Tag Archives: crash out

Saturday 10th January 2015 – I’M A FIRM BELIEVER …

… that if a thing is destined to happen, it will happen. Regardless of however much input one puts (or doesn’t put) into the whole procedure. It seems to happen time and time again and the only secret of this is, as Jacqueline De Bellefort said in Death on The Nile – “You have to follow your star wherever it leads, even to death itself”.
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And with this in mind, I went off to Commentry this afternoon.

Mind you, I nearly didn’t.

I had made a stunning breakthrough with this 3D program that I’ve been playing with. I had totally given up on the modern version of it ages ago and had gone back to an ancient version, and there I was last night trying to make a 4th Generation character work properly when, all of a sudden, it all clicked into place and I was so engrossed in what I was doing that it was 06:00 this morning before I realised it, and I hadn’t had any tea either.

Consequently, it was 11:20 when I crawled out of my stinking pit and seeing the bright sunlight and clear sky I resolved to go to Commentry and the swimming baths. Pausing only to add a little more filler to the wall where there was a hole or two, at 13:30 I was off on the road.

The pool was a little (just a little) warmer than last time, practically empty and the shower was just as delicious, even though the private showers were closed for maintenance. And seeing that I was only half a mile from Bricomarché, I went off in search of some sunken hinges – I’ll need these for the trapdoor that I’ll be making in a week or so.

While I was there, not only did I find siome hinges that will do the job, I solved the problem of the handrail for the stairs. Some huge screwed eyes, with 16mm holes, and a 2-metre length of some very nice 14mm hemp rope – that will make a lovely handrail.

But here’s the exciting bit, that relates to what I was talking about earlier. I was thinking again about these wooden ends for the plasterboarding. Cutting up pine boards was my original idea but at Montlucon the other week the stuff on offer was rubbish. At Bricomarché the stuff is so much better, the staff is so much more friendly and they have cutting facilities too.

So while I was wandering around turning things over in my mind, I came across the tool sale, and there on offer at just €44:00, was a cheap 600-watt table saw. It was the last one in stock too.

It’s not the ideal thing, but it’s the nearest that I can find and i’ll need to build a table for it if I’m going to cut doors down doors and things like this, but for what I want to do at the moment it’s ideal. I can soon trim down half a dozen floorboards with this.

I went to the new NOZ at Commentry too. I didn’t buy anything exciting but nevertheless it was a good opportunity to have a look round.

Back here, nice and clean for once, I crashed out for an hour or two. And I’m not surprised either. And I’m off to bed in a minute with nice, clean bedding too. And as it’s Sunday tomorrow, I ccan have a nice lie-in.

But I’m glad I followed my star all the way to Bricomarché at Commentry today.

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Thursday 11th December 2014 – I FINALLY BIT THE BULLET TODAY.

When the alarm went off this morning at 07:30, not only was I up and about already but I had even had my breakfast and drunk my coffee. Having had an early-ish night last night I was wide awake by 05:00 and by 06:30 I gave up on the idea and made my breakfast.

I was outside by 10:00 and the first job was the check the tyres on Caliburn. The right-hand rear tyre looked distinctly low.

It wasn’t, as it happened. It must have been an optical illusion. But nevertheless it gave me the opportunity to try out the portable power board that I built the other day.

Here it is wired up to the flying lead on the Kubota tractor and the air compressor ran quite nicely off that. All the four tyres are now at the correct pressure and I’ve even charged the tank on the air compressor.

As I said before, the idea of fitting the flying lead on the Kubota was an impressive decision.

After all of that, I fitted the inline fuse for the overcharge circuit on the power board in the barn – the fuse that I had forgotten and wbout which I spoke yesterday.

I also fitted an LED striplight in the barn so that it illuminates the power board – whenever the power board might be finished.

After lunch (and after a little snooze too) I fetched up a pile of wood for the fire for the next few days and then carried on with the front panel for the power board. Almost everything is now in place and I’ve even done some of the wiring on it.

However, I did manage to shear off a screw on one of the connectors on one of the data loggers so I had to work out how to dismantle that, remove the broken screw and then find another screw to replace it. And that didn’t take only 5 minutes either.

In other news, I had a friend from the North-East of England who mysteriously disappeared out of touch about three years or so ago, and I had no news at all. Anyway, all of a sudden, he’s reappeared, and that’s cheered me up.

I’m resisting the temptation to ask him where he’s been – if he wants me to know, he will tell me. Usually with my friends and associates, it’s one of three reasons –
1) – they’ve shuffled off this mortal coil (clearly not the case here)
2) – they’ve been removed to a place of safety in accordance with the provisions of the Mental Health Acts
3) – they’ve been sent down and detained at Her Majesty’s Pleasure – the more usual fate of my friends, although what pleasure Her Majesty could possibly have from detaining any of my friends is very hard to understand.

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Thursday 4th December 2014 – WHEN WAS THE LAST TIME …

… that I was in bed before 23:00?

It wasn’t last night, to be sure, but it wasn’t long after 23:00. Certainly at 23:00 I was downstairs taking the stats, the last thing that I do before going to bed.

However I was awake at about 06:00, despite having an exciting night where I was in Montreal. I’d been to see someone about mounting a wind turbine on my land in New Brunswick but he told me that it was a waste of time. In fact he had had the same idea as me and bought some land on the Canada side of the Mars Hill wind farm in the USA, but has decided to sell it on as the projected extension of the farm wasn’t ever going to happen. We then had a long drive around Montreal with me taking the wrong turnings all the time, and him jumping out of the car each time that I did so, and waiting for me on the corner when I realised my error and turned back.

Once I was awake, I couldn’t go back to sleep and was tossing and turning until the alarm went off.

After breakfast, I went round to Liz and Terry’s. Liz was at work but Terry had a medical appointment at Riom and needed someone to go with him.

That was a pleasant morning, not the least of reasons being that I met a couple of people there who go to watch the football at Pionsat. I have’t seen then for w while, and it turned out that the guy has been quite ill. He’s had an operation in the hospital and was going back for a check-up.

On our way home, we had a major surprise. Just outside Les Ancizes we noticed something big and black moving at quite a substantial rate of knots across the field in the distance. As it drew closer (and what a good artist it was) we realised that it was a sanglier – a wild boar – and one of the biggest that I had ever seen. He roared across the field and right across the road in front of us – a really impressive sight. Magnificent beasts, these wild boar. No wonder I love living right out here.

I stopped off at the Intermarche at Pionsat to do my shopping. These shopping trips are getting earlier and earlier in the week but there’s no point going out shopping when I don’t need to.

And isn’t this attitude a change?

Back here I don’t know what happened but at one moment I was sitting eating my lunch (it was 15:00) and the next thing I remember, it was 18:06. I had crashed out completely and I’ve no idea why, especially after my early night last night.

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Monday 24th November 2014 – WE WERE RADIOING TODAY.

Just this afternoon though, and that’s just as well because I didn’t wake up until 11:00 today.

I should never have drunk that last cup of coffee at Liz and Terry’s ysterday, because it was long after 06:00 that I went to bed. I’m still having these sleep issues, aren’t I?

After breakfast I went round to Liz and Terry’s, and Liz and I went off to to record our radio programmes for Radio Arverne. We did 5 programmes and that took a bit of arranging as there isn’t going to be a programme for Christmas week. I had anticipated this, however, and with 5 weeks of radio programmes prepared, we had taken a sixth week’s events with us so that we could seamlessly skip the Christmas week.

However, I have been asked to prepare another Christmas special – a one-hour programme of variety and entertainment – and I have just two weeks to do it as well. I shall have to get weaving, won’t I?

On the way home, I fuelled up. Diesel at the Carrefour at Menetrol was just €1.19. That’s the cheapest that I’ve seen it for years and so I squeezed as much in as I could, and I wished that I had taken a container with me too. The fruitshop in Mozac produced a red pepper and yet another pile of grapes. They were delicious too.

I dropped Liz off at home and came back here where I promptly crashed out on the sofa.

I need to do something about these sleep issues.

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Thursday 6th November 2014 – THE BIG PROBLEM …

… about portable telephones these days is that there are fewer and fewer public telephone boxes.

Consequently when Yours Truly and his sidekick Strawberry Moose are off in Caliburn on a Mission to rescue people in distress, there is nowhere for us to go to put our underpants on outside our trousers. As a result, we drove all the way to Rouen dressed quite normally.

The drive was quite uneventful and I found a place to park up in the secluded car park of a restaurant right on the edge of the city of Rouen and froze to death all night. It really was cold.

I had my phone call at 06:40 and then went to look for the hotel. And I do have to say that I have come to hate the centre of Rouen – really hate it. It’s all one-way streets and pedestrianised areas and I couldn’t reach the hotel. IN the end I had to park up and let my “client” come to me.

It was 08:00 when we finally met up, far too late, and then went off to Pissy-Poville (yes, it really does exist) for this recovery job. There was no way to remove the vehicle involved and so we had to empty it of everything – and I DO mean everything. That wasn’t as easy as it might sound either as it was so misshapen that we couldn’t open the doors. We were there for ages with a series of heavy crowbars and hacksaws, but we managed it in the end.

It then took ages to fill up Caliburn and once that was done, we had a drive back gome. And that wasn’t quite so easy either for we had a really full load up on Caliburn and he wasn’t impressed at all. Still, at 18:00, I was all unloaded and back in Pionsat.

What a day!

And it wasn’t finished either. I have some friends coming here and I’d booked them in at the Queue de Milan Hotel in Pionsat. I went round there to pay for the room now that I was free, only to find that they were there and had paid the bill. Consequently I took them to the Dauphin restaurant in Montaigut, giving them a guided tour of the town while we were at it.

I came back here and crashed out – hardly surprising given what I’d been through today. I’m far too old for this.

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Saturday 25th October 2014 – A GAME OF TWO HALVES

I’ve just come back from the footy at Pionsat where the home side has been defeated by one of the teams from the suburbs of Clermont Ferrand, Clermont Biblioteque.

And if ever there was a game of two halves, then this was it, that’s to be sure. Clermont were a big, quick, powerful team and they were sprinting through FC Pionsat St Hilaire’s makeshift defence almost at will.

4-0 up at half-time without even breaking sweat, although I do have to say that a penalty that they were awarded was not ever in a million years a penalty – the keeper clearly pushed the ball away from the Clermont player and that latter fell over the outstretched keeper’s leg after the ball had gone. Not only that, the fourth goal was the last kick of the first half and had the referee blown his whistle 2 seonds earlier this goal wouldn’t have counted anyway.

When Clermont scored their 5th goal straight from the kick-off, all sorts of horror stories were running through my head. And then a most astonishing thing happened.

Nico found the ball in plenty of space about 30 yards out, looked up to see the keeper about 15 yards off his line, and lobbed the ball right over him into the net.

10 minutes later, Pionsat won a corner and the ball broke out to blond Frederic who was about 25 yards out on the left-hand side of the penalty area. He launched it low and hard back into the area and, unbelievably, it sailed right through the crowds and into the far corner of the net.

If that wasn’t enough, about 10 minutes after that, Anthony lobbed a beautiful ball over the defence into space and Nico, beating the offside trap cleverly, beat the keeper comrotably to score a third.

Clermont launched a couple of huge waves of attack and only some desperate defending by Pionsat kept them out. And if they had defended like that earlier in the game they wouldn’t have been in all of these problems. It really was magnificent stuff.

The match ended with FC Pionsat St Hilaire back on the attack, camped in the opposition half trying to claw their way back into the game. It was a shame that a couple of Clermont’s early goals had counted.

Apart from that, I’ve been radioing today – writing a couple of programmes and a rock show for Radio Anglais in my comfortable abode up here. And I crashed out for a couple of hours too – I can’t think why. It’s not as if I’ve been overworking just now.

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Thursday 16th October 2014 – THIS WAS ANOTHER MORNING …

… when it was difficult to haul myself out of the stinking pit. I’m not doing too well at this.

After breakfast, I started on some work for the radio programmes and prepared a live concert for the rock programmes for Radio Anglais. This concert is not so easy to prepare as it consists of live recordings from a variety of different concerts and I’ve had to edit them together to mke a seamless performance. We ended up being a good few minutes short and I found a studio track to fill the gap so I had to edit in some applause and links. The lengths that I have to go through for my listeners, but it’s worth it because it’s made quite a good concert and I’m impressed with the editing.

After lunch I attacked a huge pile of errant papers and most of them have ended up in the bin. I there was, however, some good stuff that would do quite nicely for the radio programmes so I’ve cut them out to save for later.

I’ve also been editing the kitchen equipment that is up here too. I can’t think why I have half of it up here as I don’t need anything like this much.

This evening I crashed out again for another half hour or so and then I had another go at the aubergine and kidney bean casserole. It’s nice not having to cook much when I have a pile of that.

Wednesday 15th October 2014 – I WAS SOMEWHAT DISTRACTED …

…today and didn’t accomplish anything like what I intended to do.

It’s difficult to raise myself out of bed at the moment, particularly as it was another 04:00 night (or early morning) last night by the time that I had finished what I was doing. But after breakfast I made a start (or, rather, carried on) with some work that had been backing up for quite some time on the computer.

Rosemary rang me up during the afternoon – she wants to take a rain-check on our shopping trip as she has the roofers round. Her roof was badly damaged in that hailstorm last year and she’s had an emergency tarpaulin over it since then. The insurance company’s roofers have been executing their clients in strict rotation, and they’ve now appeared at Rosemary’s. Naturally, after all this time, she doesn’t want to slow them up now that they’ve finally arrived.

I stopped work at about 19:00 (yes, I was rather carried away by what I was doing) when the battery went flat again in the laptop (there’ no doubt that this little Acer Aspire notebook and its 5 or 6 hours of battery life was a magnificent purchase) to watch a DVD, but crashed out in the middle and I’ve no idea why because it wasn’t as if I had been doing anything exhausting.

I made one of my huge aubergine and kidney-bean casseroles for tea – and as usual there’s enough left over for another three meals and that saves me having to cook for the next few days, which is always a useful idea.

After tea, it was back on the laptop again to carry on all of this sorting out of files. I’m not sure where all of this will finish but so far I’ve liberated about 10GB of space on the hard drive and many of the files are much easier to find now. If I carry on like this, I shan’t know myself.

Monday 6th October 2014 – IT’S A GOOD JOB …

… that I wasn’t planning on going over to the Charlevoix. I pulled into Riviere-du-Loup just in time to see the ferry to St Simeon steaming out of the harbour.

Mind you it would have been nice to have been on it, but frankly I hadn’t given the matter any thought at all.

And yes, I’m now back on the road having a leisurely drive back to the airport at Montreal. I can’t believe that my time in North America is drawing to a close already.

I was up early and that gave me an opportunity to say goodbye to everyone here. I’ve been here in Centreville for over a week and that’s not like me at all. Normally, there are places to go, things to do and people to see, but I seem to have gone to ground this year.

I had some recording work to do for Rachel and then went up to the tyre depot to say goodbye to everyone there. And then I hit the road.

The Trans-Canada Highway took me up to the mountains where I stopped for lunch (and a little doze in the sunlight too if I were honest) and then down to the shores of the St Lawrence. At Riviere du Loup, I bought a new storage box to replace the mangy cardboard ones that I’ve had since 2011 and also a $100 telephone recharge. That’ll keep my number active for 12 months by which time I’ll (hopefully) be back. It was extraordinarily difficult to have the phone accept the payment and in the end I had to telephone customer services. That’s not like me, but I suspect that the touch screen in the telephone is on its way out.

I drove along the autoroute following the southern shore of the St Lawrence, but leaving at Riviere-Ouelle for a tofu ice cream (we’ve talked about these before) and then back on the highway. As it grew dark I came to a rest area and this will do me for the night. Rachel had given me the rest of the curry and so that did me nicely for tea, and then I watched a film before having an early night – my last-but-one in North America for the moment.

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Friday 3rd October 2014 – WE WENT TO NEW HAMPSHIRE THIS AFTERNOON

Darren had to go down there this afternoon after work to take the engine of his pulling truck back to the makers so that they could have a look at it.

However, he had suffered a slight welding flash last night and that makes driving uncomfortable in the sunlight, especially as there’s a 200-mile stretch between Houlton and Portland in Maine where the road is full south-east and the bright setting sun is in your face for the entire distance. Consequently, a second driver was required for that leg, and I was the only one not doing anything.

I’d had a bad night too, so I ran a few errands here and there, and then crashed out in a layby for an hour or so. I may as well use the free time profitably.

We were held up at the border by the US Border Patrol, as anyone reading these notes might have prophesied. Apparently the engine is classed as “commercial goods” as “it can be used to generate income”, hence an import tax was required. What income it could generate with two con-rods sticking through the sump became a matter of quite some considerable discussion.

Apparently anglers who cross the border with fishing rods, and golfers with golf clubs, and anyone with a car or van might now be liable to a US import tax now – all these items are capable of generating income. And what about a man who crosses the border with a woman? There is an enormous number of street corners in the USA after all and so the income-generating potential is enormous.

But the USA customs officials were intransigent and that was that. But whatever is going on in the USA? It’s almost as if they don’t want people to come to their country to spend … gulp … a good deal of money … … in their country.

We fuelled up at Oakfield and then I took the wheel for the 200-mile dash down the highway. A big Chevy C5500 with a V8 6.6-litre Duramax diesel engine. It’s the biggest thing that I’ve driven since I had a tour bus, and all the way through the rush hours of Bangor, Augusta and Portland too. And I managed it without hitting anything and killing anyone too.

Once it was dark, Darren retook the wheel and we drove a little further on to a shopping mall just off the highway where he met a few of his friends for a chat, and then we continued on along the old highways, passing many of the places that I drove through on my way here, right into the depths of darkest New Hampshire. We stopped in the car park of a small cafe-restaurant place, Darren on the front seats and me in the back, and I went out like a light and that was that.

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Wednesday 1st October 2014 – NOT FOR NOTHING …

… is this area known as the French Fry Capital Of The World. And not for nothing does it have the world’s largest food processing plant. It’s the potato harvesting time and you can’t move on the roads without squidging a potato that has fallen off the back of an overleaded potato lorry.

And with the weather having been dry for the last while or so there are clouds of dust all over the horizon where the potato rippers are out harvesting this years crop. All this automation is a far cry from when I used to go spud-bashing as a kid.

You never know – the McCain Frozen Chips that you eat next yar light be the very ones that you are seeing here being ripped out

After that, I’ve been hunting down old railway lines.

As we mentioned the other day, there was formerly a railway line that ran along the banks of the Saint Jonh River, and a branch left the main line at Woodstock to come up to Centreville. In fact, the tractor-pulling track in Centreville is situated on the former site of the railway goods yard.

I set out today to see if there were any vestiges of the old line still remaining, and here on the edge of town I found, not darkness, but an old bridge that very likely carried the line over the river that runs through the town.

It looks as if it’s in the correct place and going in the correct direction so it’s a fairly safe bet.

Further along the road is the town of Lakeville and on the back road that runs (eventually) to the Saint John River is where the old track bed crosses the road.

And knowing nothing at all about anything related to this railway line, this is the site that looks to me like the most logical site to have built the railway station.

As I have said before, only in the UK has everything that there is to be known about all railway lines in the country been recorded and documented. In all other countries of the world, the old abandoned railway lines have simply been forgotten.

And as I have also said before … "and you will say again" – ed … Canada ruthlessly out-Beechinged Beeching when it came to savaging the country’s rail network. There’s practically nothing left of it, and passenger transport is definitely a thing of the past.

This afternoon I spent sitting in a Ford Ranger 4×4 pickup. 2011 (so it is probably one of the very last to be made), white, one owner, main-agent maintained, 49,000 kms on the clock and looking as if it’s just come out of the factory. It was love at first sight, I’ll tell you that, but the price tag of a mere $16950 means that the love will remain unrequited.

But it was a magnificent vehicle, a credit to its previous owner, and probably worth every penny of its sale tag.

It was at the Ford main agent in Woodstock and I ended up having a long chat with the owner. They do have Rangers in fairly often but very few make it onto the forecourt. Most of them are sent straight away to the auctions at Moncton. Anyway, he now knows what I’m looking for and, more in hope that expectation, he has my phone number.

I crashed out this afternoon at the side of the road – I had another really bad night last night and was still awake at 05:00 – and then came back here for tea. Now I’m off for an early night.

And October already.

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Tuesday 16th September 2014 – I’VE REACHED THE SEASIDE.

This motel where I found myself last night would have been really good value (apart from keeping on dropping the internet connection which annoyed me intensely when I was trying to work) but it was not at all the kind of place that I was looking for.

And I had a really bad night’s sleep too. That coffee that I had with Hannah did me no good at all.

Seeing as it was dark last night after I had left Hannah, I went off this morning for a little wander around the University campus to see what there was to see.

And it seems that apart from being at the most prestigious University in Canada, if not the entire English-speaking world, Hannah is also at probably the most beautiful one as well, because it really is nice and civilised here.

There’s a railway line here at Antigonish, which is a surprise as Canada really out-Beechinged Beeching when it came to decimating the railway network.

Judging by the rails it receives plenty of use, but the station doesn’t get any at all which is a tragedy for many people living around here. Canada really was ruthless when it came to gutting its passenger facilities. If it wasn’t for the fact that this is the main line for the oil that’s landed at Port Hawkesbury on Cape Breton Island, this line would have been long gone too.

From here I wander off along the Nova Scotia coast because it certainly is beautiful around here. I have thousands of photos that I took and it’s hard to find just one that would do justice to the view.

This one is as good as any, taken from the end of the road down to Williams Point, just a few miles outside Antigonish. If you’re a fan of the outdoor life, then the coast of Nova Scotia is certainly the place to be.

There’s a town called Monastery along the coast and it is so-called because there’s a monastery here. This is it, a couple of miles outside the town, and it’s called Our Lady of Grace.

It’s not very well-known but I once tried the monastic life, but I didn’t last too long. It was the monotonous diet that did it for me. There were only two monks who worked in the kitchen, the Chip Monk and the Fish Friar.

There’s the Canso Strait just down there at the bottom of the hill and Cape Breton Island is over there on the other side of the strait. That’s our destination for this afternoon and we’ll be there in 10 minutes with a bit of luck, God’s help and a bobby.

The south side of the island isn’t all that interesting apart from the old French fort at Louisbourg, I drove the central road in 2010 and so I’ll be going up along the north west coast.

We mentioned the decimated Canadian railway network earlier, and this is my lunch stop at the site of the old Troy railway station.

There used to be a railway line that ran from the Canso Strait to Inverness as there used to be all coal mines out around there and the railway was used to haul away the coal. It opened in 1901 but passenger traffic ceased in 1959 and goods finally ceased in late 1980s although been tottering along on the edge of closure for years. Of course, the mines have all gone too. In fact I can’t think of any coal mine still operating on Cape Breton Island.

Coming out of the back end of Port Hood on the old gravel road over the headland, you’ll see why I’ve chosen this particular way round the island. The views from up here are really stunning looking north towards Inverness

And you are lucky that I took this photo. 5 seconds later and I was shrouded in dust from a school bus that roared past me like there as no tomorrow and it was like a Sahara dust storm.

One of the “games” that we play on our travels is “101 uses for a redundant school bus”. School buses are only licensed for a certain number of years and so the countryside is littered with abandoned and redundant school buses. It’s interesting to see what people do with them.

Transforming them into pickups is certainly one of the best ideas that I’ve seen.

The biggest town on this part of the coast is Inverness and it’s quite famous for its wonderful beach. This is what I’ve come here to see, and you can tell that they aren’t wrong about that.

And although it’s not by any means late (despite how dark it looks), my bad night has finally caught up with me. I’ve not been able to find a coffee place and I’m too tired to make one, so I’m going to crash out right here.

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Saturday 13th September 2014 – DAY FOUR OF THE HARVEST JAZZ AND BLUES FESTIVAL

Little did I know it last night, with everything being so quiet and peaceful where I had parked last night, that the tents around me were packed full of infants.

When I’m in Canada, I’m usually up quite early – the alarm goes off at 06:30 and I’m usually awake long before that, but these kids beat me easily to the draw. It’s a good job that I wasn’t planning on a lie-in this morning.

I dashed through the photos and the texts and then set off for the Tim Hortons on the edge of Fredericton to upload everything to the web, stopping off at the petrol station at Keswick where fuel is just 122.9 cents per litre.

I wandered up to Value Village to see whether they had anything in the line of a new tote bag to replace the one where the zip has broken and sure enough, the place did me proud. There was a new $50 rucksack in there at just $12.99. Not quite the cavernous one that I was hoping to find but it’s certainly bigger than anything else that I might find at that price.

Parking at Fredericton was horrendous today. It took me ages to find somewhere that was near the city centre, and there was still a long walk into town. Still, needs must when the devil drives, I suppose.

First person whom I stumble upon is Mike Peters. He’s had a promotion this year, playing at the CBC busking spot in the centre of town. You may well recall that last year he was playing stuck around the back of everywhere by the footbridge over the by-pass.

I’m not quite sure where he will go from here, but it’s a shame, if not a tragedy, that he can’t be given a place as a support act at one of the more formal venues. He’s streets better than some of the performers we’ve seen on there.

Here at the Officers Square, this is Double Dutch Hutch whom we have seen before. I’m not sure when but it might have been 2011, I reckon. I just caught the tail-end of their show and saw them perform Londa Ronstadt’s "You’re No Good" and Bob Dylan’s "Mr Tambourine Man" and I wish that I had caught some more of them too because I really enjoyed their music.

And as for his team of go-go dancers, then good luck to them, and good luck to him too.

Carrying on into the Mojo Tent, we have Morgan Davis on stage. He was at the Officers Square – was it yesterday? He had Rick Fines with him today and we met him too in 2011 – I remember speaking to him and the bassist whom he had with him at the time, a female bassist whose name I have also forgotten but who I remember was pretty good.

Bassist tonight is Alex Fraser, and we have of course the famous Jeff Arsenault on drums.

With Morgan Davis and Rick Fines together on stage you don’t need to say too much about their performance do you? Traditional simple home-spun blues, and played to perfection too, especially when it’s backed by Alex and Jeff.

It’s a shame that many of the performers here can’t keep things simple and basic. There’s quite a place for this kind of simplicity here at the Festival

These are the Revivalists and it’s much easier sitting on top of the bleachers at the back of the marquee with the big telephoto lens. And another Gibson bass as well.

and all that I can say is that I’m really sorry that I missed most of their set because I was quite enjoying what I heard. They finished with the old Blues Brothers standard “Somebody to Love” and did quite a good job of it too.

The Chris Robinson Brotherhood is another Southern Rock band. The musicians are somewhat under-rehearsed but they have the crowd bouncing around as well and this is going to be a good concert if they can keep going like this

So as well as a very competent moog synthesizer player we had a duelling guitar solo right at the end just like most Southern bands and it was really good. The drummer is excellent too but I did notice that he was counting the bars as he was playing.

But the sad thing about all of this is that with not having been to bed until long after midnight, and waking up at 06:00 to do the photos and the notes, I’m crashing out here, even in the middle of a rock concert and so in the end it’s all too much and I head back to the car to crash out there.

I’d parked the car near to the Government Offices in Fredericton and as I passed, I noticed a woman setting up a tripod to photograph the floodlit building. I fell in with her and we had quite a chat about all kinds of things.

I realised that I don’t actually have a decent night photograph of the building and so while I was talking, I added one to my collection.

And then I hit the road

And I’ve been spending more of my money today, more of which anon

-3

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 26th July 2014 – WELL, THERE I WAS …

… lying in bed this morning waiting for the alarm to ring, and after a while I thought that this can’t be right. Yes, it was 08:30 and bith the battery in the phone and in the alarm had gone flat through the night. What are the odds on that happening?

So after a rather late breakfast I sat down and dealt with this outstanding programme that I have to write for Radio Anglais. I did five and a half weeks, and there’s just the bit about tourism to finish off. Then there are two rock programmes and some information notes to do.

I tried a different tactic about shopping today. I worked on the radio programmes until about 14:45 and then ent straight to Neris and the swimming baths. It wasn’t as nice as last week – just a mere 9.5 out of 10 – -and there were a couple of bizarre goings-on in there too today.

I then went to Commentry to do the shopping and ran straight into a motor-cycling weekend and the town was packed with people and motor bikes.

I didn’t buy anything extra either today, and I was back home at 19:00, nice and clean (for a change) and shopped. And then I crashed out yet again for half an hour.

And that was today finished. Tomorrow is a day off and a lie-in.

EPIC HALL

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