Tag Archives: ScotiaBank

Thursday 27th September 2018 – I’VE BEEN FEELING …

… much better today.

That is of course a very long way from saying that I’m feeling good, or even well, but it’s certainly an improvement over the last three days or so.

And one thing that I have noticed is that these spells of ill-health are becoming more frequent, deeper and lasting longer than they did before;

of course, I knew all about this because I have been told. But it’s still rather disappointing to see myself sliding slowly into the abyss. Getting ready to see my forebears, I imagine. And we’ll all be stoking the fires together. But at least I’m more fortunate than Goldilocks. She only had three.

I did know that I would be feeling better though – my sleep could have told me that. Deep and intense, turning over slightly whenever I heard a noise, and then going back into my deep sleep until the alarms went off.

There had been an interesting voyage too. Being short of money I’d gone to see what work was available at the local pub and they had offered me three nights a week as a pianist. I took it of course, even though I couldn’t play, and it wasn’t until I was due to start that I reckoned that I really ought to withdraw. The pub itself was set in a large, kind-of abandoned quarry, well-worn down and surrounded “up on top” by cheap local authority housing.
A little later, I wanted to take a shower, but the bath was full of dirty clothes. I mentioned it to Rachel but she told me to go ahead and just walk on them. That’s how I take a shower when I’m on the road anyway, washing my clothes in the shower around me.

It took me a while to organise myself, which is no real surprise, and then having done all of the preparation, I was off. Strider and I haven’t been on a voyage so far this year, so we hit the road and headed to Fredericton.

Not for any good reason, but because it was there, it was a place to go and I couldn’t think of anywhere else.

Once Strider warmed up, he ran really well. But our persistent misfire has come back and the fuel consumption has deteriorated again. I suppose that he’s getting old like I am. 10 years old now, he is.

First stop in Fredericton was at the Value Village. I’ve talked about these places before. In Canada there aren’t Charity Shops like there are in the UK.There’s just one big one and everything is centralised.

My treat today was a pile of books, some of which I’ll bring back to France and the rest I’ll leave in Strider for if I ever return. I dunno.

After that, it was Home Depot but since I no longer live at the farm there’s nothing there that excite me these days. Princess Autos came up with a circuit tester for the new tow hitch. Need to make sure that Strider’s electrics are up to the job if I’ll be towing trailers.

Scotia Bank next, where my account took a substantial hit. And for a couple of good reasons too, but I’ll talk more about those in due course.

I called at a Subway for a rather late lunch and a rest, and followed that up with a coffee at Tim Horton’s, as I was feeling a little under the weather by this time.

There was still time to go to the Bulk Barn. I’d noticed in Montreal that Gram Flour was really cheap there and I can’t usually find it in France. So I bought myself a kilo and I’l smuggle it in at the border if I can.

On the way back, I came by the scenic route, across the Saint John River and along the north shore, where the roadworks that slowed up Rachel and me last year are still going on.

Roadworks everywhere in fact and it took an age to get to the cheap petrol station at Keswick to fuel up.

On the way back I stopped off at Mactaquac to photograph the dam there but instead was greeted by a car fire, with various fire engines, police and ambulances around trying to look busy. Rather sad, that was.

From there, the return was quick enough but I still hadn’t finished because I had to run up to Centreville for some whipping cream.

Hannah was the chief architect of tea tonight. They had all kinds of fishy things and I had a pasta with veg and tomato sauce. But Hannah excelled herself with the falafel. A mix out of a packet but delicious nevertheless.

We watched TV for a while until everyone decided to watch this anatomy programme. And once they started talking about surgery and operations I beat a hasty retreat to my room. I can’t be doing with any of that.

Now as tomorrow, I wonder if the improvement will continue or will I have a relapse? I’m on the road to Montreal tomorrow night so I’m hoping that it will be good.

We shall see.

Thursday 30th August 2018 – I WISH …

… that banks would stop employing cashiers who wear low-cut tee-shirts. When this one today leant over the counter to give me my US dollars in a fashion so that we could count them together, I was totally distracted and I have no idea how much she gave me.

It’s definitely bad for my health, all of this.

Last night was slightly better. I slept all the way through until the racket from the fridge and the air-conditioning awoke me at about 04:00. But I soon went back to sleep until the alarms went off.

Breakfast for some reason didn’t start to be served until 08:00 so I had plenty of time to attack the notes from yesterday, and I’d even finished by the time that they opened the dining room, which is always encouraging.

Afterwards, I had a shower and washed my clothes from yesterday. I’ll be washing myself away at this rate if it keeps on like this.

A little later, I went out into town, stopping off for a bottle of water and to explore the shopping mall just down the road.

And why is shopping in North America so boring? Well, when you’ve seen one bunch of shops, you’ve seen a mall.

I’ll get my coat.

Down the road at the foot of the hill by the Parc Viger is this beautiful building.

Dating from the early years of the 20th Century, it was formerly the Montreal Technical School but today it’s the BANQ – the Bibiliothèque and Archives National de Québec.

I’ve taken shelter there from the rain once a few years ago, but I’ve never actually visited it. However, it is my destination for this morning.

While you admire one of the most beautiful interiors that I have ever seen, let me tell you my story.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that a few years ago I wrote a pile of stuff about the Chemin du Roy, the road that was built by Pierre Robineau de Bécancour and Jean Eustache Lanouiller in he early 18th Century to link Montréal and Québec

I wrote at the time that I would one day have to visit the National Archives to find the original maps of the route, because much has been lost in the subsequent 300 years.

So here I am.

But I’m in for a massive disappointment.

There are indeed record of the route, that’s for sure. But they are held at the archives site in Québec, not Montreal. So I need to go there instead.

And where are the BANQ archives in Québec? Why, on the campus at the University of Laval of course.

Ring any bells?

But all is not lost. It wasn’t a total waste of time.

I’ve been wondering for years about the track arrangements at the Gare Viger – how the platforms were actually laid out in relation to the buildings, and here I struck gold.

On the wall was an exhibition of the area, and one of the exhibits was a map of the area 100 years or so ago which showed everything that I wanted to know.

The station was subsequently modernised and extended, and this meant that the track layout needed to be changed.

And while I wasn’t able to see a plan of how the station layout was configured afterwards, there was a handy aerial photograph hanging on the wall that showed at least some of the train sheds.

So I might not be any the wiser, but I’m certainly better-informed.

The Gare Viger dates from the turn of the 20th Century. But before this, there was an earlier Canadian Pacific railway station in the eastern side of the city – the Gare Dalhousie.

It was from here that the first trans-continental train set out in 1886 (and we’ve all noticed that, once again, the Maritime Provinces have been totally ignored by the official Canadian History. According to them, there’s nothing except eskimoes and indians east of Montreal and they don’t count for anything)

After the opening of the Gare Viger it became a freight depot and then an industrial warehouse. However it’s recently undergone a programme of renovation and they have done a good job here.

It’s now a circus school, and seeing as it was formerly a Canadian Pacific building, that is quite appropriate. Clowns should feel right at home here.

Down on the docks Oakglen is still there, as we might expect, but we have another bulk carrier down at the far end.

She’s the Gullwing, a Maltese bulk-carrier of 39000 tonnes and was built in 2011, although you might not think it.

She’s come in from Quebec after an exhausting tour around the Pacific, and were I going to visit my friend Rhys I would hop aboard because according to the port authorities her next stop is Charleston in South Carolina.

Also in the far end of the harbour was a huge MSC container ship.

No chance of reading its name from here unfortunately but according to the port records, there’s an MSC Alyssa in port and she seems to fit the bill.

She’s of 61500 tonnes and has arrived from Liverpool. And were I to want to go back to Leuven for my next hospital appointment I would immediately leap aboard, because her next port of call is Antwerp.

The brats still aren’t back at school yet in Montreal, and so the children’s entertainment is in full swing.

I was impressed by the pirate ships, and even more impressed by the fact that the kids were being allowed to swing on ropes and slide down zip wires and all of that.

Can you imagine that in the stupid nanny-state UK where the ridiculous Health and Safety rules are such that you even need a fire safety certificate to wave a flag at a football match.

But I haven’t come here to waste my time.

I had it on good authority that there was a cruise ship in town ready to do a voyage down the St Lawrence and the Eastern seaboard of the USA, and so I went for a look.

And here we have the Seabourn Quest, all 32,500 tonnes of her and built as recently as 2011, which is quite modern for a cruise ship. We’ve seen some thoroughly ancient and disreputable ones in our time.

Unfortunately the quay was heavily guarded so if Strawberry Moose and I want to nip aboard, we’d have to buy some tickets.

The little tender alongside her is the Juno Marie.

She’s officially described as a tanker, and being small like this, her task is very likely to be to fuel up the larger ships in the docks as they arrive so that they are ready to set sail as quickly as possible.

There are a few of these little tankers in port and we’ve seen at least one of them before.

When I was here last October I’d finally managed to make it to the real centre of the city where it all was happening back in the 17th Century but I didn’t have time to go far.

One of the places that I hadn’t seen was the old Ursuline convent, or what remains of it.

This organisation of the “Grey Nuns” was founded here in Montreal in 1737 by Marguerite d’Youville and they ended up over time with quite an impressive range of buildings here.

Their claim to fame is that they were the first female religious organisation to undertake the full range of social and charitable aims.

There had been many people engaged in these tasks before, and we’ve talked in the past about people like Marguerite Bourgeoys.

But they just had their little niche of interest, not the whole range.

There was a large hospital on the site too, as well as a very large and impressive church, if the old drawings are anything to go by.

But as the city expanded northwards and eastwards away from the river, and as the port of Montreal expanded along the banks, it was deemed necessary to make a new road network connecting the two.

And so the Ursulines had to go, and so did some of their buildings.

Luckily, not all was demolished. There are still some remains of the impressive buildings that are now classed as Historical Monuments.

And if you look very carefully in the roadway, you’ll see lines of granite setts – there are a couple in the photo here.

When they were doing some roadworks a while ago they came across the foundations of the old walls that had been demolished. They have marked them out on the road with the granite setts so that you can see the extent of the former buildings

As I was making my way round to the Place d’Youville I noticed this building in the distance.

Whilst the building itself is impressive, the exciting thing about it is that over the door is carved the legend “Grand Trunk”.

This was one of the earliest of the main-line railway companies that was involved in the “railway wars” in Canada at the end of the 19th Century.

This was their magnificent Head Office in the Rue McGill, built 1899-1902.

Unfortunately it didn’t last long. The Grand Trunk was one of the biggest losers in the Railway War and it was coming back from a very unsuccessful fund-raising trip in Europe in 1912 that its president, Charles Hays, was drowned on the Titanic.

The company quickly went bankrupt and was taken over by the Government, forming part of the Canadian National rail network.

Montreal these days is basically a very large island, but back in the 16th Century it was several small ones.

The original settlement was on a small island bounded by the St Lawrence River and the Riviere St Pierre.

That latter river was eventually built over, and today, it’s the Place d’Youville, named for our friend Marguerite.

When we were here in October last year, you will remember seeing the excavations that were taking place just here.

This was the site of the city’s first indoor covered market which later became the Parliament Building for the country.

However the building was destroyed in 1849 in the riots that followed the passing of an Act emancipating the rebels of the 1830s and was never rebuilt. The Government of Canada moved elsewhere, much to the chagrin of the Québecois.

A fire station was erected here in 1903 – 54 years too late to save the Parliament building unfortunately.

Today the fire brigade has moved elsewhere and the building is now a museum. I would have liked to have gone for a look around but I was rather pushed for time.

I still have quite a lot to do today and it’s late.

While I was standing by the side of the road taking photographs, I was interrupted by a street washer.

Mind you, he didn’t let me interrupt him, and carried on with whatever he was doing.

As a result, not only did I have a complimentary shoe-wash I had a complimentary ankle wash too and that certainly different. And it wasn’t just me either. Several other passers-by were in the same boat.

Further interruptions were the order of the day too.

While I was a-wandering a little further on (which is rather better than walking by St Paul’s), I heard the familiar wail of a diesel locomotive siren in the distance so I legged it rather rapidly down the street.

Not rapidly enough, as it happens. I was defeated by the pair of locomotives, 4707 and his friend, disappearing into the distance down towards the dock.

And when I return home and have access to myJane’s Train Recognition Guide I’ll tell you all about them.

Instead, I went back to the Place d’Youville and to photograph the stele. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that last year when I was here it was all fenced off and it was impossible to take a proper photo.

So having done that, Bane of Britain wandered away from the site, without actually going over there to read the plaque to discover what it says.

I really don’t know why you lot pay me, honestly I don’t.

You DO pay me, don’t you? All you need to do is to click on one of the links at the side and make your next order from Amazon that way. I receive a small commission on your orders, but it costs you nothing at all.

I’m not sure at all what was going on here.

There I was, standing on the edge of the kerb and three or four fire engines pulled up, one after the other. Their blue and red flashing lights blazing away.

They performed some kind of danse macabre in the street and I’ve no idea why. There was nothing like any emergency that I could see in the vicinity and they didn’t seem to be in too much hurry.

I turned my attention to the building that I had come here to see – the old Customs House.

Ideally situated at the exit to the harbour, nothing could come into port without paying the appropriate duty to the Government and this was where they did it.

The Customs people aren’t there now- they’ve moved on down the road into a new modern building that is 10timesasbig, even though trade in the port has declined.

By now, my stomach was thinking that my throat had been cut and I needed to organise some food.

Not round here though as I still had some important things to do.

So onto the Metro at Victoria-OACI and off to Namur (the Metro station, not the town in Belgium) and the big Walmart there. But leaving the metro station was really difficult. The way that the doors are positioned there was a howling gale every time someone opened one of them and it was something of a struggle to pass through.

It all seems to have changed there. New buildings and the like and I couldn’t at first get my bearings. But there’s a Subway at the bottom end of the shopping complex so I installed myself there.

The restaurant next door had a free wifi service so I was able to patch in there and pick up the news.

It was a long hike to Walmart from there – longer than I remember it being – and it was something of a disappointment when I arrived. It seems to me that there are fewer and fewer items on the shelves these days and the place is looking rather untidy.

There weren’t all that many customers there either and I’ve no idea why.

There wasn’t as much choice as I was hoping but I managed eventually to kit myself out with the remainder of the articles that I need. Whether it’s all suitable I really don’t know, but I can’t do any better than this.

But here’s a shop that I hadn’t seen before, even though the staff tell me that they have been here for four years.

It’s called the Bulk Barn and it’s very reminiscent of the old “Weigh and Save” shops that we had in the UK in the late 70s and 80s.

And I’ll make a note of this place because they had everything in there that I could possibly use, including dehydrated vegetables for travelling purposes.

I’ll have to check to see if there are any of these places anywhere else on my route around Canada in the future.

By now it was rush hour and time for me to be heading off.

I was lucky that I was on the train because had I been in a car I would probably still be there now judging by the amount of traffic on the Boulevard Decarie.

Total gridlock and that’s the kind of thing that makes me glad that I don’t live in a city these days. How would I cope with all of this.

Back at my hotel I organised my suitcase yet again to take into account my recent purchases. This suitcase is becoming rather uncomfortably full.

There was some work that needed to be done, so I caught up with that, and then decided to go out for tea.

I walked the entire length of the rue St Catherine Est from my hotel almost all the way down to the bridge and I was not alone.

Apparently the students from McGill University are having their induction week this week and it’s party, party, party. Hordes of them freaking out all over the place.

It made me feel quite old to watch them. These days they don’t look anything like 18 year-olds at all and that’s all very confusing.

But the big surprise for me was the pizza place that was advertising vegan pizzas – yes, vegan pizzas! I’ve never ever seen vegan pizzas advertised in a mainstream pizza place before so I went in to give the place some support.

And delicious it was too.

That was me organised (such as I can be) for the day. I retreated to my hotel and decided to have an early night. I need it too after all of this.

Wednesday 29th August 2018 – I’VE NO IDEA …

… why it is that some people can make the easiest job turn out to be the most complicated and consume hours of my time when I have much better things to do.

Take my Canadian car insurance as an example.

It needs to be paid, and had the company sent me their account details, I could have walked into any Scotia Bank anywhere in Canada and done it in a machine in 30 seconds and everyone would have been happy.

Instead, they tell me to “do it by e-mail transfer”

I’ve no idea how to do that but never mind. Just down the road from here and round the corner in the rue St Catherine Est is a Scotia Bank. So I duly take myself down there to enquire.

“We can’t go that here for you” they wailed
“Probably not” I replied. “All I asked you to do is to tell me how to do it”.
So the cashier sent for a supervisor, and I explained again.
“That’s not something we can do” she said. “We don’t have access to your information”
“I know” I replied. “I just want you to tell me how I do it”
“That’s something that you have to do yourself”
“Is there something wrong with my French? Or don’t you understand my accent or something? I’m not asking you to do it – I’m asking you to tell me how I do it”.
“We can’t do it for you”.

After another half an hour like that, I walked out. I really don’t understand why I’m having such a problem with such a load of bankers these days. Every single one seems to be causing me problems.

But all is not lost. There’s another branch up the road towards the town so I set off there to see if they are any better.

And the walk up town is not without excitement.

Here we have a typical Western-World scene of a young thin black guy working a pneumatic chisel breaking up the pavement, with another young thin black guy holding a board to stop the concrete chips flying all over the passers-by.

And a big fat much-older white guy standing around watching the immigrants work. Too lazy to even go to fetch a shovel to lean on.

No wonder the Western world is in such a crisis when it’s only the immigrants who want to work. And these are the people whom the Fascist want to kick out

And not only that – I was almost squidged by a passing car as I stepped carelessly into the roadway.

At the second Scotia Bank, much farther away that I thought, I explained my problem.
“We’re only an express bank here. You need to go to one with full facilities. There’s one two blocks away”
And that was two of the largest blocks in the whole of Montreal, I reckoned.

There were two cashiers on duty there. One, an older lady, clearly knew what she was doing. The second was evidently a new-starter who was stopping her colleague every ten seconds to ask questions that even I could answer;

And the queue in front of me was becoming quite impatient.

Eventually, after a very long wait, I was seen. Luckily it was the efficient one. And she told me “you need to see another colleague about this”.

Another colleague was eventually found and she asked me to switch on my mobile banking application.
“I don’t have one” I replied.
“We can download the app” she said.
And if you have any idea about how long the on-line mobile banking app takes to download on my ‘phone.
“Never mind. I’ll show you on my computer”.
So she switched on her machine and took me step by step through the procedure.
“What we need is an example of a payment”.
“So why don’t we use this real example here?”
“Ohh, what a good idea!”.
Couldn’t make it up, could you?

And so we did. She set me up with a mobile banking account and we eventually managed to make the payment. And that was only by luck because she didn’t really know how to do it and was having to search for loads of answers to questions.

I had started out from here at 10:20 to do a 2-minute job. It was now 12:02 and I had an appointment at 12:00 across town.

Later on, in the Koodo mobile phone office.

I’d found a mobile ‘phone repairer who checked my new phone. As you know, it’s a dual-sim phone and so I wanted to know if it works in North America. He put a couple of different North American sim cards in it and sure enough, it worked fine.

So round to the Koodo network suppliers.
Our Hero – “I live in Europe and I come to North America for a couple of months every year. I need a pay-as-you-go card that will do …….(and I explained what I needed)”
Girl in Shop – “okay, we need to fill out a form”
Our Hero fills out a form
GIS – “where’s this address again?”
OH – “In France”
GIS – “but that’s no good. You need a Canadian address”
OH – “I told you that I come from Europe”
GIS – “you need an address in Canada”
OH fills it out with an address in Canada
GIS – “now which plan would you like?”
OH – “one that does what I told you just now”
GIS – “yes, but which one is that?”
OH – “how do I know? It’s your shop not mine!”
GIS – “so tell me again what you need”
OH repeats his initial enquiry
GIS – “I don’t think we have a plan like that. Is it one of these?”

In the Montreal Public Transport Enquiry Office.
My plans to leave Montreal have changed due to weather issues at my destination so we’re leaving on Saturday at 08:10, which means that I have to be at the airport at 05:10.

So I queued to ask if the 747 bus ran throughout the night.

Some agent was walking down the queue asking people if they had simple questions. So I asked him mine.
“I don’t know” he replied. “You need to ask at a window”.
And so I asked at a window, when it was eventually my turn. And they didn’t know either. After a lengthy chat amongst themselves, they came to the conclusion that it might. But they weren’t sure.

I really don’t know why these days that they employ people like this. They clearly have no pride or interest in their work and couldn’t care less about the effect that their “je m’en foutiste” attitude has on their customers.

But a lot of it is due to the lack of training. That’s because the employers pay such pitiful wages that people don’t stay around long enough, so the companies won’t invest the money in training them.

The long-term vision about recruiting good people and training them to do their jobs efficiently so that the customers want to come and spend their money there to make the place profitable in the long-term has been replaced by this short-term “grab it and run” philosophy that will bring about their own downfall in the long term, as we are seeing with so many formerly blue-chip companies that have gone to the wall just recently.

It was a strange night last night. I was wide -awake at 03:00 (jet-lag again) and working on the laptop. But not for long. I drifted off to sleep again, was awakened by all of the alarms and then finally by the fridge and the air-conditioning working in concert to make sure that I was up and about.

Breakfast here is “basic” to say the least, the kind of thing that is advertised as a “continental breakfast” – and you find that you are expected to eat your quilt. The kind of thing that makes you feel down in the mouth.

But at least it’s here and not half a mile away. And afterwards, yet another shower to look my best.

I finished off the work that I had started and then hit the streets for my appointment with destiny – or, rather the Scotia Bank.

At 12:00 I was supposed to be having lunch with Josée so I had to leg it across town and eventually arrived 20 minutes late. She was ever so pleased to see me (I’m not sure why) and we had a good meal and a chat.

At 13:30 she had to go back to work, so I went with her and she showed me her workshops and introduced me to her pupils. And printed out the directions for where I needed to go next.

I need some special equipment for the next part of my journey so it was to the Montreal Equipment Co-operative.

This involved two buses, the 80 and the 179, and a long walk at the end, almost being squidged a second time by another car.

They weren’t particularly helpful as much as I would like, and they didn’t have some of the stuff that I needed, but we worked around it and I’ve ended up hopefully with stuff that might do.

It better had because I’ve put a lot of effort into the next stage of my voyage and I don’t want to be confounded at the final hurdle.

But here’s another example of total “je m’en foutisme”. I want a hat with a mosquito net for part of my project.
“We don’t have any of those in stock”.
“But you have hats, and here’s a mosquito hat-net. Couldn’t I buy them both and fasten the net to the hat?”
“Yes, that would work”
“So how come you didn’t suggest it?”
It’s frightening, the lack of imagination that some people have these days

We had a moment of panic in there too when I couldn’t find my camera bag, and I had all of the staff searching for it. In the end I found it, in my rucksack where I had put it earlier.

And paying for the stuff was fun. Josée told me to use her name as my spouse so that I would get the member discount. And have you any idea how embarrassing it is when you tell someone about your “spouse” and they ask for her address and you don’t know it?

I went and had a cold drink to recover.

Outside, there was another one of these five-minute storms raging;

Apart from the torrential downpour there were some devastating winds that looked incredible.

Apparently they caused some considerable damage all over southern Quebec and when I was walking through the city during the evening I could see considerable evidence of that, with the advertising hoardings all blown over.

A long walk back to the bus, and a long wait too. And much to my surprise, everyone else waiting seemed to be an Indian – one of those Indians, not “those” Indians. Except when the bus turned up, and a tiny little elderly white man barged his way to the front of the queue to push in, clearly exercising his role as a white oppressor of the brown-skinned immigrants.

I leapt out of the bus near the Parc metro station, and my walk round the corner took me past the mobile phone places that I described earlier.

On the metro, I had to change at Jean-Talon, and in the confusion found myself going back the way that I had come.

I just don’t know what is the matter with me these days.

But at least the round trip gave me an opportunity to notice this sign on the metro train.

My friend Doug Paulley would be delighted to see this, having single-handedly waged war against selfish transport companies and passengers who deny wheelchair users the benefits of public transport. And the Montreal transport authorities might feel so smug about advertising this kind of thing.

But the facts are totally different.

Anyone who gets onto a Montreal metro train in a wheelchair deserves a Victoria Cross, never mind a place to himself, because the metro network here rivals the Paris metro as being the most wheelchair-inaccessible metro system in the whole world.

Getting a wheelchair onto a platform in a Montreal metro station is impossible in at least 90% of them.

Finally, at Berri-UQAM I went for my fruitless chat with the public transport people and then back here for a rest for a while.

Later on, I went to that new falafel place to try out their offerings. And witnessed the most amazing spectacle at the hotel across the road.

That coach over there wants to unload his passengers at the hotel but the jeep thing is parked in the bus unloading bay so he can’t pull in.

He’s blocking the road, to the annoyance of the other motorists going up the hill.

While the driver is arguing with the jeep driver and trying t make him move, another car pulls up behind the jeep and blocks him in so that he now can’t move even if he wanted to.

Eventually, the police tell the coach driver to go around the block while they move the cars, but as soon as the coach pulls away, another one pulls up and we start all over again.

And the falafel? I’ve had much better than that.

In the IGA supermarket for some pudding, and my attention is drawn to the allergy-free shelves.

These products should bring relief to almost anyone – free from gluten, milk, eggs, soya, peanuts, sesame, mustard, sulphites, fish and shellfish.

Imagine trying to look for this kind of thing in France. Things in North America are definitely looking up for the allergy-affected consumer.

Back at the hotel I ate my sorbet and had all kinds of things to do, but instead I’m crashing out. I can’t see how far I’ve walked today as it’s 03:00 according to my fitbit and I didn’t notice the mileage before it restarted at 0:00.

But it feels like 100 miles that I’ve walked and I can’t last the pace these days.

Thursday 2nd November 2017 – A RIGHT LOAD OF BANKERS.

I seem to attract the worst sort of bankers, don’t I?

On my way to the LIDL this morning, I stopped off at the Credit Agricole to check the automatic payments on my account. And the monthly payments to my bank in Belgium and my bank in Canada STILL haven’t been paid.

In the bank I got to see an assistant, and he confirmed that although all of ly accounts are now held at the bank here in Granville, the monthly payments referred to above have never been made.

Consequently I insisted on seeing the manager. And when he was finally free and I saw him, I told him precisely what I thought of his bank. And I was impressed with how much polite but offensive French I could conjure up on the spur of the moment.

What made it worse was what happened once he telephoned his International Department and they said that International Dorect Debits can’t be transferred between branches, but need to be cancelled and restarted. And when I asked him why his assistant hadn’t told me that when I went in in May to transfer my account, he didn’t have a reply.

With the heat from my comments on his remarks, they’ll be having the painters in to redecorate his office. I was one very unhappy bunny, as you can imagine. I’ve just been for two months in Canada and the USA spending money that I ought to have had but didn’t – and if you recall, I didn’t stint on my expenditure out there.

I made an appointment for after lunch to continue our discussion, and I went off to LIDL where I bought the bread for freezing, some ice cube sacks, and the wrong size of plastic bag in which to store my frozen stuff.

During my lunch break I gathered up some papers to take back to the bank, and it’s just as well because they had absolutely nothing on their files and, for some reason, they were extremely reluctant to telephone the bank in Pionsat to obtain the information.

The information for the Belgian bank was easy, but for Canada, not so. On the transit form that I took down, the reference number was 16 digits and there was only space on their computerised form for 9.

Having run round in circles for half an hour, I insisted that they telephone the bank in Canada and obtain the information first-hand. Eventually, they agreed and here we encountered the unfortunate fact that Canada’s clocks haven’t gone back yet, so they weren’t open.

I had to loiter in the bank for 45 minutes before the call went through, and after being thoroughly interrogated as to my movements in Canada, they gave me the account details. A 9-digit number indeed, “but you’ll need the 7-digit branch code”.

“I wondered what that box of 7 digits was for on the form just before the space for the account number” said the bank clerk. I despaired.

So now I’ll have to wait until the beginning of December to see if the payments have gone through. But I’m way beyond being annoyed about all of this, as you can imagine.

As I left the bank, I bumped into Brigitte who was loitering around outside. Three times this week, that is. We went for a coffee and a walk around the docks. I came back here and crashed out for half an hour – after all, I’ve walked over 118% of my daily activity today.

I’d had a rough night last night. Tossing and turning for much of it. And I’d been on my travels too – driving a coach on a holiday feeder service. I’d returned home to find that someone else was trying to go out on a feeder but there was no oil in his coach and he was annoyed to say the least. I said that he could go in mine, which somehow I had managed to park in my room in this hostel where I was staying.

What was ironic about this was that I was idly surfing the internet looking for photos of Ford coaches and there in glorious technicolour was a photo of a coach that I used to drive when I worked for Salopia Saloon Coaches in 1979. It’s a small world.

Having done well over 100% of my daily routine, I’ve exempted myself from going for a walk. I’m going for an early night to recover from today’s exertions.

Wednesday 11th October 2017 – SO HERE I ALL AM …

… not sitting in a rainbow, but sitting in the Departure Lounge of Dorval – or the Aeroport Pierre-E Trudeau waiting for my flight back to Paris.

And I have a feeling that it’s going to be an uncomfortable flight too. I’ve asked for an aisle seat because I’m still having problems with my right leg, And the girl in the check-in has given me my boarding pass, with the luggage label stuck over one of the places where the seat number is printed, and another sticky label stuck over the other place. So I can’t read it.

And so I bet that it isn’t an aisle seat. That’s just the kind of trick that they play on passengers instead of being honest and up-front about it. And so I’ll be crammed in somewhere extremely uncomfortably in the middle of a row.

Just as well that it’s a decent Air Canada flight and not an Air Transat sardine tin. But I’m still not happy.

I slept the sleep of the dead last night. Flat out all night and didn’t feel a thing until the alarm went off at 05:00. Mind you, it was … errr … somewhat later that I actually crawled out of bed. I wasn’t in much of a rush.

I spent a while doing some stuff on the laptop and then I went for a shower. Once I’d done that, I sorted out all of my affairs and repacked all of my possessions. That took me up until about 09:30 – meaning that I missed out on breakfast. But I didn’t really worry too much about that.

There’s a cupboard here at the hotel where you can dump your suitcase and so I left mine there and went for a walk around the city. First stop was the Dollar Store to pick up some stuff for the aeroplane. A couple of bags of sweets and the like.

Next stop was the Scotia Bank to take out some more money.I like to have a little stock on hand when I’m in Europe. I’ve been caught out with an expired bank card before, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall.

From there I went down to the Old Town. I needed a few things to take home with me and there was a place that had what I needed.

One last thing was to leap aboard the 55 bus with the driver listening to Focus III at full volume, and head off to the north side of the city.

Bang on midday I was at Josée’s place of work. I’d missed her yesterday as you know so we had agreed to meet for lunch. We ended up at a place not too far away where I had a vegan salad. I handed back the telephone, with grateful thanks to her for letting me borrow it.

Back down into town after that, and despite the grey overcast weather I couldn’t resist the opportunity to visit the vegan ice-cream bar in the rue St Catherine. The coconut milk was delicious as usual but I declined the chocolate – you remember from last year that it left something to be desired. Instead they had some kind of Vietnamese fruit.

I had a snooze too, having made sure that it wasn’t an auto-flush toilet. I seem to be making that some kind of habit these days again. But at least for the last couple of days I’ve been doing well over 100% of my daily activity so that’s something. and it will probably be something like that tomorrow too.

Having had my little relax I hobbled back (because I’m feeling the strain now) to the hotel to pick up my suitcase. the owners were there and they recognised me from when I was there before. We had a little chat and I had a little rest before wandering round the corner for the 747 bus to the airport.

We had one of these bus drivers who was a stickler for the rules. Everyone had to put their luggage in the racks and once the racks were full he refused to take on board any more passengers. But the motorway was open at last and it didn’t take too long to drive there.

Interestingly, some of the worst parts of the flyovers seem to have been demolished – they had concrete-cutters busily chopping up all of the rubble as we drove past.

At the airport I remembered to hand in my green card at the Immigration desk, and then went to check in. The automatic check-in didn’t recognise me, which is hardly a surprise – after all, who would want to admit to recognising me? And so we had the performance at the check-in desk.

And my suitcase for the flight back? A mere 16.7kgs. I’m clearly losing my touch.

Food is the next thing. I know that I won’t be having my special meal on the flight, but there’s a “Subway” in the airport, which is a good thing. A 12-inch vegetarian without cheese accompanied me through the security gate.

While we’re on the subject of security … “well, one of us is” – ed … apart from the queues it was relatively painless. They discovered my small bottle of water that I was hoping to keep, and also one of these juice pack things which I had forgotten all about.

They didn’t think much of my laptop either – but then I’m not exactly crazy about it. They spent quite a long time giving it a close-up befoe they were able to agree that it was relatively harmless.

At the boarding gate I had a word with the girls there. They confirmed that I didn’t have an aisle seat and so I explained my problem. They doubted that they could do anything for me seeing as the aeroplane was full.

But much to my surprise, 10 minutes later one of them – a young red-headed girl called Roxanne – came running over to me waving a new ticket. Somehow they had managed to find an aisle seat. It was a left-hand one, not a right-hand one, but that is far better than nothing.

So in a minute we’ll be boarding. Didn’t that 8 weeks go quickly? I managed to pack an enormous amount into it – like 12,000 kilometres in the 5 weeks or so that I was on the road. I don’t want to leave but I don’t really have much choice.

But then I’m always like this when I leave Canada.

Wednesday 5th October 2016 – BRRRR!

When I awoke this morning, bright and early, I went out to grab the cereal and soya milk from the back of Strider. And by heck, I wish I hadn’t!

Winter has definitely arrived, that’s for sure. Just look at this lot outside. It’s just like back home in the Auvergne isn’t it, with the hanging cloud, the cold and the freezing fog that has blanketed the Appalachian Mountains round about here on the edge of Kedgwick.

I had had a bad night last night despite just how comfortable it was in my nice big bed in my nice big room.

I’d crashed out by about 21:00 but I was tossing and turning all over the place and was really uncomfortable. Somehow I was tired and completely fast asleep and somehow I wasn’t, and I’m not sure that you’ll understand what I mean. But anyway, I was wide awake at 01:00, with the radio still playing, so I turned it off and this time I managed a decent sleep, until about 05:00

I’d been on my travels too, with the welcome return of Nerina, who hasn’t set foot in these nocturnal rambles for quite a while. We were at my house, in its usual state of papers all over the floor and we were looking for some papers that really ought to have been there but weren’t and this was all becoming far more complicated than it ought to have been. At he same time, Zero was at the kitchen sink doing the washing-up. She was being her usual cheerful self and we were discussing smoking. She said that she had tried a cigarette once, so I smacked her bottom for her.

When I sat down to breakfast I found that I had forgotten to fetch the spoon so I ended up eating my breakfast cereal with a fork and trying my best not to crash out again. I’m clearly not well at the moment.

Still, I can’t sit around here all day moping about the bad weather. I need to be moving on despite the fog. And this time, I didn’t forget to go and take a photograph of the night’s lodgings just for the record.

I’d been low on fuel too last night and there was an Irving’s next door – one of the reasons why I had stopped here – so I went off and fuelled up. I now have 97 Air miles after that – isn’t that good?

When I was on my way in the other direction 10 or so days ago, I’d stopped at the supermarket in town where I’d discovered baguettes on sale at half-price. I popped back in there on the way past this morning to see how the land lay and, sure enough, baguettes were on sale again. And so with what I had bought yesterday at Matane, that was lunch organised.

On the way through St Quentin the other day I’d noticed that there was a railway station in the town, on the old abandoned Canadian National railway line between Campbelltown and St Leonard.
There were a few railway artefacts on display outside, and so I’d pencilled the station in for a visit on the return trip and so here I am.

The little locomotive had caught my eye and I wondered if it really was a narrow-gauge locomotive that had been rescued from a mineral line somewhere. But in fact it was built in 1985 out of scrap and recycled materials by a couple of Canadian National employees from Campbelltown.

That wasn’t the only thing to catch my eye either. What do you reckon about this?

It’s a platelayers’ trolley but enclosed (a necessity given the severe winters around here) and with a petrol engine rather than a pump-action handle, which is a bit of a cheat. They were used by the track maintenance crews during their duties, which included fire-watching because sparks from the steam locomotives setting the forests alight was a real problem.

So much so that it will come as no surprise for any regular reader of this rubbish to realise that the station building here at St Quentin is not the original one. That, just like any other building here in Canada, caught fire and burnt down.

However, the most exciting exhibit here at the railway station must be this weird machine.

I’m not sure of the proper name by which this machine might be known, and I certainly have never seen one of them before, but I think that it’s magnificent and I definitely want one of these.

There were lots of other stuff actually inside the station, which was by the way not only a museum but the local tourist information office and the offices of the local Chamber of Commerce.

There was some kind of collection of railway wagons here too and so I went for a browse.

This caboose caught my eye – and not just because it’s a caboose but because of the message that’s on it. It reads “Dessert tout le Canada” which, crudely translated by Yours Truly (and if there’s any “crudely” involved, then in the words of the late, great Bob Doney, “I’m your man”) as “serves all of Canada”.

However, that’s clearly a spelling mistake. It should read “Désert tout le Canada” which means “Abandons all of Canada” – which is certainly true these days.

This is why I have to mess around on buses and rely on Rachel to pick me up in Florenceville when there’s an abandoned Canadian National railway line that passes at the bottom of her garden and an abandoned Canadian National railway station right next door to the tyre depot.

By now the hanging clouds had gone, the sun was out and I was coming out of the Appalachian Mountains. It was a beautiful day now so I headed to St Leonard and the Saint John River to find a place to eat my butties.

I found a nice place to park up for my lunch – the car park for the Rendez-vous des Artistes in St Leonard. It was closed up so I didn’t think that anyone would mine.

What appealed to me about this place was that it had a good view over the river and right by one of the few remaining railway lines in New Brunswick. And I thought that I had heard a locomotive whistle too and so I prepared the camera, but nothing came by while I was here.

That over there across the Saint John River is the town of Van Buren, which is in Maine, USA. I was sitting right by the border crossing on the Canadian side of the river admiring the view and taking advantage of the beautiful weather.

And I wasn’t alone either. They say that there’s one in every village, and the one in St Leonard sought me out for a chat. He was speaking French and what with his accent and a speech impediment that he had, I couldn’t make out one word in every ten that he was uttering.

Nevertheless, we put the world to rights for half an hour and then, in the words of the reporters of the long-gone and long-lamented “News of the Screws”, I “made my excuses and left”.

Back up the hill and I hit the highway southwards, and aren’t I grateful for speed limiters and cruise control? I set the speed to 108kms and settled down for the drive back to Centreville, and it was then that I noticed in my rear-view mirror a County Mountie slowly closing up on me. But with the speed limiter I didn’t have too much to worry about in the normal run of events. He eventually passed me, having a good glance as he went by, but with the cruise control in operation he had no reason to pull me over and he eventually pulled away in front.

I was having visions of David Crosby and his
“It increases my paranoia”
“like looking at my mirror and seeing a police car”
“But I’m not giving in an inch to fear”
“‘cos I promised myself this year”
“I feel like I owe it to someone”
and reckon that it applies to me – I certainly owe it to myself, that’s for sure after all that I’ve been through this year.

I tracked down my mailbox too. And talk about a local postal service – my mailbox is about 7 or 8 kilometres from my plot of land. It’s astonishing. How I’m supposed to go and get my post in the middle of winter is totally beyond me.

But there was some really good news for me. Regular readers of this rubbish might recall that the motor insurance on Strider was cancelled about my head last year when we had the driving licence issues. There was a cheque in my mail box for the refund of the cancelled policy, minus the time on risk value, and this was not far off the total premium of the new policy. The cheque had timed out and so I took it back to the brokers in Florenceville and they wrote out a new one.

Waving that around in my sweaty little mitt, I went to the Scotia Bank and paid it in. I did a few more financial manoeuvres … “PERSONoeuvres” – ed … there, and now I reckon that I could keep on going over in Canada for a good while if necessary.

Back at the tyre depot I met up with everyone, had a coffee and a chat, and then we went back home to Rachel and Darren’s. Rachel made a lovely tea and we had a good chat, and then I crawled off to bed at some really early, ridiculous time.

This six weeks gap between treatments is evidently too much, but I’m not complaining. Despite the health issues that have now caught up properly with me, I would never otherwise have come here and I wouldn’t have missed my trip to Canada for the world.

Friday 23rd September 2016 – I WAS OFF …

…so early and in such a rush this morning that I forgot to take a photo of my motel at Caraquet last night. I’d had a communication during the late evening to say that the lorry had been fixed and the tractor pull was on. It’s only about 350 kilometres from here to Centreville but it’s over some dreadful roads through the mountain and they were planning to leave at 15:30 so there was no time to hang about.

Not only that, the weather was dreadful. It was freezing cold and the gorgeous sunny day that we had had yesterday was now miserable, grey and wet with this freezing rain that was getting in everywhere. I wasn’t going to enjoy this drive one little bit.

But stil, the sooner we start, the sooner we finish and I hit the streets. Leaving behind me my breakfast cereal as I was to discover later. There’s always something that I leave behind me, isn’t there?

The drive as far a Bathurst was quite uneventful, apart from the dreadful weather, that is, and I found a cheap Ultramar service station where I could fuel up Strider. Shortly afterwards I found a huge Atlantic Superstore where I could stop to lay in supplies for the next few days, and where fuel was even cheaper that at the Ultramar – but then, that kind of thing always happens, doesn’t it?

The road from Bathurst over to the Saint John valley goes right into the mountains and through the Mount Carleton National Park and some of the roads through there that we will have to take are quite dreadful.

It’s all up and down, through the rainstorms and the low hanging clouds and with a good length of dirt road that I remember driving on back in winter 2003 through the pitch black and the snow … "no you didn’t – you came a different way" – ed

Further into the mountains and the weather hadn’t improved any. In fact I was beginning to wonder if we would be having snow any time soon – that was what it was looking like to me.

In fact I was starting to become rather worried. If the weather doesn’t improve any, we can forget all about tractor pulling and I will have had this long and exhausting drive for nothing. And after a good spell on the dirt road, Strider was looking disgraceful. He’ll be needing a wash.

Hitting the Saint John valley I drove along the old route of the Trans Canada Highway for a while and found a place to park for lunch right by the river, at the back of the seasonal camp site. And having demolished my butty I was back on the road again for Centreville, completely forgetting that I needed to go to the bank at Florenceville for some US money. I shall just have to do without, I suppose.

We went back home and sorted out the tractor and Amber hopped into the driving seat to move it around.

It’s the first time that she’s actually been behind the steering wheel under power so Darren kept her under close supervision. After all, it’s a mere 3,500 horsepower so I was told, and it’s not every young girl of Amber’s age who will have the opportunity, never mind the confidence, to handle that kind of power.

She was doing really well too. She wasn’t just along for the ride

Eventually we set off and had the usual histrionics at the USA border. There’s an extremely long and complicated (and expensive) procedure to be undergone and as a result no-one has really bothered with it in the past. But a Canadian tractor-puller took his vehicle across into the USA – and sold it. And these things are worth hundreds of thousands – the engine is worth $80,000 on its own. And because the border crossing wasn’t registered he escaped paying the import duty and the sales tax.

As a result, the people at the border post had their derrieres very soundly kicked by Head Office and so now everything is done by the letter of the law. And it takes ages to do.

But we were soon back on the road and headed off down towards Millinocket, stopping off for diesel and also for some food. And as we headed south, the clouds blew away. By the time we arrived, the skies were clear and you could see millions of stars.

It was also freezing cold.

What might have been a major problem was that the raceway was all chained up and padlocked – there was no way in. But regular readers of this rubbish will remember from several events that have occurred in the past that a chain and padlock isn’t going to keep me out for long. Five minutes and we were inside, and no-one would ever guess how we managed it.

Darren set a methanol fire – about two inches of methanol in an old saucepan and he tossed a lighted rag into it. The liquid doesn’t burn – just the gases – and the evaporation is slow enough that it lasted for about an hour or so. We were crowded around it to try to keep warm and that wasn’t easy. After a while I could smell something burning, and I was shocked to realise that it was me! I had to move my chair back into the cold.

By now I was pretty tired and so I sloped off to bed. Darren is having the front seats of the lorry, Amber the rear and so I’m having the mattress in the trailer.

I’m glad that we are only staying for the one night.

Wednesday 16th September 2015 – AND THE ANSWER TO YESTERDAY’S QUESTION IS …

… just about everybody.

Actually, that’s not quite right.

First port of call was the Scotia Bank. One of the things that I need is a bank statement with my name and Canadian address on it. And so to the Scotia Bank on the north side of Fredericton, and as you might expect, it was closed.

After a coffee however, it was open, and the bank quite happily obliged with the information. You can’t say fairer than that.

Next stop was Service Canada. They don’t have an immigration service office there – it’s in a separate department elsewhere and callers are only accepted by appointment. But they did have a telephone number and eventually, after a considerable wait and jumping through a great number of hoops, I was put through to a human being.

I need an immigration form 1M1442 setting out my entitlement to be in Canada. This can be applied for on-line, but the waiting list is … errr … three months, by which time I shall be out of the country. I can however obtain it at the border when I cross in.

And so after a great deal of discussion, there was only one solution – and that was to go BACK to Houlton where I crossed in yesterday, and pick it up from there. Of course, that will take a good few hours, but you spend more time debating the issue than actually doing anything and I am playing for high stakes here, so off I went.

And at the border we had the most astonishing arrangement that makes European bureauocracy look like nothing at all. I could only pick up the document as I ENTERED the country, so I had to leave the country, go and annoy the American immigration people (who were not in the least amused, and who can blame them?), do a U-turn, and then go back in to Canada.

Back in Canada, after much discussion, I ended up with the manager of the Canadian Immigration office there. They do indeed issue IM1442 forms there, but only for immigration purposes, not for demographic purposes. However he did accept that laws and rules and regulations change according to events, and he would have been quite happy to issue a document to me, but he needed something in writing from the Insurance Company.

And here’s the rub – the manager of the Insurance Company REFUSED to put the details in writing and to fax them to the Immigration Office – so that was that. I was there for a good few hours in earnest discussion, but I’m a miserable pleader at moments like this. However, I am in possession of the address of the Insurance Company Head Office (it’s in Dartmouth, opposite Halifax) and so I shall go to Home Depot and sort out a suitable pickaxe handle, then go for a drive.

Despite everything that the manager of the Immigration Service did for me, Service New Brunswick wouldn’t budge either, although they did give me the phone number of the Appeals body. I shall just have to apply on-line for this form – which of course takes much longer than the time that I’ll be spending in Canada – and the Insurance Company will still honour the policy as long as my application is ongoing.

Back at Fredericton (good old Strider), the Festival proper started tonight with two tents opened – the Blues Tent and the Mojo tent.

First up on stage at the Blues Tent were the Mellotones.

First thing to say about them, as you can see from the photo here, is that there are far too many musicians up there on the stage. Four too many in fact. I’ve no idea why they needed a brass section but there you are.

I mean – they were good at what they did – there’s no denying that of course – but it’s not my kind of music at all.

It certainly wasn’t blues, and as for jazz, well, jazz can be very good if it IS very good, but working over a few Bar-Kays numbers and that kind of thing isn’t really what I was expecting to hear. In fact, I found it all rather a dismal proceeding

From here I popped into the library. I’ve been writing quite a bit on certain occasions about the railway lines in New Brunswick and I went to see if they had any old maps of the area. And sure enough, they produced a set of old maps that showed quite a few railway lines, but it was dated from the late 19th Century and there were many lines which I know existed but were not recorded. I had been hoping for a map of the 1930s, but they had nothing from that era.

I wandered on from the library to the Mojo tent, in time to catch the start of the Downtown Blues Band.

We’d had the Bar-Kays in the Blues tent and so in the Mojo tent we had the Blues Brothers. The Downtown Blues Band played a re-hash of numbers from the film of the same name.

This was another occasion of far too many musicians on the stage. I’ve absolutely no idea why many of these groups want to have brass sections, and indeed why the organisers of the Festival want to book them. It beats me.

But then, as I have said so many times before, the rest of the audience enjoyed them. I’m clearly in a minority of one here.

The female singer was clearly enjoying herself on the stage. She was having a good time too.

And it has to be said – they were quite good at what they did. But to my mind, it’s not jazz and it’s not blues either. There’s clearly something that I’m missing here.

Back to the Blues tent and we had JJ Grey and Mofro from Florida. They’ve played the Festival before, but I somehow seem to have managed to miss them.

They started off quite well and I was feeling that I might actually enjoy this concert. But my feeling of elation didn’t last long.

They played a number that was crying out for a lead guitar solo, and they built up to this over a period of a good five minutes, or so it appeared to me.

And then we got it – the solo. But, would you believe, played on a trumpet. Well, I suppose, you would believe it after having read what I have written up to date. It was so disappointing as far as I was concerned.

And so back to the Mojo tent, and this was the Halifax group Paper Beat Scissors.

They are now living in Montreal and recording CDs, and they weren’t all that bad. They were something similar to Sigur Ros, but singing in English of course, and I didn’t mind at all staying here for a while to listen to them.

The one big drawback that they had was that they had a brass section.

When they wheeled on the French horn of whatever it is during the warm-up, I feared the worst. And I was right too, because even though the player started off on the keyboards and shaking his maraccas too, it didn’t take too long for him to get on the horn.

However, the singer had a good voice for what he was doing, and they were definitely the best band that I have seen here so far this year

But then again, that doesn’t say all that much for them. They haven’t had all that much competition to date as far as I was concerned.

Back again at the Blues tent, and we had Galactic on stage.

They started off with an instrumental number, and of course we did have the brass section that has featured in every act to date and it’s thoroughly dismayed me, in case you haven’t guessed

However, we were soon joined by a singer, a young lady from Louisiana if I remember correctly.

And their second number was a scorcher too. This was much more like it, even with the brass section and I quite enjoyed that. I was quite optimistic with that and was quite looking forward to the rest of the set.

But it was not to be, unfortunately.

Despite the energy that our vocalist was putting into her show, the third number degenerated into a rap number and if there’s one thing that really grates on my nerves, it’s rap music. This kind of stuff isn’t for me at all, and I beat a rather hasty retreat.

But not before we had had a little excitement on stage.

We had a small, lightweight platform on stage and they had an organ and a heavy drum kit crammed onto it. And I mean ‘crammed” too because there was no room for anyone to move and the drummer was extremely enthusiastic to say the least.

With the platform bouncing around, I was betting with myself about how long it would be before all of this went pear-shaped and sure enough, just a couple of minutes in to the performance, part of the drum kit collapsed across the stage. We had the roadie trying to rebuilt it all the time that the drummer was playing with what was left of the kit, and in the end they weighted it down with sandbags.

Now this is very much more like it.

At the Mojo tent we had Wintersleep.

I’d missed the start of their act because the performance of Galactic had started late, and so I can’t tell you all that much about them. but what I can say is that they were a four-piece band and I enjoyed their performance very much.

There was no brass section – or mouth organ – in sight while I was there and they were playing real music from my point of view.

Nothing quite as electric or as lively as Samantha Fish or the 24th Street Wailers, but then again, what could ever be as lively as all of that, but it was good enough to hold my attention for quite a while.

And so we definitely have a winner of today’s entertainment – something that was looking very unlikely after the first couple of acts this evening.

I’ll have to go and have a look for these and see if I can’t lay my hands on a live performance for broadcasting on Radio Anglais sometime in the near future. It would be quite enjoyable, that’s for sure.

And so I went back to Mactaquac Provincial Park and my tent.

I’d had a good night’s sleep last night for once and that had certainly helped with all of the issues that I had had to deal with during the day. I don’t suppose that tomorrow is going to be any different and so I’ll need to have a good night’s sleep.

And by the way …

… the photos that I’ve posted for tonight’s acts at the Harvest Jazz and Blues Festival are only a small sample of the dozens and dozens that I took during the evening. If you want to see any more of those that I took, you’ll need to contact me. Leave a comment and I’ll be in touch.

Monday 3rd November 2014 – LOOK AT THIS!

It’s a 2008 Ford Ranger 4×4 Sport pick-up fitted with a 4.0 litre V6 engine. And furthermore, it’s mine. All mine.

Long-term readers of this rubbish will recall that I am thoroughly fed up with the price that I’m having to pay in North America to hire a vehicle every time that I go over. And not only that, what laughingly passes for “customer service” with Avis Car Hire is appalling. Every time I go there, they try to chisel extra cash out of me for all kinds of excuses and reasons and it’s gone beyond the point of embarrassment.

So to cut a long story short … "hooray" – ed … I’d asked a couple of garage proprietors in New Brunswick to keep me informed about any suitable 4×4 pickup taken as a trade-in, and one of them has come up with the goods.

Bearing in mind how much I’m paying for car hire, this pick-up will pay for itself in one-and-a-half visits to Canada. and if I can find a lightweight slide-in camper back for it, I will be really in business.

Consequently, I spent most of the morning on the phone to a couple of people in Canada – the garage proprietor and my bank – and now the deal is done.

Apzrt from that, I’ve finished the verandah today. Totally stripped out, cleaned and tidied and you can actually see the worktops now. I’ve also cleaned and refurbished the chemical toilet now that you can reach it, because that will be useful for visitors.

Finally, I tidied up a little more on the ground floor and that’s showing a great improvement too.

Tonight, I cooked one of my famous augergine and kidney bean whatsits, accompanied by one of the most wicked rainstorms that i’ve seen for a while. The weather really has changed now.

Tuesday 9th September 2014 – I’VE LEFT CENTREVILLE …

… and I’m now at my other spiritual home, the campsite at the country park at Mactaquac, near Fredericton.

It wasn’t quite as cold this morning – a balmy 9°C would you believe – when I set off to the tyre depot to pay my respects to everyone there, and I ended up for an hour or so doing some photocopy-editing of a photo in an old historic book that someone has found. It shows all of the kids who went to a local primary school in 1935 – including Wallace McCain, he who had his chips just a few years ago – and someone has succeeded in identifying them all.

Consequently we were doing a “cut and paste” on the photocopier so that all of the kids would be labelled with their identity.

From there I went to the Bank at Florenceville to do some stuff down there and then set off for Woodstock. And by the time I got to Woodstock I was half a mill … "you said that last year – and the year before" – ed. I did a little food shopping and at Canadian Tires I bought a small hydraulic bottle jack. There’s a good reason for this in that the jacks in these hire cars are sill jacks, and totally useless on uneven ground. And of course, I might be going to Labrador as you know.

But then again, I might not. It’s snowing in Alberta already and there are people snowed in at their homes and so on – early September and WE complain about our weather! I want to see what the long-range forecast is before I commit myself.

On the motorway down to Fredericton, I was right about something of which I had caught a glimpse earlier. You may recall, from all of our previous visits to Canada, that they have these road trains – an articulated tractor unit towing not one but two small trailers – a lead trailer and a pup trailer (although when they have to reverse, the drivers often call the pup trailer something like “the mother of a pup.

But I was convinced that I’d seen not one but two Day and Ross lorries, each towing two full-sized trailers on the motorway around Montreal and so I had the camera poised as I flashed along the Trans-Canada Highway.

Sure enough, I was not wrong about that. The lorry here in this photo on the other carriageway is pulling two full-sized trailers. I’ve seen plenty of lead-and-pup combinations in my time, but never this.

And doesn’t Strawberry Moose take a superb photo, especially when we have a closing speed of what must be not far short of 250kph. Well done, Strawberry!

At Fredericton, they hadn’t done my press pass info so I had to hang around for a while so I went up to Home Depot for a nosy around. There was nothing interesting there but I did meet Danny, the store assistant who comes from Croatia and with whom I’ve had several good chats before. And at Value Village, I bought a few more CDs and a book on Quebec and the Maritime Provinces.

Finally, I picked up my press pass and my parking permit and now I’m here. I’ve had tea and I’m going to have an early night, I reckon.

-1

Friday 6th September 2013 – I HAD AN “AT HOME DAY” TODAY

The only difference being that I wasn’t of course at my home but at Rachel’s. I slept for at least part of the night with a cat curled up next to me, something that brought beck memories of course, and after breakfast (and the typical frantic hunt for keys) Zoe and I went off to do a few things.

We went too look at my little kingdom up on the USA border, and then went to see someone to chat to him about Ford Rangers. The Bank in Florenceville was the next port of call but I couldn’t get done there what I needed to do, so we headed to Woodstock. By the time we got to Woodstock we were half a million strong of course and Zoe took me to see her new salon. Now that she’s a qualified and licensed aesthetician after her year ot college in Miramichi she’s planning on opening her own little business and has rented two small rooms. They will be ideal for a newcomer to the business once she sorts herself out.

We ran quite a few errands for her while we were there and after lunch it was back to the Bank where a few (but by no means all) things were sorted out. I went on to the Great Satan to sort out my entry permit and then back to Rachel’s where we loaded everything up for the weekend.

This led to the immortal conversation
Hannah “Will 2 packs of water be enough for us for the weekend?”
Yours Truly “How much beer do we have?”
Hannah “two 36-packs”
Yours Truly “why do we need water then?”
Yes, I’m fast becoming a redneck, aren’t I?

Rachel came with me in the Dodge on the long drive to southern Maine and the highlight of the journey had to be eating chips (or “fries”) in Dysart’s, a typical American truckstop and a team of cheerleaders coming in. A scrawny, scraggy lot, it has to be said but cheerleaders all the same. No, you can’t make up a story like that and I wish that I had taken a camera into the truckstop to prove it.

The pulling track at Clinton, Maine, is cold and wet.

But so what? So am I.

But at least I’ll feel better in the morning.

Hopefully.

-2

Thursday 26th April 2012 – THIS PHOTO …

… had me tickled pink, as it clearly had several other people too. Because there really were some people who believed that the rocket really was being carried on the trailer of this lorry.

I went out for an early morning constitutional, like you do, and noticed the rocket on display on a plinth across the motorway. And so I waited until a convenient lorry drove past.

I had meant to go for a closer inspection after breakfast but somehow, Brain of Britain forgot.

I was up and about early – and by “early” I mean 04:00. So that gave me plenty of time to catch up on my notes and photos of yesterday and even some from 2011 too. Can’t take a shower too early.

And yes, we’re back in a Quebec motel. The C and F on the taps doesn’t stand for chaud and froid like you might think. It means “Cold” and “Freezing”.

But the towels were something else completely. So luxurious! I had no end of trouble trying to close my suitcase when I left. Makes a change from some motels where I’ve stayed, where they actually stole the towels from the guests (and YES – I have had this!).

Shopping was next. And never having been to Laval before, I had done my research. It didn’t take long to find the Canadian Tire, Walmart and Home Depot, located quite close together down the road.

And a Dollar Store! They had packets of seeds on sale at three for $1:00 – including some sweet corn! I was tempted by that kind of offer – after all, growing crops at my altitude is challenging – but seeds destined for the short Canadian growing season sound just the job to me.

Finding a bank was something else, though. No trace of a Scotia Bank (where my UK bank has an arrangement) in the vicinity so we had to resort to the telephone directory and the Lady Who Lives In The Satnav.

I’d seen a supermarket – an IGA – on the side of the motorway last night driving down here, and I’d made a mental note. But seeing it was one thing – finding my way to it was something else completely.

All of that took me until lunchtime, would you believe. And those raisin buns that I had bought in the Dollar Store were delicious. Went down a treat

This afternoon saw me at my storage box at Jarry. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that I rent a storage box in one of these self-store units. Just 1m³ but I keep my bed, my camping stuff and my fittings for the Dodge in there.

I spent most of the afternoon fitting out the Dodge and then hitting Highway 40 east.

Straight into the rush hour.

If that wasn’t enough to be going on with, the temperature suddenly plummeted 10°C as I sat and watched, and we were greeted with the most tremendous downpour. Nothing that I had ever seen in the Auvergne came anywhere close to what we were having just then.

And with the traffic having sat stationary for about half an hour we were joined by a pile of fire engines, ambulances and police cars. That prolonged our stay.

We eventually moved off, four lanes compressed into one – in the rush hour – due to a major fire on the hard shoulder. And it was black as pitch, torrential rain and freezing cold.

I slipped off the motorway, wondering if it would be quicker to advance by going via Repentigny, but a Motel welcoming sign greeted me with rooms reduced to a special price “for tonight only”.

copulatum expensium, as we Pompeiians say. I needed cheering up.

So here at the Motel des Pinions Rouges at Bout-de-l’Ile it gave me an opportunity to charge up the Ryobi batteries that I had bought in Home Depot, and to cook myself a meal in the slow cooker.

I’ll organise myself better tomorrow.

Tuesday 20th September 2011 – I WENT FOR A LITTLE …

… drive out today, on the eastern bank of the Saint John River.

First stop though was into Florenceville, and we now have the deeds to our property, a safety-deposit box to keep them in and also a direct debit with the council to pay the property taxes on the property.

From here, I continued my drive upriver.

One thing that I hadn’t noticed before was that there was a dam across the Saint John River here just on the outskirts of Perth Andover.

It’s called the Beechwood Dam and it was the second to be built on the Saint John River system, dating from 1955. Apparently it was shrouded in controversy due to the fact that it interrupted traditional First-Nation water-borne movement patterns up and down the river.

From the other, western side of the river there are some stunning views a couple of miles south of Perth Andover.

Here I am on one of the old sections of the Trans Canada Highway (I think that in places it’s on its fourth reincarnation) and you can see exactly what I mean . And it would have been even nicer had I had the right kind of weather for it.

When I came by Hartland in 2010 I stayed in a motel on the top of the hill north of town, but I forgot to take a photo of it.

One of the things that I wanted to do this year was to put that right, and so I came past here this afternoon with the intention of rectifying matters. My room was one of those on the front row over there just by the telephone box.

From this spot there’s also a good view of the covered bridge down the hill at Hartland. It’s the world’s longest covered bridge apparently, 391 metres long.

These covered bridges are often described as “kissing bridges” because young couples would often go for a ride through them and while the horse concentrated on the road, the couple could occupy themselves with other things, out of the gaze of the public. In this bridge, they would have plenty of time for other things too.

Here’s somewhere else that I wanted to visit. I’d been here once before but I didn’t have too much time for a wander around. Today however, there wasn’t anyone around to ask if I could go for a walk around, and you need to ask for permission to do that sort of thing in North America.

It’s certainly the kind of place that I would like to visit when I’m on holiday. It’s home from home for me.

One more place that I wanted to capture on film was the largest food-processing plant in the World. It’s the McCain potato-processing plant in Florenceville, down there on the banks of the Saint John River.

I’ve been told that one third of all prepared chips sold in the world is a McCain product, so that’s some going. It’s hardly surprising that you can’t move on these roads for potato lorries during October.

So I’m going back to Rachel’s for an early night. I’m going to be busy for the next couple of days.

Tuesday 6th September 2011 – I WENT OFF …

… for a little drive today as I had a few things to do.

But on my way out towards Florenceville I caught a good view of Centreville in the rear mirror and so I couldn’t resist the opportunity to take a photograph of the town. I don’t recall taking a photograph of the town from here before so I need to put that right.

In Florenceville my lawyer was unavailable but I was able to open a bank account at the bank next door. Mind you, it took them long enough and a couple of good kicks to the computer in order to do it, but there it is.

I now have 200 dollars in a Canadian bank account, and I’ll be adding to that here and there as I go around.

I took the old road down alongside the Saint John River down to Hartland and there’s a really good spec along there to stop and take a photo of the covered bridge there.

It’s the world’s longest covered bridge at 391 metres long and, much to everyone’s surprise, it wasn’t covered when it was built. The covering was actually added about 20 years later, but not many people know that.

There used to be a railway line, maintained by the Canadian Pacific, that ran up along the Saint John River.

From what I understand, which may or may not be the case, that the CPR was looking for a way out of its obligations out here beyond Montreal and in the Spring of 1987, the weather came to the aid of the company where the spring ice-flow took half of the bridge down just outside Woodstock.

That was the best excuse that the company could wish for, and the line was abandoned immediately.

At the Planning Office in Woodstock, I was out of luck. It had been closed for Labour Day and was not due to re-open until Wednesday.

I wasn’t the only person to be taken by surprise by that. A local came in with some business to do, and he was quite upset. He had a good go at Public Servants and suggested that we change our jobs. How could I disagree?

However, it wasn’t a completely wasted journey down here. Parked up here is a Chevrolet 1300 pick-up. No idea about it really but I imagine that it’s from the 1960s. But that’s just a pure guess.

It’s had a makeover and is being used as a mobile advertising display, and that’s not a bad idea. It’s certainly attracted my attention, and probably the attention of many others too.

In the Health Food shop that has just opened, they didn’t have any vegan cheese but the girl there set me right about the whole kind of different things. There’s nothing much exciting going on around here but the Harvest Jazz and Blues Festival starts on the 13th and she thinks that there might be camping in one of the forest parks about 20 mins from Fredericton. That should be useful.

She was telling me about all these places to go to in Woodstock “its near here and just by there” and she noticed the puzzled look on my face.
“How long have you been in Woodstock?” she asked
“Ohhh, about 15 minutes”, I replied.

I do know that there’s a swimming pool here and so I went for a swim – and a good wash and shower – but its surely no surprise to you to learn that it’s closed for maintenance. It closed down the day I arrived and it opens up the day after I leave.

You couldn’t make it up.

But that girl was right about the vegan cheese in the Atlantic Superstore. And while I was waiting in the queue at a shop I noticed a magazine that told me that Canada’s biggest worry is the grief “given to us by our best friends across the border”. Why is this a surprise? I’ve been saying this for years

If I do come to live in Canada, I’ll be okay for work here. I could have a job on the techie counter at Walmart’s Woodstock branch because I knew more about the products on sale than the girl on the counter. It was me who had to insert the additional memory card into someone’s Blackberry and then program it – and I’d never even seen a Blackberry before.

I bought a 8GB micro-SD card for my Samsung mobile phone and wasn’t that an excellent idea? I now have an MP3 player for far cheaper than I would ever have imagined anywhere else.

also were having a DVD sale – piles of DVDs on sale for $5 – I bought 4 – 1 box contained 25 John Wayne films, another had 20 spaghetti westerns, a third had 9 commando B-features the fourth had 8 B-movie westerns. I’m set up for the long boring nights now.

But it’s a surprise to see who is starring or otherwise appearing in some of these films. There’s Klaus Kinski, father of Natasha of course, Lee van Kleef, Robert Mitchum, Van Johnson, Michael Rennie, Dana Andrews, Richard Conte, Lloyd Bridges, Chuck Connors, Cesar Romero, Jose Torres, Eddy Chandler, Walter Brennan, Jack Elam, Ricky Nelson, Slim Pickens, Burt Lancaster, John Ireland (is he father of Jill?) to mention just a dozen all of whom went on to greater things.

And that is of course before we mention John Wayne himself.

On the way back to my little plot of land I have a bizarre encounter with two young boys riding bicycles towards me on the wrong side of the road.

That wasn’t all that I encountered either.

Away in the distance was a rainbow. There had been a storm somewhere and the wind had blown the residue towards me, and the sun had caught it full-on. I hope that the photo comes out as well as it looked in reality because it really was a nice thing to see.

I’d come up the back way from Woodstock, missing out Centreville, and just before I joined the road that goes down to the USA border I came across the Presque Ile stream and a lovely girder bridge that was also worth a photo.

We have different issues about whether or not this image will come out. I can’t believe how late it was and the light was going already. I hope that this photo comes out properly too.

EPIC HALL

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

Tag Archives: ScotiaBank

Thursday 27th September 2018 – I’VE BEEN FEELING …

Thursday 30th August 2018 – I WISH …

Wednesday 29th August 2018 – I’VE NO IDEA …

Thursday 2nd November 2017 – A RIGHT LOAD OF BANKERS.

Wednesday 11th October 2017 – SO HERE I ALL AM …

Wednesday 5th October 2016 – BRRRR!

Friday 23rd September 2016 – I WAS OFF …

Wednesday 16th September 2015 – AND THE ANSWER TO YESTERDAY’S QUESTION IS …

Monday 3rd November 2014 – LOOK AT THIS!

Tuesday 9th September 2014 – I’VE LEFT CENTREVILLE …

Friday 6th September 2013 – I HAD AN “AT HOME DAY” TODAY

Thursday 26th April 2012 – THIS PHOTO …

Tuesday 20th September 2011 – I WENT FOR A LITTLE …

Tuesday 6th September 2011 – I WENT OFF …

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