bizarre conversation as I tried to explain to at least four people what it was that I wanted and somehow they didn’t understand.

Back here I had vegan hot dogs and beans for tea and then we all settled down to watch TV. First programme was one of these medical ones where they cut people open, so I bid a hasty retreat back to my room.

The air in here is rather gloomy today. It’s my father (Rachel’s grandfather)’s funeral today back in the UK and Rachel thinks that I should be upset by it. But Rachel didn’t have the childhood that we had.

All I ever wished for was that his end would be quick and he wouldn’t suffer – I wouldn’t wish suffering on my own worst enemy – and in that at least he was lucky.

Whatever else I was intending to write, I’ll keep it to myself.

No reason to inflict my problems on you lot.

Wednesday 5th October 2016 – BRRRR!

o'regal restaurant and motel kedgwick new brunswick canada october octobre 2016When I awoke this morning, bright and early, I went out to grab the cereal and soya milk from the back of Strider. And by heck, I wish I hadn’t!

Winter has definitely arrived, that’s for sure. Just look at this lot outside. It’s just like back home in the Auvergne isn’t it, with the hanging cloud, the cold and the freezing fog that has blanketed the Appalachian Mountains round about here on the edge of Kedgwick.

I had had a bad night last night despite just how comfortable it was in my nice big bed in my nice big room.

I’d crashed out by about 21:00 but I was tossing and turning all over the place and was really uncomfortable. Somehow I was tired and completely fast asleep and somehow I wasn’t, and I’m not sure that you’ll understand what I mean. But anyway, I was wide awake at 01:00, with the radio still playing, so I turned it off and this time I managed a decent sleep, until about 05:00

I’d been on my travels too, with the welcome return of Nerina, who hasn’t set foot in these nocturnal rambles for quite a while. We were at my house, in its usual state of papers all over the floor and we were looking for some papers that really ought to have been there but weren’t and this was all becoming far more complicated than it ought to have been. At he same time, Zero was at the kitchen sink doing the washing-up. She was being her usual cheerful self and we were discussing smoking. She said that she had tried a cigarette once, so I smacked her bottom for her.

When I sat down to breakfast I found that I had forgotten to fetch the spoon so I ended up eating my breakfast cereal with a fork and trying my best not to crash out again. I’m clearly not well at the moment.

o'regal restaurant and motel kedgwick new brunswick canada october octobre 2016Still, I can’t sit around here all day moping about the bad weather. I need to be moving on despite the fog. And this time, I didn’t forget to go and take a photograph of the night’s lodgings just for the record.

I’d been low on fuel too last night and there was an Irving’s next door – one of the reasons why I had stopped here – so I went off and fuelled up. I now have 97 Air miles after that – isn’t that good?

When I was on my way in the other direction 10 or so days ago, I’d stopped at the supermarket in town where I’d discovered baguettes on sale at half-price. I popped back in there on the way past this morning to see how the land lay and, sure enough, baguettes were on sale again. And so with what I had bought yesterday at Matane, that was lunch organised.

On the way through St Quentin the other day I’d noticed that there was a railway station in the town, on the old abandoned Canadian National railway line between Campbelltown and St Leonard.
narrow gauge steam locomotive railway station st quentin new brunswick canada october octobre 2016There were a few railway artefacts on display outside, and so I’d pencilled the station in for a visit on the return trip and so here I am.

The little locomotive had caught my eye and I wondered if it really was a narrow-gauge locomotive that had been rescued from a mineral line somewhere. But in fact it was built in 1985 out of scrap and recycled materials by a couple of Canadian National employees from Campbelltown.


platelayers trolley railway station st quentin new brunswick canada october octobre 2016That wasn’t the only thing to catch my eye either. What do you reckon about this?

It’s a platelayers’ trolley but enclosed (a necessity given the severe winters around here) and with a petrol engine rather than a pump-action handle, which is a bit of a cheat. They were used by the track maintenance crews during their duties, which included fire-watching because sparks from the steam locomotives setting the forests alight was a real problem.

So much so that it will come as no surprise for any regular reader of this rubbish to realise that the station building here at St Quentin is not the original one. That, just like any other building here in Canada, caught fire and burnt down.


railway bicycle st quentin new brunswick canada october octobre 2016However, the most exciting exhibit here at the railway station must be this weird machine.

I’m not sure of the proper name by which this machine might be known, and I certainly have never seen one of them before, but I think that it’s magnificent and I definitely want one of these.

There were lots of other stuff actually inside the station, which was by the way not only a museum but the local tourist information office and the offices of the local Chamber of Commerce.


caboose canadian national railway station st quentin new brunswick canada october octobre 2016There was some kind of collection of railway wagons here too and so I went for a browse.

This caboose caught my eye – and not just because it’s a caboose but because of the message that’s on it. It reads “Dessert tout le Canada” which, crudely translated by Yours Truly (and if there’s any “crudely” involved, then in the words of the late, great Bob Doney, “I’m your man”) as “serves all of Canada”.

However, that’s clearly a spelling mistake. It should read “Désert tout le Canada” which means “Abandons all of Canada” – which is certainly true these days.

This is why I have to mess around on buses and rely on Rachel to pick me up in Florenceville when there’s an abandoned Canadian National railway line that passes at the bottom of her garden and an abandoned Canadian National railway station right next door to the tyre depot.

By now the hanging clouds had gone, the sun was out and I was coming out of the Appalachian Mountains. It was a beautiful day now so I headed to St Leonard and the Saint John River to find a place to eat my butties.

le rendez-vous des artistes st leonard new brunswick canada october octobre 2016I found a nice place to park up for my lunch – the car park for the Rendez-vous des Artistes in St Leonard. It was closed up so I didn’t think that anyone would mine.

What appealed to me about this place was that it had a good view over the river and right by one of the few remaining railway lines in New Brunswick. And I thought that I had heard a locomotive whistle too and so I prepared the camera, but nothing came by while I was here.


saint john river van buren maine usa october octobre 2016That over there across the Saint John River is the town of Van Buren, which is in Maine, USA. I was sitting right by the border crossing on the Canadian side of the river admiring the view and taking advantage of the beautiful weather.

And I wasn’t alone either. They say that there’s one in every village, and the one in St Leonard sought me out for a chat. He was speaking French and what with his accent and a speech impediment that he had, I couldn’t make out one word in every ten that he was uttering.

Nevertheless, we put the world to rights for half an hour and then, in the words of the reporters of the long-gone and long-lamented “News of the Screws”, I “made my excuses and left”.

Back up the hill and I hit the highway southwards, and aren’t I grateful for speed limiters and cruise control? I set the speed to 108kms and settled down for the drive back to Centreville, and it was then that I noticed in my rear-view mirror a County Mountie slowly closing up on me. But with the speed limiter I didn’t have too much to worry about in the normal run of events. He eventually passed me, having a good glance as he went by, but with the cruise control in operation he had no reason to pull me over and he eventually pulled away in front.

I was having visions of David Crosby and his
“It increases my paranoia”
“like looking at my mirror and seeing a police car”
“But I’m not giving in an inch to fear”
“‘cos I promised myself this year”
“I feel like I owe it to someone”

and reckon that it applies to me – I certainly owe it to myself, that’s for sure after all that I’ve been through this year.

I tracked down my mailbox too. And talk about a local postal service – my mailbox is about 7 or 8 kilometres from my plot of land. It’s astonishing. How I’m supposed to go and get my post in the middle of winter is totally beyond me.

But there was some really good news for me. Regular readers of this rubbish might recall that the motor insurance on Strider was cancelled about my head last year when we had the driving licence issues. There was a cheque in my mail box for the refund of the cancelled policy, minus the time on risk value, and this was not far off the total premium of the new policy. The cheque had timed out and so I took it back to the brokers in Florenceville and they wrote out a new one.

Waving that around in my sweaty little mitt, I went to the Scotia Bank and paid it in. I did a few more financial manoeuvres … “PERSONoeuvres” – ed … there, and now I reckon that I could keep on going over in Canada for a good while if necessary.

Back at the tyre depot I met up with everyone, had a coffee and a chat, and then we went back home to Rachel and Darren’s. Rachel made a lovely tea and we had a good chat, and then I crawled off to bed at some really early, ridiculous time.

This six weeks gap between treatments is evidently too much, but I’m not complaining. Despite the health issues that have now caught up properly with me, I would never otherwise have come here and I wouldn’t have missed my trip to Canada for the world.

Wednesday 26th August 2015 – I HAVEN’T MENTIONED …

… the rain as yet. But every morning this week, at about 06:00, we’ve had a rainstorm for about half an hour, and then it’s gone off on its way. This morning though, it loitered around for most of the morning and at times it was quite wet.

After breakfast I went up to the shop for a while but then Strawberry Moose, Strider and I set off out to Woodstock, and by the time we got to Woodstock we were half a million strong, so it was pretty crowded inside Strider.

The junk shop came up with nothing at all – no books or CDs – and I had to stop at Zoe’s shop to pick up her waste bin that was rolling around the car park, and then for a coffee at Tim Horton’s.

After lunch I went across the road to the County Planning Department to discuss my plans for Mars Hill Road. My friend Gerrit has moved on but the new guy was just as helpful and doesn’t see a problem. He gave me a great deal of useful tips and hints that should make the project go easier.

And there’s good news on this front too. 4 or 5 years ago, connection to New Brunswick Power for electricity was compulsory for a new-build, but today, it’s not. You have to submit plans and they are considered on their merits. If you have 110-volt electricity, it needs to be certified but if you have a 12-volt DC system with an inverter, you need a certificate for the inverter and an electrician’s certificate for the 110-volt system that you have installed from the inverter onwards. As for a DC circuit, he’s never encountered one, so he suggests just submit it and see what happens. But solar panels and wind turbines developing 12-volt is quite a common thing these days.

They are even encountering people who wish to live with no electricity at all. 5 years ago, that wouldn’t be tolerated (people equated lack of electricity with poor quality of life) but now, it’s not uncommon to receive applications where the details of electricity installations are described as “none”.

As for rainwater harvesting, he doesn’t see any problem at all with that, but a certified sewage disposal system is an essential and there is no way around it.

But to cut a long story short … "hooray" – ed … I’m giving serious consideration to going towards a 48-volt system with 12-volt lighting and 110 volt power.

At the organic shop across the road, the girl who runs it was very helpful. There are apparently three co-ops in the area where vegetarians and vegans combine every two months to place bulk orders for their supplies and she gave me their addresses.

And if that wasn’t enough to be going on with, Sobey’s has greatly increased its supply of vegetarian and vegan food and we now have several different varieties of vegan cheese, although vegan ice-cream is only available next door at the Atlantic Superstore.

In other worlds, even in fairly-rural Canada, things are looking very much up.

If that wasn’t enough to be going on with, I hit the jackpot at Canadian Tire. There’s a clearance sale going on there, and a big reinforced plastic tool box, a Flexible 3/8 drive ratchet with spark plug sockets and extensions, a big set of wobble extensions, two big sets of 1/2 impact sockets (AF and metric), a converter from 3/8-drive to 1/2-drive and one or two other bits and pieces – all of that came to just over $100 – or £50:00. Add that to the tools that I have already that I need to pick up from my box at Montreal and I now have enough for almost anything. And if I can make it to Marden’s in Presque Ile and see what they have too, I might well end up with a very decent tool kit. You can’t have too much of this.

So it was hardly surprising that I didn’t do all that I had intended to do today. It was 19:00 by the time that I returned and then after supper I helped Darren repair and service the lawn-mowing tractor (which is bigger than my Kubota) and we overhauled a fridge that was in the basement.

But I have made a decision – and that is that on Friday early morning, I’m moving on. I’m becoming far too comfortable here. I’ll be trying to Enter the Dragon and go southwards through the forest to the Hudson valley then back up to Montreal for my stuff.

Tuesday 25th August 2015 – THE GOOD NEWS …

… is that the address of my little kingdom out on Mars Hill Road has now been approved by Canada Post and I now have a Canadian postal code.

The bad news is that it’s a different one to the one that I’ve already given out to everyone.

And so that’s going to complicate things even more when I give one lot of information to one group of people and another lot to others. But there again, if life were so easy and uncomplicated, no-one would be in too much of a hurry to leave it. In any case, it’s hardly my fault that it took Service New Brunswick almost 4 years to allocate the property address.

As for the postal code, the details had been sitting in the Centreville Post Office and they had somehow overlooked to ‘phone me back, but with Rachel needing a pile of stamps, it seemed like a good opportunity to go down there and chivvy them up a little.

More good news is that I have a Community Mail Box for my post, but the bad news is that it’s not inside the Post Office itself (that’s payable) but in a battery of boxes at the side of the road on the main drag up near my land. I can picture a soggy mass of animal-chewed papier-maché when I go back there after 10 months away.

I’ve also been running errands today. A pile of stuff for the shop has been delivered to different addresses and needed to be picked up, and what’s the point of having a pick-up if you don’t put it to good use? It gave me a chance to go to the food store and stock up with goodies.

And I needed to as well, for my little voyage during the night had left me starving. I’d started off in Liechtenstein This all started off with me making a visit to the barracks of the Liechtenstein Army and there were all kinds of goings-on going on in there that ended up completely out of hand and which led to me making a formal complaint to the commanding officer.

From there Liz and I were travelling somewhere and we had a young girl with us. We stopped somewhere for a coffee and we were joined at our table by another couple who were intrigued to find out what was going on. Liz and I were discussing the radio programmes and planning on making a few changes – I was going to introduce some kind of discussion about French football and Liz would include a little craft section. Then Liz got up to go somewhere and this girl went with her, and I noticed that she was wearing my boots.

This left me with rather cold feet, I can tell you.

This afternoon Darren took Strider for a ride. He reckons that the little misfire that I’ve been noticing isn’t a misfire at all. He thinks that it’s either a flat spot on the tyre or a warped brake drum. And bearing in mind the high fuel consumption, my money is on the brake drum.

This evening Darren and I made major plans to have a mega-tidy-up before I get on my way elsewhere and that seems to be our project for tomorrow night. I’ll go down to the scrapyard at Woodstock and see what they will take.

But the high spot of yesterday was the very lengthy discussion that Darren and I had about economy, false economy, and all kinds of things that young people will find useful a little later in life. And Amber was sitting there by the side of us. So I turned round to her and said “have you understood all of that, Amber?”

To which Amber replied “what?”

Friday 26th June 2015 – DUNNO …

rotten sills nissan 4x4 st eloy les mines puy de dome france… who does the controle techniques around here but I hope it’s not the guy who does the controle techniques on Caliburn.

I’m the first to admit that I used to have cars with sills like this, but that was 25 years ago in another life and things were so much different in those days. I didn’t think that you would go very far with a car like this these days.

I’ve been out and about doing my shopping this evening. I know that I said that I would go to Montlucon tomorrow but I’ve ordered my circular saw by post and I don’t really need the tiles next week as I still haven’t finished the door, and then I have the ceiling to do, and I had forgotten about that.

What with having Monday off to go a-radioing, which means that I’ll have to do about 150 miles with a quarter of a tonnes of tiles in the back of Caliburn and before I go to Montlucon to buy the tiles, to empty Caliburn of all of the stuff that’s still in there.

For all of those reasons, I’ve postponed my trip to Montlucon until next weekend.

This morning, I was up early yet again and after breakfast, carried on with my website for a couple of hours. And it made me realise that I seem to have slipped rather unconsciously back into how I used to be when I lived in Belgium – doing the writing stuff in the morning before getting on with the heavy work in the afternoon. Especially as, these last few days, I’ve had the coffee machine bubbling away through the morning, such has been the amount of solar energy that I’ve received.

I’ve fitted all of the hinges to the door now and had a go at hanging it. It’s certainly the most difficult door that I have ever hung, even though I’ve taken more time over this than I have over any other door that I’ve hung.

The door wasn’t quite right – or to be more accurate, the floor isn’t quite right and the door is fouling.

using aluminium guide to cut bottom off shower room door les guis virlet puy de dome franceI’ve had to cut off 4mm from the foot of the door and that’s not easy without a circular saw. I’ve done it by hand with the rough-cut saw and you can see how I’ve done it.

I use a length of aluminium in “L” section as a guide, clamped to the surface and then I saw along the guide. It’s not too bad actually although it takes quite a while to do it.

I’ve not re-tried the door yet. I’ve drilled and chiselled it out for the mortice closer. I had to hunt around for one of those because there were none in the house. In the end I found three in the barn, one of which didn’t have a lock so I’m using that. Instead, I’ll fit a little bolt on the inside of the door. I mean, there’s only me who lives here so it doesn’t really make much difference.

I could have finished the door if I had had another hour or so to work, but I was distracted.

I ended up on the phone to Canada for ages. I need to register Strider (my Ford Ranger) in Canada and for that I need an insurance policy and an address. This meant hassling Service New Brunswick – it’s been four years since I first applied for a street address for my parcel of land at Mars Hill Road. Anyway, after much binding in the marsh, I now have an address and I can progress.

At the insurance company, they were rather bewildered. They haven’t had a request like mine before – a person with a foreign driving licence wishing to insure a Canadian vehicle in Canada. They eventually decided to go away and discuss things with their Head Office and see what happens. I have to phone them back on Tuesday.

And then, with going shopping, I checked the temperature in the solar shower. 37.5°C with no added hot water and that was perfect. At 17:45 then I had a glorious hot shower and it was lovely. And then I could wander off into St Eloy and the shops.

So you see what I mean about being distracted, as well as needing an extra hour to finish off.

I might even have a go at it tomorrow.

Saturday 13th June 2015 – I KNOW THAT I SAID …

… something about all of the things that I was going to do today. Well, none of that happened at all. I was sidetracked quite severely today.

A short while ago, while moving some stuff around downstairs, I came across a box marked “LPs”. And having you told you all a while ago about the little program that I have discovered that enables me to download tracks off the internet, I brought the box up here to go though it, see what LPs are in it, see what I already replaced with a CD and then see what is available on the internet for the LPs that I already own and which I dn’t have on CD.

Anyway, to cut a long story short … "hooray" – ed … I lifted out the first dozen or so LPs, and that was all that there were. Underneath was a huge pile of paperwork. probably about half a tonne, I reckon.

It’s all stuff that I brought back from Brussels when I sold the apartment, and another pile of stuff that I had accumulated while I was living downstairs in the lean-to between 2007 and 2009. All of which I had completely forgotten.

So this morning, with a nice stiff mug of coffee I sat down and attacked version 2 of the European Paper Mountain.

By the time that I had finished, I reckon that about three quarters of it will be on its way to the great paper mill in the sky, and probably a lot more will follow it once I’ve closely examined it all. But I have found tons of stuff that is important, including all of the registration details for the Brian James car transporter that I bought a couple of years ago. As well as that, I’ve found a letter that I’ve been looking for for 3 years, a couple of instruction books that I need, and all of the Canada papers for my visit of 2012 and for my land at Mars Hill Road.

So, bingo!

Now, one thing leads to another as you all know, and once you start off, you’ll be surprised at just how many other things there are. Piling the waste paper into an IKEA bag, I decided to add another pile of waste paper – and then another etc etc.

And moving the box away from the wall left a space which was just the right size for the small set of shelves that Hans gave me last month when I was in Eching.

All of the food and cooking gear has now gone onto those shelves and at one swell foop this place looks a lot better than it did before (although there are still a hundred miles to go).

Now, I have a space next to the desk, so I moved my comfortable chair over there. I can now reach the external drives and the external DVD player simply by reaching out my hand. This led to a session of copying to my laptop the CDs that I bought in Canada and subsequently that have been sitting in a nice orderly pile on the desk. I’ve recorded 15 of them, which leaves just a mere 23 to go, but it’s a start.

This was hard work and so I closed my eyes for a little doze. and just as I was dropping gently into the arms of Morpheus, Rosemary rang for a chat. So there I was, for a good half hour.

I’d checked the clock at one moment and it was 17:57. Next time I looked, it was 20:18. Where did that 2 hours go? I must really have been engrossed in what I was doing.

But honestly, it doesn’t look any better in here. But then, I can’t do this tidying-up lark at all. All of this stuff heaved out or tidied up on shelves and the place just looks worse.

But you can see now why I didn’t do what I had intended to do today, and it wasn’t for lack of effort either.

Remember that yesterday I mentioned the rainstorm?

We had 40.5mm that fell in a three-hour period. And today, despite the good start, we ended up with another downpour in the evening and that gave us another 15mm.

That’s good news for me because my water tanks are full to overflowing. And as there are two tanks together – the rainwater falls into the top of the back tank, sinks to the bottom, passes through the connecting piece (which is at the bottom of the tanks) and into the front tank, with the overflow at the top of the front tank, then there’s a continual circulation of water in there and this is good for aeration. This means that it’s not just a stagnant pool of water.

And as I pull water from the bottom of the front tank, this is where the freshest water will be anyway. So a really heavy downpour like this is really good news for me.

Monday 9th September 2014 – HALL TOWERS …

eric hall mars hill road upper knoxford new brunswick canada… is looking rather worse for wear these days. It seems that a little bit more of the gable roof has disappeared. So much for my plans to donate it to a worthy cause. I tried several of these historic villages to see if anyone wanted it, but no-one did, even if I offered to pay the transportation.

I only hope that if it does fall right down, it’ll fall across the border into the USA. Usually I seem to be able to attract trouble without going out to look for it, so a frontier incident or border war should be right up my street.

Talking of frontier incidents and border wars, last night I was working for the STIB – the Société de Transports Intercommunale de Bruxelles as a bus driver. They started me off on an easy route, just following one main road, but even I managed to complicate matters and deviate from the plan … "no surprise there " – ed.

The next day they were planning to send me out driving the route 23. I’ve no idea where that goes to but last night in the Land of Nod it was the bus that hugged the roads back and to across the linguistic frontier between Flanders and Wallonie. That was a route that was the subject of endless confrontations between drivers and the public as a French-speaking driver would be harassed by the Flemish and a Flemish driver would be harassed by the Walloons, and there was no way of having a typical Belgian compromise and splitting the route. Putting an Anglophone driver on the bus would be a red rag to everyone.

However the depot where the 23 was garaged was also the subject of complications. It was far too small for the purpose of garaging the buses that were needed in the vicinity – just an island dividing two carriageways, but neither the Flemish or Walloon communities would agree to its expansion or its displacement elsewhere as it would give some kind of advantage to the other community.

Sounds just like real Belgium, doesn’t it?

saint john river florenceville new brunswick canadaRegular readers of this rubbish will not need to be told where the Saint John River might be. It’s in a steep-sided valley, and although it is nothing like as steep as the valley of the Sioule near home, it’s steep enough and you’ll be able to guess quite easily.

Yes, it was cold during the night and when I took this photo, at about 08:30, it was a mere 7°C.

I went to see the guy who was supposed to be looking for a vehicle for me, and his (rather predictable, I’m afraid) response was “ohh, I forgot all about you after a month or so”. It seems that it’s too much like hard work for a businessman to haul himself out of a chair and earn a couple of dollars these days. Rather sit at home and let the dollars flow through his fingers. What a sad state the Western World is coming to when businessmen can’t even be bothered to earn some money.

I tell you now, customer service in North America is disappearing rapidly down the tubes. It’ll be like Belgium soon.

So after checking on Hall Towers, I crossed the border into the USA. I went over at Riviere de Chute, the same crossing point as last year, and it was the same miserable old whatsit on duty, but just for a change he was cheerful and happy. No idea what was happening there.

So negotiating the Amish horse buggies I arrived in Presque-Ile to some devastating news. The huge Salvation Army Thrift Centre has closed down. I had a pile of good books and music from there last year and this was my main reason for going.

cook florist presque ile maine usaStill, I could always go to the local florists and buy some suitable flowers to express my feelings, but if Cooks Florists had any flowers to express the feelings that I was having right at that particular moment I would have been very surprised indeed.

I wonder if there’s a Trading Standards Bureau in the USA that checks for misleading advertising. I think we should be told.

Still, not to be outdone, I went old-car hunting, and look at this!

h m vehicles freeway presque ile maine usaThis is a Freeway, a three-wheeled vehicle made by a company called HM Vehicles in Burnsville, Minnesota. That was a company that made vehicles for just 3 years, 1979 to 1982, before closing down.

This vehicle is one of only about 700 ever made, so it’s as rare as hens’ teeth, and what remains of it, because you would need to be dedicated to have a go at restoring this one, is available for purchase at a mere $2500, or near offer.

I suppose that there would be some takers at that price, and I might be interested myself. It would fit into my suitcase and would probably come within the weight of my baggage allowance too.

frazer nash metropolitan presque ile usaThat wasn’t the only interesting car either. There were plenty of others, including this one. This is a Nash Metropolitan, either a Series III or a IV, and the claim to fame of these cars is that they were built by Austin at Longbridge for Nash, the American car company and were imported for sale in North America – the first car ever to be totally built abroad on behalf of a USA manufacturer. There will even probably still be the old 1489cc BMC B-series engine in there.

A few were sold in the UK and people with long memories will remember the pile of them dumped and abandoned for years on the waste land at the side of Grocott’s garage in Wistaston, Crewe in the late 1960s and early 70s.

I could cry when I think of that, how rare these cars are now.

I headed on back to Canada afterwards, and at the frontier I was once more given a hard time, this time by a Canadian border official. I just don’t understand what it is with border officials. Do they have to undergo a surgical operation to remove their goodwill, good humour and pleasant disposition before they are appointed to a post?

Tuesday 20th September 2011 – I WENT FOR A LITTLE …

… drive out today, on the eastern bank of the Saint John River.

First stop though was into Florenceville, and we now have the deeds to our property, a safety-deposit box to keep them in and also a direct debit with the council to pay the property taxes on the property.

From here, I continued my drive upriver.

hydro electric power plant dam beechwood perth andover new brunswick canadaOne thing that I hadn’t noticed before was that there was a dam across the Saint John River here just on the outskirts of Perth Andover.

It’s called the Beechwood Dam and it was the second to be built on the Saint John River system, dating from 1955. Apparently it was shrouded in controversy due to the fact that it interrupted traditional First-Nation water-borne movement patterns up and down the river.

view of saint john river perth andover new brunswick canadaFrom the other, western side of the river there are some stunning views a couple of miles south of Perth Andover.

Here I am on one of the old sections of the Trans Canada Highway (I think that in places it’s on its fourth reincarnation) and you can see exactly what I mean . And it would have been even nicer had I had the right kind of weather for it.

motel hartland new brunswick canadaWhen I came by Hartland in 2010 I stayed in a motel on the top of the hill north of town, but I forgot to take a photo of it.

One of the things that I wanted to do this year was to put that right, and so I came past here this afternoon with the intention of rectifying matters. My room was one of those on the front row over there just by the telephone box.

worlds longest covered bridge hartland new brunswick canadaFrom this spot there’s also a good view of the covered bridge down the hill at Hartland. It’s the world’s longest covered bridge apparently, 391 metres long.

These covered bridges are often described as “kissing bridges” because young couples would often go for a ride through them and while the horse concentrated on the road, the couple could occupy themselves with other things, out of the gaze of the public. In this bridge, they would have plenty of time for other things too.

lorry scrapyard Simonds Well Hartland new brunswick canadaHere’s somewhere else that I wanted to visit. I’d been here once before but I didn’t have too much time for a wander around. Today however, there wasn’t anyone around to ask if I could go for a walk around, and you need to ask for permission to do that sort of thing in North America.

It’s certainly the kind of place that I would like to visit when I’m on holiday. It’s home from home for me.

mccain food processing plant florenceville new brunswick canadaOne more place that I wanted to capture on film was the largest food-processing plant in the World. It’s the McCain potato-processing plant in Florenceville, down there on the banks of the Saint John River.

I’ve been told that one third of all prepared chips sold in the world is a McCain product, so that’s some going. It’s hardly surprising that you can’t move on these roads for potato lorries during October.

So I’m going back to Rachel’s for an early night. I’m going to be busy for the next couple of days.

Friday 9th September 2011 – HALL TOWERS

dodge grand caravan mars hill road upper knoxford new brunswick canadaI had a bad night last night – I couldn’t get off to sleep at all for ages and it was most uncomfortable.

I had the feeling that I wasn’t the right way round in bed and I’ve no idea why. The astonishing thing though was that after this had preyed on my mind for ages I turned round and put my head to the tailgate of the Dodge – and I went out like a light and that was that until the alarm went off, except for having to go for a gypsy’s at 04:00.

mars hill road upper knoxford new brunswick canadaToday it’s a beautiful day, brilliant bright sunlight and the solar panel on the roof of the Dodge is doing its stuff.

It’s charged up the laptop and it’s charged up the phone (which I’m now using as a mp3 player and why not? that was a good plan to buy a micro SD card) and it’ll charge up the spare battery before I’ve finished.

mars hill road upper knoxford new brunswick canadaThis morning I spent in measuring up. I have a few plans as to what I intend to do but for that I need some measurements. My measurements differ slightly from those of the surveyor so I reckon that it’s my measurements that are out, not his.

And then we had a mega-two-hour performance of playing “hunt the keys” that involved emptying right out the Dodge and eventually I found them stuck inside the map.

florenceville bridge saint john river new brunswick canadaThat makes me too late for the lawyer unfortunately, but instead I can go for a wander round.

There’s a big bridge over the river here at Florenceville – part of it is covered but the rest is a more-modern open girder bridge. It’s the covered bit that receives most attention from photographers, and so I’ll take a photo from less well-known western side of the river

wind turbine florenceville department of national resources new brunswick canadaAnd here’s something that I’ve been wanting to see.

This is the Florenceville District Office of the New Brunswick District Office of Natural Resources. They have a wind turbine at the back here and that’s what made me stop and go for a chat.

Apparently it’s nothing to do with them but a pilot study installed by the people at the University of New Brunswick about 5 years ago. They are having these pilot studies in a few places so it seems, and the energy is all fed into the National Grid directly. They here know nothing about it, but he will have someone from Fredericton call me back.

Of course I’m going to be in Fredericton later on this week for this Blues Festival so that’s fine. I shall have to go to the University of New Brunswick, shan’t I?

I found that garage that Darren told me to go to see, and I wasn’t all that impressed with what was on offer. I’ll have to pass on this for now and think again.

At the tyre place everyone was still there working until long after 18:00. We then went back to the house but we couldn’t go “over across” for a meal as arranged because Amber had a friend Abbi over for a sleepover and she had no passport with her.

But I was fed and watered and stayed the night, for which I am grateful as always. Darren and I were watching these documentaries about the unexplained – what is this Aurora flying saucer accident all about?

Thursday 8th September 2011 – WATERFALL

mars hill wind farm turbine maine usaI had another excellent night’s sleep and yet another really vivid dream. As a result I wake up fully refreshed at … errr … 08:30, which, after going to bed at 10:00, is something of a record for North America.

We’re still in wet and clammy weather after yesterday of course but slowly the morning brightens up, and not before time either.

I eventually go round to the garage and have a good long chin-wag with everyone there, and even help Darren MoT a car. Once I’ve done that I head off to Woodstock to try my luck at the council again.

mars hill wind farm new brunswick canada maine usaI’m at a place that’s probably 9 kilometres south of a place called Lakeville on the brow of a high ridge. I’ve no idea how far that is away from where the wind turbines are but you can see them for miles.

It’s a magnificent view though isn’t it? You can see exactly why they installed the wind turbines up there. There’s nothing around for miles to interrupt the flow of wind.

By the time I got to Woodstock I was half a … &#34yawn;" – ed … and much to my surprise the council offices are open.

The girl there is very helpful – tells me some of what I can and can’t do.

There’s a good place to eat my butty down on the river bank and then wander off to do some shopping (well, not much because apart from gas there isn’t anything much else that I need right now) and then back home (and isn’t it nice to be able to say that here in Canada?)

jacksons falls new brunswick canadaI’ve taken a little deviation to the North Branch Meduxnekeag River (and I hope that I’ve spelt that correctly).

The reason why I’ve come here is that I saw a sign down the road pointing this way that said “Jackson’s Falls” and the name looked interesting.

As for the falls – well, I have to admit that I’ve seen better but they do look quite attractive.

dominion bridge company lachine bridge jacksons falls new brunswick canadaThe bridge might not look like very much but what caught my eye was that it carried a maker’s plate, and that’s not something that you see every day.

It was built by the Dominion Bridge Company in Lachine, which is where the rapids are, just outside Montreal, in 1928. And so it made me wonder how people crossed the river back before then. Did we have a ramshackle timber bridge, or did people have to ford the river as best as they could?

And on that note, I could go back home.

Wednesday 7th September 2011 – WHAT A DAY!

I thought that I suffered from claustrophobia but having spent almost 24 hours inside the Dodge and only going outside once, it’s clearly not the case.

I didn’t move a muscle – hardly an inch away from the side of the vehicle. Mind you, with the weather that we are having it’s hardly any surprise.

It p155ed down all day long and the most I managed to do was to go out and fit the solar panel on the roof of the car. And that was when I had my only interaction with anyone. The dog from over the road came across the road barking at me.

Eventually the lady owner came out and called it back in. “It’s not a problem” I shouted to her but for all the notice that she took of me I might as well have just held my breath. They are a weird lot around here, that’s for sure.

sunset over mars hill wind farm maine usaThe sun finally made some kind of brief appearance late in the evening, peering out from underneath the cloud right over the wind turbines on Mars Hill.

I suppose that it’s symbolic in a certain sense, but I dunno.

But on the positive side, I’m nice and comfortable in the Dodge and I’ve had a nice relaxing day not doing much. But it was a good decision so far to hire a vehicle like this and kit it out as a camper. How it all pans out of course remains to be seen.