Category Archives: Eric Hall

Friday 15th June 2012 – TODAY WAS MUCH …

… more like a normal day.

I woke up with the alarm clock (no wonder it was noisy in bed), had breakfast, did some work on the computer and apart from the guy who came to pick up some parcels, that was about that for the morning.

But I’m glad all of the parcels have gone as I now have a little space.

And just as well too because I had a text message – my door is ready.

Rosemary has very kindly said that she will keep the door safe for me but I still need to pick it up, and that means emptying Caliburn of all the stuff I bought at IKEA at Christmas – hence it’s just as well that I now have the space where I can store it.

What I actually bought at IKEA was a trolley load of bits and pieces – all left-over or shop-soiled stuff – for €10.

I always pick one of those up if I can, and that particular lot that I have in the van is an excellent example because

there is a load of side panels for wardrobes, cupboards and the like with all of the holes pre-drilled in them for shelves and drawers and so on. Very useful, these, and I have plans for them.
there is a pile of sprung bed laths that I need
there is a pile of sides and doors from display furniture. You can make nice shelves in the shed with those.

Yes, it’s always a good plan to buy a load of that stuff when you see it.

I’ve done a pile of weeding along the pathways too and it’s much easier to move about now. It’s really only scratching the surface of course but it’s all progress anyway.

And while we are on the subject of weeding, I noticed that the potato beds were looking overgrown and so I spend an hour on them pulling up the rubbish. And you’ll be amazed how different all of that looks now.

The biggest advantage of raised beds is that the soil has not been compacted because you don’t walk upon it – in fact the thorough hoeing and raking that it had before I went away coupled with all of the wet weather means that even the biggest and toughest weed can be pulled out easily by hand without any problem whatever.

From there I went on to pull the old caravan window off the plot in which I had sown some beetroot.

You couldn’t see anything in there apart from a mass of weeds but once I had pulled a pile of rubbish out, there were in fact quite a few beetroot sitting in there doing what beetroot do.

But that has confirmed something – quite a few seeds that I planted, like the beetroot and the brassica, I covered over with some kind of glass covering, and they have taken well. Other stuff that I planted and didn’t cover, they haven’t done so well.

There must be a moral in that.

In other news, I’ve been quietly seething about the Royal Bank of Scotland. I sent some instructions to them ages ago to do something and they replied with a whole host of reasons why they should not do it.

This afternoon I made up my mind that I really ought to take some drastic action, involving pick-axe andles and napalm, but even as I was speaking to myself the phone rang – and it was THEM!

Talk about timing!

And as for my steamed meal; I didn’t have that tonight. We had footy instead and I need a free evening to start with that.

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Thursday 14th June 2012 – I WAS LYING …

… on my palliase this morning, wide awake, thinking that I really ought to heave myself out of the aforementioned stinking pit. I have a lot to do and I’ve been letting things slide rather

And so after about half an hour of musing, I had a glance at the time. All of 07:10. It’s been a long time since I’ve been up and about voluntarily at that time. That early night last night must have done me some good.

It’s also been a long time since I’ve breakfasted and been for a walk and started work before the alarm clock at 08:15.

walk! Yes! It’s been a beautiful day today – a real and proper summer one. So much so that the water in the solar water heater reached 36.5°C and this evening I had my first solar shower since before I went to Canada.

The water in the 12-volt immersion heater (a black plastic storage box with a 12-volt electric element powered by the excess solar energy once the batteries are fully-charged) reached 69.5°C and so we had electric hot water to wash the dishes this evening.

And that’s not all – at least for now anyway.

while I was rummaging around the other day I came across an object that I had forgotten – a small 400-watt steam cooker. There are two banks of solar panels on the barn and they are almost always fully-charged. One of them is wired up to a 600-watt inverter and so if this weather keeps up I’m going to have a go at cooking some steamed vegetables and see what happens then.

As you know, I’m trying to get away from bottled gas. The new woodstove has given me some considerable help in this direction for the winter, but it’s clearly impractical to use it in the summer. The electric steamer, a slow cooker, and – who knows? Maybe even a microwave oven? That would work in summer if only it would stop raining.

This morning I had a pile of packing to do – another load of stuff to be shipped off to Canada in this little business enterprise. And it’s a good job that I have loads of old advertising flyers round here – the electric shredder shreds them all up nicely and the shreds make lovely padding inside the boxes.

I’ve also made a start on the web pages for my voyage to Canada just now and I’ve put the first one on line. I’m going to be doing this from now on – not waiting for a pile to be ready – just add them on as they are done.

This afternoon I did a pile of tidying up – emptying the bedroom of some of the stuff that I don’t need and putting it upstairs in the lean-to now that there’s a roof on it.

And then I emptied the cupboard at the back of the stairs so that I can work in there and do something with it, such as to store another load of stuff and get that out of the way of me tripping over it.

I even managed a huge pile of weeding on the path too while I was wandering around.

It’s all starting to look a little more healthy here now.

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Wednesday 13th June 2012 – BLIMEY!

This is early!

But I’ve finished everything that I need to do and I’m not sure now how to go about killing time until later. I might even go and have an early night just for a change.

And I’m not sure what’s going on either, because if anyone were to ask me what is it that I’ve done today, the response would effectively be “badger all”!

It all started to go wrong when the alarm clocks rang this morning. “Just another 5 minutes” I said to myself, and the next thing that I knew was that it was 09:40.

Mind you, the weather was gorgeous at that time of the morning and so I profited by having a leisurely breakfast – interrupted by a knock on the door. That was Liz, who had brought back the rest of the washing that I had left there on Monday.

As a reward, she departed with some oregano and tarragon, because all of that is going berserk at the moment.

But that reminded me – the washing that I did on Monday was still in a plastic bag in Caliburn and so seeing as it was a lovely day, I hung that out to finish off drying.

And wasn’t that a big mistake? Cue the big black rain cloud and that was that.

And while I was discussing the washing situation with myself the phone rang. Rosemary – “they can’t fix the wheel on my car today and seeing as I’m at a loose end I’ll come round and help you do some weeding”.

That led to a hasty tidying up and so on around here. Must exhibit some dignity and pride.

But of course when Rosemary arrived she brought with her a few more rain clouds and so we sat around drinking coffee and chatting for most of the afternoon. And she also departed with some oregano and tarragon.

I have a great deal of work to do and I cant really spare the time to lounge around but nevertheless time spent with friends is never wasted. I’ll just have to work twice as hard tomorrow, won’t I?

And thanks, Joy, for your little note about the spray bottles for the vinegar mix. I’ll give that a go when (if ever) the weather dries up. It’s too wet for anything right now.

-1

Tuesday 12th June 2012 – IT WAS A …

… much better day today.

A mere 3.5 mm of rainfall fell today, and given what we have had just recently that’s a positive drought.

This morning though I was on the computer and finally finished the spell-check on my notes from Canada.

You might be wondering why I was using a spell checker, but apart from the obvious reason, it also has a multiple-entry correction facility. And the speed at which I transcribe my notes from the dictaphone there are always the same faults and typing errors and the multiple-entry correction fixes all of those in one keystroke and that saves me ages.

Next thing was to go into my text editor program.

I use Note-tab instead of Notepad, and for a few good reasons too

it has multiple-page facility, which Notepad does not have, so I can have a dozen pages open all at once
it has a library facility. That means that you can build up your own library of common phrases or keystrokes and use just one click to insert the block of text instead of typing it out each time
There’s an excellent find/replace facility too. If you want to change – say, an é letter into its alt-code for web purposes, or change a name from Mike to Michael in a huge block of text, tabbing through the find/replace facility does it far more quickly than you would do it by hand. How long would it have taken to change the … (gulp) … 745 cases of e-acute manually one-by-one?

After that I went off a-gardening.

I’ve had some bean, pea and sweetcorn seeds soaking since Saturday and they needed planting before they go rotten. And the pea seeds were already chitting too.

This meant “weeding” and to my delight this was much easier than I had anticipated. The ground was so waterloged and the raised beds were working so well that the roots of the weeds were not in very deep at all and came out quite easily.

I did the bean and pea beds in no time at all.

But this was where I discovered that I had been rather too quick off the mark. When I returned from Canada I had checked the beans and peas and noticed that next-to-nothing had come up – hence the soaking of another batch of seeds.

But after weeding, I reckoned that the peas must have been slow germinators as there are now about a dozen or so rearing up their ugly heads, not to mention all of the seeds that I had just been soaking.

Anyway, I planted everything all ready for the second phase of gardening, and I also found the old pea frame. I gave that a going-over and then installed it over the pea bed to give them something to cling to.

You can also see one of the bean beds in front of the pea bed, a potato bed to the left, a compost bin to the right with a blueberry bush in front.

It did rather remind me of the story of the Crewe and Nantiwh Borough Council workmen, and the foreman ringing up the clerk of works on one particular job that they were on –
“the men’s shovels haven’t arrived yet on this job. What are we going to do?”
The clerk of works replied “tell the men to lean on each other until they arrive!”

In other news, I’m having phone issues again. The phone that I bought from a brocante three years ago for 50 cents seems to have given up the ghost. I have another Belgian phone that I could use to replace it but I don’t have a French (or a generic) phone cable – the one for the broken phone is a special type made just for that phone and isn’t interchangeable.

After much searching, I decided to buy a new phone. And this wasn’t as easy as it sounds either. The cheapest ‘phone is €9:99 but there is a €6:50 postage fee from amazon.fr.

There were quite a few others to choose from but the one at €15:50 comes with many more facilities and is also on special offer – free delivery, and so that makes it cheaper than the cheapest. So that’s on its way now and hopefully my phone issues might be at an end.

I did once have a spare phone but I lent it to a girl who used to live around here but she has moved – twice as it happens – and so I won’t ever be seeing that again, will I?

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Monday 11th June 2012 – IT’S ASTONISHING.

Today, the weather was so much better. Only 14mm of rain.

So once again I awoke to the sound of a torrential downpour but no staying in bed today. We had to be a-radioing at 10:00 and I had a lot to do before I could set out.

But it wasn’t as if it mattered any. The woman who does the engineering for Radio Tartasse at Marcillat-en-Combraille forgot that we were coming and so we had something of a wait until she arrived.

The best-made plans of mice and men, and all that.

But eventually we managed to record our 6 weeks of programmes. Luckily I did 2 rock programmes before I went away and so they are up-to-date too.

Back at Liz’s, I was very kindly permitted to have a shower and to wash some clothes. This depressing, miserable weather has meant that I have had no hot water for a week and more, and so I’m really grateful for the good friends that I have.

No need to worry about quantity, as I have said before. It’s the quality that counts.

Down in Gerzat at Radio Arverne this afternoon we did another 6 weeks-worth of programmes and so that’s everything recorded until the end of July.

On the way back, we stopped off at the Carrefour in Riom to buy some of these ethylotests. The law in France from July 1st is that every car should have a breathalyser fitted for the use of the driver and the supermarkets are selling them for peanuts. I bought a kit of 2 for €2:00 and you can’t say fairer than that.

I also had another bit of good luck there.

Last year I bought a neat 25-litre 12-volt coolbox for Caliburn for €27:95 or something like that and it’s useful for when I’m out shopping and when I’m on my travels – I need a place to store the cold food in the hot van.

I drove all around Canada just now wishing that I had had one in the car there too, and here they are in the Carrefour again – this time for €24:90.

So I’ve bought another one and I’ll pack it in the suitcase and fill it with clothes or something next time that I go over and then I can leave it in my storage unit over there in Montreal to keep the cool food and drink in.

It’s MoT time for Caliburn too and so we called in at the testing centre on the way back. Caliburn of course passed with flying colours and so we are all happy

At the Anglo-French group it was nice to see Clotilde back from Annemasse.

Yes, I’ve been rushed off my feet today and not had a moment to myself. That’s why I’m blogging early – I’m off to bed in a minute for an early night.

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Sunday 10th June 2012 – FLAMING JUNE?

It’s more like blasted November right now.

It’s been flaming raining all flaming day. 17mm (not cm, Krys) has fallen so far and a quick referral shows that since I came back from Canada there has been only one rain-free day.

I woke up at 09:20 (and that’s early for a Sunday, isn’t it?) and heard the torrential downpour that was going on outside. That was enough to make me turn over and go back to sleep and there I stayed until a much-more-reasonable 11:30.

No point in getting up in this weather.

After breakfast I watched a film while I reviewed the latest edition of the magazine that I receive that gives me info that I need for the radio programmes.

A few likely topics in there as well as a few extra questions to add to the “20 Questions” that I keep in reserve for if ever we are caught short-handed for news.

After lunch I started to tidy up a little in here. Only a little – I can’t get the hang of this “tidying-up” lark. But I did make a useful discovery.

The wooden box that you may remember me building to keep the fruit and veg in makes a useful and quite comfortable seat and so I’ve moved that into the kitchen in the verandah where it ought to be, and put a load of stuff in it.

This evening I went round to Liz and Terry’s to rehearse the radio programmes. 6 weeks for each of the two radio stations. That should take us up to the end of July which is comforting, and keeps us out of mischief.

Liz made some really nice chick-pea and spinach curry as well as a really tasty cake.

I asked Terry if he could order some ink for me for my printyer seeing as how I have run out, but he did better than that. A few of us bought the identical printer a while ago, one of these Epson SX115 all-in-one machines that were on special offer at €49.

While they work just fine, they are rather sloooooow. So Liz, who has to print out loads of stuff for her teaching, has bought a new laser printer that does 17 pages per minute rather than the Epson’s 17 minutes per page (that really is unfair – there is nothing at all wrong with these Epsons in an ordinary domestic environment, especially at that price and at the price that the ink refills are available).

Conseuently I’ve ended up with a box of inks and a spare printer, for which I am extremely grateful.

And it’s still flaming raining.

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Saturday 9th June 2012 – HOW EMBARRASSING.

I was invited out to a party tonight and even though I’m not particularly sociable as you know, I try to make a point of going – it’s the only way that I’ll ever meet new people. And there would be someone there whom I was looking forward to meeting.

But anyway, after a leisurely start I set to work on the radio programmes for the next 6 weeks. And in a fit of unbridled enthusiasm I’d finished everything that needed doing by about 19:00.

Rather late I know if I’m going partying, but I wasn’t going to stop in mid-flow.

So while I was washing and shaving I threw together a mushroom fried rice to take with me, and then I leapt into Caliburn and set off for the entertainment.

It was when I reached St Fargeol that I realised that I didn’t have a clue where I was going. Bane of Britain had forgotten to enquire.

I knew the name of the people whose party it was and so I asked around in the village. No-one knew of them and so I looked in the phone book, with the aid of one of the natives, but they weren’t listed in there.

And so I went for a good drive around to see if I could find a place with plenty of cars but that drew a blank as well.

What a shame. I was quite looking forward to it too.

Ahhh well.

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Friday 8th June 2012 – I WAS UP …

… this morning at 08:30.

That was surprising seeing as how it was well after 04:00 and starting to dawn when I went to bed, never mind to sleep.

What was the spur to my leaving the depths of my darkest pit was a phone call telling me that I was going to have a brief visit. I had a few things to do before then, tidying up being not the least of them either.

After that, it was off to visit Rosemary. She’s had car issues and needed something sorted out at the garage, but didn’t understand what the guy there was telling her.

And so yours truly was summoned to appear …

Rosemary lives in one of the most beautiful parts of the Gorges de la Sioule and the view from the road up to her house is phenomenal – it’s well worth the price of the drive up to visit her.

But anyway, we sorted out her garage man and that part of the story ended happily ever after.

Seeing as I was out and about and I am going to be busy this weekend I nipped to LIDL in St Eloy-les-Mines and did some shopping for next week – no sense in me going out tomorrow if i’m out today.

This afternoon I steam-cleaned the kitchen area of the verandah. Well, some of it anyway. It was in a pretty sorry state.

But I think that I ought to spend some time in my busy schedule doing some kind of cleaning up. The place is looking unhealthy after my long absence just now.

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Thursday 7th June 2012 – YOU MAY REMEMBER …

… that we discussed weedkiller the other day.

Joy suggested a 50-50 mix of vinegar and water and so I tried it. And you can see the result.

A pile of burnt and scorched grass. And so there’s clearly some mileage in that idea,

Thanks, Joy, but I shudder to think about how much vinegar I’m going to need.

This morning it was work as usual on the website but I didn’t get much done due to a couple of lengthy and complicated phone calls that led to a lengthy form-filling session.

All of that made me late for my trip with Marianne and while Liz was wishing me all the best for the afternoon and me saying something like “knowing my luck it will pour down with rain” we suddenly had the most terrific thunderstorm and cloudburst.

Right on cue, you might say.

And so I picked up Marianne and off we went for a good wander around Chateau-sur-Cher.

The village is so named because the remains of a Gallo-Roman fort were discovered on the promontory overlooking the River Cher, on the spot where the church sits today.

It’s certainly an impressive site for a defensive fortification – surrounded on three sides by a very steep climb and I can understand why the Gauls would have chosen it

not only were there some interesting sights to see around the village and around the river, but that we were also directed to an intact chalk-oven and to an outcrop of a coal seam somewhere out off the beaten track on the way back to St Hilaire-près-Pionsat.

The chalk oven took some finding and that’s hardly a surprise. You can see that the chimney is all overgrown with all kinds of everything and you really did have to know where it was before you could see it properly

But it was totally fascinating, as a good exploration confirmed once I’d been able to hack my way through the vegetation into it.

It seems to have been built from a kit or something like that, because the fire bars are noted with Roman numerals – presumably indicating the position and order in which they should be assembled.

I’ve never seen that before.

Apparently the coal seam that we visited 2 years ago and about which I posted on here breaks out in a few other places in the Combrailles.

We had a good scratch around in the vicinity and, sure enough, we found some evidence. Not worth coming here with a mechanical shovel though – the Highways Department’s sign erectors would have been here a long time ago had it been worth the effort.

There are even some mining remains where someone had a go at trying to exploit it, but they are all overgrown apparently (as if the chimney was not) and so we need to wait for winter to hunt for those.

Highlight, for me at least, has to be this beast sitting here abandoned inthe garden of an abandoned cottage in the village.

It’s a Cadillac DeVille, one of the “fourth generation” models from the early 1970s I reckon, and what is significant about it is that according to the maker’s plate under the bonnet it’s actually a “Bienne” – a Swiss model made in that town where general Motors had an assembly plant for 40 years until 1975.

But scrambling over vehicles like this brought back some very happy memories. How poor Nerina must have suffered.

Meanwhile, in other news, I’ve run out of black ink for the printer. I’ll have to see if Terry can order some more for me.

-1

Wednesday 6th June 2012 – WHAT HAPPENED …

… to this morning?

I was up early for a change – before the alarm went off in fact – and had an early breakfast.

But I dunno what someone must have slipped into my coffee because the next thing that I remember was it being 13:57 and my coffee was stone cold.

I’ve no idea at all what happened there. Ahh well.

Mind you it was 03:00 when I went to bed and then I had to leave the bed twice during the night – one to go and ride the porcelain horse and the second because it suddenly occurred to me that I had left outside the house the parcels that I had wrapped yesterday and it was pouring down with rain.

A torrential rainstorm in fact, so it was just as well that I had taken the precaution to wrap them in bin liners and seal them up very well, because that managed to protect them from the worst of the weather. A good idea, that was.

This afternoon I carried on the weeding.

Joy recommended using a mixture of vinegar and water and so I tried a sample plot of that to see what happens.

Another idea that someone had was to use old newspapers, publicity leaflets and the like to cover over the paths and that should suppress the weeds there. I can then spread broken slates (of which I have plenty) everywhere.

Seeing how well things like planks and bits of wood suppressed weed growth while I was away, and seeing how many old newspapers and publicilty leaflets there are hanging around here, there has to be some mileage in that too and so I’ll give that a try.

Rosemary rang up today as well. She needs a little help over her car and seeing how she has some porridge oats for me and that she has offered to store my new front door for me until I’m ready (whenever that might be) then it’s only fair that I pop down there on Friday and see how she is getting on. By all accounts it sounds like a buckled wheel and I know a place in Montlucon that supplies them.

Tomorrow I’m out with Marianne a-wandering around Chateau-sur-Cher. We’re photographing historical bits and pieces over there. I bet we’ll have a rainstorm.

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Tuesday 5th June 2012 – I’VE MADE FURTHER STRIDES …

… in the garden today.

after another late start and breakfast I carried on with my notes from my recent trip to Canada and the USA and they are now all up-to-date.

Following that I had a huge pile of stuff to pack and prepare for shipping – and it was then that I realised that the UK is closed today.

Bearing in mind the catalogue of disasters that occurred while I was away, after lunch I started the repair programme.

A few batteries needed recharging and replacing and it didn’t take long to do all of that

The new fuse is now fitted to the overcharge circuit that powers the home-made 12-volt electric immersion heater and so I have hot water again at last.

But the largest strip fuse that I have seems to be 50-amp and that’s nothing like enough, but it’s all that I have for now. It will have to do.

I’ll have to pay a discreet visit to the local car breaker’s, or else buy some … “Buy? Are you feeling alright?” – ed … when i’m next in the UK. The type that I want actually range from 40 amps to 250 amps so I shouldn’t have too many problems getting what I want.

Not so good news in the barn though. As you fix one problem, another problem rears its ugly head. It seems that one of the charge controllers, the oldest one, has ceased to function.

10 years old so I can’t complain too much but it is rather annoying.

It’s something internal that has gone wrong with it. I can tell this because the voltmeter is registering the voltage on the battery so that side is fine, and the hourmeter wired to the input side is working too, so that bit is okay. it’s all of the bits in the middle where we have a problem.

What I’ve done for now is to connect the two terminals together with an old jump lead – not ideal but at least current is reaching the batteries and so they will charge up.

But there’s no cut-off when they are fully-charged so I will just have to keep my eye on them, and disconnect them if I have to go out on a sunny day.

That left me an hour in the garden and I weeded one of the beds. It’s stil not all done but at least I can see what’s in there. Tons of brussels sprouts by the looks of things.

>Meanwhile in other news, since I graduated from University, the whys and wherefores of OUSA – the Open University Students Association, have been sadly lacking from these pages.

I’ve been doing my best to put it all behind me but it won’t go away.

The latest is that what should have been a private mail from an elected officer to a member of the Association but which was “inadvertantly” (as if that ever happens) published to a public forum.

The memo reads – Hi all. My name is Hazel (http://www.facebook.com/hazel.pegg) and my Alter Ego is VP Comms. For various reasons my official ID needs to be an admin of your FB page. please don’t force me to go the heavy route?

What kind of threat is that to make to a member of an organisation of which the writer is an elected member?

My own opinion is that it is thoroughly shameful. It reminds me of the Kray Twins or the legendary “Dinsdale” sketch – “he nailed my head to a coffee table. He didn’t want to do it – I had to insist”.

But whatever you might think – it just goes to show that nothing has changed in OUSA.

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Monday 4th June 2012 – I MADE A START …

… on work today.

Only a start though.

After (a rather-late) breakfast, I worked on all of the photos of the holiday and wimp that I am, there are only 1200 of them. Not a patch on the 2500 or so of my epic 2010 voyage around the Trans-Labrador Highway, but considerably more than the 78 of my first visit to Canada.

All the photos have now been thumbnailed and had the copyright text added and they are now on-line. I’ll post a link to them in due course and you will be able to see them for yourself.

That took me to a rather late-ish lunch and then afterwards I prepared a little game for the Anglo-French Group.

I took all of my photos of the Québecois language and asked them to see what they could make of them.

No-one came even close to guessing what this was all about so if you have an idea – without cheating and looking it up – make a suggestion in the “comments” bit below.

That left me an hour and a half and so I went out to tackle the weeds. There’s only so much you can do in that kind of time and I didn’t do much, but at least I can walk between the front door and the downhill lean-to now, and the area around the solar shower is free.

And if we have some sun any time soon, I might even be able to use that.

But the disappointment is the hard-standing that we laid down for parking a couple of years ago.

Every day I made it a task to pull up a dozen weeds and I’ve kept it pretty weed-free. But 6 weeks away when everywhere is going mad has just about done for it. Not only is it swamped in weeds, their roots are so deep that they are pulling up the gravel and hardstanding when I try to remove them.

It seems that the only solution is whatever is the local equivalent of Agent Orange.

This is depressing as I have tried ever since I came here to avoid the use of chemical weedkiller but as I am on my own and I’m not as young as I was, I don’t see what alternative there is.

If you can think of anything non-chemical, answers on a plain brown envelope to …

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Sunday 3rd June 2012 – WHATEVER I SAID …

… that I did yesterday, that was a darn sight more than I did today, because today I’ve not been anywhere at all.

What didn’t help matters was that for much of the morning we were having a tropical rainstorm – 15mm of rain fell in 4 or 5 hours and I didn’t much feel like going anywhere in that.

Another surprise was that the coffee that I had for breakfast this morning while I was writing up yesterday’s blog entry is the first that I have had since being on the railway station at Lyon on Thursday lunchtime.

70 hours without a coffee has to be some kind of record for me. I don’t ever recall that happening before.

Tomorrow is back to work. And my first task is to hack my way out of the house and create some kind of pathway through the jungle so that I can walk about.

It’s astonishing how much things have grown here while I was away. I don’t think that I have ever seen anything like it.

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Saturday 2nd June 2012 – I FORGOT TO BLOG …

… before I went to bed last night, so I’ll make up for it right now while I have my Sunday breakfast coffee.

But then again, it wasn’t as if you missed anything important because I hadn’t done all that much to blog about.

We did of course have the usual sleep issues – the issues from which I always suffer whenever I’ve been away on a long journey, but nevertheless I did manage to tear myself out of my stinking pit and of the house and go into St Eloy-les-Mines for some food.

And it was just as well that I did that too because there wasn’t anything in the house worth eating.

After that, it was back on the sofa and that was that.

Wednesday 30th May 2012 – MY LAST DAY …

… in Canada for the moment. I won’t be back for a while.

And after a good night’s sleep in my expensive motel, I’m ready for anything

On the motorway back into Montreal, I notice a huge Home Depot at exit 94. I’ll make a note of that because the ones in the city itself are a little “restricted”. But for now, the huge Walmart, Canadian Tire and Home Depot across the river from Quebec are currently in the lead.

At my little storage unit at Jarry I unload the Dodge and stack everything away for the next time. I’m leaving my heavy winter coat here because I’m hoping to be back in the autumn.

The guy in charge of the unit tells me of a car wash place in the rue Jean Talon and sure enough, it comes up trumps. There are three Eastern Europeans there and they washed, vacuumed and valeted the Dodge to within an inch of its life for just $23. It now looks like something that has just come out of the showroom. I don’t think that I have ever rented a car that has looked as nice as this even when it’s been new. This car is spotless now.

And down the road I found a falafel restaurant that served up a plate of chips and a falafel wrap with a can of pop for all of $7:00.

I need to fuel myself up as well, never mind the car, for the return journey because I quite often have dietary issues on the plane as you know.

Here’s my plane for the journey back home.

We’ve had the usual stress issues at the airport again, but on a more positive note, this time we had free internet and a pile of electric plugs to help pass the time and that’s a change from the stinking reception that I have had in Dorval in the past.

And it gets better than that too. On the aeroplane one of the films was Some Like It Hot and then we had a whole pile of albums by Hendrix, Springsteen, David Bowie, Led Zeppelin and Neil Young.

I’ll fly by Air France again, even if I don’t ever get to sleep.

EPIC HALL

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