Category Archives: Eric Hall

Saturday 19th September 2015 – SOMEONE IS ON A POWER TRIP …

… and, just for a change, I’m not talking about the farces of Law and Order either.
What we have here is a “suspicious package” in the middle of the festival, and everywhere is cordoned off by the police.

But what we do have is two of the Festival volunteers, pushing (and I DO mean pushing) people out of the way, yelling at everyone, and generally being on a major control freak exercise. I asked them what was going on and they told me that it’s “a police incident”. And so when I asked what kind of “incident” I was told that it was nothing to do with me.

And when I asked them how come, as festival employees, they were dealing with a “police incident”, they walked away. And so when I asked them if I could ask another question, one of them replied “yes, I DO mind. I’m not answering”, and carried on walking away.

And so I went 20 yards further on to a police officer, who made a full and complete statement without any inhibitions, even telling me that “no-one is taking it very seriously but we have to check it out just the same”.

But this kind of behaviour by festival employees, assaulting members of the public (because pushing someone is an assault of course and had it been me on the receiving end of it then the matter would not have rested there), being aggressive and abandoning their festival duties in order to go on a major power trip is something that is inevitably going to have repercussions as far as the festival is concerned.

And not only that, on the main street I counted at least two other “acts” that included backing tapes. Whatever is the festival coming to, that it is abandoning the principles under which it was founded?

If you are a solo performer and need more than just a guitar, then this is exactly how you do it.

This is a guy from Montreal called Steve Hill and he’s playing guitar and singing. And not only that, if you have a closer look at the photo you’ll see that he has a bass drum, another drum, a hi-hat, a tambourine and a set of cymbals, that he plays by hitting them with some kind of extension fastened to his guitar.

He had another guitar too, and that had a maracca attached to the end as well so he could shake his maraccas during the performance.

I was amazed to see that he didn’t have a mouth-truss and a gob-iron, which was what I would have expected to see in a solo performer, and I did have a little muse to myself that had he had a really good plate of baked beans for lunch he could have played the trumpet too.

But I’m a big fan of one-man shows and I have appeared in several, but these were usually named after the size of the audience.

But joking apart, I do have to say that I really enjoyed his performance. He was certainly a very competent performer and he had quite a good voice too.

This is what being a solo performer is all about. Using backing tapes and the like is selling the public, and the festival, short.

Talking of mouth trusses and gob-irons, this is what I mean.

This is a guy called Oland Monteith and he comes from up the road in Nackawic, and he is an excellent representation of what the festival is all about – the old man sitting on the porch with the guitar and mouth organ singing the blues – in this case the Folsom Prison Blues.

You might – or might not – have realised this, but this is the FIRST real old-man blues act that we have seen at the festival. And by the time that the festival had finished, this was the only one that I had encountered.

What a let-down from the days when I first came to the festival and we had raft after raft of old men singing the blues. Of course, I’ve not had the blues for years – ever since I started on the Prozac of course.

As for other unusual acts, how about this one?

This is the North Mississippi Allstars and if you look very carefully at the stage and the musicians, you will notice that they have one singer-guitarist and two drummers.

And that’s your lot.

You might think that the sound that they would be able to create would be rather limited, but nothing could be further from the truth.

They managed to put in a “complete” performance that certainly sounded as if there was nothing missing from the show, and it all went down rather well. Much better than I had expected.

And with all of the above, just WHY do you need backing tapes? And just WHY are you allowed to get away with it at the festival?

And so this morning I was up quite nice and early and had plenty of time to have breakfast and do the paperwork from yesterday without any interruptions.

But I did have an interruption while I was driving into town. However, this was something of a quite welcome interruption. You may remember that I’d sent a note backstage to Ross Neilsen during his performance yesterday, And this was him, ringing me back.

We had quite a lengthy chat, and the result of this is that he will indeed do something for Radio Anglais and that can only be good news. If what he sends me is as powerful as what he performed yesterday then our listeners really will enjoy themselves.

That’s not all either. At a Charity Shop, Strawberry Moose made a few new friends – a couple of girls aged about 8 or 9 were very keen to make his acquaintance while I was having a long chat with their mother.

And so to the music.

We’ve already seen a couple of acts, right out of running order. The first band that we actually encountered, in strict running order, was Greensky Bluegrass. They come from that well-known haunt of legendary bluegrass music … errr … Minnesota.

Bluegrass is a long way from being my favourite style of music as you all very well know, but good music is good music, no matter what it is and where it comes from.

But this bluegrass music was so astonishingly good that I doubt if I’ve ever in all my life had a better time at this kind of concert

We media-types are only allowed to be there for the first three numbers but I was there for probably three quarters of an hour because one of their numbers seemed to go on for ever.

Not that I minded, of course. I could have stayed there all night and listened to them, if I hadn’t had so many other things to be dealing with.

There were five musicians on stage – and no drummer, which they didn’t need anyway because the guy on the upright bass was a stunning performer who kept perfect time.

They aren’t really suitable for a performance on Radio Anglais unfortunately, but I’ll be checking them out when I return home to see what else they can come up with.

On my way to my next venue I passed by the Barracks Tent. There was no performance scheduled for there, but there was certainly something going on.

One of the benefits of my media pass is to be able to enter venues when they are officially closed, and so I went in to investigate, and found myself face-to-face with Yukon Blonde doing a sound check.

Yukon blonde’s bassist, as well as being a left-hooker, comes from the UK, which was evident when he shouted across the stage “there’s something the ma”er with your speaker” – not a trace of a ‘t’ between two vowels. I hope that he doesn’t sing like this.

But that apart, they were quite a good group too.

I doubted very much that I would be around for their act, seeing as it was timed for 23:00, long after my bed-time, and so I stayed around for the entire sound check.

And it wasn’t a wasted experience either because, as I said, they put out quite a good performance even if it was only a simple sound-check. A shame that their set wasn’t timed for earlier.

Down at the Mojo Tent, Raoul and the Big Time were due to come on stage and so I needed to get a move on if I wanted to catch the act.

This looked like something out of the 1950s, what with the shiny grey suit and pork-pie hat, and this was indeed what we got. Appearances were certainly not deceptive in this case.

Despite the presence of the mouth organ, this was another very good, competent performance.

It seems that Raoul, whoever he is, is something of a well-known performer on the music stage although I have to admit to never having heard him before. And to be honest, it wasn’t my cup of tea and so I wandered off elsewhere.

“Elsewhere” turned out to be tea. There was quite a big gap between the next performances and so I went off to find some food.

We’re overwhelmed by food stalls this year and vegan food is quite popular. Tonight I had 6 hot-vegetable samosas, for $7:00 – and they were totally delicious – and very filling too. I’m doing well for food at the festival and, to my surprise, it’s not as expensive as it might have been.

My wanderings took me back at the Mojo Tent (we’ve seen the photos of Steve Hill in the Blues Tent earlier) where Amy Helm and the Handsome Strangers was the next act.

Now let’s forget the music for a moment – let’s talk about Amy Helm, because she was well-worth talking about. She’s someone else of whom I hadn’t heard before, and so I went off to make enquiries.

It turns out that she’s the daughter of Levon Helm who for many years was a member of the band “The Hawks”, which later became “The Band” and backed Bob Dylan during his “rock” phases and went on to have successes of their own.

This was another act that wasn’t really up my street as far as the music went, but there was no doubting the quality of the music, and no doubting the quality of the performance either, because Amy Helm really knew how to put on a show.

She was an entertainer from start to finish and not only that, she clearly had the air of thoroughly enjoying herself on stage.

At the Barracks Tent, I went to see a band called Rah Rah, who come from Saskatchewan apparently.

They were a five-piece band featuring a guitarist-vocalist, a bassist, a violinist, a drummer and a keyboard player who doubled on guitar too, and they produced quite a powerful act that I enjoyed very much.

The sound mix was all wrong however and I couldn’t hear half of the instruments, although that’s not surprising for us in the media pit at the front of the stage.

I was disappointed not to be able to hear the violin though, and I shall have to go around for a fiddle with the violinist later.

Final act that I caught was back at the Mojo Tent where Waylon Thibodeaux took to the stage.

He’s a ‘cajun from down Louisiana way, and he and his back-up band played just like it too. It didn’t bother me too much because this kind of music is the kind that you can listen to anywhere on any occasion

And if it’s played in the right kind of spirit with performers who enjoy what they are doing and are able to communicate with the audience, it’s usually a rip-roaring night.

And so this was what we got – a thoroughly enjoyable evening with a good bunch of performers and a lively crowd.

But I didn’t hang around too long. It’s my last night and I want to have an early night as I’m back on the road tomorrow. But today, I had a pile of interesting chats, including one with a cameraman from CBC and another with a young guy at the Rah Rah concert, to name but two.

It makes the time pass so much quicker and make things so much more interesting.

But I’m disappointed to see that the traditional “old-man blues” is no longer popular at the festival. For me, that’s what blues is all about and to legislate it out of the festival is a very sad thing as far as I am concerned.

And by the way …

… the photos that I’ve posted for tonight’s acts at the Harvest Jazz and Blues Festival are only a small sample of the hundreds that I took during the evening. If you want to see any more of those that I took, you’ll need to contact me. Leave a comment and I’ll be in touch.

-2

Friday 18th September 2015 – I KNEW THAT …

… I couldn’t keep it up.

We had twice the amount of usual interruptions today, to make up for the smooth day that we had yesterday.

I’m not counting the rain in this because although this morning there was no sign of any precipitation whatsoever, I’m convinced that I heard some rain during the night.

Mind you, that’s all that I heard. I had another Sleep Of The Dead and didn’t feel a thing.

And so next morning I started on the building of my bed for Strider. This meant that I had to completely unload him so that I could measure up. and with stuff all over my camping pitch, another camper pulled up on the pitch beside mine. He came over to see what he was doing, and his dog promptly went to urinate on my camping pitch. And so the dog had my boot up its backside and his owner would have received one too had he not beaten a hasty retreat, with my opinion of him and his dog ringing in his ears.

While all of this was going on, a camp site steward came up. I can’t stay at this pitch, apparently, as it’s been booked for the weekend. I have to move.
“But you should have come to the office and booked in. After all, you’ve been here a few days”
“Every time I’ve been past the office I’ve seen the ‘sorry – we’re closed’ sign in the window”
“But I come on duty at 12:00”
“And I’ve been gone by then”
“But you do need to register”
“How?”
“One of the campground rangers should have come to see you and given you the details”
“And did they?”
“… errr … no”
“And as you know that I’ve been here for a few days, have you pinned a note on my tent to tell me what’s happening?”
“… errr … no”.

But in the end I had to move and I’m now elsewhere, and my bed isn’t finished either. All of this just goes to prove what I’ve always said about most Government servants. They only work when they have too and when it suits them. Providing an efficient and effective service to their clients is the last thing on their minds.

Some good news anyway concerns the group Tokyo Valentine – you remember that I saw them yesterday on one of the free stages. I was quite impressed with what I had seen of them and so I’d given my phone number to the guy who was doing their sound engineering.

The result of this was that Rachel, the keyboard player, rang me back and we had quite a lengthy chat. She likes the idea of recording one of the group’s live concerts so that I can make up a live broadcast for Radio Anglais. Plenty of interaction with the audience – that’s the thing, even if the have to summon up a clacque. I want to make my audience feel that they are part of the performance.

But as for the other acts to whom I’d slipped a little note – not a word. As I’ve said before, just like most people, musicians seem to be just interested in moaning about the lack of airplay that they receive and it’s far too much effort to actually go out and do something about it.

But before we start to involve ourselves in the festival tonight, let’s just say a word or two about the volunteers.

If you haven’t yet been to the festival, you won’t understand just how much work is done or needs to be done here and without the volunteers, none of this work would be done and the festival would ever take place. The volunteers deserve a big round of applause from everyone.

The first group that I encountered was on one of the free stages in the main street. This is Paula Tozer and Friends.

They were nothing special. Technically competent, they were, and playing an assortment of 12-bar blues including a number by JJ Cale that I hadn’t heard before but they didn’t manage to set the crowd alight.There wasn’t anything that I would have considered for broadcast on Radio Anglais.

As for the musicians, I recognised the lead guitarist. He’s called Rick Bartlett or something like that and I’m sure that I’ve seen him elsewhere at the festival in a previous year.

As for the bassist though, he gave me the opinion of being rather sour-faced. I went up to him as he was umpacking, and told him that it’s been years since I’ve seen a Rickenbacker bass, but he merely scowled and carried on unpacking, totally ignoring me.

And talking of totally ignoring me, I went into Tony’s Music Shop to see what they had – I’ve bought a few things from there in the past at various festivals.

This year though, I went in and all of the shop assistants were busy chatting away to various callers. Eventually, someone bade farewell to one of his visitors and came over to chat to me. And while we were chatting, another visitor came in and he turned to chat to them about babies and children, totally ignoring me.

That was enough for me and I walked out, with him running behind to try to persuade me to stay. But whatever happened to North American customer service? It used to be legendary, but now it’s all becoming just like Belgium. It’s shameful.

Talking of thigs being shameful, here’s Mike Peters, my favourite busker.

He’s been shunted out to play underneath the footbridge far from the madding crowd surging down the main street. He’s here playing to an audience of … errr … just me. And this is shameful treatment for someone such as him because he’s miles better than many of the performers who have appeared on a paid stage – never mind a free stage on the main street.

This is another thing that is shameful in my opinion.

The festival was created, so we were told, to counter the DJ movement and recorded music, and return to live entertainment and live music. But here, what we have is a “musician” strumming a guitar every now and again, backed by a recorded drummer, a recorded bass and a recorded backing choir. And it’s in the main street too.

But whatever is he doing with all of this gear at the festival, never mind on the main street, when many artists much better than him and playing all of their own music are stuck out at the back of the festival miles away from the crowds.

The first formal band that I encountered was the Earthbound Trio at the Barracks Tent. They were to play a little later on as one of the opening acts for Grand Theft Bus and so were warming up before the crowds filtered into to tent.

And yes, the Earthbound Trio is indeed the name, even though those of you who are able to count will have not failed to have noticed that there were four of them up on stage.

Musically, they were okay, I suppose, but this isn’t really my cup of tea and so I didn’t stay around very long.

But this is much more like my cup of tea.

Ross Neilsen is by far and away the best rock musician that you are ever likely to encounter anywhere in New Brunswick and, furthermore, he plays with the correct number of musicians too. Just a drummer and bassist – no horns, no keyboards, no nothing. This is a genuine power trio although his two backing musicians this year seem to be different than those who I’ve seen him play with in previous years.

Now if ony he would play like this all of the time, it would be a magnificent performance and he would be the star of any festival that I would organise.

He does however have a tendency to run a “blues by invitation” kind of show where he invites his friends up onto the stage to join in with the show. And while his friends are without doubt quite competent musicians, you have to hear the opening numbers of any show that Ross Neilsen puts on to hear how much of a disappointment the “augmented” show might become.

One of the things that I noticed about Ross Neilsen and his mates is that while Neilsen and his bassist weren’t ‘arf freaking out at the front of the stage, the drummer, whoever he was, was quite simply and stoically playing away on his drums totally oblivious of what was going on out at the front.

It was quite a remarkable exercise in concentration from the drummer, given the distractions.

And distractions they certainly were because Ross Neilsen and his mate were putting on quite a show and giving it all that they’ve got out there on the stage.

And as my three numbers were up (I’m only allowed to photograph the first three songs) I passed a note to backstage to ask him to contact me. I’d love to use one of his live concerts on Radio Anglais on my radio shows and I’m sure that my listeners would love it too.

This group on stage at the Barracks Tent was the winner of this year’s “Rising Stars” competition and unfortunately I forgot to enquire as to the name of the band … "it’s Free to Grow" – ed.

The stage in the Barracks Tent is one of the smallest stages at the festival, and yet there are no fewer than nine performerss on the stage. It’s cramped enough when there are only three or four performers on here and these nine were really suffering.

Once again, the music that they were playing, technically competent though it might have been, was not my cup of tea and so I didn’t hang around very long.

But what did impress me was the bassist, who you might have seen on the previous photo. He was playing what looked to me like a six-string bass and it’s been quite a long time since I’ve seen one of those on stage.

My permabulations took me back to the Mojo Tent. I’d seen Matt Minglewood and his band warming up earlier as I was wandering around and I was determined not to miss his set.

He had a four-piece band, consisting of himself on guitar and vocals, a keyboardist and drummer who provided the backing vocals, and a bassist. And all in all, it was a very tight set and from what I saw, I enjoyed the show immensely.

And did you notice the bassist? Yes, we had a female bassist who looked as if she might have been Matt Minglewood’s grand-daughter.

From what I heard of her, she kept her bass lines simple and basic, but then what else do you need in a show like this? And if she ever reads these notes, she’s quite welcome to come round to my tent and have a play on my instrument any time she likes. After all, I do have a Jaguar in my truck, don’t I?

He was a really popular performer with the crowd and rightly so because what I saw of his performance was quite impressive.

I was inclined to ask him to do something for Radio Anglais but at the last moment I had a change of heart. It turns out that he is an out-and-out militarist and spent much of his time regaling the Canadian Armed Forces and their aggressive and unprovoked invasion of Afghanistan.

I’m not having my listeners infected by any of this kind of nonsense and so I desisted. People who adopt polarised positions have to accept the consequences of their actions.

And I couldn’t hang around anyway. The battery in the camera was going flat and Canned Heat are up next in an hour. I need to do some charging.

Having rustled up the battery charger and infinity lead, I shot off to Tim Horton’s for a coffee and a charge. But, to my surprise, the Tim Horton’s in town has no public charging points. Consequently, I refused my coffee and wandered off elsewhere, eventually finding an outdoor power point at the local church where I could listen to (but not see) Garrett Mason in the Hoodoo House.

Back at the Mojo Tent, playing to a disappointingly small audience, was Canned Heat.

I couldn’t understand that. For a start, the Mojo Tent is not the best venue for one of the oldest continuing groups in the history of modern music – the Blues Tent where I’d deen Michael Franti and Spearhead is much more suitable. And I couldn’t understand why the tent here was only half-full anyway. Canned Heat should have packed out the festival.

Mind you, talking to one of the stewards earlier, he told me that for one of the artists here, the tent had been filled to beyond capacity.

The problem that they have is that they sell tickets for the individual shows but issues Ultimate Passes so that people can wander around from venue to venue. And if all of the Ultimate Pass holders were to present themselves at a venue as well as all of the regular ticket holders, then the capacity of the venue will be exceeded.

Returning to the music, I’m not sure whether or not the drummer was the same as when I has seen them previously. He certainly looked different, but then there are a great many reasons why that might happen.

But what made me consider this is that the drummer has a high-pitched voice and you’ll recognise his singing on many of the group’s early hits. And he sand several of the songs last time that I saw them, including “Going Up The Country”. But this time, “Going Up The Country” was sung by the lead guitarist who has a quite different vocal range.

Nevertheless, te performance was quite good and I enjoyed what I heard. But I had other fish to fry – there were still several groups to see and so I set off on my rounds.

But my heart wasn’t in it and I rather lost interest. I treated myself to a big plate of chips (I’d had nothing to eat since breakfast) and headed back to Strider. And here’s a thing. On the side of the street was a hat with a note – something like “thanks to all the musicians” – and people were leaving money in it, even though there was no-one with it, never mind doing anything. Imagine that – in the UK – leaving money lying around like that. Some people have much more faith in human nature than I have.

Back in my tent, I spent a half-hour or so quietly reading a book but at the end of the day I decided that enough was enough.

I turned the light off and settled down for he night. I was going to have an early night.

-2

Thursday 17th September 2015 – AND SO TODAY …

… nobody managed to get in my way. But then again, I didn’t put myself into much of a position where I was likely to be interrupted or diverted (although anything is possible of course).

I had an excellent night’s sleep in the tent, which I reckon that I thoroughly deserved, and I was up early and at work by 07:30 with a mug of coffee and a pile of breakfast biscuits, and it didn’t take all that long to work on the 61 photos that I had taken yesterday. And then they all needed to be imprinted with the copyright logos.

Once I’d done that, I wrote up the blog for yesterday ready to upload as soon as I could find a wifi connection.

One thing that I did manage to do is the change the headlight bulb in Strider. I’d picked one up at Rouses Point when I was there a few days ago, and while I’d been looking for a paper for Strider yesterday, I noticed that there was a section in his handbook about changing the bulb. It looks pretty straightforward but it isn’t, mainly because I don’t think that it had ever been changed before and the clips took quite a bit of forcing with a pipe wrench to move them. But at least he’s all legal now.

I also took the opportunity to have a really beautiful and warm shower.

On the road, first stop was the Atlantic Superstore where I stocked up with food as we are running right low on fruit, veg and bread. And they also had a few other things on special offer. So I now have a full pickup and we’re (almost) ready for anything.

Tim Horton’s came up with an internet connection (they must have made a fortune on coffee since they started on the free wifi connections – I know that they have from me) and after all of that I went to my usual little spec on the boat launching ramp car park opposite the city for lunch.

Home Depot was the next stop, and there I bought all of the wood that I need to make the bed that I want for Strider. And so Strider is now all loaded up with wood. They also had the insulation that I want too, but that’s going to have to wait until I’ve done the bed. I don’t want to load up Strider with stuff that’s going to be in the way. I’m going to buy it as I need it.

And so off to the Festival, and at the Barracks Tent, which has now been erected, we were having a communal yoga session.

As I arrived, they were all going into the mass hypnotism session that they have usually right at the end of every session, and so I engaged in a conversation with the volunteer on the door. We were wondering what might happen should a marching band go storming past the tent at this particular moment

The free stage has been erected at the City Hall, and the first band up on there was Tokyo Valentine. They are local, from Fredericton, and have only been together for a short while.

The vocals were a little, well, hit-and-miss, but musically there was nothing wrong with them and they seemed to be enjoying themselves, as did the audience.

In fact, the rhythm section was quite impressive. The drummer was superb and I really enjoyed listening to him.

As for the bassist however, he was easily the best that I have ever seen at this level. And I’m certain that I’ve seen him before too. I don’t remember his face but I do remember his style of play and I’m sure that I’ve seen him before with someone else at a previous Festival.

We had two female singers. One of them was sometimes on the keyboards and sometimes on the tambourine. And her vocals weren’t all that bad but her style wasn’t really a style that appealed to me.

But she knew how to interact with the audience and at one stage went off the stage to dance with everyone in the audience, who clearly enjoyed it too.

The girl on guitar, who was really a mermaid apparently, kept it simple and basic and that’s all that you need to do. But she knew how to get an audience moving too.

All in all, I had to say, what a way to start the Festival. This was quite a good act to have on a free stage, considering some that we have had in the payable venues, and I approached their manager afterwards with a view to doing something with them on Radio Anglais.

But we shall see.

The Hoodoo House is now open for business too and we started off with Tomato Tomato, who come from Saint John. They’ve been at the Festival before but I don’t recall having seen them.

It’s a married couple, who have been together for 11 years, and the kind of music that they were playing was certainly different. It wasn’t jazz and it wasn’t blues either, but whatever it was, they put everything into it.

We had the guy on acoustic guitar and vocals (and by the looks of thing, banjo and a few other stringed instruments too) but it was the woman who interested me.

She was playing almost everything – the washboard, the cymbals, the tin can, and also the bass drum and the tambourine, which she was playing by hitting pedals with her heels.

That must have taken quite some co-ordination, but never mind. She managed it fine and it was really quite different

I’d seen Kill Chicago last year in the “new faces” competition and this year here they are again, back in the Barracks Tent as established performers.

I wasn’t all that impressed by them last year. It wasn’t that their music was bad in any way, it was just that the style of music didn’t appeal to me that much. It’s something like modern pseudo-punk, high energy stuff.

They were much more refined this year, having had 12 more months to work on their act, and the audience clearly enjoyed the music that they were hearing.

But as I said, it’s not for me and, in all honesty, I don’t know why it’s the kind of music that should feature at the festival. I don’t reckon that it’s blues, and it’s certainly not jazz.

Now, this is much, very much more like it.

We’ve all seen these before. It’s the Record Company and they’ve been here at the Festival before too. Playing proper music with exactly the right number of musicians on stage for a change, and they made the most of it.

We had a bassist and a drummer and also a third musician who played guitar but also occasionally played mouth organ (without the guitar).

Now I’ve said on numerous occasions that I don’t like harmonicas in blues bands, but that’s because most musicians don’t know how to play it properly. But here, the musician certainly knew how to use it, and he was using it in a novel way as backing to the bass and drums., and that’s different.

He also played slide guitar and bottleneck guitar (with a real bottleneck and this isn’t something that you see every day), and all in all, this was a really good performance.

They have moved clearly into first place on my hit list, and I sent a message backstage to contact them about doing something for Radio Anglais. We’ll have to see about that too.

Now this is an interesting duo, for sure.

We’ve not yet had an old traditional blues musician on stage yet – the kind that we always used to have back in the days when I first started coming to the Festival – but here we are at last, and about time too. And in the Hoodoo House, which is where I always used to spend my time back in those days.

This is Old Man Luedecke, and with a name like this, there has to be something about the blues in the performance.

He was accompanied by a mandolin … "PERSONdolin" – ed … player and between them they pumped out some good old Tennessee blues music during the time that I was there, and I would have stayed around had I not had other places to go and other people to see.

A couple of years ago, I’d really enjoyed Keith Hallett’s performance at the Festival, and I’d had quite a lengthy chat with him when I encountered him in the street back then.

He and his band had led my hit-list for quite a lengthy period that year (was it 2013?) until they were overtaken right at the very end of the Festival by the 24th Street Wailers and then by someone else whose name I have forgotten.

I was therefore quite looking forward to seeing his act this year, and when I noticed that he’d reduced his band from a four-piece to a three-piece (the right number of musicians on stage in any rock or blues band, in my opinion – lead vocalists may be extra) I knew that we were going to be in for a really good night back at the Barracks Tent.

And I wasn’t to be disappointed either.

And here he is, with his well-worn and well-battered semi-acoustic guitar, belting out the blues at 100mph.

As you might have expected, he’s soared to the top of my hit-list now and he’s yet another one to whom I’ve slipped a little note to ask him to contact me about doing something for Radio Anglais. I’d feature an hour-long live show by him at any day of the week. This performance was special.

Final act on stage (at least, that I saw – I’m not as young as I was and can’t keep it up like I used to) was Michael Franti and his backing band, Spearhead.

Franti is quite a well-known performer in North America with a string of hits behind his name (although he’s never made it across to Europe) and is one of the most popular live performers on the “circuit”. And it’s easy to see why from this performance.

His interaction with the crowd was stunning, to say the least. Just like Gord Downey last year, he knew how to reach out to the crowd, and that included going walkabout and having a dance on one of the refreshment tables in the middle of the hall.

And there’s no doubt whatever that everyone in the crowd enjoyed it. And going over to a woman in a wheelchair and giving her a big kiss was a piece of art.

The music though, was a long way short of the blues and that wasn’t for me.

But there was no doubt about the quality of it all because his backing band was superb. He had a young energetic lead guitarist, an old powerful bassist, a competent keyboard player and a wild, enthusiastic drummer, and they gelled together completely to belt it out for hours. I thoroughly enjoyed that part of the concert.

However all good things come to an end and I headed for home. But I was interrupted by a vegan wrap from a mobile food stand. They are all here now, and there’s a much bigger vegan choice of food on sale than in previous years.

Things are looking up!

And talking of that, what have – or haven’t you noticed tonight?

Despite all of my whinging yesterday, we haven’t had any brass sections. That’s a big improvement as far as I am concerned. I hope that it keeps up.

And by the way …

Wednesday 16th September 2015 – AND THE ANSWER TO YESTERDAY’S QUESTION IS …

… just about everybody.

Actually, that’s not quite right.

First port of call was the Scotia Bank. One of the things that I need is a bank statement with my name and Canadian address on it. And so to the Scotia Bank on the north side of Fredericton, and as you might expect, it was closed.

After a coffee however, it was open, and the bank quite happily obliged with the information. You can’t say fairer than that.

Next stop was Service Canada. They don’t have an immigration service office there – it’s in a separate department elsewhere and callers are only accepted by appointment. But they did have a telephone number and eventually, after a considerable wait and jumping through a great number of hoops, I was put through to a human being.

I need an immigration form 1M1442 setting out my entitlement to be in Canada. This can be applied for on-line, but the waiting list is … errr … three months, by which time I shall be out of the country. I can however obtain it at the border when I cross in.

And so after a great deal of discussion, there was only one solution – and that was to go BACK to Houlton where I crossed in yesterday, and pick it up from there. Of course, that will take a good few hours, but you spend more time debating the issue than actually doing anything and I am playing for high stakes here, so off I went.

And at the border we had the most astonishing arrangement that makes European bureauocracy look like nothing at all. I could only pick up the document as I ENTERED the country, so I had to leave the country, go and annoy the American immigration people (who were not in the least amused, and who can blame them?), do a U-turn, and then go back in to Canada.

Back in Canada, after much discussion, I ended up with the manager of the Canadian Immigration office there. They do indeed issue IM1442 forms there, but only for immigration purposes, not for demographic purposes. However he did accept that laws and rules and regulations change according to events, and he would have been quite happy to issue a document to me, but he needed something in writing from the Insurance Company.

And here’s the rub – the manager of the Insurance Company REFUSED to put the details in writing and to fax them to the Immigration Office – so that was that. I was there for a good few hours in earnest discussion, but I’m a miserable pleader at moments like this. However, I am in possession of the address of the Insurance Company Head Office (it’s in Dartmouth, opposite Halifax) and so I shall go to Home Depot and sort out a suitable pickaxe handle, then go for a drive.

Despite everything that the manager of the Immigration Service did for me, Service New Brunswick wouldn’t budge either, although they did give me the phone number of the Appeals body. I shall just have to apply on-line for this form – which of course takes much longer than the time that I’ll be spending in Canada – and the Insurance Company will still honour the policy as long as my application is ongoing.

Back at Fredericton (good old Strider), the Festival proper started tonight with two tents opened – the Blues Tent and the Mojo tent.

First up on stage at the Blues Tent were the Mellotones.

First thing to say about them, as you can see from the photo here, is that there are far too many musicians up there on the stage. Four too many in fact. I’ve no idea why they needed a brass section but there you are.

I mean – they were good at what they did – there’s no denying that of course – but it’s not my kind of music at all.

It certainly wasn’t blues, and as for jazz, well, jazz can be very good if it IS very good, but working over a few Bar-Kays numbers and that kind of thing isn’t really what I was expecting to hear. In fact, I found it all rather a dismal proceeding

From here I popped into the library. I’ve been writing quite a bit on certain occasions about the railway lines in New Brunswick and I went to see if they had any old maps of the area. And sure enough, they produced a set of old maps that showed quite a few railway lines, but it was dated from the late 19th Century and there were many lines which I know existed but were not recorded. I had been hoping for a map of the 1930s, but they had nothing from that era.

I wandered on from the library to the Mojo tent, in time to catch the start of the Downtown Blues Band.

We’d had the Bar-Kays in the Blues tent and so in the Mojo tent we had the Blues Brothers. The Downtown Blues Band played a re-hash of numbers from the film of the same name.

This was another occasion of far too many musicians on the stage. I’ve absolutely no idea why many of these groups want to have brass sections, and indeed why the organisers of the Festival want to book them. It beats me.

But then, as I have said so many times before, the rest of the audience enjoyed them. I’m clearly in a minority of one here.

The female singer was clearly enjoying herself on the stage. She was having a good time too.

And it has to be said – they were quite good at what they did. But to my mind, it’s not jazz and it’s not blues either. There’s clearly something that I’m missing here.

Back to the Blues tent and we had JJ Grey and Mofro from Florida. They’ve played the Festival before, but I somehow seem to have managed to miss them.

They started off quite well and I was feeling that I might actually enjoy this concert. But my feeling of elation didn’t last long.

They played a number that was crying out for a lead guitar solo, and they built up to this over a period of a good five minutes, or so it appeared to me.

And then we got it – the solo. But, would you believe, played on a trumpet. Well, I suppose, you would believe it after having read what I have written up to date. It was so disappointing as far as I was concerned.

And so back to the Mojo tent, and this was the Halifax group Paper Beat Scissors.

They are now living in Montreal and recording CDs, and they weren’t all that bad. They were something similar to Sigur Ros, but singing in English of course, and I didn’t mind at all staying here for a while to listen to them.

The one big drawback that they had was that they had a brass section.

When they wheeled on the French horn of whatever it is during the warm-up, I feared the worst. And I was right too, because even though the player started off on the keyboards and shaking his maraccas too, it didn’t take too long for him to get on the horn.

However, the singer had a good voice for what he was doing, and they were definitely the best band that I have seen here so far this year

But then again, that doesn’t say all that much for them. They haven’t had all that much competition to date as far as I was concerned.

Back again at the Blues tent, and we had Galactic on stage.

They started off with an instrumental number, and of course we did have the brass section that has featured in every act to date and it’s thoroughly dismayed me, in case you haven’t guessed

However, we were soon joined by a singer, a young lady from Louisiana if I remember correctly.

And their second number was a scorcher too. This was much more like it, even with the brass section and I quite enjoyed that. I was quite optimistic with that and was quite looking forward to the rest of the set.

But it was not to be, unfortunately.

Despite the energy that our vocalist was putting into her show, the third number degenerated into a rap number and if there’s one thing that really grates on my nerves, it’s rap music. This kind of stuff isn’t for me at all, and I beat a rather hasty retreat.

But not before we had had a little excitement on stage.

We had a small, lightweight platform on stage and they had an organ and a heavy drum kit crammed onto it. And I mean ‘crammed” too because there was no room for anyone to move and the drummer was extremely enthusiastic to say the least.

With the platform bouncing around, I was betting with myself about how long it would be before all of this went pear-shaped and sure enough, just a couple of minutes in to the performance, part of the drum kit collapsed across the stage. We had the roadie trying to rebuilt it all the time that the drummer was playing with what was left of the kit, and in the end they weighted it down with sandbags.

Now this is very much more like it.

At the Mojo tent we had Wintersleep.

I’d missed the start of their act because the performance of Galactic had started late, and so I can’t tell you all that much about them. but what I can say is that they were a four-piece band and I enjoyed their performance very much.

There was no brass section – or mouth organ – in sight while I was there and they were playing real music from my point of view.

Nothing quite as electric or as lively as Samantha Fish or the 24th Street Wailers, but then again, what could ever be as lively as all of that, but it was good enough to hold my attention for quite a while.

And so we definitely have a winner of today’s entertainment – something that was looking very unlikely after the first couple of acts this evening.

I’ll have to go and have a look for these and see if I can’t lay my hands on a live performance for broadcasting on Radio Anglais sometime in the near future. It would be quite enjoyable, that’s for sure.

And so I went back to Mactaquac Provincial Park and my tent.

I’d had a good night’s sleep last night for once and that had certainly helped with all of the issues that I had had to deal with during the day. I don’t suppose that tomorrow is going to be any different and so I’ll need to have a good night’s sleep.

And by the way …

… the photos that I’ve posted for tonight’s acts at the Harvest Jazz and Blues Festival are only a small sample of the dozens and dozens that I took during the evening. If you want to see any more of those that I took, you’ll need to contact me. Leave a comment and I’ll be in touch.

Tuesday 15th September – I WAS RIGHT …

… yesterday when I said that this first month of my stay in North America had been one of 30 disappointments. We’ve had another issue raise its ugly head today too.

There’s only one company in Canada that insures vehicles for people with non-Canada driving licences (and they make people suffer financially for that of course) but it seems that since April this year they have ceased that particular line of business. And so the motor insurance for Strider has been rejected, leaving me without insurance cover.

However, the company has said that cover can remain on a temporary basis while I apply of a driving licence in Canada and so that’s what I’ll do. Apply for a Canadian driving licence.

Of course.

How long it might take, and whether it might be granted is of course another thing completely, and then there will always be an appeal process if it’s refused. But by that time of course I’ll be back home in France and it won’t be an issue. And next year is, of course, next year.

And so tomorrow, I’ll get on the case.

But if you think logically about it, it’s all a nonsense. There is without any doubt at all at least one company that insures drivers with foreign driving licences. If there wasn’t a single one, then how would car hire work? I’ve hired dozens of cars in North America and each hire has been with my French driving licence. And I still can do so (because I’ve checked). You aren’t going to tell me that a car hire company is going to let its customers drive around in uninsured vehicles, are you?

And it’s true (or it was true – at least in the UK) that when I worked in the motor insurance business, a company or a person could insure himself against liability. But he had to deposit a bond of £50,000 (and that was in 1972 – I shudder to think what that figure would be today) per vehicle and that money is tied up. I can’t see a hire company going through all of that, having the money tied up, no tax relief, no interest payments and all of this.

No – there is a company somewhere that specialises in this business and I have to find it. I’ve always said that where there’s a will, there are relatives. It’s just one more problem to solve. Now, how do you go about setting up a car hire business in Canada?

But apart from that for the moment, I slept the sleep of the dead last night. I crashed out at 20:28 and that was that until I had to go and ride the porcelain horse. An early(-ish) start and I did a pile of work and then a copious breakfast. I really can’t believe all of this for just $59:40 (including tax).

But while I was eating my breakfast I was watching TV (something that I rarely do of course) and the disclaimers for the adverts (which are often longer than the ads themselves) are quite often funnier than any comedy programme you would care to name. This morning we had a “do not take {this product} if you are allergic to any of its ingredients”. And you can’t make that up, can you?

Back on the road Walmart came up trumps with the big tent pegs that I’m going to need if I use this tarpaulin oversheet idea for the tent, and it also produced a couple of gas canisters for my cooker (they are becoming harder and harder to find as everyone changes over to the bigger sort) and a set of stubby spanners, which cost just $4:49. Ideal for getting into tight corners. But Mardens couldn’t produce a 19mm ring spanner at any cost. Still, I have an open-ended one and a socket and I hope that that will do me if I need anything.

At the border, I was whacked for import duty on the truck cap. $90:00 or something like that, but I don’t suppose that this is excessive really. It’s worked out as 5% of the value (in Canadian dollars), including, would you believe, the sales tax that I had to pay in the USA. That’s a bit near the knuckle.

I had a race down the Trans-Canada Highway with a lorry – simply because I didn’t recognise his number plate and I wanted to see where he came from.

As it happens, he comes from Georgia (that’s Georgia USA, not the former Soviet republic) and so he was a long way away from home. It seems that the Maritime Provinces are becoming more and more popular.

Af Fredericton I picked up my parking pass for the next three days (foreign visitors can park free in the town centre for three days if they apply to the tourist office for a pass), picked up my media passes for the festival and went to have a chat with the people at Service New Brunswick who gave me a couple of useful tips.

At Value Village, it’s Pensioners Day and I profited to the maximum with a pile of books, a couple of CDs and also (at long last) the Canadian cable that I need for my laptop power pack (which saves having to hump around a pile of adapters. Walmart and Home Depot came up with nothing exciting and so I went for my traditional falafel platter in the Lebanese restaurant and then came back here – “here” being the Mactaquac Provincial Park campsite where I stay when I’m here.

But we did have a very interesting encounter this afternoon. You may remember yesterday that I was talking about big old British single-cylinder motorcycles. Anyway, wandering down the street in Fredericton I noticed a young guy sitting on, of all things, a Triumph T100. 1971 it was, and it looked it too. In original, unrestored condition looking every day as old as it was. We were chatting for hours about old British bikes and of course, AJS and Matchless motorcycles figured heavily. And it turns out that he has a friend who has a fetish about the big AJS and Matchless singles and who, at the last count, has 14 of them, plus numerous crates of bits and pieces. And so he’s taken my e-mail address and says that he’ll pass it over to this guy.

And so that was that. I buried myself in my sleeping bag ready for bed.

Now who is going to come along and spoil my day tomorrow?

Monday 14th September 2015 – WHAT A HORRIBLE NIGHT

No sooner had I settled down than we had a rainstorm. And while it might not have been as intense as the other night, a rainstorm it most certainly was. And it went on and on and on until I never thought that it would end. Certainly, for four hours it kept it up because I remember looking at the time when I went out in the middle of the night to check that the stream right by my tent wasn’t going to burst its banks and sweep me away.

And that’s a shame too because for once I was comfortable in here. Now that I’ve rearranged the inside of Strider I can actually reach the bed and I pinched the mattress off it and that made quite a difference. And I must have dozed off during the proceedings because I was on my travels again. We needed to obtain some information from a certain guy and the best way to do this was to find someone to impersonate his secretary. She was a small blond who did her hair in a special way with a long pony tail, so we found a girl who resembled her from a distance and who, with a hairpiece, could pass close enough to fool the security cameras. So when this other girl went to lunch we infiltrated our girl into the building, but while she was in the ladies room checking her hair, the real secretary came in and was astonished to see her doppelganger. Our girl solved the problem by knocking the real secretary into next week with a frying pan and that was that.
But later, I was on the move again in my old van (it might even have been Bill Badger, the Austin A60 van that I had for years) with, of all people, my brother. He needed coal and there was just one place to go in Crewe for bagged coal, so off we went. When we arrived there, I was absolutely whacked and so I sent him in while I had a sleep, but anyway he came out to say that there was no coal (I’d heard this conversation anyway). I asked him if he’d asked if there was anywhere else where he could get it but he said that he hadn’t. But he knew where we could go, so I told him that I wasn’t going to mess up my van by putting loose coal into it. He’d also needed to post a letter (price £0:09) but they only had a stamp for £0:08 in there so the sales lady there sold him that stamp and told him to go to the post office and tell them that he’ll post anther letter with a stamp for £0:01 in it, and the’ll accept that. Such weird things as that happen when I’m on a nocturnal ramble, but even in that kind of state I knew enough that it seemed simpler to me to simply stick the stamp for £0:01 on the outside of the letter with the stamp for £0:08 and save the discussion.

And so while you admire the very basic, very primitive and very very free camp site on the outskirts of Greenville, I woke up to an inch of water inside the tent in the bottom corner, which was rather disconcerting but not surprising given the amount of rain that we had had during the night.

Water will always leak in around the zip and so you always pitch your tent with the entrance pointing downhill and you sleep in the uphill bit and even if it does rain in a little you can stay relatively dry. But I’ll go to Walmart, buy some more of these super-duper heavy duty tent pegs that I bought the other day, and stick the big tarpaulin that Rachel gave me over the top next time that the weather looks threatening.

A quick coffee and I was off down the road into Greenville

Parked up here in the town centre, I had a very nice piece of entertainment.

It had been seaplane fly-in weekend at the weekend here on Moosehead Lake, and there were still two left tied up at the quayside. And as I left Strider in order to admire the view, one of them started up, left his berth, and came right across to where I was standing, right by the paddle-steamer Kathadin, which you all saw in 2013 when I was here because, in the famous words of the legendary Jimmy Ruffin, “I’ve passed this way before”.

And so he (the seaplane, not Jimmy Ruffin) did a few laps of the bay in order to warm up his engine to operating speed, and then shot off down the lake.

After a run of about a quarter of a mile he heaved himself into the air and off he went.

And off I went too, to see about this log cabin.

And I was disappointed too. It seems that prices have increased considerably since I was here and what I want has priced itself out of the market. Not only that, many of the items that were included in the price back then are now optional extras and so what looked two years ago like $20,000 on the site all in and delivered is going to end up being twice that, and twice as much work too.

In fact, I can go as far as to say that my journey for the first month of my stay in North America this year has been a period of 30 disappointments. “But smile!” they say. “Things could be worse!” And so I”m smiling – and you know what that means.

But it’s not all doom and gloom.

Over the road was a hardware store and they are agents for log cabins. Nothing like as de-luxe as what was available back where I’d just been, but then neither was the price, and this looks much more “like it” from that point of view. I’m going to have to give this some further consideration.

Ably assisted by The Lady Who Lives In The SatNav, I left Greenville by the main highway that goes south-east to Millinocket and you can see what a beautiful road this highway is. Very reminiscent of the Trans-Labrador Highway.

Strider, as befits any good ranger, took it in his stride … "ohhh, very good" – ed … and I can see the benefits of having a solid truck with decent all-weather off-road tyres. The Dodges that I used to have wouldn’t have lasted five minutes down here

I had to stop for a minute or two for a gypsy’s, and found myself right by the rapids on the river just here.

This river goes down eventually past Millinocket, and while you’ll see hundreds of timber lorries down the roads here, even as late as the 1930s it’s suggested that they were still floating logs down here to the huge lumber mill down there, even past rapids like this.

If you were with me in 2013, you’ll remember our discovery of the grave of a flotteur de bois that we discovered at the foot of another series of rapids not too far from here.

At Millinocket, I nipped onto the Interstate for half an hour and then took the old road up to Presque Ile

This is another one of those roads that can be classed as one of the most beautiful roads in North America. It’s all up hill and down dale and shows Upper Maine at its beautiful best.

It’s another one of those roads that can only be driven properly on a big old single-cylinder long-stroke motorcycle and a beautiful 600cc side-valve Panther solo would be a pleasure to drive up here. And I deeply regret the one that I missed out on a few years ago.

But that’s not looking too optimistic, is it? That’s right over Presque Ile where I’m going. I don’t fancy camping in that.

And at Presque Ile I had a little success. Walmart did indeed have one of the slimline air beds that I need for the bed that I’m going to need for Strider, and they also had (at just $8:00) a little wooden fold-flat table, the size that you’d have by your chair for your coffee and cake. This is a good size for Strider, to cook on, eat off and use as a desk.

And at the Super Save shop, that has a good vegan range of food, I treated myself to a pot of carrot-flavoured vegan hummus.

It was pitch-black by now, even though it was only 17:00 and suddenly the storm broke. And how it broke too! I wasn’t going to camp in this – not under any circumstances.

And as I left Presque-Ile, the “Budget Traveller” motel appeared in the gloom. $59:95 including breakfast, and I was entitled to a discount on that rate too. I’d had a free night last night and so I wasn’t going to miss out on any of that.

There was a microwave in the room too and so I treated myself to a vegan pizza (I have plenty of my vegan sliced cheese) and that was gorgeous;

But now it’s 20:28 – I’m watching film, but my bad night last night has caught up with me and any second now I’m going to drop ….

ZZZZZZZZZZZZZ

-1

Sunday 13 September 2015 – SO THAT WAS MY NIGHT …

… in my rather overpriced motel.

It trades heavily on its superb view of Mount Jefferson just across the road, but today I couldn’t even have my money’s worth of that, because of the hanging clouds that we were having (it IS just like home, isn’t it?).

We’d had rain during the night – not much of it but enough to generate this weather phenomenon, and so there I was. But at least there was a coffee machine in my room and I could have a good shower and change my clothes. And I had had a good night’s sleep too. So much so that I’d been on my travels again.

I’d been doing something in some kind of home. Firstly we’d been off somewhere to check on an abandoned house and in there we ound amongst other things a lively ginger kitten. It took straight to me and so I brought it back with me to thins home place.
Back here I had to prepare a bath for some residents but was interrupted as my father (whatever was he doing there) needed to use the bathroom. And then he couldn’t find any toilet paper so I had to hunt around for that.
Another one of my jobs was to water the motorcycles that were growing in pots. You had to start off by using heated water and then continue using tap water when the heated water ran out.
Meantime, this ginger kitten had gone missing in the house and no-one knew where it was.

But talking of being on my travels again, I didn’t go very far before I was sidetracked.

You all know what this is because you’ve seen one of these before. It’s a Nash Metropolitan, made by Austin (and called the Austin Metropolitan in the UK) and was the first car sold by an American manufacturer to be made 100% outside the USA.

It’s either e series 3 or a 4 (you can tell by the chrome stripe) and it’s fitted with the BMC Series B engine. 20,000 genuine miles from new on the original engine, this baby.

And as I said a few days ago, what went wrong with the British motor industry with in the 1950s and 1960s they were selling cars to half the world, and 20 years later, they couldn’t even sell cars in their own country?

And that’s not all either. How about taking this home in the hand luggage?

It’s a Ford Fairlane Crown Victoria sedan, fitted with a Fordamatic gearbox and it has the most magnificent interior that I have ever seen on a car.

This has to be one of the most beautiful vehicles that I have ever seen, and I’m in love with it. It sums up the 1960s USA completely for me. I didn’t enquire as to whether it was for sale, or ask the price because it would certainly be far, far outside my pocket.

I didn’t move on far – just to the town of Gorham.

There’s a mainline railway here, which might be the famous Montreal – Portland line, built before icebreakers could keep Montreal’s harbour free of ice in winter, so that Montreal’s commerce could have a winter outlet.

The passenger service here has long-gone, but the good inhabitants of the city have recruited a collection of locomotives and rolling stock, including this Baldwin 0-6-0 which dates to 1911 and which worked previously in a factory in Massachusetts.

It had a restoration in 1990, so we are proudly told, but this restoration seemed to be the usual North American restoration of slapping everything all over with black bituminous paint to hide the rust and hoping that no-one will notice.

You can see what I mean by looking here at the framework of the tender. The wood has just totally rotted away here to leave absolutely nothing at all and this is just completely dreadful.

On good authority I am told “The steam locomotive was built as New England Gas and Coke n°4, the company later became Eastern Gas and Fuel, and ran in Everett, Mass adjacent to Boston from 1911 to the 40s. It was significantly rebuilt during its life to what you see now and for a while was part of the Steamtown USA collection. Allegedly the tender is from B&M mogul 1435. It was sold off when the collection moved to Scranton and has remained in Gorham ever since. As built, it very closely resembled Baldwin #26 at Steamtown”

And thanks to Alden Burns for the info

And just look at this diesel power car. You can see even from here that several of the metal panels have been replaced with wood and the wood has rotted away just as much as the metal has. There’s notmuch of either left.

Now I have seen some dreadful attempts at preservation here in North America, but I do have to say that here in Gorham is the worst that I have ever encountered. The kind of stuff that is on display here brings shame upon its owners. It really is appalling.

And so from here I set off once more, continuing my route eastwards, missing out on Berlin and Peru but passing by Mexico and into Maine, and occasionally having a few more attacks of the Jimmy Ruffins.

At a certain moment I was passing very close to the watershed between the Atlantic and the St Lawrence basins, and there was the most astonishing view from a peak on the ridge.

It’s a shame that the weather wasn’t better to enable all of you to enjoy the view because, like most views from the camera, it was much more magnificent than it looks on the photo. It wascompletely spellbinding.

I wasn’t alone here either. A couple of German tourists were here too and I ended up having quite a chat with them for a while.

It reached 18:00 – time for me to call it a day and so I started to look for a place to park. And at 18:02 I found te perfect place – a little hardstanding behind a hedge right by the river. And had I had my bed in Strider organised, that’s where I would be now. But you can’t stop at spots like this with a tent.

There was a camp site further along the route but he didn’t take tents. However, he did point me in the direction of a free wilderness camp site about half an hour down the road and I eventually found it.

It’s extremely primitive, to say the least, but it’s free, which is what I need after my motel last night. There’s a nice spot in the corner by the stream and that’s where I’ll be staying tonight.

-1

Saturday 12th September 2015 – STRIDER HAS CHANGED.

Here he is , with his brand-new specially-made truck cap.

It’s not as I wanted it unfortunately, as there’s a window on the driver’s side which I hadn’t wanted, there’s no sliding window at the front, and there’s no insulation in it (so the condensation inside it will be tremendous). But as a rush job, being built with parts ex-stock, it’s good enough.

The good news is that it’s over $400 cheaper than the fibreglass truck cap that I didn’t get, and the price difference would have been even greater had I not had the roof bars that are on it. But as I expected, the folding bed is too long for the back and so when I reach Fredericton I’ll have to make a bed for it. But that’s not going to be difficult, and I was really expecting something like this anyway.

Last night I had a very disturbed night. Not because I was uncomfortable – far from it in fact, but there was a lot of noise. The camp site was full to capacity and people were partying, playing music and running generators until all times. There really ought to be a law about generators on a camp site.

But at least I was up early, and a good coffee got me going.

And while I was working, a whole load of people were going down to the beach, even at 07:30 and I wondered what was going on.

It turns out that as part of this Homecoming weekend celebrations, there are some inter-school cross-country races and they went running up and down past my tent – about 5 or 6 races. And I was impressed that so many kids took part.

Although I’ve made several comments about the unhealthy attitude and lifestyle of many Americans, there’s just as much to celebrate, with all of these kids taking part in sporting activities. That’s a fact that deserves to be noted too, just to balance the equation.

After having the truck cap fitted I went to Hannafords down the road and bought some lunch. And then I hit the road. All the way across central Vermont and into New Hampshire, having another attack of the Jimmy Ruffins as I drove past one of the RV places that I had visited 100 years ago.

The scenery is beautiful around here but I didn’t have time to stop. It’s a long way to Greenville in Maine, my next port of call, and I want to be there on Monday morning without fail. I need to be in Fredericton on Wednesday morning and that’s considerably farther, so I can’t afford to hang about.

I resolved to stop at the first place that I found after 18:00 and at 18:02 a motel appeared through the gloom. I hadn’t planned on a motel but I haven’t had a shower for a good few days, I’ve had a couple of bad nights sleep, and I need to set myself in order. And so a motel it was. Rather expensive, and no microwave, but a coffee machine and a free handful of sweets.

It does go against the grain having just spent all this money on the truck cap, but it’ll do me for tonight. I reckon that I deserve it for once.

-3

Friday 11th September 2015 – WHAT A NIGHTMARE!

Absolutely.

There I was on my travels last night and who should come breezing in but Nerina. She’d left me two months ago but now she had discovered that she was pregnant and so wanted to come back. No wonder that I awoke all cold and sweating!

I’d been elsewhere on my travels too. I’d been quite friendly with a group of girls and every time I went around to see them their mother used to shout at me “and wipe your feet!” and this went on for ages. But then one day they announced that they were selling up and going to have to find somewhere else to live, and so I answered that there were some nice big houses by Pebble Brook School, in Buchan Grove in fact (which of course, is nowhere near Pebble Brook School but anything is possible when I’m voyaging during the night)

That latter bit does in fact have some significance for anyone who can remember events of 40 years ago, but if you weren’t around just then, then you missed out on events of earth-shattering importance.

All of the foregoing might lead you to suppose that I had a really good night’s sleep, but in fact nothing could be further from the truth. I just couldn’t drop off, for a start. I was awake for hours, and then I had another bad, uncomfortable night where I kept on waking up.

But eventually there I was, with a coffee. But not a shower. It’s another pay-shower and I don’t have any quarters. But it does go to show just what good value the Goose Point Campground at Alburgh was.

Talking of campgrounds, I can’t stay here two further nights either.It’s Homecoming Week here at the High School (hence all of the sports) and there’s quite a few inter-school competitions this weekend. The campground is therefore full but they’ve squeezed me in elsewhere for tonight and then I have to move on. Not that it’s a big deal because I could be quite comfortable here if I had decent accommodation.

And talking of things being decent, after I’d bought my butty for this afternoon I went down to the beach to eat it.

First time that I’ve been down here and it certainly is a nice place to be. I’ve not seen a beach quite like this except when I was on my travels at the start of Spring last year when I went down to western France for a week.

In fact this whole area reminds me very much of western France, which is probably what attracted many of the early settlers here. Because this area was first settled by mainly French settlers from Nouvelle France.

In fact, if you look in the telephone directory, you’ll see loads and loads of French surnames. I was sitting behind someone called Gagnon and they announced the name “Tremblay” for one of the players on the hockey team last night.

But just a word of warning if you fancy coming down here visiting in a school bus or something – there’s a 9-foot height limit under the abandoned railway so you’ll need to leave the bus miles away and walk down.

As for me, no trouble with Strider. That’s another reason for having a Ford Ranger. he fits anywhere that a small family car will go. And so I was able to sit and eat my butties in peace and enjoy the nice weather. Summer was back today.

After lunch I went up to Home Depot and had a plank of cheap OSB cut for the floor of Strider. I’ve had it cut to 40″ by 6’and I’ve now encountered another problem. And that is that with his boot liner, he’s not even 6 feet long and that means that

I have to cut down the wood further (good job that I have a saw
My camp bed won’t fit in the back of it

And so I can see that I’m going to have to make a bed to fit it. But then, I was half-prepared for this anyway – hence the circular saw.

Back at the High School, I armed myself with a press permit (Radio Anglais has a lot to be said for it) and so I was authorised to take photos of tonight’s football matches

We started off with the girls against Colchester High School, and the first thing that you’ll notice is the refereeing.They don’t have one referee and two linesman but two referees (possibly one from each school) and the pitch seems to be divided up by an invisible diagonal line, with each referee administrating on “his” side of the line.

This was how the hockey was refereed too last night but I just thought that that was usual. School hockey refereeing has probably come a long way since Joyce Grenfell refereed a hockey match at St Trinians.

The Seahorses scored just as I was entering the ground (I was late). Their n°10, whose play was very reminiscent of Les “the Truck” Davies at Bangor City in the Welsh Premier League, chased after a long ball forward (I would have given her offside by a foot, but never mind) despite being well-marked by her limpet-like defender.

And as the keeper came out for the loose ball, the n°10 kept bustling forward, shrugging off a few tough challenges, got her head to the ball and nodded it over the keeper’s outstretched arms into the net.

A proper “English Centre-Forward” of the type that followers of the English Premier League haven’t seen in years.

But the Seahorses couldn’t keep it up. They were, unfortunately, possessed of a “Pionsat” central defence, and anyone who has been a regular reader of this rubbish will know what I mean by that. They don’t seem to be able to clear the ball, dither about and are indecisive when the ball should be kicked upfield, into touch, or anywhere else for that matter, and this led to their downfall.

The central defence, from a fairly inocuous position, hang on to the ball too long instead of clearing it, and of course they eventually lose possession. And the result of that is, as we all were expecting the moment that the n°6 didn’t kick it upfield as soon as she had the ball, was inevitable.

It goes from bad to worse too. One lesson that I’ve always tried to drill into my young strikers in Pionsat’s 2nd XI is that no matter how hopeless a cause looks, you always follow the ball in. At this level, anything can happen, and young Florian has scored a few goals doing just that.

Here, a superb shot is well-saved by the Seahorse keeper but she can only push it onto the bar.

The Colchester n°5, playing inside-right and who was easily the best player on the field (and I told her so after the match – her name is Rachel apparently) was following up the shot and with the Seahorse defence being slow to react, she got her head to the ball and that was the winner.

It nearly wasn’t though. The Seahorses kept on going forward, without much luck, but here one of the girls has a shot from the diagonal corner of the penalty area, beats the keeper but hits the post and rebounds back into play.

There’s not another Seahorse close enough to capitalise on the loose ball, and this just goes to show the benefits of following in rather than standing around watching.

Most exciting moment of the match was after about 15 minutes of the second half.

The Seahorses won a free kick and it was a beautiful strike right around the end of the wall. But the Colchester keeper produced an equally beautiful diving save to push the ball out for a corner.

But you’ll notice the two Seahorses on the right – quick enough off the mark that time, but strangely, no-one running in on the left.

But the result was the right one – Colchester always looked more dangerous going forward and were more organised in defence, choosing the simple but much more effective option of clearing the ball at every opportunity.

And I’ll tell you something else for nothing too – I’ve seen a bigger bunch of girls playing football in the English Premier League too than I saw out here tonight. This kind of match is the kind that would send shivers down the spine of any woman’s football team in any other country.

As for the boys’ match against Middlebury, this really was a game of two halves. Or two keepers, in fact, as Middlebury changed keeper at half time. And this is something that is amazing me – the substitutions.

We had rolling substitutions, which you expect at this level, but not at the speed that they were doing it. Every couple of minutes there was a substitution, and at one stage they made a substitution just 20 seconds after having made a previous one. Not only does it break up the game, how on earth do you build a balanced, confident and cohesive team with all of this going on?

This was just like last night’s match – pretty much one-way traffic, but this time all flowing towards the Middlebury goal and the keeper had to show some real heroics to keep the ball out of the net.

This here is not the only example of him bravely diving at the feet of a Seahorse attacker. He did it a couple of times, and it’s just as well because his defence was just a little shaky and were rather short on skill compared to the Seahorses

Here’s one that the keeper didn’t get to, but no matter. The ball, played in by the Seahorses n°14, who was the best player on the field in this match, hits the top of the bar and goes out of play.

But the Tigers (as the Middlebury team is called) defenders need to be much closer in on the attackers to stop them having these shots on goal. Giving them half a yard of space is inviting trouble.

And so as you might expect, with all of this dominance and one-way traffic, Middlebury break away upfield, the first time that they have kept possession in the opponents’ half, and take the lead.

A goal out of absolutely nothing and so unexpected that I wasn’t ready, but a 40-yard hooker right over the diving keeper’s despairing wave (he might have got his fingers to it) and dropping neatly in the top right-hand corner of the net. Absolutely inch-perfect.

Of course, I have no photo of it, but by pure coincidence, there was a goal scored in the Welsh Premier League a few weeks ago that was a stunning carbon-copy of this goal. Check out Neil Mitchell’s goal for Newtown (Y Drenewydd) in this clip.

But with just 6 seconds to go (nice big digital displays here) Burlington finally find their way past the keeper.

A diagonal ball in from the right wing finds a player totally unmarked in the centre of the goalmouth – absolutely shocking defending, this – and he doesn’t have any problems whatever finding the back of the net. Nothing the keeper could do about this.

And so at half time, we have the goalkeeping change. And this is where the roof falls in on Middlebury because up to now, the keeper has been a one-man show on his team.

After just 55 minutes of the match there’s another diagonal ball out across the penalty area to the right-hand corner and the keeper rushes off his line, even though there are two defenders out there.

Now I know that he’s not going to reach it in time, but anyway he’s out there, and it’s an easy matter for the attacker to sidestep him and slot the ball into the empty net.

But never mind that – just look at the two Seahorse attackers there. Where’s the defence?

And it goes from bad to worse. From the kick-off the Tigers lose possession and a punt upfield from the Seahorses, again to thet right-hand corner of the are produces a weak shot to the keeper, who has stayed on his line correctly this time, and the ball goes right through his hands into the net.

But let’s not criticise the keeper. Here he is, in a one-on-one with a Seahorse attacker, doing the right thing by coming out just far enough to block the sight of the goal, forcing the Seahorse attacker into a shot, and then spreading himself wide enough to get something on the shot and push it wide.

That was an excellent save, and credit where credit is due.

So the Seahorses made hard work of what should have been a comfortable win, because the Tigers defence was dreadful and had it not been for the heroics by the Tigers keeper in the first half, this could have been an embarrassing result. You can’t play with a central defence of Lord Lucan and Martin Bormann and get away with it.

-4

Thursday 10th September 2015 – THE BEST-LAID SCHEMES …

… o’ mice an’ men gang aft a-gley, as we all know. And none more so that when I’m involved.

I went round today to pick up Plan B – the camper shell that I was having specially built for me, only to find that it wasn’t ready and wouldn’t be for another week. And that is of absolutely no use to me as this time next week I’ll be in Fredericton.

Mind you, I wasn’t that disappointed because first of all, I had suspected something pretty much like this – that it wouldn’t be done. I dunno – I had that kind of funny feeling and I’ve had it ever since. And secondly, I’d been having another thought anyway that maybe I had been too hasty in making a decision.

But as it turned out, the place where I’d been to also spends its time manufacturing aluminium work-type truck caps and that’s much more like it. And not only that, They can go for a taller height (32 inches instead of 29 inches) and you’ve no idea the difference that three inches can make, as the actress once famously said to the Bishop.

Anyway, having made the guy there feel suitably guilty, he’s going to build me on specially for Saturday. At least – he better had or else my long-suffering patience and good humour would disappear on the spot.

And I was in fact lucky that I still had any patience and good humour left. I didn’t have a very good sleep (not being able to fit the bed into the tent didn’t help much – I had to empty the load bed of Strider and that all needed to be under cover) and so I wasn’t in the best of humour to start with. But at least I managed to find the saucepan and the coffee so that I could brew up.

Now yesterday, I told you that there was no railway line to Burlington. In fact, I was being rather economical with the truth.

Further enquiry and exploration revealed that there is indeed a railway line here and if you need any proof, here are a few of the locomotives that are stabled in the goods yard.

There’s certainly a freight service here – a lot of kaolin (china clay) by the looks of it so whether they mine it here and ship it out or whether they mine it elsewhere and bring it in here for any kind of pottery industry I have yet to discover.

However, I have found out that Burlington is the headquarters of Ben and Jerry’s, so seeing all of the liquid kaolin slurry here has put me right off ice-cream.

The passenger rail service has long gone (although there’s talk of restarting it some time) and the abandoned railway here in front of me as I type is the old line to Alburgh, that lost its passenger service as long ago as 1948, so I was told.

South of the town on an industrial estate is a small headland that overlooks Lake Champlain, and so this is where I went for lunch.

It was quite impressive up here and while the weather might not have been the best, it was still a quite pleasant day for idly sitting around for an hour or so and doing not very much.

And then I went off for my disappointing visit.

But as I said, it isn’t all doom and gloom. Round the corner was a charity shop and I bought a rug, almost exactly the right size for Strider’s floor, for just $5:00. And the Walmart down the road came up with a cheap doormat and one or two other bits and pieces. If ever I do get something organised, it will be the prettiest place in the universe.

On the way back, as it was getting dark, I drove past the High School sports stadium just as two teams were taking the field. Thinking it might be something interesting like a football or a gridiron game, I went for a look but it was in fact a girls hockey match between Burlington High School Seahorses and Champlain Valley High School Redhawks.

Well, it wasn’t a “hockey match” – but a “field hockey” match. In North America, if you say “hockey” you mean ice hockey, whereas in Europe when you say “hockey” you mean the stuff played on grass (or in this case, astroturf) and “ice hockey” is the minority sport.

It was quite apparent from the warm-up that the Redhawks were the most disciplined and better-organised team, and they even had the team “hypnotism” session that you often see at the end of a yoga session.

And that was how the match went. The first 15 minutes were spent entirely in the Seahorses semi-circle and I did at one point think that the only time that the ball would end up at the other end would be after the teams had changed ends at half-time. One-way traffic was not the word.

Nevertheless, the Seahorses’ goal led a charmed life and how the score ended up just 2-0 for the Redhawks instead of the cricket score that I was expecting remains one of those little mysteries.

What didn’t help matters, from the Seahorses point of view, was that the only times that they threatened on the attack was down the right wing, with a combined attack of the n°17, playing right midfield and who in my mind was the most impressive Seahorse on the field, and the girl playing right-wing whose number I didn’t notice. When they were working together they usually managed to produce something threatening and interesting, even if the rest of the girls couldn’t quite manage to get on the end of the ball. But in one of the weirdest coaching decisions that I’ve seen for quite a while (and regular readers of this rubbish will recall that we have seen a few in our time at various sports) the Seahorses coach substituted the n°17 after about 40 minutes (there were two 30-minute halves) and the Seahorses attack, such as it was, melted away after that.

As for the Redhawks, they were by far the better team. Quicker, fitter (a couple of times, a Seahorse or two were caught upfield out of position and out of breath), more organised, more disciplined and more powerful. And the best player on the best team was the Redhawks right-back – a little slip of a girl wearing n°17. She was playing sweeper on the right, right on the edge of the Redhawks half-circle, but I’ve never seen anything so small move so quickly. She could run all the way up to the half-way line to intercept a loose ball and play it forward before her opponent, who had 30 yards on her, had even made up her mind what to do.

It’s not my sport of course, field hockey, even though I had a girlfriend (Rohina) who played on the school 1st XI back in those days, but I can recognise a good team and a good player and good tactics whenever I see them.

All in all, a most enjoyable night in quite a large partisan crowd – helped of course by the fact that for the first 20 minutes at least I had some convivial company – a guy from a neighbouring town who had dropped by with his wife and daughter. In fact, he was most interested in life in Europe, energy conservation, all that kind of thing, and we had a really good talk until his daughter started to become cold and wanted to go.

And no photos of the match, unfortunately. As you know, in the USA, cameras are not permitted at many places where children are present. Personally, I’m surprised that they don’t wrap them in Bourhkas myself.

And back here the camp site has been invaded by Roadtrek campers. It seems that they are having some kind of convention here, singing around the campfire and stuff like that (but I’ve no idea what the occupants will be doing of course). That’s going to be another night when I won’t have any sleep.

And talking of campers, look at this. Is this not the epitome of laziness?

For those on pitches that don’t have water taps (and private sewage hook-ups) the public conveniences are in no case more than 50 metres away. But this here is someone who has a wheeled water container so he can drag it along like one does with a shopping trolley, but tows it behind his car – for all of a maximum if 50 metres.

You can’t make up anything like this, which is why I chose to prohotgraph it. But it sums up North America completely (yes, I have noticed that the vehicle has an Ontario number plate).

-3

Wednesday 9th September 2015 – HERE, IN ONE OF THE BRIEF …

… dry moments of today, here’s a photo of my little spec at the North Beach Campgound.

It’s actually my second site. I was misled into believing that when they said “by the beach”, they actually meant “by the beach”. I didn’t realise that there was an abandoned railway line on an embankment in between.

And if that wasn’t enough to be going on with, it was the lowest part of the camp and so all of the water was streaming by in a raging torrent. A move was clearly on the cards.

In the photo above, you might just have been able to make out the lakeshore in the background. Having been for a walk around the campsite this morning, I found a much better pitch with a beautiful view over the lake, and if I walk 20 metres down the slope (because I’m much higher up here) I have this view out across the beach.

In fact the beach is only about 100 metres away from where I’m sitting and as soon as the sun comes out (which it never did, by the way) I’ll be down there with my folding chair.

And so today I’ve had a nice relaxing day of doing nothing at all, and I needed it too as I had had a very bad night. I hadn’t taken the camp bed into the tent (you have to unpack half of Strider to reach the bed and I wasn’t doing that in the pouring rain) so my night’s sleep was rather uncomfortable.

I did manage to make it out to the shops though. There is a Hannafords store not too far from here and of course, they have a decent range of vegan food. I bought some hummus as well as another pile of vegan cheese. I’ll be getting some more of that cheese too before I move on as it’s difficult to find in certain places and I don’t want to be caught without.

And so that’s basically that for today. Not gone far, not too concerned about it either. The only thing that could have been better is if the internet connection had been good. The strength of the signal is fine – no complaints there at all – and the speed isn’t too bad either. But there’s a problem with the router in that it keeps on dropping connection to the outside world and so we are cut off. It’s a good job that I stocked up with films off archive.org so that I have things to keep me occupied while I sit in my tent watching the rain come streaming down.

-3

Tuesday 8th September 2015 – WHAT AN ASTONISHING STORM!

It went very hot and humid late at night and then about 23:00 he wind got upand we had a howling gale for 20 minutes, and then the most tremendous thunderstorm for ages and ages – at least I know that my little tent it waterproof. I sat there for hours (probably 20 minutes in fact) wondering whether I should evacuate the tent but I’m not sure at all what happened because the next thing that I realised, it was the alarm going off at 06:00. Yes, the bed, even though it is too small for the tent, has made a world of difference.

But I couldn’t stay here lounging in my stinking pit all morning. This is the morning when I need to be moving on, so I have to pack everything away. And I’m pleased that I packed away everything yesterday so that today’s packing is a simple (well, relatively simple) half-hour’s job once I’d dealt with everything that needed dealing with on the internet.

Then a shower, followed by the laundry. There was a machine and a dryer available, both at $1:00 a go, and I could have put myself in there with the clothes. Everything took a while but it all came up clean and dry and you can’t argue with that. I just wish that I’d brought the washing from home.

And the result of my little stay at Goose’s Point campground? Covered with (harmless) whitefly and my spec wasn’t up to all that much. However, the internet connection was the fastest I’ve ever had in a public place and it was just $21:00 per night. I’d more-than had my money’s worth just here for sure.

First job after leaving the campsite was to go down to the Isle la Motte, or la Motte Island or whatever it’s called. The woman I met the other day recommended it.

This place is important for several reasons, not the least of which being that it’s yet another place where Samuel de Champlain is said to have landed. And it might be true too, although if de Champlain landed at every site that is claimed for him, he would never have found the time to get back into his ship.

The second claim to fame is that it was the site of one of the French forts – Fort Sainte Anne – that protected the Lake Champlain / Richelieu Valley supply route from attacks by the Iroquois. Built in 1665-66 by Pierre la Motte, it was garrisoned by about 300 soldiers (the first “European” settlement in what is now Vermont) and only lasted for three or four years before the French pulled back, destroying the fort as they left.

Nevertheless, a great many artefacts from this period have been unearthed by different archaeological squads over the years. It’s a shame that they haven’t rebuilt a replica of the fort around here.

But I have been told a story about the time that Hawkeye and Chingachgook came around here on a spying expedition for the British

“How many soldiers do you see in the fort?” asked Hawkeye.
Chingachgook lay down and put his ear to the ground. “About 300” he replied
“And how many cannon?”
Chingachgook lay down and put his ear to the ground again. “About 30”
“And how many horses?”
Chingachgook lay down and put his ear to the ground yet again. “About 60”
“And how many native allies?”
Chingachgook lay down and put his ear to the ground once more. “About 200”
“That’s incredible” said Hawkeye. “Can you tell all that by just lying down and listening to the ground?”
“Ohh no” replied Chingachgook. “If I lie down here like this and turn my head so that my ear is to the ground just like this, I can see right underneath the gates of the fort”.

In its short lifetime, the fort was aid to be an “exciting” place to be if you craved for contact with the native Americans.

Its third claim to fame was that it was the site of the first mass said in this region – in May 1666 as the fort “opened for business” and a shrine to Saint Anne, mother of Mary and grandmother of Jesus, was dedicated.

Although the fort itself was abandoned, the shrine lived on and since then it’s become a place of pilgrimage for many people. There’s also a retreat here, where people can come to seek peace and quiet, and communicating with nature, although if the racket that I heard coming from the unsilenced hedge trimmer used by one of the gardeners was anything to go by, I would have done my communicating with a pickaxe handle.

I’d seen this sign a few times as I had been driving up and down the road between Alburgh and Rouses Point and so I had to take a photo of it, just to prove that the street did exist.

And sure enough, down at the end of the road were a few derelict nissen huts and a few bits and pieces of other stuff, but nothing exciting in the way of ordnance like an A4 rocket or something. The place was however sealed off with chains and padlocks and so a really good exploration was out of the question.

It wouldn’t normally bother me as you know, but bearing in mind the paranoia and fear that is gripping all Americans right now, I’d probably wake up in an orange jump-suit in Guantanamo Bay – if I ever were to wake up at all.

I went into Rouses Point after that to buy myself a coffee and something for lunch (yes, it was that time already) at the big petrol station in town.

And just to prove to many people that bad parking isn’t just confined to Liverpool, here’s some pretty shocking car parking in Rouses Point New York as Madam abandons (because on-one can say that this is parking) her vehicle across two parking spaces, one of which is a disabled bay. It’s hard to believe just how selfish and thoughtless some people are.

Over the road from the petrol station is another historic site, of which there are thousands all around this area.

This promontory where this derelict motel is situated is a former quay and over there where the lighthouse is is another quay. And this was apparently the route of a sail ferry that plied its trade across the head of Lake Champlain. I’m not sure how long it lasted but the first bridge across the head of the lake wasn’t, apparently, until the 1930s so I suppose that there had to be something going across here until then.

From here I retraced many of my steps from the other day and ended up in a town called Plattsburgh

And once again, it’s amazing the things that people leave lying by the side of the road isn’t it?

Never mind the FB1-11 that was parked up here, this is a B47 and to see this kind of thing parked up here must be something pretty exceptional. Where we are in fact seems to be at some old military complex with loads of decaying and abandoned barracks-type of buildings. apparently there was an Air Force base just outside town and the two planes here were of the type that flew out of it.

And now, almost my final destination for today.

This is the harbour at Port Kent and why it’s important for our journey is that it’s the terminal of the only crossing of Lake Champlain that I have not yet taken. It’s another one of these places that was very important once the area calmed down in the late 18th Century, becoming a thriving port and holiday resort, because there are some nice beaches here.

But the coming of the railway here (and, very much to my surprise, there is still an Amtrack railway station here and that just about beats everything) took away much of the river trade and the port declined in importance.

According to a very friendly old guy with whom I had a lengthy chat, there are three scheduled goods trains that pass by here every day, as well as the once-per-day passenger service between New York and Montreal.

And of course, I missed them all.

I’d also missed the ferry too. Only 4 per day and the one that I wanted was steaming (or dieseling) out of the bay as I arrived.

But never mind. It gave me a good opportunity to go for a good wander around and admire the local sights, including some of the famous local beaches. And they were quite nice too. But many of the hotels that used to be here no longer exist or else have been converted into private houses, such as those up there on the cliff behind.

Eventually, after a two-and-a-half-hour wait, the Good Ship Ve … err … Valtour came steaming back into harbour from its trip across to Burlington and we made oursleves ready to cross.

$30:00 to cross for a 45-minute sailing, which is starting to become excessive, but with just 7 cars, one motorcyle and a dozen foot passengers, they need the revenue. It’s a seasonal service too, that’s why it’s not very well advertised, but yet it sails right into the harbour in the centre of Burlington.

As we sail out of Port Kent harbour, I have to tell you that it’s ironic really that we are on our way to Burlington, the largest city in Vermont and whose metropolitan area includes one-third of the State’s population, and the railway line there has long been pulled up. But you can still reach Burlington by rail, in the summer months at least, if first you take the train to the little station here and then take the ferry.

It did make me wonder if they synchronised the times of the trains to correspond with the ferries? Knowing how public transport works, I doubt it very much. But they could make quite an impression on Burlington’s public transport if they were to make an effort

“Twas on the Good Ship Ve .. errr … Valtour”
“By God you should have seen us”
I know that I shouldn’t have let His Nibs near that bottle of rum.

Strawberry Moose and Strider are here enjoying the relaxing crossing, which was nothing like as rough as I was expecting, given the weather that we were experiencing. It had changed dramatically for the worse since this morning.

While you enjoy the rapidly-deteriorating weather, I wandered off to check out the facilities on the boat.

And much to my surprise, there is actually a ship’s cafe on board – the first that I have encountered on a North American short sailing. But it’s down in the bowels of the ship and you have the disconcerting sight of watching the water splash against the portholes which are round about your eye level.

I don’t mind being below water level if I can’t actually see it, but this was getting to be a little too near the knuckle for me. I’d rather be out on deck in rough weather where I have a good chance of escaping if we turn turtle. What kind of wimp am I?

We eventually make it over to Burlington in one piece, and I end up chatting to a guy and his wife who are doing a tour of the North-Eastern states on a Harley Davidson. I asked him what the fuel consumption was like, because I’d head the stories.
“Depressing” was his reply.

Anyway, they are planning to end up in Halifax and so we had quite a lengthy chat about the city which, as you know, is one of my favourite places in the whole of North America. I really hope that they enjoy it.

Having left the ship, I made my way out of town to the campsite at North Beach – and it really does have a beach too!

But I didn’t show you this cloud that was looming away in the distance as we were crossing the lake. It was in fact right over the campsite and we were having a torrential rainstorm and high winds there when I arrived. I quickly put up the tent (you’ve no idea how quickly I can do that when I’m being soaked to the skin) and crawled inside.

That’s all that I’m doing tonight!

-2

Monday 7th September 2015 – THIS BED …

… has made a world of difference – I’ll tell you that. It’s far too long for the bed, due to the dome-like nature of the latter, so even though I have to sleep curled up I was out light a light and off on my travels.

In fact I was in Shavington last night, wandering aimlessly around between Goodall’s Corner and the Sugar Loaf and I was joined by Zero, a young lady of my acquaintance who comes along to join me every now and again when I’m off on my perambulations. I’ve no idea why she should put in an appearance in the night though. Just one of those things I suppose, or else I’m hankering after my lost youth again.

The phone battery was going flat as I was going off to sleep and I couldn’t be bothered to put it on charge, so when I awoke I had no idea of what time it might have been and so I arose anyway – only to find that it was 04:00. And I couldn’t go back to sleep either.

It’s Labour Day in the USA today – a Bank Holiday – and so I had a day off. In fact I spent all morning reading a book and I don’t regret one minute of it either. And with the campsite office having coffee on tap as well; I was doing even better.

This afternoon though, I did a mammoth sorting out of everything that I had brought down from Canada yesterday and managed to fit most of the things into the storage boxes wit room to spare. And just as well too, because it’s going to be just a little tight for the next couple of days.

I seem to have acquired some duplicate tools too, not knowing what I had and what I didn’t have, and that seems par for the course of course. Still, better too many than too few. One thing though – I don’t have a metric spanner bigger than 18mm and 19mm is one of the most useful sizes on a Ford. Must sort that out too.

As it grew dark, and to celebrate the bank Holiday, I went into Rouses Point firstly for some cash and secondly for a meal. The transport cafe on the corner came up with one of the nicest spaghetti and tomato sauces that I have ever tasted and I thoroughly enjoyed that. Things are definitely looking up in North America.

But Strider now has a headlight out. I’ll have to fix that tomorrow.

-3

Sunday 6th September 2015 – I WENT TO … errr … MONTREAL TODAY

But I nearly didn’t, for I was away with the fairies last night again.

Well, not exactly the fairies, but a bunch of young girls, taking them to an audition as dancers in a film. However we arrived on the wrong day – the day when they were to audition the main cast – and one of the young girls said that she would like to try out for n acting role. Much to my (and everyone else’s) surprise, she had the most wonderful singing voice out, and ended up with the starring role.

Yes, who says my bed is uncomfortable and my camp site is noisy? I was out by about 22:00 and didn’t feel a thing. Totally painless.

But yesterday, just messing about, the Lady Who Lives In The Sat-Nav told me that Montreal was just 1:15 away from here on the motorway and so I decided to go. By 07:30 I was on the road and by 09:00 I was at my storage unit, and that includes having a 15-minute chat at the Canadian border with the Immigration Officer. He was a little peevish and sour at first but soon warmed up when he found out that I came from “somewhere near Liverpool” as that is where his father comes from and he knew the area pretty well. And so we had an interesting chat.

The drive to Montreal was uneventful and I’d sorted out my locker and loaded up Strider by 11:45.and after an exciting moment when I was ruthlessly and deliberately cut up by a bad-tempered Quebecois, I headed for home.

That was more interesting than you might think, because roadworks had closed off the interchange between the two motorways that I needed to take and I forgot which motorway I was on – hence having to go around the lengthy diversion twice before I could find my way out.

Having seen the enormous queue to get into the USA this morning, I turned off the Motorway and came around the back way to the tiny (and as yet un-modernised) crossing just up the road from here. But the queue here was enormous too, with just two officers on duty and seemingly having a work-to-rule.

But they asked me all kinds of questions to which (for once) I knew the answer, and the woman fell in love with Strawberry Moose, although she refused to have her photo taken with him.

But there was a depressing incident here. A foreign tourist in a hire-car had to go into the office to pay her $6:00 entry fee and went in through the wrong door. This was right behind the Immigration woman and she turned round startled when she heard the door opened.

“It’s a good job for her that I didn’t go for my gun” she said to me, and so I had quite a few words with her. As I’ve said before, “going for your gun” when you hear a door open is the limit of just how frightened and paranoid the average American is these days. It would be totally pathetic if it wasn’t so sad – Government employees blasting away tourists just because they go in through the wrong door.

It’s a mentality like this, bred into the various law enforcement officers, that has led to the current wave of violence on the streets of the USA as the law enforcement officers gun down anyone and everyone who scares them, no matter what they might be doing.

It’s a time-bomb that everyone is sitting on here, and it’s waiting to explode.

On that note, I came here. It was 15:00 and I started to sort out my stuff. And at least I now have a proper bed to sleep on, even if it is too big for the tent.

-2

Saturday 5th September 2015 – QUEBEC SHOWERS

At this campsite we have what are called “Quebec showers”, and regular readers of this rubbish will know exactly what they are. For the new readers, of which there are many these days, this is when the “C” and “F” on the taps does not mean chaud and froidas you might expect, but “cold” and “freezing”. Still, at 07:15 in the morning that woke me up, I’ll tell you that.

Yes, 07:15! I had a lie-in today, one of the reasons for this being that as I am now so close to the Quebec border my phone is picking up a signal again and it has reset the time to Quebec, rather than Maritime time. The second reason being that I had another bad night’s sleep. A pile of campers decided to have a party that went on until I don’t know what time last night and also due to the fact that I’m right by the edge of the road here so every item of traffic passing by makes a noise that wakes me up.

Of course, it can’t be that bad because for much of the night I was away on my travels – another reason for a good lie-in. Some town where I was had picked a fight with two or three car-loads of strangers from another town, and had given them a “right good panning”, as the saying goes. The townspeople were delighted but like most successes of this nature it was quite ephemeral, as the injured parties returned to the town with not just the rest of their townsfolk but the townsfolk of a couple of other towns too, and the result was an orgy of some violence and it was all quite uncomfortable.

From here, I went off for an interview. I had at one time written the script for a film in just two days. The third day, we rehearsed it all and on the fourth day, we filmed it, and this was the track record that appealed to whoever it was who was holding the interview. I wasn’t actually going for the interview – I was running through it in my mind and was making a mental list of everything that I needed to take with me. One part of me was saying that I surely wouldn’t forget everything, but the second part of me, that clearly knew me much better than the other one, was saying that I really ought to be writing this down as I’m certain to forget something important.

But once that was out of the way and I’d had quite a leisurely morning (after all, I am on holiday) I went off on my travels to check on something that I had caught a glimpse of yesterday

And I was right! It is indeed a Morris 1000 convertible. Here in the USA too! This is really quite extraordinary!

It really does make you wonder – here in the 1960s Britain was selling cars all over the world, including to North America (and we’ve seen several examples of British cars of this era on our travels – a Cortina Mk II and a Mini to name but two of them) and yet 20 years later the British couldn’t even sell one in their home country.

In this period Ford UK disappeared. So did Hillman and its offspring, so did Austin and Morris and their offspring. Gone, the lot of them. Rover struggled on for another 10 years selling obsolete copies of Asian cars and Jaguar and Land Rover were being bailed out by foreigners.

Where did it all go wrong?

That wasn’t all that was on offer here at Alburgh either.

We had a couple of other vehicles too. A saloon from the 1920s – the beige one – and inside the garage was a drop-top from an earlier period.

There was no-one around to ask permission to photograph them (you have to do this kind of thing these days) otherwise I would have found out much more about them

No such issues around the corner at Rouse’s Point, New York. Here, the owner was out mowing his lawn and so I went over for a chat – and ended up with the good old traditional American hospitality.

It’s nice to know that, despite all of my moaning, there’s still plenty of the good old American hospitality left although these days, you do have to look for it.

This is a 1949 Hudson that he rescued in 1988 and one of these days he’ll get around to restoring it.

It’s one of the last of the Hudsons, so he says. The company folded because it ra the same product line for 8 years and people who wanted an up-to date vehicle had to look elsewhere. And so despite my earlier ranting, it’s not just the UK that lacks vision and imagination and suffers from complacency.

That wasn’t all that he had either. What we have in this photo is a 1941 Buick 8 saloon as well as an absolutely gorgeous 1946 Buick 8 Hearse – the hearse being fitted with a “Flexible” body, and you can actually see the welds where the body has been customised.

I’d take that one home in a heartbeat too given half a chance. It was beautiful

He had lots of other stuff too but it wasn’t convenient to go to see them. he’d had a notice served on him by the town council to either remove the vehicles or to erect a fence, and a fence was what he was going to erect.

At least he was given the option. I lost count of the threatening letters and the other stuff that I received from Crewe Borough Council over my vehicles. And he said that it’s given him the impulse to do something, and once the fence is up, he’s going to build a great big shed to put them in and, who knows, he might even start work on them.

In between Rouses Point and Alburgh I had stopped at the picnic place at the foot of the big bridge over the Richelieu River between Vermont and New York State.

I’d been here once before, and I certainly don’t remember seeing the fort over there. It’s actually Fort Montgomery and dates from the period of the Border troubles between the USA and Canada in the 1830s and 1840s.

Ironically, by the time that it had been built, the disputes had been settled and so it never saw action and was part-dismantled in the 1930s to provide the stones for the footings of a bridge.

It’s for sale too, if you want to buy it and the island upon which it sits. Surprisingly, it’s not a Government Historic Site but private property, and it’s yours for just $2,950,000. Cheap at half the price.

One thing that I have been noticing though, and here’s a fine example of that, is that at many New York-Vermont state lines, there’s a large open area. It’s almost as if they are expecting Vermont to secede from the Union and so they have prepared the border control immigration points.

Of course, Vermont did used to be a republic (as did Texas) before selling itself out completely to the USA. I’d be intrigued to see what would happen if Vermont were to secede – what action would the USA take?

From Rouses Point I continued my leisurely ramble around Lake Champlain and, sure enough, I came across what I was expecting to find.

A ferry! The first of the holiday for Strawberry Moose and Yours Truly, and also the first for Strider. Strider will have to start getting used to our maritime perambulations

It’s always a bad idea to take me to see a ferry. After all, whenever I do see a ferry, it always makes me cross and today was no exception.

There are three or four ferry crossings across lake Champlain, and this is the second that I’ve taken. Believe me – I’ll be researching into the others in due course and we’ll be doing the business without fail.

I still can’t believe that they don’t have coffee machines on board though. What a waste of a business opportunity.

There were a couple of women here, in a Quebec car, but talking the Francais de Paris. They were trying to take a photo of themselves and so I went over to them to ask if they wanted me to take one of them.

“No thank you” they said, “but isn’t your French good!”. Well, and so it should be after almost 23 years of living there. I would have been disappointed with anything else.

Back on the Vermont side of the lake, I stopped to take a good photo and ended up chatting to a couple who had a house right here – with one of the best views in the entire State, I reckoned.

We ended up discussing building a fieldstone house, something he was quite keen to do as he had a very stony piece of land upstate somewhere. I wished him luck, because although it’s not difficult, it’s quite a complicated procedure.

And on that note, I came home for an early evening.

-3

EPIC HALL

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

Category Archives: Eric Hall

Saturday 19th September 2015 – SOMEONE IS ON A POWER TRIP …

Friday 18th September 2015 – I KNEW THAT …

Thursday 17th September 2015 – AND SO TODAY …

Wednesday 16th September 2015 – AND THE ANSWER TO YESTERDAY’S QUESTION IS …

Tuesday 15th September – I WAS RIGHT …

Monday 14th September 2015 – WHAT A HORRIBLE NIGHT

Sunday 13 September 2015 – SO THAT WAS MY NIGHT …

Saturday 12th September 2015 – STRIDER HAS CHANGED.

Friday 11th September 2015 – WHAT A NIGHTMARE!

Thursday 10th September 2015 – THE BEST-LAID SCHEMES …

Wednesday 9th September 2015 – HERE, IN ONE OF THE BRIEF …

Tuesday 8th September 2015 – WHAT AN ASTONISHING STORM!

Monday 7th September 2015 – THIS BED …

Sunday 6th September 2015 – I WENT TO … errr … MONTREAL TODAY

Saturday 5th September 2015 – QUEBEC SHOWERS