… with these perishing sleep issues.
An early night, a film on the laptop and there I was, gone. Only to wake up a short while later and take an absolute age to go back to sleep again.
But I was on my travels too during the night. My niece Rachel was in Canada trying to work out some connections with associated companies and was phoning around. She asked me to help out too, and one of them that I called was a taxi company in … errr … Detroit, about 1,000 miles away. And when I did phone them up, the girl who answered the ‘phone had the air of being totally gormless, and I couldn’t understand why Rachel would – firstly – want to associate her business with a business so far away and – secondly – why she would want her business to be associated with a firm that was so clueless.
Alone again at breakfast, and then back down here to carry on with my research. I’ve been wading through this report from these Finnish geologists and found some more exciting stuff that might change a few of my – and other peoples’ – perceptions.
And that is that the Moravian missionaries in the north of Labrador kept very detailed records of day-to-day life in their mission stations for a period of more than 150 years. And you’ll see where this is leading.
In my writings, I’ve commented on several occasions about how certain places, such as the Norse landing sites, don’t look like the kind of places that I would choose for landing. But my opinions might have to change.
Labrador and Newfoundland were, in the Ice Age, covered with ice to a depth of at least 4,000 feet and that has an enormous weight. Since the end of the Ice Age and the melting of a lot of the ice, the land has slowly been rising. Obviously the weight of the ice had compressed the earth, the soil and the rock, and now the pressure is off the land, it’s springing slowly back into shape.
The Moravians kept records for this at some of their stations, and a change of level of a rise of 15 feet was recorded at one station “in one generation”. Extrapolate that out over 1,000 years and you are going to have a totally different shape of coastline, and the raised beaches that you see all along the coast of Labrador and Newfoundland give ample testimony for that.
Looking at the coastline today may give you a totally different idea of what the land might have been like in recent history.
At lunchtime I went out for my baguette and then at some point in the proceedings I crashed out for half an hour or so. A brief exchange of pleasantries with my djervushka and then the second half of my mega-meal which was just as delicious as last night.
I’ll try again to have a decent sleep and tomorrow I have work to do. I need to go to Caliburn for the washing soap, and then to the launderette to wash my clothes. I’m running out.
But winter is on its way. Snow is forecast for the next few days and the temperature is threatening to drop.
Minus 9°C might not be cold in Canadian, or even Auvergnat terms, but it’s cold enough for here.
