Just in case yo were wondering, last night was very much like the previous couple of nights. And today was like the last couple of days where I’ve spent a great deal of time flat out on my chair.
When the alarm went off this morning, I was dead to the world again and it took me a couple of minutes to leave the bed
But I think that that was about the only time that I was asleep because you’ve absolutely no idea of the miles that I travelled during the night. We’ve had a few where we’ve logged the miles but this one will be up there with the best of them.
I started out in Labrador last night sorting out some food, trying to make up some burgers from bits and pieces that I had lying around that I could cook in the air fryer. When I looked in the air fryer there was a load of breaded fish-type fillet things in there and a load of other food lying around too. I thought to myself that if I don’t put that lot into a fridge or a freezer or something it’s all going to have to be thrown away.
And then back in Newfoundland again. My mother had gone away for a few days and left the kids behind. She’d given us a few tasks to do but we hadn’t been particularly diligent in doing them. For a start, all the plastic bottles and jars were still in the container under the sink. When she came back I hastily rearranged it so that it didn’t look quite so obvious. She began to have an enquiry into why things weren’t done. She became quite obnoxious and short-tempered about it. I was beyond caring at this particular point so I snapped back and called her a lot of names that weren’t particularly polite under any circumstances. We had this enormous slanging match that went on with her shouting, trying to keep me quiet and me hurling vulgar gratuitous abuse
And yet again where there was some kind of director of a Holiday Camp in Newfoundland who was something of a megalomaniac and was trying to build up his own evil empire. he was converting all the camps of the children in his care and using the money to buy weapons etc. He was bankrupting the community but wasn’t intending to let up on anything. They took him to court, some of the people, because they’d noticed that he had applied for control of a couple more accounts of the children in his care. This led to a huge Court case and he was prevented fromopening, holding or operating any furhter bank accounts. But no-one believed that he would be able to respect the court order and everyone was preparing for the worst
There was another disreputable financier somewhere. He was giving the while finance system a really bad name. He had his office in a big building in New York. It was a couple of floors underneath in the same building of where the President of that weird American company was where I worked. Everyone was quite surprised that knowing this man’s proclivities that they were in the same building and not quite some considerable distance away. I was talking to someone about the system of finances, saying about this network of corruption and so on and they replied “things can only get better from here on” but I wasn’t convinced at all. I thought that there was plenty of time and plenty of room for everything to go worse.
Then there was an incident at a football match. We’d arrived early and took our seats, sitting there waiting for everything to happen. The game was a while off starting so we stood up to stretch our legs when a couple of well-known footballers came along and sat in our seats. We told them to clear off. This led to some considerable argument about how they should have seats because of who they are and what they’d contributed to the game etc. I said “that has nothing to do with it. My friend and I are taxi drivers and we contribute an enormous amount to society too, but at least we had the sense to book our seats early for this game”. If they wanted seats they should have done the same. It led to quite a long argument. It wasn’t until that guy’s dog went to sit on my seat while I was standing up and I grabbed hold of the dog. In the end these two footballers wandered away muttering curses and things like that under their breaths
After that it was Friday lunchtime and I had to leave work to go to run some errands and then pick up a bike because I had to cycle somewhere for the weekend for a meeting or party or something. I had my bedding with me so I had to sort the bedding out and wrap it into a pillow case then I could prepare to go. On the way out there was a question of an old car that I’d bought, a big 14hp Vauxhall from the 1930s. It had been stolen and recovered, and I’d bought it. Since then I’d decided that I was going to sell it so I had to collect all the photos up and many of the photos were taken by the previous owner. Then I wasn’t sure whether wherever I’d left the car for the moment was going to let me sell it from there or whether I needed to talk to them first. Then there was a story about the policmen who had to go to give chase to someone. They pulled out of their yard and it was like the Keystone Cops watching them drive through these narrow streets running pedestrians over and hitting vehicles coming the other way. Eventually they came across their chief superintendent who was also in a car. They had a collision with him but he sent them on their way. It turned out that it was a fleet of bikes that were leaving work. The issue was all these bikes riding on the wrong side of the road.
Back in this dream later and I came into Shavington to look for this car. The first thing that I noticed when I reached Gresty was that the whole road realignment had changed. It took me a few minutes to collect my bearings. Where the Cheshire Cheese pub had been had been flattened. It was just a demolition site full of weeds. I drove up and down the road trying to find this house but suddenly realised that it would have made things much easier if I’d had the house number with me so I could simply have gone and knocked on the door. No house in the street resembled what I’d seen in the photographs so I was beginning to think that I’d probably be better off going home, finding the number of the house and coming back again. That would probably be much quicker.
It’s hardly surprising that I was thoroughly exhausted after all that.
Nevertheless I struggled to my feet and went for my medication. And after that it took me a while to get going. For a couple of hours I couldn’t do all that much.
Once I started work though I’ve been looking for stuff about someone called John Osborn Williams.
Born in Cardiff into the timber trade, he came to Canada in the early years of the 20th Century and saw the opportunities. Despite having been bankrupted in the past he played on the innocence of the Newfoundland Government and ended up with a large timber concession on the Labrador coast at the height of the Depression.
With there being no official schooling in Labrador (it was a British colony until 1949) many people down the coast were illiterate and had had no contact with the outside world and so they were prey to Williams and his enterprise. For almost 15 years he drove them as a slave driver would and exploited them ruthlessly, all for 25 cents an hour which they had to spend in the company shop.
What’s strange about this though, or maybe it isn’t, is that opinions about him are “varied”. Some people see him as nothing more than a dyed-in-the-wool villain whereas others see him as some kind of victim of a wicked conspiracy.
The cleaner came round today as usual. She gave me some good news about our neighbour who had the bad fall a few weeks ago. Although it’s unlikely that she’ll ever fully recover she’s managed to set foot outside the building for a couple of occasions, with some help. In fact she’s probably doing better than me right now
There were too many leftovers today to use with some of my curry and naan bread. I was going to simply lengthen it with a small potato and make a curry like that but I had another idea.
What I did was to tip a few kidney beans in it and turned it into a chili. And it was quite nice too. I shall remember that for another time. It makes a nice change to vary the diet every so often.
It’s a shame that I spent so much of the day crashed out as I had so much to do. I probably won’t be able to sleep now but I’ll have a try all the same.
Tomorrow the physio should be coming, if he decides to put in an appearance. I’ll have to have a shower too so that I’ll smell nice. I don’t know what to have for tea tomorrow as yet but I’ll worry about that at the appropriate time. Right now I just want to go to bed.
