Thursday 4th September 2014 – OLD HABITS DIE HARD

Indeed they do? I’m at it again, even in the USA.

This is where I spent last night – on a motorway service area on Interstate 87 up at the top end of New York State. This is what it looked like at about half an hour after dawn because I was up early. I’d had something of a restless night.

But you can see why I was happy to stay here. The surroundings were beautiful and the smell of pine essence was overpowering. There wasn’t too much noise either, which makes a change for a motorway rest area.

I wasn’t alone on here by any means. There were plenty of cars about, as you can see on this trailer. Most of the overnight residents on here were Canadians heading south – I hardly noticed a lorry from the USA. It’s something about which I’ve often wondered – where do lorries from the USA park up overnight because you don’t see them parked up in every lay-by as you do in Europe.

Mind you, you don’t see many lay-bys either in North America, something about which I’ve often commented.

I found a Home Depot (eventually) and I’ve bought a couple of things that I needed. I had to go to a second one though for an angle grinder (passing by a Walmart on the way where I left half of my shopping and had to go back for it).

It was quite exciting in this second Home Depot. According to the Home depot computer, there should have been 6 there but there were none on display. Eventually I found someone who confirmed that they had some but he couldn’t find them either. Eventually he located them up on the top shelf, so he fetched a ladder, climbed up and passed one down to me. Then he started to descend the ladder. “Aren’t you going to get the others down then?” I asked. “Either customers will walk away empty-handed or else you’ll be climbing back up that ladder again”

One of the things that I’ve been moaning about too is the price that I’m having to pay these days for hiring vehicles. The idea of buying one to keep in North America has often gone through my head but finding the right kind of vehicle has always been an obstacle.

I wouldn’t have any problems here though. There must be a thousand vehicles here, many of which are Ford Ranger 4×4 pickups and prices start from about $4800 which is reasonable.

They are all bulk-buys from Government institutions, such as the Police as you can see, and the owner reckons that he has about 100 new vehicles every week. Anyway, I have a card from him and I shall be giving the matter some serious thought.

From here I’ve been on Highway 9 heading east towards the Maine coast but I’m not making very much progress with things that there are to see.

This is the view from Hogback Mountain in Vermont. This particular spot is called the Hundred Mile View, so-called because you can see for 100 miles from here.

It’s probably true as well, becaus that mountain right over there in the distance looks rather like the big mountain at the back of Millinocket in Maine, although I bet that it probably isn’t.

This area was quite an important ski area at one time but rising insurance premiums and falling snow levels … "DECREASING SNOW FALL" – ed … due to global warming have caused its abandonment.

This is a 1933 Pontiac saloon parked up in New Hampshire and it’s for sale for … errr … $19500, a price that stopped me in my tracks. I stopped to take a couple of photos and the owner came out for a chat. He’s totally rebuilt it from the ground up – one of many that he’s done because he’s 76 and been doing this for 60 years

It’s not for me though, because it’s been rebuilt to modern standards with a “350 V8” engine, a modern auto box, hydraulic disc brakes and all that kind of thing. There’s probably very little that is the original vehicle which is a shame if you ask me, but that’s how vintage vehicle “restoration” is carried out in North America.

From here I came across a camp site just as the sun was setting, so I’ve stopped here for the night on a pitch with a beautiful view across the lake. It’s a lovely place to spend the night, as you will soon find out.

-3

Wednesday 3rd September 2014 – WELL, I HAD AN EXCITING DAY TODAY.

And here is the result of my visits to places of historic interest along the lower part of the valley of the River Richelieu

The Museum of Fort St Jean – closed since yesterday for renovation and to be moved into a new building

Fort Lennox on the Ile aux Noix – open Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays

The blockhouse at St Paul de l’Ile aux Noix – closed since yesterday

The museum at Lacolle – open at weekends only.

Yes, I’m not having much luck at all with the Canadian Tourist season, am I?

I had better luck at Bell Telephones in St Jean sur Richelieu. Someone who actually knew what he was talking about had me conected in five minutes – at a price, mind you (we are talking about Bell Telephones of course) but I’m now connected. I’ve had to have a new number – it’s 740 6186 but the area code remains the same as before.

So off to the Fort St Jean and found that it was closed, but a helpful woman military person allowed me to wander around the barracks and to take photos, as long as I didn’t go inside any buildings.

There are lots of old military equipment there so I was in my element for a good hour or so. This is an anti-U-boat homing torpedo from World War II. It’s the type that was launched either from the air or from a ship.

It’s certainly quite an interesting artefact to see, especially as I’ve been spending a lot of time wading my way through Clay Blair’s rather polemic and viciously anti-British submarine book just recently.

There were lots of other stuff there – tanks and aeroplanes and so on – so I didn’t have a totally wasted morning.

Probably the most important thing in the fort, at least from my point of view, were these anchors. They were discovered in Fury Bay on Somerset Island, which is in the High Arctic.

They are said to come from the ship – the Fury of William Parry (he after whom Parry Sound in the High Arctic is named) which was crushed in the ice one winter in the early 19th Century during one of his explorations to pass through the North-West passage.

So at Fort Lennox I was disappointed. Not just by the fact that the fort was closed to visitors but the fact that the fort was situated on an island and there was no possible access to the island for even a wander around outside the fort.

There was someone from Parks Canada on site and so I bent his ear about the desperate tourism facilities on offer here. If you come here during the summer season you can’t find a campsite or a motel because they are full. If you come here outside the summer season you can’t find a campsite or a motel because they are closed.

You just can’t win.

The blockhouse at the River Lacolle was also closed. It was part of the border fortifications controlling the access up the Richelieu valley and was built in 1778 after the American incursions of 1776.

Its claim to fame was that in March 1814 it held out against 4000 American soldiers bent on invading Canada, and in November 1838 it was the site of the last stand of the “Patriots”.

It’s the only blockhouse left in Quebec now, but regular readers of this rubbish will remember that we encountered one in Edmundston in New Brunswick a few years ago.

From there I went on to the town of Lacolle and with the museum closed, visited the site of the enigmatic “Battle of Lacolle Bridge”. Here in thick fog on 20th November 1812 the American forces prepared to attack the British forces but someone accidentally discharged a firearm.

This caused the Americans to start shooting, and ended up inflicting heavy casualties upon their own troops. This caused them to retreat in disarray without embarrassing the defenders at all.

At Hemmingford I encountered the “d’Antan magasin General”- a shop that was set out in the style of a shop of 100-odd years ago.

I had an interesting chat with the proprietor of the shop – I kept her away from her jam-bottling and sauce-making. We put the world to rights for a good half an hour and I ended up with a handful of traditional sweets and a cup of coffee so I’m not complaining and I’ll come back here again if ever I get the chance.

We then drove on for our usual confrontation with the American border farces down the road. I’m sure that there’s no real reason for them to be so … err … difficult with cross-border tourists and they would make tourists feel much more welcome if they would be a little less confrontational and a little more friendly. After all, it’s tourists like me that keep them in employment and if they chased everyone away from crossing the border they would all be out of a job.

I fuelled up just across the border and then set off down Highway 87 through the Adirondacks and the beautiful smell of fresh pine until I came across a welcome rest area where I’m settling down for the night.
l

-4

Tuesday 2nd September 2014 – AFTER A REALLY GOOD NIGHT’S SLEEP …

I went for a walk around the campsite and was treated to this sight here. Someone is having a boat recovered from the marina here on the Richelieu River, and the campsite here has this huge Volvo tractor and trailer unit to perform tasks like this.

Something of a monster, I don’t suppose that recovering the Queen Mary would have been beyond its power. Still, watching it with this boat was a good way to start off the morning.

From here, I set off down the road to the locks at St Ours. The Richelieu Valley (heading north) connects up with the Hudson valley (heading south) forming something of an easy route between Montreal and New York. We came up the Hudson last year, you may remember, and you’ll recall that it was the scene of several bloody encounters between the British, the French, the Americans and the natives in the 17th and early 18th Centuries.

Once peace (of a sort) had finally descended on the valley it was decided to construct a canal to facilitate water transport around several of the rapids along the way.

These are the locks on the river at the town of St Ours. The original lock is the one that has been filled in, on the left of the photo. The new one, built in the 1930s is larger and was built to correspond with the size of the locks down in the Hudson Valley.

This car is a 1958 Chevrolet Delray, and it’s for sale if you are interested. A mere $9,000 (or near offer) and it’s yours, but only if you are prepared for a lot of work because, leaving aside the question of the accident damage for the moment, it isn’t in very good condition.

$9,000 will be only the start of your expenditure to put this car back on the road, which is a shame.

Mind you, I’ve seen cars up for sale in much worse condition than this, although not at this kind of price.

Next town along the road is that of St Denis Sur Richelieu. This was the home of Louis-Joseph Papineau, leader of the 1837 rebellion against – not the Anglais as all of the signs round here insist – but the Britanniques (and it says something for the Quebecois extremists and their attitudes that they can’t even get that correct).

Everywhere you go, there are plaques saying things like “Papineau bought a loaf of bread from a boulangerie situated on this spot” and “this is the spot where Papineau scrathed his nose”.

This is not one of those – this is the spot where in November 1837 a group of “patriots” repelled an attack by 500 regular (British, not English) troops.

What the plaque doesn’t tell you is that 10 days later the regular troops returned to St Denis and burned down the town, there being no opposition as the “patriots” had all run away and hidden across the border in the USA, just down the road from here.

There is however another little plaque hidden away somewhere that does mention in small letters that the American forces on Independence visited the town in 1776 and shot some innocent civilian bystanders in cold blood, so any idea that that the Quebecois have nothing but a total and utter depraved and warped fixation about the nasty and horrible Anglais (and not Britannique) is totally false.

Now this is an interesting find, isn’t it?

It’s a pot of ice cream but made, not with cows’ milk but with almond milk. The packaging proudly proclaims that it’s a non-dairy dessert and this is confirmed by the list of ingredients, and it came from a mainstream supermarket, the IGA, too.

Europe, and especially France, is a hundred years behind the times when it comes to items like this. Being a vegan, an addition of something like this to my regular diet would have me in paradise.

And it was gorgeous too.

Chambly is the next town down the line and at the head of the little lake here is a stone fort of the 18th Century – the fourth fort to be built on the site.

It’s purpose is to control the access to the rapids here on the River Richelieu, a portage where people would have to get out of their canoes and carry them overland to a smoother section of water.

The tourist season at the fort seems to last for another few weeks yet and so I was quite optimistic about visiting it, but I arrived on a Tuesday and you don’t need me to tell you what day it is that the fort has its Day of Rest.

In the 19th Century the portage became a thing of the past when, as part of the navigational improvements, the Chambly Canal was built to by-pass the rapids and ease navigation between Montreal and New York.

These are the locks that lift the boats up to the level of the ground behind the rapids, and the canal carries the traffic along to rejoin the river further back.

So now I’m off to find a campsite for the evening. It’s threatening rain and it’s not very optimistic.

-1

Monday 1st Sepember 2014 – NEW TOY

Now that I’m back in bass-playing mood again, I can’t do with 7 weeks deprivation while I’m in North America so I’ve been scouring the second-hand and junk shops in a desultory fashion while I’ve been wandering around in Montreal.

And this is what I discovered. It’s a Squier Jaguar bass guitar – a short-scale model (which means that you can play it in a confined space like a Dodge Grand Caravan).

Made by Fender (ptah!) so they say, the world’s leading manufacturer of bass guitars, but that’s only so that people can say that they own a Fender, it’s cheap and basic. Probably about $250 worth of guitar.

But it’s surprisingly easy to play and has a very smooth action, something that took me by surprise, and so I had a good session with it in this pawn shop in the rue Queen Mary. $169 they wanted for it, but after a long and complicated negotiation that went on for a couple of days, we agreed on $100 with the case thrown in so I’m quite satisfied with that.

Talking of Dodge Grand Caravans, this is this year’s beast. 4 weeks old and with 3200 kms on the clock. The fools. It’ll have a little bit more than that on the clock when it comes back.

It’s so new that it still has this lovely new-car smell. But I wonder what smell it ill have after I’ve been sleeping in it for 7 weeks.

I’m back on the road now, and this was a photo taken at my lunch stop, the Parc St Laurent at Repentigny.

It’s not taken me long to find a ferry though, has it?

This is the crossing between St Ignace and Sorel-Tracy and the passage is delayed while the huge container ship MSC Maria-Laura comes sailing past. She’s an old Panama-registered ship of 42500 tonnes, dating from 1988 and looks every day of her age, and is on her way to Montreal via a whole series of North American ports.

In fact it was my lucky day for ships at St Ignace – there must have been half a dozen streaming in a line up the St Lawrence.

This is the Alcyone, built in 2002 and wearing the colours of the Canadian Steamship Lines but now Greek-owned. She’s come upriver on her way in from Chile via the Panama Canal. She’s a bulk carrier of 50,000 tonnes.

So now I’m at my camp site. It’s the Parc Bellerive on the River Richelieu near St Ours. This is where I’ll be staying the night. And quite a pleasant night it is too.

It’s a little noisy here fortunately, as it is on most camp sites, but I’m going to have another early night and they can all do as they like.

-1

Sunday 31st August 2014 – WELL I’M GLAD …

… that I had bought a cheap lightweight tripod in a brocante in France a few years ago, and brought it over to Canada. It’s certainly earning its keep.

I ended up on the top of Mount Royal last night – at the Maison Smith, where there are some of the most spectacular views of the city. And the view at night with all of the street lights is absolutely stunning as you can see.

Here’s the view right down one of the main boulevards in the city, with all of the traffic, and you can see in the distance the reflection of the lights, shimmering off the surface of the St Lawrence River.

It really is a magnificent place to be on a late-summer evening. It’s a place not to be missed, especially if you can manage a nocturnal visit.

You can tell, can’t you, that i’ve picked up my car this evening. A Red Dodge Grand Caravan, just 4weeks old and still with the distinctive smell of “new car” about it. It has just 3200 kms on the clock, the fools. You would have thought that they would have known me better by now.

This morning I braved the gloom ond overcast fog to go down to the Lachine Canal – the canal that took the ships around the Lachine rapids prior to the building of the St Lawrence Seaway in the 1950s. It’s just used for pleasure traffic now but it is quite a historic place to be as much of Canada’s industry from the days of the Industrial Revolution was based here.

Bit I had an encounter with the forces of law and order. They drove their car up the pavement to stop me advancing and, on leaving the car, asked me all kinds of questions such as who I was, where had I been, what was I doing, and “show us your photos”.

I shall refrain from passing any kind of really acerbic comment, as anyone who has ever followed much of what I have written will know them already, but even Canada now has become a Police State like East Germany or the USSR. How must people like Krushchev and Honecke be laughing their heads off at the West as here, there are controls imposed that will mach anything that they ever imposed upon their citizens, after the West spent 50 years denouncing their system and doing all in their power to denounce it.

When is a Wzstern politician going to stand up and say “yes, the Soviets did have a point”.

So abandoning yet another good rant, I ended up in the city centre and went to see the statue of Paul Cholmedy, Sieur de Maisonneuve.

he was the person who founded Montreal in 1642 and while it is often claimed that he led the people through the bitter period of the first 20 years of its existence, fighting for its life against the Iroquois, the fact is that quite often he was back in France pleading for help in the form of colonists and soldiers while his colonists quite often bore the brunt of the Iroquois savagery all on their own.

At the start of one of his journeys, he told one of his colonists “if I’m not back with more aid, dismantle the colony and bring everyone home” – without explaining to her how she should accomplish this task without a ship and without soldiers to fight their way back to Quebec.

It was here that I had an interesting encounter in one of these sandwich places –
Sandwich Artist (huh?) – “what would you like on your sandwich?”
Our Hero – “nothing but vegetables”
Sandwich Artist – “do you want cheese with that?”
And you can’t make up story like that either.

Here’s something that filled me with dismay when I saw it.

I’d seen a few leaflets telling me that the Quebec gas Board was replacing gas mains in the city so I was expecting to see street repairs, but I wasn’t quite expecting to see this. Here, the gas main has been replaced but clearly they can’t find anyone in the whole of the country who is able to fit cobble stones. So here in Old Montreal we have a tarmac strip.

What on earth will the world be like in 50 years tile with all of these old crafts and professions disappearing?

Talking of things disappearing, I went to see my favourite building in the whole of Montreal. It’s the Gare Viger, the Viger railway station and another old Canadian Pacific relic.

It’s been abandoned for years and so no-one is allowed inside. probably so as not to notice the consition into which the Government (for it’s now a Government building) has allowed it to continue.

However a slightly open window is no barrier to the intrepid photographer, is it?

It seems that there’s a plan afoot (“what’s afoot?” … "about 12 inches" – ed) to do something with it, but the images on the plans that I saw bear no resemblance to how the building looks at the moment. I have sore misgivings … "well, put some ointment on them" – ed.

From here I braved the torrential downpour that we were having and went to catch the bus to the airport. Two sides of the road to guess from of course, and of course you know that Our Hero guessed wrong. But anyway, hemmed in like sardines we hurtled off like a rocket and were there in 30 minutes.

And then I picked up my car.

Saturday 30th August 2014 ! WELL, I’LL BE …!

Yes, in some surprising development, I’ve had some customer service in Montreal that could rival the best that you have ever had in Brussels. It was totally astonishing.

To set the scene, I have a Canadian mobile phone with a Canadian number, supplied by Bell Telephones as they have the best coverage in the wilderness. And, as an aside, after this experience, I’ll be calling them “Hell Telephones” for ever onwards because the customer service is the closest thing to Hell that you would ever wish to find.

To cut a long story short … "hooray" – ed … my credit card expired and so I had a new one, but I forgot to upgrade the card with Bell Telephones and so my service was disconnected.

No complaints with that – it’s my own fault although one would have thought that with 50 years of expiry dates of credit cards, companies would have caught up with this kind of thing – so off to find a Bell Telephone shop.

First place that I found was one of these stands in a shopping centre. The staff there were totally uninterested but they did give me a number to call customer service. THis was when I discovered that the battery in the ‘phone was flat.

Next stall that I found, the guy there was extremely helpful and if things had carried on like this, I wouldn’t be seething out of my back teeth. Anyway, he actually put me in touch with a human at Customer Service (we did have a 20-minute queue) who told me to buy a new SIM card, put it in my phone, and call up the connection service (she gave me the number) an I’ll be back on the air.

Simple?

Not if you are anything like me it isn’t.

With the battery in my Bell phone being flat I put the SIM card in my European open-access phone and tried to call the number but several attempts gave me the “not registered on network” error message and nothing that I can do would fix it. Consequently I found another Bell telephone place – the shop in rue St Catherine to be precise.

Some girl in there who clezrly knew even less than I did checked my European phone with her data scanner. “It’s not a Bell telephone” she said, as if she were telling me something. She took me to the door, pointed across the road to the shopping mall and told me where the Rogers and the Fido stalls were. “You need to go and ask them”.
“How will they help me activate a Bell Telephone SIM card?”
“I don’t know” she replied.

Yes, you can’t make up a story like that.

But I will tell you something for nothing – and that is that we would never have reached this particular point had Samsung, the mobile phone maker, had its act together. I have three Samsung phones all told, and they all have different batteries and they all have different charging inputs. What is this all about? A standard-sized battery and a standard charging input would have saved all of this nonsense. Swapping a battery from one phone to another is the work of seconds. This thing about different chargers and different batteries (and we are talking millimetres difference in size, not anything substantial) is total rubbish.

As for the rest of the day, I’ve been on the prowl again. I found Montreal’s biggest second-hand car sales places, to find that it closes at weekends and what’s that all about too?

I did find the old headquarters of the Canadian Pacific Railway, at the abandoned Windsor Station. Canadian Pacific was another in the long line of companies that moved away from Montreal following the francophonie policies of the Quebec Provincial Government. “Cutting your nose off to spite your face” is what springs to my mind – it accounts for much of the decline in fortunes of the Province but the attitude is that the Quebeckers would rather be a very big fish in a very small pool rather than an influential subsiduary player on a multi-national stage.

The station (said he, leaving the politics aside) is a beautiful building and was only narrowly saved from demolition when Canadian Pacific pulled out. It’s now a listed building.

This is an interesting car that I encountered on my perambulations. It’s a 1939 Packhard doing a wedding at the Christ Church Cathedral in Saint Catherine Street.

The colour of the car is white-over-rust, which you can clearly see even from this distance. I’m not sure that I’ve ever seen a “professional” car looking as bad as this one, with the rust bubbling up on the bottom of the doors and on the rear wings underneath the paint.

The paint job isn’t bad at all even if the masking off was poor, but there’s more to a restoration project than just three coats of paint.

I also came across the Latin quarter of Montreal in the rue St Denis. What took me completely by surprise was that all of the signs here were in French. I wasn’t expecting that in the Latin quarter. “Puer amat mensam” say I.

But it isn’t half chic and trendy here. I couldn’t do with any more than five minutes of this kind of place.

At the Tourist Information desk I found not only the information that I wanted about the Richelieu Valley but also a booklet on the route to James Bay – another one of my projects. But there was nothing about the Lower North Shore. Not a surprise, seeing as how the communities down there are English, not French-speaking.

The “Forgotten Coast” indeed.

Friday 29th August 2014 – THE FAMILY PILE …

… 300 Draper Avenue, used to be over there on that site, just to the right of the streetlight in the foreground

And how can I say that with such confidence?

The answer is that I have spent a very exciting morning in the company of a very helpful archivist from the Public Records Department in Montreal.

And now I know the reason why the address has been so hard to trace too. There has indeed been a renumbering of the houses in Montreal (which I suspected) in the late 1920s, but even this wouldn’t explain the difficulty.

But the fact that my great-grandfather was a bricklayer and the houses behind it weren’t built until shortly after World War One gives us another clue.

Speaking to a very old woman whom I encountered in the street and who had lived here all her life confirmed the rest.

The archives showed that Lot 300 in Draper Avenue (the address that I had for him was 300 Draper Avenue) was subdivided into numerous different sublots all owned by the same person, and there was no official trace of his being there. Hence, we assume that he and his family were not proprietors or licensed tenants, but casual itinerant tenants (as you might expect with bricklayers living next to construction sites) – hence the sublots being all in one name (the owner of the site)

And then the lady told me that prior to the modern building here, there was a big row of shops with a pile of apartments on top. And there we are. All we need now to confirm is that the apartments had their entrance round the side that you can see, in Draper Avenue, and there we are.

I’m not sure how I’m going to do that though.

Another one of my illusions was shattered today.

Here I am on the riverfront going to eat my butty at lunchtime and clattering along come locomotive 7229, power car 200 and then locomotive 7083 of the Canadian National Railways. First time that I’ve ever seen a train along here.

Now I’ve always believed, and I’ve proved this by measurement, that Nort American trains are about a quarter of a mile long per locomotive, but all of this lot were pulling just 15 tankers. How much of a disillusionment is that?

This evening I went for another random ramble. I took the Metro to the Jean Talon station and then walked along rue Jean Talon for miles down to the Parc Metro Station.

Down here I encountered the Marché Jean Talon, which is the major fruit and vegetable market of the city. And this is a fascinating place – I can tell you that. I had a really good browse around in here, but refrained from joining the throngs who were sifting through the rubbish bins (it was at the end of the day) salvaging the dumped fruit. All kinds and classes of people were doing it – there seems to be no social stigma at all

Having found some vegan cheese earlier in the day, I could stop for a pizza. And it as here that we almost had a disaster, for I left my dictaphone behind. My faith in human nature was restored as it was still there, even though there was someone sitting at my table, when I returned 15 minutes later to look for it.

The Parc Metro Station is situated on the site of a former Canadian Pacific railway line and the old Canadian Pacific station is still standing (which is a surprise to me, having encountered so much official vandalism in North America) so I went to look for it before I caught my train

Here it is – and isn’t it wonderful? A nice collection of columns and so on, reflecting what a magnificent pile it is. It really must have been quite something in the Roaring 20s

And floodlit too, which is even better. I’m glad to see that it’s being taken care of because, anywhere else, it would have long-since been demolished to make way for glass-and-concrete offices, the fate that befell the magnificent Broad Street Station in London.

Mind you, its survival is probably not unconnected with its modern use as a trendy high-class upmarket clothes shop. They would want something of a flagship site and this would suit them fine.

The manager kindly allowed me to photograph the interior, and you can see just what a splendid railway station it really must have been.

But all of this meant that I had a 20 minute wait for the bus at DuCollege Metro Sation. I’d hit the driver’s break-time yet again hadn’t I?

Still, it was a very pleasant, warm evening so it wasn’t a real hardship, especially with some good music to listen to. I’m glad that I had found my *.mp3 player.

And I found an even better bus stop at which to alight too – it’s much nearer the passage under the motorway.

Finally – I’ve bought another toy. Well – I haven’t, I’ve reserved it and I’ll pick it up on Monday as I need a car to pick it up. More of this anon.

Thursday 28th August 2014 – HERE I AM …

… hurtling along on the TGV at 300kph on my way to the airport.

It was basically a good plan to stay in Lille. 10 minutes or so from the TGV station along a downhill slope, an alarm call that would have awoken the dead, a decent and copious self-service breakfast and then a pleasant stroll through the morning … errr … rain.

The train was on time too and finding a trolley at the top of the lift meant that I had one of the most relaxing arrivals ever at an airport.

It wasn’t to last, though. First thing that I encountered was a soldier on patrol, armed with a machine gun.

We all laughed at the Eastern European countries in the 1960s and 1970s with their soldiers patrolling the streets with their weapons at the ready. How Krushchev and Honecker would be laughing up their sleeves if they were ever to see this here on the streets in the West.

Not only that, can you imagine what carnage might happen to innocent bystanders if 600 rounds per minute were ever sprayed at a fleeing suspect? Something like this, I image, only much much worse.

Not only that, we had an unattended bag (did someone forget their wife?). This caused the terminal to be evacuated. I can’t think why – everyone knows that most suicide bombers these days go up with their luggage. “This is a Public Service Announcement – Abdul the Suicide Bomber Has Just Gone Off On Holiday”.

Anyway, it frightens everyone and ratchets the terror up another few notches so that the next wave of restrictions on personal liberties can come into force without any opposition.

We’ve often heard it said that “why didn’t the people in Germany – or in the USSR – or in France in World War II – rise up against their oppressors?” Well, where’s the uprising in the West?

After that, we were treated to the disagreeable spectacle of a girl about 8 years of age being given a pat-down search. I shall refrain from passing any kind of comment whatever about what might be going through the minds of the people who apply for this kind of job. You can think of your own.

At the check-in, I asked for an aisle seat. “Take this for now” said the girl at check-in, and ask at the reception area.

At the reception area, I was told “you need to chat to the people who welcome you on board the plane”.

And at the boarding of the plane, I was told, as indeed you might have expected, “you should have asked at the check-in”. Yes, another nasty letter on the way to Air Canada. You don’t even get this miserable treatment with a bucket shop airline like Air Transat and Ryanair.

Still, the flight was a new Dreamliner 787 and even hemmed in a row of 4 people, I’ve had much worse. A good selection of films (I watched The Desolation of Smaug [2013] and Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, and there would have been a few others that I would have been happy to see as well.

The vegan meal was excellent too and so I don’t have any complaints on that score either, but they could have been a little more generous with the coffee.

I’m staying again at the Quality Inn on the Cote de Liesse in Dorval, just down the road from tha airport. I stayed here last year and so I can pinch that photo.

It’s a nice hotel, not too far from the airport, and the service buses pass by on their way to the Metro, so it suits me fine. Especially as a 3-day pass on the public transport costs just $18:00.

So last night I went for a walk. Nowhere particular – I just caught the bus and then the Metro to a random station and then walked back some of the way. I didn’t see anything in particular, except this car, to prove that I’m in North America.

I’m not talking about the car itself – you can see them everywhere – but I’m talking about the body rot. When did you last see a car like that? In Europe, I welded a few up like that in the 80s but nothing since.

Anyway, after that, I went to the Cote des Neiges for my assiette falafel and my frozen sorbet next door, and back home.

And just for a change, I got off the bus at the correct bus stop.

-1

Wednesday 27th August 2014 – THIS IS MY HOTEL …

… right in the centre of Lille. The Hotel Continental, right opposite the Lille-Flanders railway station in the Place de la Gare, so it’s a shame that I’m travelling in and out from the Lille-Europe railway station so I had a 10-minute uphill struggle with the giant suitcase. Still, as they say, it’s all downhill from here.

I’m right in the centre of the city so that there’s plenty of food and facilities around (not like at an airport hotel) – in fact I had a good lunch of tomato, baguette and fruit from a supermarket, and an excellent tea from the Flunch just around the corner. And I’m 10 minutes from the station of course, where there are trains that go like stink right to the airport.

And the verdict on the hotel – well, 2 nights here with B&B is costing me the same price as 1 night at the airport and so when I say that the hotel is a little threadbare, I’m not complaining in the least. I’m having more than value for money here and that’s what counts.

And if they were to take up all of the depressing carpets and replace them with a good varnished wooden floor and paint all of the dark-brown woodwork with a nice cream topcoat, it would be 10 times better and I would love it.

So I’ve spent most of the day walking around.

My first encounter with Lille was in the early 1980s when it was a filthy, decayed old hole.

By the time I came back 10 years ago they had cleaned the place up amazingly, just like here at the Place Charles de Gaulle and it’s a vast improvement on how it used to be – so much so that I actually enjoy being here, and that makes a change for a major European city.

With the coming of the TGV here in 1994 there has been some astonishing rebuilding too.

That over there is Euralille, the new commercial centre. It consists of acres and acres of shops, a huge concert venue, piles of studios and apartments and a big student centre, one of the largest in Europe.

All in all, quite an impressive pile. And I bet that it’s been a long time since you’ve heard me say that about anywhere modern.

One place that I’ve always wanted to visit was the citadelle at Lille. It dates from the 15th Century when Flanders was an independent kingdom and was vastly improved by Vauban once the area had fallen to the French.

The walls are pretty much intact and the central barracks, vastly altered in the Napoleonic era, are in excellent condition – so much so that they are still occupied and so it’s not possible to visit there which is a shame.

So afterwards, I went for tea as I said, and now I’m back here going for an early night for I have a very early start in the morning.

Tuesday 26th August 2014 – WHAT A FLAMING SHAMBLES!

Absolutely!

This afternoon at Gerzat we had about 2.5 hours to record our radio programmes for Radio Arverne before I needed to leave to catch my train. 6 programmes this week, which meant that we would need about 2 hours or so.

Normally we would arrive there at about 14:00 and so our 2 hours would take us up to 16:00 leaving plenty of time for my train at Riom at 17:06. However, thinge never normally go according to plan and so we set out earlier, arriving at 13:45. I’d also had some kind of premonition and so on our way down to Gerzat we had stopped at the railway station at Riom so that I could pick up my ticket and so miss the rush-hour rush.

And I’m glad that we did, too.

When we arrived at the radio station, the junior engineer was outside smoking a cigarette. And inside at the office, the secretary told us that it was indeed the junior engineer who would be recording us. “Ahh well”, we breathed a sigh of relief. “He’ll be here in a minute”. That was famous last words, wasn’t it?

By 14:10 I was starting to become restless so I told the secretary how pressed we were for time. She phoned him up and then told us that he would be here in a minute.

By 14:25 I told the secretary that to call him again and tell him that at 16:30 we were walking out, regardless of wherever we were in the programmes.

Anyway, he turned up at just before 14:30 and by 14:34 we were ready to go. At least, some of us were. The engineer had a friend in the recording booth with him and was too busy chatting to see our cues. Every cue was missed and at one stage we overran because he had failed to give us our time signal.

As a result, at 16:30 precisely, we upped and went, even though the final programme was only half-way recorded. How they intend to finish it, I really don’t know, but ask me if I care.

For a change, everything went well-according to plan at Marcillat with Radio Tartasse. It’s usually there that we have our major issues but today, everything was ready and passed off without a hitch, even if I did forget to take my memory stick with me (good job I had the laptop in Caliburn).

It was nice to see Liz and Terry again after all these weeks and to talk to them about their holiday, and Terry gave me some really good news. Apparently Toolstation, Screwfix’s big rival, has now opened for business in France. They don’t stock the range of goods that Screwfix stocks, but from what I have seen, their prices for what they do carry are cheaper. I’ll be interested to see how their prices compare to Brico Depot. Anyway, it’s nice to see one of the major UK D-I-Y suppliers taking the initiative in France.

At Riom Station, my train came in on time. It’s been upgraded from the original rattletrap to something more modern, but it was jam-packed with people. There wasn’t a spare seat on the train. I’ve no idea what was happening there.

And not only was it on time leaving Riom, it was actually on time arriving at Lyon Part-Dieu too. And I felt so much better when we arrived too – leaving all of this mess behind.

However, being on time at Lyon was more than can be said for the TGV. It was 10 minuts late pulling into the station. And the fact that I’m passing comment on it shows you just how unusual this is. Normally, the trains run bang to time.

And while the luggage space was comparatively full, there were quite a few empty seats on the train. Not like last year when we were crammed in like sardines.

So by the time we got to Phoe … errr … Lille we were 27 minutes late, 3 minutes short of the magic 30 minutes that gives me a 25% return on my ticket. And now I’m in my hotel – a 10 minute walk from the TGV station. I’ve had a hot shower and I’m off to bed.

Monday 25th August 2014 – I HAD A LIE-IN THIS MORNING …

… yet even so, I was up and about by 08:05. And after breakfast, I set about packing everything.

And despite everything that I had done, there were still one or two things that I could not find and led to me having a good search around for everything. I reckon that I’ve now found everything that I’ll want, but if that really is the case, it will be a first.

Plenty of room in the suitcase for a change so in an amazing departure from the norm, I’ve cut up a couple of strips of that space-blanket insulation, 1.50m x 1.20m.

There’s a good reason for this. I’ve been using tarpaulins as curtains in the Dodge but that’s not particularly efficient. If I cut each sheet of this insulation into 2 strips 60cms wide and obtain some double-sided tape from Home Depot, I can stick this insulation onto the windows to blank them out and this will be much more appropriate, as well as keeping the temperature in the vehicle a little more comfortable.

Anyway, with all of this insulation in the suitase, the suitcase is very full but doesn’t weigh all that much.

Apart from that, I’ve sorted out the washing, tied up the onions and the garlic, put the shallots in a panier and did some tidying up and cleaning too.

I’ve also has Rosemary, Liz and Cecile on the phone.

Anyway, now I’m off for an early night because I’m going to have an early start tomorrow. There’s quite a bit to do tomorrow and then we’re radioing.

Sunday 24th August 2014 – AFTER THE EXERTIONS OF YESTERDAY …

… I was up and about quite early again. Long before the alarm went off at 07:30 in fact (yes, I had forgotten to switch off the alarms, hadn’t I?)

So a leisurely breakfast and chilling out in front of the DVD player for a while, I pressed on with the next batch of radio shows – I want to get ahead as much as possible if I can.

After lunch, I went round to Cecile’s to do some washing, check her post, sort a few things out for her and to organise one or two things, and then came back here to watch another film. I’m not quite sure what happened then because the next thing that I remember was that it was 20:00 and the film had finished. Yes, crashed out again and I’m not surprised either.

So tomorrow, I’ll have a lie-in and then pack ready to leave, do a mound of washing up and unplug the 12-volt immersion heater. I don’t want that running while I’m away. If it boils up and the water evaporates, I’ll be in trouble.

Saturday 23rd August 2014 – IT’S NOT EVERY DAY …

… that I’m up and out of bed at 06:30, but that was the time that Rob rang me up. And consequently, by about 07:30 we were on the road, fuelled up, tyres on the trailer inflated.

It was heavy going on the Autoroute northwards. It’s the last-but-one Saturday of the holiday season so there were piles of traffic heading towards Paris.

At Orleans we came off the autoroute and headed cross-country via Chartres, Dreux and Evreux to Rouen and then northwards towards Amiens and Abbeville. But Rouen dismayed us. There were major roadworks on the way into the city from the north and the queue was enormous, stretching for miles and miles. Travelling northbound, we had no troubles but it didn’t look good for coming back.

About 30 miles out of Rouen, round about 14:30, we located Rob’s car and loaded it onto the trailer. Strapped down at the back, but I chained it down at the front. Going that kind of distance (over 600kms), I wanted a chain holding the car to the trailer just in case.

We set off on a very scenic trip back. Avoiding Rouen isn’t easy as the River Seine is in the way and so it took several hours to rejoin the main road down near Evreux, but at least we were moving for most of the time.

Heading back towards home we were stopping every 100kms or so to check the strapping on the car – we didn’t want the car falling off the trailer – and we couldn’t go very fast anyway and so it was about midnight when we were finally back at Rob’s and unloading the car.

I was back here by 01:00 but I couldn’t sleep – just like in the old days when I could never sleep after doing a long shift on the taxis – and so I watched a film for ages.

Tomorrow I’ll have to uncouple the trailer and park it up properly.

But the irony of all of this is that we travelled almost 12OOkms without a hiccup and without attracting any kind of attention whatsoever, but at Evaux les Bains, just 10 kms from our destination and at 23:30 at night, we were stopped in a gendarme barrage, looking for drunk drivers and the like. They had a good look around, a good inspection of the trailer and then a length chat, and waved us on our way.

It was just 1km after that that the retaining strap that was holding the rear of the car snapped. I’m glad that I had chained it down as well.

-1

Friday 22nd August 2014 – IT’S AN ILL WIND …

… that doesn’t blow anyone any good. And so it is here.

In the realisation that I am not now going to be able to find the time, before I go away, to go to Commentry to buy the 16mm wire that I need to run through this piping, first thing this morning I sealed up the hole in the wall and put everything back.

And in doing that, I’ve chucked away a pile of stuff that was lying around, found a few exciting things that I had lost years ago, and tidied up a pile of stuff. Now, in the little corner where I sit, it’s never been so tidy. And that’s progress, isn’t it?

So now I can sit in comfort and work on the laptop.

Which I did.

I finished off the additional notes for Radio Arverne, all 6 weeks of them, including events for the ‘what’s on” section and I’ve even found a recipe. So that’s fine.

I’ve also done two rock programmes, including compiling the live concerts, which is what takes the time. The text for the second rock programme needs completing, and I need to write the additional notes for the recording that we will do when I come back.

That will be all of the radio, completed until the end of October. I wish I had had more time to complete it today but there’s only so much that I can do.

Now I’m off to bed as I have an early – like 06:00 – start in the morning.

And I hope that it’s warmer tonight. Last night it was 9.4°C. Cold it was, but that’s not a patch on Wednesday night’s temperature of … errr …. (or maybe “brrrr”) 7.2°C.

And this is August too!

Thursday 21st August 2014 – THIS TIME NEXT WEEK …

… I’ll be at 34,000 feet. I hope that the aeroplane will be too!

And I can’t wait to go either – I need a break. Especially after today. It took an hour and a half to sort out the difficult part of the wiring issues. The problem was relatively straightforward but it didn’t half take some fixing. What had happened was that when we must have fed the huge cable through the piping, the pipe had come away from its mounting and dropped down through the floor some way. Pushing the pipe back up had wedged it underneath the floor and trapped the wires.

Of course, now that the plasterboard has been put on the wall in the shower room, it’s not possible to reach the pipe from underneath. Consequently I had to drill out the floor from above and chisel part of it away. That freed the wires off but the insulation on the one that had been trapped under the floor was damaged so I had to wrap it in insulation tape. It’s a good job that I noticed.

But this huge armoured cable going through the pipe – I can’t understand that. Why did I choose that? Two strands of 16mm cable takes up much less room than that and will be much better at carrying the surplus current upstairs when I finally manage to move the immersion heater up here when the bedroom is finished. Consequently I pulled the cable right out.

It still wasn’t as easy as it might have been to pass this cable through the pipe but anyway, there it is. And there’s plenty of room for 2 strands of 16mm cable as well as one or two others if necessary.

Before I could restart work after lunch, Rosemary came round and we pulled up the onions and garlic. And what a crop! I’ve never ever been so lucky as to have had a crop like this. It seems that this wet weather has done some good somewhere.

That took us until 19:30 and I was looking forward then to coming upstairs and tidying up because it is a total disaster here what with me trying to pack as well as having to clear part of the attic to access this cabling.

But it’s not to be. I’ve had a phone call that means that either tomorrow or Saturday, Caliburn and I will have to take the big trailer on a rather long run. Consequently I had to empty out Caliburn and rescue the trailer from the undergrowth where it lives. Of course, there was a light out so I had to fix that too and that took me right up to 21:30 when it was too dark to do any more and I didn’t feel like tidying up at that time of night.

Tomorrow I’ll have to finish off all of the stuff for Radio Anglais if we aren’t going until Saturday. The radio stuff can’t be left and so for the moment this is the priority task.

EPIC HALL

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