Category Archives: strawberry moose

Thursday 14th October 2010 – WELL, STRAWBERRY MOOSE HAD A GOOD DAY TODAY.

On the road between Port Hope Simpson and Mary’s Harbour we encountered some more of his cousins. This time it was mother and daughter.

And a short while later we encountered another juvenile. So he’s having fun anyway, meeting up with all of his family and he’s ever so excited about it all. Good old Strawberry Moose

As for me, I’ve done nothing like as much as I hoped. But then again, I’ve been distracted. For a start I couldn’t get out to see the Wunderstrand.

Although it’s just across the bay from Cartwright, it’s actually a 10-mile walk followed by a 10-minute kayak journey (you need to carry your kayak the 10 miles, by the way), or else it’s half an hour across the bay in a kayak (in a howling wind across freezing cold water) and of course regular readers of these columns know that you couldn’t get warm again. You know that it’s against the law to light a fire in a canoe – you cannot have your kayak and heat it.

There is however a certain spot to which you can drive and with a long telephoto lens and a little judicious crop and sharpen, you can make out the beach right away in the distance and see just how beautiful it all is.

Of course a photo isn’t the same as actually walking in the footsteps of Eirik the Red at the climax of his magnificent epic voyage to Vinland, but I suppose that it’s the best that I can do

Anyway, back on the Labrador Coastal Drive (as this bit of the Trans-Labrador Highway is called) the next stop was the most delightfully-named Pinsent’s Arm, a small fishing village on the coast in a sheltered bay off the Atlantic. I always thought that the name was quite romantic.

I had to ask directions when I got to Charlottetown. I hailed a passing native (who picked up a handful of gravel and hailed me back)
“Excuse me – can you tell me where I can find Pinsent’s Arm?”
“Why yes alrighty” she burred (I just love the way they talk in Labrador). “It’s over there in that bucket”.

Pinsent’s Arm has a population of 64 and they were all on the quayside waiting for me to arrive.

One of the fishing smacks that operates out of here had just put in to port.
“What do you catch here now that the cod has finished? Shrimp like out of Cartwright?” I enquired.
“Why no” he replied. “We get them thar whelks and scallops”.
But if they were whelks and scallops in those baskets they were unloading then I’m going to have my eyes tested as soon as I get back to Europe.

The natives, obviously wishing to see the back of me, pointed out to me the way through the rubbish dump and local tip to the point where you can see the Atlantic through the cove.

This is quite impressive, and would have been even nicer had I been more lucky with the weather. But it could have been worse – it could have been snowing.

I also went off down Iceberg Alley for a visit to St Lewis – the farthest easternmost settlement on the mainland American continent.

And if ever I have the luck to be able to choose a place out here to settle it would be here. St Lewis is easily the prettiest place that I have ever visited on the North American continent.

It was settled in the earliest days of white exploration and then forgotten.

And when it was “rediscovered” in the 19th Century, the person who discovered it (I can’t remember his name just now) remarked on the “industry and divinity” of the inhabitants. I suppose that a couple of hundred years of isolation had had its advantages for the inhabitants.

But all of that changed after World War II

Its more modern claim to fame, as everyone will tell you, is that it was a station on the DEW line – the Distant Early Warning radar system installed by the Americans on Canadian soil to track and then shoot down the atomically-armed Russian bombers so that the nuclear fallout would be in Canada and not in the USA.

But of course it wasn’t on the DEW line, despite how romantic the legend sounds, as you can tell from the antennae. It was actually a site on Pinetree – the forerunner of the DEW line but which operated on a much shorter-reach traditional radar system and with all the defects of a traditional system.

Once the Russians mastered the art of low-flying, Pinetree’s days were numbered.

But it’s unfair to single out places like St Lewis and Pinsent’s Arm for their beauty. The whole of this road – the Labrador Coastal Drive – is full of spectacular scenery.

This is, I think, Alexis River near Port Hope Simpson and if there is a more beautiful place to stop and eat my midday butty, I would really love to see it. In fact, the nice lay-by here would be an ideal place to stay for the night, if only I had a camper.

And after that, with me not being halfway around where I wanted to go, and having found some playmates for His Nibs, I’ve had to lay up for the night in Mary’s Harbour (spelt correctly – this is Canada not the USA).

-4

Friday 9th October 2010 – TODAY WE CROSSED THE RUBI … ERRR ….. ST LAWRENCE

This morning quite early, we said goodbye to our host of the previous evening. And as you can see, Strawberry Moose was particularly sad to depart.

And what a nice motel that was – there was even a microwave oven in the room and that made me wish that I had some proper food on board. In fact, I’ll stock up with a few bits and pieces next time I pass by one of these supermarkets just in case I find another microwave in a motel room.

Tracy, where the motel might be found, is a small port on the south bank of the St Lawrence between Montreal and Quebec and you may remember that I had a good wander around there last night.

Next item of interest is this gorgeous bow-girder bridge, the Pont Laviolette that spans the St Lawrence on the outskirts of Trois Rivieres, which is on the other (north) bank of the river.

I had a good drive around to see if I could have a closer and better view of the bridge, but no such luck. However, I’ll be coming back this way and I’ll spend some time then to have a really good look around.

And while we are on the subject of bridges, what do you think about this one?

This is the legendary Pont de Quebec, built at the turn of the 2Oth Century to carry the road and the railway across the St Lawrence to the city of Quebec. It’s been the subject of two major construction failures and cost more lives than the Tay Bridge disaster did, although it was never immortalised by William McGonagall.

You can read more about the Pont de Quebec on this page.

There’s no doubt about it though, the southern shore of the St Lawrence around by the city of Quebec is absolutely beautiful at this time of the year as the leaves are falling (and it’s funny that the further north-east I travel the more the trees have lost their leaves – it’s quite remarkable).

I chose this spot to stop and eat my butty, with the St Lawrence over my left shoulder and the city of Quebec across the river.

It was something of a late lunch because I went to the Walmart just up the road to buy another SD card – they had Kodak ones on special offer – 4GB for $10 but they had sold out. And in line with my resolution of this morning, I bought a tim opener, a mixing spoon and a microwave bowl to go with the pile of pasta in tomato sauce (4 for $5) and tins of beans (99 cents each) that I bought in a food supermarket across the road in case I find another motel with a microwave.

I have to be prepared.

After my lunch I crossed over into Quebec and had a drive around. Old Quebec is really beautiful but I didn’t stop as I’m running to a tight schedule. I hope I’ll be able to fit a day into my return journey to go for a wander round. It’s just like a late medaieval European city in places and has somehow managed to escape the developer’s bulldozer.

After that I headed north-east along the north shore of the St Lawrence and this is really where the beautiful part of Canada begins.

After maybe 15 miles you abruptly leave civilisation and go right into the mountains. It is just so spectacular, as you can see in this pic taken from halfway up Cap Tourmente. The St Lawrence is down there in the valley and Quebec is on the skyline.

>And this is what it is like – all up hill and down dale all the way along the coast, with the St Lawrence never more than a mile or two away.

Here, at the top of Cap Tourmente, you can see what I’ll be encountering. The mountains, the undulating road, the deciduous trees shedding their leaves, and the possibility of encountering a moose, if the one sitting beside me wasn’t enough to be going on with.

Tonight I’m staying in St Simeon which is a ferry port across to Riviere du Loup on the southern shore where I crossed over last time I was up here. This is the view of the ferry terminal from my motel bedroom.

And what I don’t understand is that last time I struggled to find a motel and had to drive another 25 miles until I found one quite by chance.

Just now, I’ve passed 6 at Malbaie, a small town about 15 miles west of here and there’s 5 motels that I can see from my window just here. I really must have been asleep that evening.

But even now I’m not lucky. It’s quite expensive here and there is nothing – no coffee machine (although I’ve sorted that out) and no microwave either. And even worse, there’s nowhere around in the town where I can find a meal.

I’m really not having much luck, am I?

Tomorrow I’ll be driving the 4 hours up to Baie Comeau, going by the famous ferry at Tadoussac, which you will have seen from the last time I was here, and then it’s into the interior. 400-odd miles of dirt track through the interior of Quebec and then 600 or so miles through Labrador and out to the Atlantic Ocean.

Now that’s what I call the wilderness!

-2

Wednesday 6th October 2010 – I RECKON THAT I MIGHT JUST STAY IN THE USA FOR GOOD ..

… if I could keep on finding business opportunities such as this one. What a way to earn a living, hey?

But seriously – I can’t live here. Driving through Buffalo earlier today and already in a really bad humour (I’ve had a run-in with another security guard) I came across a woman in tears on the edge of the street, with a baby, and with all her possessions scattered around her. And it was in the driving, streaming rain too.

Apparently the bailiffs had just been.

But Buffalo is a city that is already in my bad books, and has been for quite some time. In 1860-something a steamer launched in 1846 – one of the earliest lakers – sank in Lake Erie in a storm.

A few years ago a couple of divers located it and it was raised from the sea bed and taken to Buffalo for restoration. However the mayor declared it an “eyesore” and called in the scrapmen, who promptly cut up this rare, if not unique historical artefact.

In 1813 the British burnt Buffalo to the ground during one of the American wars, and believe me, I was sorely tempted to make my own re-enaction of that historic event.

There can’t be any greater eyesore in any city anywhere in the whole world than the sight of a crying woman and her child out in the street in the middle of a rainstorm with nowhere to go and no-one offering any help. 10% of the American working population is out of work, there are thousands of jobs going every day, and there’s no state aid for anyone.

And talking of that, just a short while later, I stopped to take a photo of an absolutely ancient Dodge Power Wagon plant mover used as a haulage truck in a boatyard. Fishing from the quay was an old guy. I got talking to him about things.

“Well”, he said “I worked for 29 years as a shopping centre manager and I was laid off in the spring. I don’t suppose I’ll ever work again and I don’t know what I’ll do now. And in my spare time I was a bailiff for the sheriff’s office but I had to give that up too. It was just so distressing turfing all of these people out into the street.

It’s the rich who are causing all of these problems in the USA – it’s high time a few of them were turned out into the street and made to suffer”.

I once heard someone say that the USA is a great place in which to succeed. Indeed it is, but it’s a dreadful place to fail. If the USA has the highest standard of living in the world, then there must be some awfully rich people somewhere well-hidden, because all I ever seem to encounter are the poor. And there are plenty of them!

r>After all of that, there isn’t an awful lot to say about my journey. I wasn’t really in the mood for much.

I left my rather expensive motel on the edge of Erie, Pennsylvania, in the rain and the further along the road that I travelled, the more the weather. Just like my humour did, I suppose. It was going to be one of those days.

But it’s astonishing, the things that you encounter along the road. At Westfield, near the quaintly-named Barcelona Harbour, I came across the Sea Lion.

It’s a replica of a British 3-masted sailing barque of the late 16th Century and it gives you an idea of the size of the ships that they used to cross the Atlantic in the early days of exploration.

But I can’t think what was going through their minds when they decided to build it, and why they have let ths ship degenerate subsequently into such a poor condition. Seeing that the bay in which the ship is situated is so depressing, perhaps they wanted their barque to be worse than their bight.

Strawberry Moose had a good photo opportunity today as well.

I’d stopped at a local Moose Lodge to see if there were any friends and family of His Nibs in the vicinity, but a local copper stopped to find out what was happening. So having given my explanation, he very kindly (and much to my surprise) allowed His Nibs to have his moment of glory.

So let’s hear it for the New York Police!

I also stumbled upon Graycliff – one of the houses that was designed by the famous architect Frank Lloyd Wright.It dates from the late 1920s and was built for the Martin family.

The were wealthy entrepreneurs in Buffalo and in fact sponsored Wright in his early days, but were wiped out in the Depression and the house was sold to a Monastic Order who used it as a school.

When the school was closed in the 1990s, there were plans to demolish the place and build a huge housing estate here, but the property was saved by a preservation group (a rare event in the USA)

And famous architect as Frank Lloyd Wright might have been, he designed his house without guttering as it would spoil the aesthetic effect. I suppose that that was much more important than spoiling the foundations and the clothes of the people entering and leaving the property.

It wasn’t actually open when I arrived but I managed to blag my way in for a look around the garden

No-one can pass by Buffalo without going for a look at Niagara Falls and once more, Strawberry Moose was in luck as a Tourist Guide/Security Guard agreed to pose in the same photograph as His Nibs.

It’s all quite astonishing, this. All of these officials and dignitaries and so on agreeing to be seen with him. Maybe there is an underlying sense of humour in the USA after all and I have been missing it for all of these years.

The view from the Canada Side of the falls is even more impressive – well-worth the walk across the bridge to the other side of the river.

What was even more impressive was that parking for the whole day (had I decided to stay that long) was just $5:00, entry to the park was free, and the border crossing in and out of the USA was relatively painless. I wasn’t expecting anything like that.

If you have been following my adventures from previous voyages you will be well-aware that I have been extracting the urine from the United States over its self proclaimed status as “Land of the Free”, because everywhere I have ever been to that has any kind of importance, it has been “Please Prepare Your Admission Money”

It’s only right and proper that I record the events surrounding my visit to Niagara Falls.

At the head of the river, on Lake Ontario, is Fort Niagara. There’s a British fort on the other side of the river directly opposite and during the various revolutionary wars and so on, there have been a good few battles between the two sides.

There was also a major battle between the British and the French in 1759, and in the grounds was a German Prisoner-of-War camp from World War II

Something right across the lake caught my eye but I couldn’t make out what it was, so I photographed it at the fullest extension of the zoom lens in order to have a play with the image later.

And this is what I saw – it’s the city of Toronto – probably 30 miles or so across the lake and it’s astonishing what a really good camera and lens can capture in the right kind of weather conditions.

You can see that the weather has brightened up – and so have I by now.

Tonight, I’m now in a small town called Ontario, in Upper New York State. Tomorrow I’m going to stay on the south side of the St Lawrence as far as I can until the last bridge across (round about Quebec I reckon) and then head north to Labrador.

-7

Wednesday 29th September 2010 part II – WELL, HERE I AM.

In a motel on the edge of the town of Kitchener in Ontario. $62 plus taxes and you don’t get much for your money.

But having been into the city, tried unsuccessfully to withdraw cash at three banks with three different bank cards and missing my way back to the motorway, I was ready for a good sleep. Mainly because I hadn’t had one on the plane.

Some blasted infant started to scream the moment the plane took off from Zurich and didn’t stop until we landed at Toronto. And at one time it was screaming so much that it gave itself a nosebleed. I was thoroughly fed up with that.

It’s been a long time since I’ve been up, showered, dressed and breakfasted before 08:00 – I’ll tell you that. And up before the alarm as well. Well, breakfasted after a fashion with the rest of the biscuits from my bag – and no coffee either. With the prices that they were charging I’d need a mortgage for that.

And on the airport shuttle bus some American got on board with two of the biggest suitcases I had ever seen, even bigger than mine – while his wife stood and watched him. I couldn’t resist it –
“Wouldn’t it have been easier just to buy the kids a ticket?” I asked him.

And as the bus pulled in to Charles de Gaulle Terminal 2 his wife stood and watched as he struggled one of the suitcases off. And he had to hurry to take the second one off before the bus pulled off to the next terminal. If she had been my wife she would have had a smack in the mouth by now. It wasn’t so much the standing and watching that did it for me – she may well have been disabled or something, you can never tell, but it was the way that she was harassing him while he was trying to do it.

Once inside the airport we are subjected to what can only be called "Skyway Robbery". I’d already lost some dosh in a vending machine at the entrance and it took me ages of wandering around the concourse before I found some nice friendly woman with a coffee trolley who sold me a nice cup of hot steaming strong coffee for a very respectable €1:70. Yes, it can be done, but you need to persevere.

The final words that I gave to Strawberry Moose
before we parted were
“Are you going to be all right, stowed away in the suitcase?”
“Just bung me a bottle of whisky” he said “and I’ll be absolutely fine”
“Badger off!” I exclaimed. “I know you! We won’t be halfway across the Atlantic before you start singing bawdy songs”
“Once we’are halfway over the Atlantic it won’t really matter. They aren’t going to stop in mid-air to search the baggage now, are they?”

He did ask me though if we were flying by Lear Jet but I did explain that it’s spelt L-E-A-R.And in any case, it was a nice, comfortable Airbus 320 that took us over to Zurich.

My only complaint was that there was nothing for me to eat. somehow my request for a vegan meal doesn’t apply to snacks served on short-haul flights.

They said that out plane from Zurich to Toronto was a Boeing 777. Mnd you, it looked more like a 767 to me but I suppose that they ought to know.

And as we flew over Greenland I had my vegan meal. Couscous and roasted vegetables. Not as nice as Liz’s but then again, nothing is.

But you missed all of the excitement. When we were at about 20,000 feet we had the safety announcement. And one of the things that they said was “if you are sitting by an emergency door you must be able to open it”. And I didn’t see the point of that – they didn’t half yell at me when I tried.

As well as that, we had another exciting incident. I always understood that there had to be a good vertical and horizontal clearance between two planes on the same course ever since those two airliners collided over the Grand Canyon years ago.

But there’s not much in the way of separation between us and this Thomas Cook flight that we overtook in mid-Atlantic.

But that’s enough of that. I remained inconspicuous for the rest of the flight with my head down. And at least the skriking infant drowned out the bawdy songs coming from the hold.

We made it in one piece as far as Toronto where the screaming brat finally shut up. I’d made the most of the journey by watching a couple of Hopalong Cassidy films and the new Robin Hood. At least the headphones kept out the screaming.

And the queue into the country was miles long. Half a dozen flights from Europe had come in at the same time as, as usual, the airport wasn’t prepared for them

But good fortune followed me to the car hire place.

They didn’t have a compact car so they offered me an upgrade. After much negotiation we settled on a Chrysler PT Cruiser. Ive always loved these vehicles, ever since they first came out. They reminded me very much of the Ford Anglias and Prefects that my father had when we were kids. And it’s been a lifetime ambition to drive on. So I was more-than-happy with this.

And so in my Chrysler PT Cruiser which I have named Casey (check his numberplate) Strawberry Moose and I head off into the sunset – going west you might well say, along the motorway in the general direction of Windsor, Ontario.

I’m looking for a cash point and then I’ll be looking for a motel. I won’t be doing all of the trip tonight. I’m thoroughly exhausted after the events of today.

-1

Monday 19th July 2010 – There was no conversation group today …

… so Clotilde invited a couple of us round for a chat and some snacks, which was very nice of her. Of course Strawberry Moose came along too to meet some of his admirers.

Clotilde’s house is gorgeous but it’s really discouraging to hear her say that it took 46 years to get it into the condition that it’s in today. And she showed us a photo of how it was when she bought it – and it really was a right tip too.

On the way down to Clotilde’s, I went the long way round with my new camera via the birdwatching centre at the back of St Gervais d’Auvergne seeing as how it was a beautiful early evening. This as you know is my favourite photography spot.

Here’s a beautiful view of the Gorge de la Sioule just down there in the centre of the photograph and over away to the left is the church at Sauret Besserve

I wanted to take a couple of photos of the view from there – a view which you all know is one of the best in the whole of France – and see how the new camera performs in the excellent weather conditions.

This is a close-up of the radio antenna on the Puy-de-Dome – a little bit of crop-and-enlarge from a full-size image. We have a new high-quality lens and I was keen to see how that performed too.

But that wasn’t all that was exciting about my little visit to the centre ornithologique this evening. As I was there this evening, the moon rose. Quite early for once, I know, and so I gave it a little go with the new lens too.

Quite honestly, this photo couldn’t have come out much better, could it?

All in all, I’m well-impressed with my new camera and lens. And quite rightly so, considering the money that I’ve spent on it.

Back at Pooh Corner this morning, Terry has started on Lieneke’s roof and I’ve been roped in to help. That’s going to be the plan for the next few weeks I suppose. And her roof is a right mess – far worse than mine was – and only patching a part of it is not going to be a long-term solution, for the more that you rip off the more damage that you find.

The chimney is leaning quite ominously too and I don’t like the look of it.

But it was hot up there on that roof today and my being stung by a wasp didn’t help matters much. 30-odd years since I was last stung by a wasp and now it’s twice in as many weeks.

And we’ve set a couple of records today. A total of 317 amp-hours on the two banks in the house will take some matching. And 44 degrees in the solar heat exchanger and 42.5 in the electric heater – those figures are impressive too. I’ve been thinking about the electric water heater – a 25-litre oil drum would do the job but an old milk churn with lid would be even better. I need to search the brocantes.

But at Clotilde’s this evening I did hear a story about a man who ran some cold water slowly onto his tin roof and took a shower underneath the downspout – and burnt himself, the water was so hot. And here I am, just having fitted about 150 sq m of metal roof on my barn. I’d love to try that out!

Saturday 3rd July 2010 – Today was really decided for me.

You may remember that last night I was undecided about what to do today and so while musing over the problem with a coffee this morning, the phone rang. Nada had been wanting to come round and see Pooh Corner for a while and could she come this afternoon?

I told her to come this evening instead and I legged it into Commentry where I bought all of the stuff I needed to finish off the guttering, the stuff I needed to make the puzzolane water filter (except the puzzolane), a pile of stuff from the cheapo shop (including a load of those clip-together storage bins at €1 for 3) and then back here and a quick tidy up.

While the tidying up was in progress we had a huge thunderstorm that presented us with 5mm of rain and flattened my potatoes (but at least it soaked all of the plants which is a good thing) and then Nada came round for her visit.

This evening was the annual walk around Virlet to get to know the commune and Nada came with me for the walk – it turns out that she knows the Mayor’s wife. Going for a tramp in the woods was out of the question due to the thunderstorm and the fact that we wouldn’t have caught him anyway

Instead, we visited the highlights of the village – namely the church that blew down in the hurricane in 1999, the old house that is on the point of falling down, and the cemetery which is of course right in the dead centre of the village.

Virlet is of course a very healthy village – so much so that they employ a man to go round the cemetery at closing time to tell the deceased to go back to sleep. It’s a huge cemetery for such a small village and an American tourist said “do people die here often then?”
The cemetery keeper replied “no – just the once like everywhere else”
The wall is quite high too and our American visitor wanted to know why they bothered to put a wall around it. The keeper replied that it was because people were dying to get in.
And I was impressed with the cemetery keeper. He told me that his job carried a great deal of responsibility – he had 500 people under him.
One thing that he did try to tell me was to reserve my plot. There were no English people buried in there (not that I am English but let’s not spoil this story by introducing facts into it). He did say that there was a Scots grave in the cemetery. So I wandered off to have a look, and there it was – “Here lies Jock MacTavish, a loyal father and a devoted husband”. Now isn’t that just like the Scots to bury three men in one grave?

One of the issues with burials here is the cost – it isn’t cheap. You can now get burials done on the instalment plan – they bury your left arm the first month, the right arm the second month et cetera. And I did ask the keeper what happens if you miss an instalment. “Well”, he replied “we simply dig them up”.

On leaving the cemetery this old guy was struggling his best to catch up with us.
“How old are you?” asked the cemetery keeper
“I’m 102 years old” he replied
“Well, it’s hardly worth your while going home then, is it?”

Because of the inclement weather, they decided to abandon the idea of lighting up the bonfire. Instead, we all went into the village hall for drinks and cakes and to have a good chat. It’s just a shame that there weren’t more of us.

You can’t have a village fête without inviting Strawberry Moose. He is very popular and took advantage of the occasion to have a photo opportunity with some more new friends. He’s always up for that.

A little later we decided that regardless of the weather we would indeed all go outside and have a go at lighting the bonfire after all. Perhaps the wine played something of a part in this decision.

I tried to encourage the deputy mayoress to play the leading role in my new production of “Joan of Arc” but she wasn’t having it. Shame. Everyone else thought that it would be a good idea.

We had a good time talking and telling jokes, all that kind of thing. It really was a nice friendly gathering and represents the best of French village life – something that you probably won’t understand if you have never taken part in it. And at midnight, with dogs and children all long-since asleep we all called it a night.

Tomorrow I’m going to have to make up for this by painting the wood for next week and doing the gutttering. I shall have to get my finger out.

-3

Friday 2nd July 2010 – Up until about 21:00 this evening …

… the weather was magnificent. In fact it was far too magnificent to work.

This morning we put up a small scaffolding at the southern end of the barn and while Terry was drilling and screwing into the wall for the mounting brackets I was sawing and cutting scaffolding pipe to make a framework to mount the solar panels that are on the roof of the Luton Transit.

I’ll be fitting them permanently onto this end of the barn along with the wind turbine that we took down from the north end of the barn.

But we were defeated by that most unusual phenomenon – overheating batteries. When they went flat in the Hitachi SDS drill (and what a good purchase that was!) they were too hot to take a charge. Mind you, it was only 37°C today – the hottest of the year.

Not to be outdone however we started on the guttering of the barn as you can see. I told Terry that there are four classes of people in France

the peasants – the ones with the leaky roofs
the lower class – the ones with roofs that don’t leak
the middle class – the ones with guttering on their barn …

“What’s the fourth class?” asked Terry

“The ones with drains to take away the water!”

But having seen how dry the house walls have become since I put guttering up, then my barn will have it too. I’m sick and tired of being up to my neck in mud. But I’ll have to wait a bit for the drains though.

The chevrons are much too short for the roofing (I went for a long overhang) and so a fascia board is out of the question but they did have at Brico Depot yesterday some galvanised straps with the facility for a sliding attachment. If you bend the straps so that the sliders are at about 60° there’s still a good 9 inches or so on the straps and they fit nicely onto the chevrons and you can bolt the gutter mounts to them and they are then perfectly vertical.

We did what we could bearing in mind that we had no joints (moving the scaffolding out to give us clearance was fun) but by 15:00 it was no longer possible to work up there. The combination of a searing hot metal roof, blinding sunlight and tools too hot to touch made us call it a day.

I did a little some while later and then history was made by my not only having a solar shower (and this LIDL garden shower thing needs some attention) but a solar shave as well. And no surprise – the water temperature was a phenomenal 46°C

We had a barbecue round at Clare’s tonight. Esther hosted it and very kindly invited me, and of course Strawberry Moose met some of his admirers. James and Julianna drew some good pictures of him too.

But by 21:00 we were having thunder and lightning and we even had some rain. But nothing like as much as we need. And right now the sky is a clear cloudless starry night promising much more sun for tomorrow. I have to go to Commentry to look for joints and downpipe and then it’s a toss-up as to whether I come back to do the guttering or go for a swim.

We shall see.

-7

Saturday 26th June 2010 – It was Karl and Lou’s chantier today …

… so Strawberry Moose and I went along to Lapeyrouse to see what was happening and to lend a hand.

Once again there weren’t all that many people there. The novelty of the idea is clearly wearing off as peoples’ own chantiers are completed. Liz and Terry, Clotilde, Francois, Jean, Hein (whom I met briefly for the first time at Kate’s the other day) and Yours Truly were the only attendees, and I was late arriving.

Hein’s wife and kids turned up later and of course Strawberry made a new friend. Good old Strawberry!

The girls (Lou, Liz and Clotilde) occupied themselves with painting 30 panels of OSB to put on the walls of the attic, while Jean and I put some guttering up to the side of the garage and connected a downpipe to the drain. I like working with Jean – he’s an old guy but very fit for his age and has a keen interest in woodwork and that kind of thing. We’ve done quite a few jobs together at various chantiers.

Terry, Francois and Hein spent the day working on the door to the barn. The previous owners had nailed it shut as the bottom had rotted off and the huge hinge had broken away, leading to a risk that the door might fall across the lane.

They unfastened it, removed it from the doorframe and lowered it onto some trestles. Once it was there they cut off the bottom part, screwed some new wood onto the frame, reinforced the frame, replaced the ironwork and then we all lifted it back into position.

In the photo just here you can see the work receiving close attention from the assembled multitudes. From left to right we have Karl, Jean (who is hiding Francois) Hein and Terry. Here they were refitting the stone that had the pivot hole for the lower hinge.

Back here the temperature in my room was an astonishing 30°C. But I am prepared for this kind of thing. I bought a heavy-duty in-car fan for just €3.99 the other day and I took off the cigarette lighter plug and replaced it with an American 110-volt plug (that’s what I use for my 12-volt circuits). It’s noisy but it doesn’t half blow the cool air around when you clip it into the frame of the open window.

A good move that!

+11

-5

Saturday 15th May 2010 – His NIbs made some more new admirers today.

Yes, we did this furniture removal today and Strawberry Moose came along to take charge, supervise and in general look after the children while the adults did the work.

Of course this calls for a photo opportunity (have you ever known Strawberry Moose to miss out on one of those?) and here he is being feted by James, Samuel and Julianna while Liz, Esther and Lionel look on.

The furniture removal took most of the day, what with one thing and another, but we had a chance to meet up with Clare and Keith. And Clare very kindly donated to the cause a complete set of kitchen cooking knives that she had received as a free gift and which were surplus to requirements. That was really nice of her.

After the removal was over we went back to Liz and Terry’s where we discussed plans for the forthcoming week and also to continue the discussions over our moneymaking activities. We’re a long way from being destitute of course and we are all doing things to keep ticking over but you need to be proactive and take control of matters. Consequently on Monday we will be extracting the old caravan chassis from the wilderness around here, repairing it and loading Terry’s small tractor onto it so that it is ready for work and then fitting the towbar off my old Transit onto Terry’s van so that he can tow it about. Then Tuesday Wednesday and Thursday we will be fixing the pipes at the back of Terry’s house, seeing as the kwikstage scaffolding is up there.

There are lots of other things too but if you plan to finish them all, the first thing that you need to do is to make the start. And that’s as good a place as any.

Once those things are out of the way we can see where we are up to.

-2

Wednesday 21st April 2010 – Friends Reunited

Strawberry Moose got to see his Auntie Tracy this evening. In fact it’s been quite some time since the two of them met – probably two years or so.

As predicted, cleaning this apartment is pretty hard work particularly when your heart isn’t in it. But at least I’ve cleared away the forest of dead plants inside the apartment, made a start on the ones on the terrace, and I began some desultory cleaning.

But then of course the rest is history.

It didn’t take me long to get discouraged so I rang up Tracy in Antwerpen to see if she fancied coming down for a coffee, but she wasn’t feeling too well and so, any excuse to stop cleaning and tidying, I went up there.

We had a good chat, mostly about what’s been happening to us since we both graduated from the Open University, and then went out for a meal. And if there’s one type of cooking that will run a good Indian close then it has to be Middle Eastern cooking and as luck would have it there is an Egyptian restaurant not too far from where she lives whose falafel and hummus is second to none. And of course there has to be a big plate of fritjes to go with it. After all, this is Belgium and they invented the French Fry. There is of course all of the old jokes about this –
“Why are there no Belgian astronauts?”
“Because there are no fritkots on the moon”
“What do you call a German living in Belgium?”
“Fritz”
“Why are there potatoes in Belgium and oil in the Middle East?”
“Because the Belgians had first choice”
Yes, we know them all.

But I like Antwerpen – it’s got much more going for it than Brussels. And had my work not have been so “irregular” I would have gladly bought a place here. In fact there is a suburb of Antwerpen specially named for me – it’s called Weerde. I would have been very happy there, almost as happy as living in that Belgian town between Enghein and Ath.

It’s called Silly.

-7

Saturday 15th August 2009 – I SAW THIS MOST MAGNIFICENT CLOUD …

… on my way to Liz and Terry’s this evening. A finer example of an “anvil” cumulonimbus cloud you cannot hope to see.

It’s hovering just about over Clermont Ferrand so I reckon that the good citizens of that fair city are having a right pasting this evening, for “anvil” clouds are associated with heavy thunderstorms.

So what was I doing at Liz and Terry’s this evening? You may well ask.

In fact it all starts this morning at about 11.45. There I was casually nailing my fascia boards to the ends of the chevrons when suddenly Terry put in a dramatic appearance.

“There’s a damsel ( or was it a damson?) in distress at the Brico Depot in Montlucon” he announced

Of course, someone’s antlers pricked up at that. All his life he’s been in training for just this moment and despite one or two false starts
“Help help I’ve been tied to this tree and ravaged by the entire crew of the HMS Victory” cried a damsel in distress, tied to a tree in the forest.
“Well, it’s just not your lucky day, is it?” Strawberry Moose
, unbuckling his tunic.
he was well in form.

He leapt into Caliburn, his trusty steed (in the old days when I used to be a superhero all on my own and the job didn’t pay as well as it does now, some of the vehicles I owned were rather less than reputable and were more like rusty steeds, but certainly not Caliburn) and as his driver, I leapt in beside him and we chaud-pieded it to Montlucon.

This digital revolution and mobile communications has brought about some significant benefits and so on – but also a major disadvantage that as far as I know, everyone else has overlooked. In order to be a superhero you need to have your underpants on outside your trousers, and telephone boxes are the traditional places for superheroes to change their clothing.

But try finding a telephone box these days now that everyone has a mobile phone! Strawberry and I had to search for ages until we found a suitable telephone box to change in, and that’s in the Auvergne where mobile phone coverage is patchy at best. How is Superperson managing in the USA where telephone boxes are all but redundant?

Superheroes will have to find new venues in which to change.

Public toilets are likely to receive plenty of support, and I have indeed made use of just such a venue on a previous occasion. But these days you have to fight your way into a public toilet past the drug abusers, the cottagers, the cross-dressers (“Mabel, if you don’t let me wear your tights I’ll smash your ****ing face in!”) and the like.

Mind you, I did have a brother who almost always used to come out of a public toilet with his underpants on outside his trousers, but that was more to do with his status as being a couple of sandwiches short of a picnic rather than any superhero status he might (or might not) wish to claim.

So Strawberry Moose
, Caliburn and I duly arrived at Brico Depot and found Terry standing guard over a trolley with a pile of windows too large to go in the back of his car.
“Where’s Liz?” I asked
“Ohh, she’s going to take advantage of you while you’re here” he replied.
Now, I don’t know about you, but it’s a long time since anyone has ever said anything like that to me, and my surprise was quite clearly written all over my face.
“She wants to make use of Caliburn now you are all here by getting some more windows”
“Ahhhh” I replied, this time with disappointment all over my face.

Liz asked me if I could deliver the windows this evening.
“Might that involve some of your vegan chocolate cake?” I enquired.
“I’ll see what I can do” she replied.

And hence my visit to Liz and Terry’s this evening. And not only was there vegan chocolate cake, there was some vegetable curry with rice, and some vegan chocolate cake to bring home.

We have a system round here of chantiers communaux – where if anyone has a work project that needs many hands, we all do a blitz on their premises to get the job done. And whenever there’s a chantiers communaux at Liz and Terrys, you are usually trampled to death in the stampede, so well-known is Liz’s vegan chocolate cake.

And in other news, it was the hottest day of the year so far – almost 42 degrees – and I’ve fixed the fascia boards, tacked on the guttering (I can’t fix it on until the scaffolding is moved) and put on the first row of tiles.

-3

Sunday 9th August 2009 – I MENTIONED THE OTHER DAY …

… about Strawberry Moose playing hide-and-seek with his sister Katherine and other students from Hatfield University. Well, I’ve been sent some photos to prove it.

Here you can see His Nibs cunningly hiding behind a tree. Unfortunately, his antlers somehow give the game away but at least he had a good time, being surrounded by young ladies of the female sex.

I’ve also been sent some “other” photos detailing his “other” antics while on his solo round-Britain tour, but the world is not yet ready for them.

Sunday today so I didn’t set the alarm. Nevertheless I was up at 09:30 and had a leisurely breakfast. I carried on with the pointing later – it takes me about 10 minutes to mix a bucket-full of cement and about an hour or so to apply it, and twice I was caught out by rainstorms just as I had a bucketload. I can’t leave it so I ended up working in the rain.

The second storm meant business so I abandoned the task once the bucket was emptied, came in and dried myself off, followed by a coffee. But the pointing isn’t going to be finished at this rate – not even close – so I’ve pretty-much decided on a change of plan.

-8

Friday 7th August 2009 – NEVER ONE TO MISS OUT ….

… on a photo opportunity, Strawberry Moose tagged himself along to Gilles’ barbecue this evening.

Of course he made plenty of friends, mostly of young ladies of the female sex, and was even taking part in the “jumping off the wall” game – to match the games of “hide and seek” that he played with students of Hatfield University the other week.

As for my part, I don’t “do” social stuff but I force myself to go out – otherwise I’d never ever do anything.

Terry and Liz are good company as are Bill and Gilles. Rebecca’s mum is quite nice to talk to too, but after a while I long for the peace and quiet of my own four walls such as they are.

And talking of walls, I started the pointing today. Followers of my ravings from previous incarnations will know that my cementing is total carp, and so I didn’t expect much from my efforts at pointing. But even though my technique improved dramatically, my target of Monday afternoon for this is hopelessly optimistic.

There are holes in the existing cementing big enough to put your hand in and god knows what kind of livestock is lurking in there. One hole swallowed up an entire bucket of cement so after that I resorted to filling the big holes with gravel and then cementing them in, to bind everything together. I was interrupted by a rainstorm too at 17:30.

It’s just as well that I’m pointing the wall as it is in desperate straights but finished by Monday? Not a chance.

-5

EPIC HALL

The Poisoned Pen (or Poisoned Chalice, more like) – or my relentless struggle against reality

Category Archives: strawberry moose

Thursday 14th October 2010 – WELL, STRAWBERRY MOOSE HAD A GOOD DAY TODAY.

Friday 9th October 2010 – TODAY WE CROSSED THE RUBI … ERRR ….. ST LAWRENCE

Wednesday 6th October 2010 – I RECKON THAT I MIGHT JUST STAY IN THE USA FOR GOOD ..

Wednesday 29th September 2010 part II – WELL, HERE I AM.

Monday 19th July 2010 – There was no conversation group today …

Saturday 3rd July 2010 – Today was really decided for me.

Friday 2nd July 2010 – Up until about 21:00 this evening …

Saturday 26th June 2010 – It was Karl and Lou’s chantier today …

Saturday 15th May 2010 – His NIbs made some more new admirers today.

Wednesday 21st April 2010 – Friends Reunited

Saturday 15th August 2009 – I SAW THIS MOST MAGNIFICENT CLOUD …

Sunday 9th August 2009 – I MENTIONED THE OTHER DAY …

Friday 7th August 2009 – NEVER ONE TO MISS OUT ….

Your reactions

Excellent

Useful

Interesting

Weird

Surprising

Boring