Tag Archives: eric hall

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.

Monday 5th September 2011 – I AM NOT ALONE

There’s a security camera and radio transmitter now sprung up on the USA side of the border and it’s part-pointing onto the crossing just here and part-pointing onto my property.

It looks as if I’m going to have to have an accident while cleaning my crossbow or dismantling a spring-loaded container. But I’m sure that I can think of some other ways of distracting the attention of the people who stare at these security screens all day

But it’s nice to think that I’m so popular, isn’t it?

This is a good opportunity to show you exactly how I have arranged the Dodge so that I can live in it.

Firstly, why I chose a Dodge Grand Caravan was because the seats fold flat into the floor and there’s enough room to dance in here when you do that, without any obstructions at all to get in the way.

There’s the bed, and the double mattress that stops me rolling down the side and keeps me warm and out of contact with the cold window. The suitcase cooking stove is under the bed and the little table for cooking is right there to hand.

And if you don’t know what the flower pot is for, then you’ve clearly not been keeping up with things.

From the side, you’ll see the tarpaulin that has been cut in two halves and string run through the holes to make curtains.

The suitcase fits under the bed if I were to remove the Ryobi plus one drill that’s in the way. And there’s a brolly in the cup holder in the door.

We have two big storage boxes (there’s a third too between the head of the bed and the back of the passenger seat) and that’s where the food, the cooking items and the tools are stored. We have a Ryobi charger, a small mains inverter and also a power pack with jump leads, an internal battery and a small built-in inverter for powering the laptop and charging up the mobile phone.

I’m all set up for everything with this little set-up.

As for my neighbours, they aren’t very sociable so far. I was expecting them to come over for a chat – after all, I introduced myself to them yesterday, but so far, no such luck. So, in view of the miserable weather, I’ve had a quiet day “at home”.

Sunday 4th September 2011 – TRAVELLING TO MY NEW HOME

Here is where I spent last night.

I drove all around the town of Cabano and the local area last night but there wasn’t anywhere convenient to park up, so the back of the car park of the Metro supermarket had to do. I spent most of the night dying for a slash, freezing cold and I was awoken by a text message at 5:09.

GRRRRRRRRRRRRRR.

and haven’t I had some good luck here?

I fully believe that if I’m using someone’s facilities, it’s only polite to show my gratitude in a positive way and so with the supermarket being open this morning, I went in to do some shopping.

And just look at this! Real vegan cheese! And here in Quebec too. I consequently stocked up with a good supply of this for the next few weeks. This will go nicely on my salad butties, won’t it?

Cabano is situated at the head of Lake Temiscouata, which is the at the headwaters of the Saint John River system.

Back in the old days this was the site of a portage – people travelling between Lower Canada and Acadia made use of waterways as much as possible but there were places where they needed to leave one waterway and carry their equipment (a portage) overland to the next waterway. Cabano was one such place.

You don’t need any guesses to be able to tell what this might have been at one time. And when you see a street called rue de la Gare– “Station Street”, your suspicions are confirmed.

In the 1980s Canada out-Beechinged Beeching when it came to savaging the railway network and east of the city of Quebec the railway network was all-but wiped out. The line between the St Lawrence and Edmundston, which followed the old routz of the coureurs de bois was one that was obliterated.

To see more of Cabano, because there is plenty to see, you need to go here.

When I came by here the first time that I came to Canada, I saw a sign to a town called, rather enigmatically, St Louis du Ha! Ha! – complete with exclamation marks.

I didn’t have the time to go to check it out, but I took some time out today to go for a look, to make sure that I wasn’t imagining it. And here I am. It certainly exists, and that is confirmed by Canada Post.

Despite the rain, I go for a wander around the town and I’m immediately sidetracked by a load of fire engines.

It turns out that today is the the 39th Annual Tournament of the Fire Brigades of East Quebec, a series of competitions for who has the prettiest fire engine and so on, and I’ve stumbled right into the middle of it.

Whatever next? I’ll probably find a tractor pull or something.

From here, my journey takes me southwards into the hills – or the Appalachian Mountains to be precise – along the Route des Beaux Lieux.

And had it not been for the depressing weather, the lieux would have been exceedingly beaux. As it was, I wasn’t complaining at all. That’s the town of St Eusèbe up there on that crest, and it was every bit as beautiful as it looks from down here.

The Route des Beaux Lieux takes me to some beautiful places such as the town of Packingham just down there.

But you can see that this road has really earned its name. Even in the miserable weather that I was having today, it was all quite pretty around here. In the sunshine (if ever they have sunshine all around here) this must be a beautiful road to drive. I’ve made a mental note to come back here again and see for myself.

I cross over into New Brunswick and head for Lac Baker, which is going to be my lunch stop. Lac Baker is renowned for its municipal beach, which attract visitors from miles around, so they say.

Parked up outside the church, there’s a lovely view over the lake, although there would have been an even better one had the weather been decent enough. And it gives me an opportunity to try out my new vegan cheese, which is delicious. I’ll have some more of this.

The road from Lac baker takes me along the Saint John River to Edmundston and there on the outskirts of the town I finally find part of whatever it is of the New Brunswick rail network that survives.

This line is the main freight line that runs from Moncton up over the mountains to Edmundston and then along the Saint John River and over to Montreal. Much to my surprise, there’s actually a train moving around down there too.

Edmundston is famous for three reasons.

It has the third-largest French-speaking population outside France and Quebec
It has historically adopted a neutral position in all of the arguments that have raged around here – to such an extent that it set itself up at one time as the Republic of Madawaska
You can’t move around here without tripping over a paper mill

There are several paper mills here, one of which straddles the border with the USA and the liquid paper pulp passes over the river to the USA in a pressurised pipeline.

But look at the weather. It’s horrible and I’m not going for a walk around the town today. I’ll come back another time when the sun is shining.

Leaving Edmundston I caught up with my railway train. It’s pulled by three locomotives – two Canadian Nationals and a BC Rail – and there’s a power car in amongst the wagons, but I couldn’t see whose it was.

There’s a variety of rolling stock in there, including a wagon from the Illinois Central. Whatever is that doing in there?

Finally, the weather eases up and as it does so, the light disappears and I’m plunged into darkness. I suppose that you can’t have everything.

As I pull into Perth Andover, my arrival is celebrated by the local inhabitants with a fireworks display.

It’s Labour Day of course and the First Nation Community – Malicete, I think – here has been having a festival. The celebrations have concluded with this firework display and so, like everyone else here, I stop at the side of the road to find a good spec.

And so I arrive at my little piece of Canada. There are neighbours’ cars all over the placeand when the neighbour comes out onto the porch to see who it is who has arrived, I take the bull by the horns and go up to introduce myself.

This takes him completely by surprise.

And it’s pelting down again and we have thunder and lightning. What a way to arrive.

It’s just like my Demon King arrival in Milton Keynes.

-1

Saturday 3rd September 2011 – CHARLEVOIX

This is my spec from last night – the big Tourist Office on the slope down from Cap Tourmente into the Charlevoix. And it was just like home too with a huge hanging cloud hovering over me.

And while parking up at a place like this might be a good idea in theory, it falls down in reality because there is no coffee machine, and that is unthinkable. What kind of welcome is this for tourists?

By the time that I had driven down the hill, through the town of Baie St Paul and up the hill on the other side, the hanging cloud had gone.

There’s a big parking place just along there with a magnificent view of the bay, the interior and also the town, and anyone standing on this point for more than 30 seconds will immediately understand why it is that the Charlevoix is the most beautiful place in the world.

A beautiful drive along the coast brought me to the town of La Malbaie. I came past here on my first journey to Canada but I was in a little hurry and so never stopped. However, today I took the opportunity to stop and go for a wander around.

It’s a really nice town, quite pretty too, and its claim to fame is that it was here that I handed out my first business card to a potential client.

As the mid morning sun cleared away the fog in the river, the views became spectacular. especially across the St Lawrence River.

And there is the distance is the St Lawrence Ferry that crosses between St Simeon and Riviere du Loup. We sailed on that on my first trip here too, smashing through the ice on the way across. But this year, I have another ferry crossing planned.

And I don’t mean this ferry either.

We’ve been on this ferry quite a few times and we are going on it again. It’s the Saguenay Ferry that crosses the mouth of the Saguenay River on the north bank of the St Lawrence at Tadoussac. It’s a symbolic ferry in that the river formerly marked the unofficial dividing line between “civilisation” and the backwoods.

It’s symbolic for other reasons, because look what else I’ve found here.

This is called a T-Rex and it’s a car, believe it or not, made in Quebec. About 50 of these are produced every year and if I lived here in Canada I would be the first in the queue for one of these. And of course, it would have to be called “The White Swan”, for the most obvious of reasons.

And that’s not all of the excitement either. There was a mobile home and caravan on board the ferry and you will notice the number plates. It’s come all of the way from Munich in Germany.

I went over to interrogate the owners and it appears that they have crossed the Atlantic with a company called Seabridge, the vehicle being shipped by Atlantic Containers in a service that runs from Hamburg and a few other places over to Halifax and Montreal.

I shall have to look into this.

This rusting hulk that has come sailing into Les Escoumins is the boat that is taking me over to Trois Pistoles on the south bank of the St Lawrence.

It’s quite an interesting ferry. Tickets are sold in the petrol station in the town, check-in is done by a man who drives up in a car, uses the inside of his hatchback as a desk, and then drives off again afterwards

As for the ship – well, she’s seen better days, and that’s what makes this crossing really interesting. Anyway, I pick up my oar, I’m chained to my seat and off we go.

Just by way of a change, there were all kinds of exciting people on the ferry and I fell in with this American couple from Massachusetts.

Strawberry Moose won some new admirers of course, because he is such a gregarious moose, and the feeling was mutual.

We had a lengthy chat, during the course of which they mentioned that they just driven the Trans-Labrador Highway. They had done the trip in reverse, so they said, which made me think that they must have had a really good pair of rear-view mirrors, because there was no obvious crick in the guy’s neck.

As the sun goes down on the St Lawrence River, Strawberry Moose surveys the scene.

Trois Pistoles is getting closer and closer and night is drawing in, so I won’t have much chance of finding a home fortonight. What I’ll have to do is to drive over the mountains tonight to the other side of Quebec on the New Brunswick frontier and see what presents itself.

I’m full of optimism, so all is well.

This is just a short account of everything that happened today. I took tons of photos and wrote loads of notes, so if you want to see it all, you need to go to this page and follow the account from there.

Friday 2nd September 2011 – TROIS RIVIERES AND QUEBEC

here’s where I spent the night last night – in a lorry-weighing station about 15 miles south of Trois Rivieres. And had it not been for the workmen going past with strimmers at about 07:30, I would still be asleep there now. I was really comfortable here.

It was crowded with trucks when I arrived last night but apart from the gardeners, it was as deserted as the Mary Celeste.

On my brief passage by here on the motorway on my first journey here, I first saw this bridge – the Pont Laviolette – but couldn’t stop to take a photo.

When I was here in 2010 I tried my best to find a good view of the bridge to photograph it but with not much luck. But this year, on the north bank of the river on the edge of Trois Rivieres there’s a little park here and there’s a place here where there’s a lovely view of the bridge.

First appearances can often be deceptive, and in Trois Rivieres that is certainly the case.

When I came here first, I wasn’t all that impressed but I spent a good couple of hours wandering around the city and that changed my point of view completely. If you would like to go on my little misguided tour of the city, you need to follow this link and you can form your own opinions.

This building is quite worthy of note, because it represents an irony that has gone completely over the heads of everyone around here.

Not too far from here is a chapel and the priest here back in the mid 19th Century wanted to enlarge it. he bought a pile of stone to bring across here when the river was frozen but the river never froze. So when he decided to cancel his plans – and almost immediately, the river froze over.

This was classed as a miracle and the crowds began to flock here, and so they built a bigger church – the irony being totally lost upon them.

How about this for an impressive construction? It’s the Tracel de cap Rouge, a latticework viaduct built at the turn of the 20th Century to carry the railway line over the valley here.

The valley around here is also of interest, for it’s the site of the first French colony in North America, although the colony didn’t last all that long.

After my vicissitudes of last year, we finally made it up to the top of the Plains of Abraham on the outskirts of the city of Quebec.

The battlefield here is ringed with old cannons and field guns from various wars and Strawberry Moose took the opportunity for a photo call with a cannon that had been recovered from the river, presumably from a sunken ship.

It was not much longer after this that I had a couple of encounters with the farces of law and order. Consequently I decided to leave the city and head for the hills. But if you want to see the city of Quebec, you can follow this link.

These are just a few photos and a brief recap of my day’s travels. For a fuller account, and to see more photos, you need to follow this link.

Thursday 1st September 2011 – I’VE BEEN SHOPPING TODAY AS WELL

I had a good night’s sleep for a change at the Howard Johnson Motel – no antics in other rooms to wake me up this time.

With there being a late check-out time, I spent a while programming the phone that I bought yesterday and catching up with another few things. Then off to Canadian Tire for a leisure battery and a small solar panel, and Home Depot for a few other bits of DiY stuff including a cheap Ryobi plus one drill and set of batteries.

I had a meeting with a couple of people afterwards where we talked wind turbines, and then off to IKEA where I bought a kiddies’ bed and found a cheap mattress in the bargain bin, plus a saucepan and one or two other things.

I hit the main road at rush hour, as you might expect, and a slow crawl took me south of the river and now it’s dark. I’m heading towards Trois Rivieres to find a place to park up and then I’ll start my real journey tomorrow.

-6

Wednesday 31st August 2011 – HERE I AM…

… standing outside my hotel down on the end of the runway at Paris Charles de Gaulle, waiting for the shuttle bus to take me to the airport.

You can see how close we are to the airport here. Mind you – it’s a good 15 minutes on the bus as the terminal is on the other side of the runway.

The airport was as usual a thoroughly stressful experience and our plane was actually parked away from the airport on the concrete pan. We had to be bussed out there.

And it was like flying Transatlantic Ryanair with Ait Transat. We were crammed in like sardines and we were late taking off – there being a problem with a chemical toilet on board. In fact the most comfortable 5 minutes that I had on the ‘plane was when I had 5 minutes on the Elsan.

We flew over some areas that I recognised, including the Manic 5 dam, and you can see the Trans Labrador Highway quite clearly down below. It was good to be back in familiar territory.

We were again parked up miles from the terminal at Pierre Trudeau Airport and had to be bussed to the terminal. And much to my surprise, the passage through Immigration was painless – I was “interrogated” by a girl who looked as if she was about 12. Shows you how old I am, doesn’t it?

And look at my car! It’s a Dodge Grand Caravan that I’ve chosen especially for this journey, because the seats fold flat into the floor and that makes a nice big space to make up a bed.

I’m staying here for a while and I need to watch my budget, and hiring a vehicle like this is cheaper than staying in motels. I’ve rented a tiny storage unit too, so what I buy can be stored here for use on a subsequent occasion.

I found a Walmart where I found a camping stove and some food supplies. I couldn’t make IKEA though – stuck in road works and rush hour traffic, it was impossible to move. And so I made my way across town to my motel and I’ll go th IKEA tomorrow.

Tuesday 30th August 2011 – DAY ONE OF MY VOYAGE

I’m not sure if this should actually count as Day One because firstly, there wasn’t much of it and secondly, I didn’t actually leave the country. It was however they day that I hit the road (or rather hit the rails) and so for that reason I’ve included it as a fair candidate.

Having said that though, I did actually hit the road rather early. I was all washed up, cleaned up, tidied up (well, sort-of) and on the road for 09:45 because today is the day that Liz and I record the Radio Anglais programmes for the month of September. We did the Radio Tartasse sessions in the morning and then I drove Caliburn down to Liz’s and left him there, piling myself and the baggage into Liz’s voiture for the journey down to Gerzat and the Radio Arverne sessions.

When they were over she heaved me out at the railway station at Riom and that was that. And only a wait of 75 minutes for the train. Good job there’s a coffee machine here.

This is the locomotive that pulled my train for Paris Gare de Lyon.

I sat next to a girl on the train up and we had a healthy conversation for at least 10 minutes before we worked out that we were both British. She was from Inverness and a student at St Andrews studying French for Scientists. She was spending a year’s exchange living in the language but she’d been in Aurillac for a month house-and-dog sitting.

Her family lives in the wilds and they have no mains electricity – just solar panels and wind turbines and so we had a good chat about that and I gave her a card.

We had the usual struggle across Paris with my giant suitcase and there has to be a better way to go to the airport than this – hitting the city in the evening rush hour with swarms of people and escalators out of order and miles to walk. I’m going to have to resolve this somehow.

At the airport, I dunno where this blasted shuttle bus has gone to – I have to wait about a year for it to turn up. And then by the time that I’ve sorted out everything at the hotel and gone for a walk, the only restaurant in this village here is closed. It only opens Thursday Friday and Saturday evenings and closes at 21:30. So that’s no use to me.

Nothing to eat tonight then. I hope that the rest of my voyage is better than this.

Monday 29th August 2011 – I had another early start this morning.

I don’t know why – but I was downstairs making breakfast when the alarm went off at 08:15. What’s going on there, then? It’s not like me.

And so this morning I packed everything up ready for going to Paris on the train tomorrow evening. The suitcase is all done – it just remains now to do my backpack and to sort out the camera and one or two other bits and pieces.

I’ve also printed off a pile of stuff that I needed to print – the radio stuff and also my rail tickets and so on. even managed to find the time to plant some winter cabbage. But talking of the garden – I planted some endives a couple of weeks ago when I pulled up the new potatoes, and covered the plot with a black plastic bin liner. When I lifted it off today, much of it had sprouted. That was good. Mind you, despite how warm it was today, the temperature last night dropped to about 9 degrees – the lowest so far this summer. Autumn is acumen in. Lhude sing the falling leaves.

Round at Liz’s we prepared our radio programmes for tomorrow and Liz cooked a nice tea. we also weighed my suitcase – 3kgs overloaded. I’ll have to do some trimming down of what I’m taking.

Now I’m back here chilling out. The next news that you have of me won’t be from here, that’s for sure.

-2

Sunday 28th August 2011 – It was Sunday today

And so following the principle of “on the seventh day”, I had a nice long lie-in and for most of the day I haven’t done a tap.

This morning I’ve managed to finish a book that I’ve been reading and then I went to track down some more stuff that I need to take with me to Canada. I want to have my packing finished by tomorrow afternoon.

This afternoon I transcribed the rest of my notes from Canada 2010. You might remember that the dictaphone that I had broke down in the USA. That one recorded on either 1.2 or 2.4 ips but I have an ancient one here that records on 1.8 ips and so I’ve managed to transcribe the notes from that, even though I do sound rather like Donald Duck on it.

I’ve recorded a few more CDs to take with me – some Help Yourself, some Lindisfarne and finally (because I won’t be doing any more) Live in the City of Light by Simple Minds.

None of these were difficult choices. Help Yourself I first encountered on Man’s “All Good Clean Fun” Tour and Help Yourself’s subsequent classic
Good Clean Fun has passed our way and gone
But we’re glad that we have met someone
With a little bit of funk and soul
Man we’re glad we know you!
And not only that, if you are fed up of lead guitar solos where the guitarist plays a million notes so quickly that you can’t hear what he’s playing, then have a listen to the lead guitar solo on “Reaffirmation”. THAT‘s how you play a guitar solo.

Lindisfarne were of course the first serious group I ever saw live, Christmas 1971 at “Up the Junction” in Crewe. I was 17, my girlfriend at the time was nearly 15 and as it was a private members’ club, we borrowed the membership cards of my sister and her husband to get in. That was the night that the rest of the band left Jacka on the stage to play the harmonica solo in “We Can Swing Together” while they dashed off to the pub across the road. At 10:30 the club locked its doors as it was required to do by law, and when the band came back 2 minutes later they couldn’t get back in. They had to bang on the door for 15 minutes before someone would let them back in and poor Jacka was exhausted – the longest gobiron solo in the history of the planet.

As for Live in the City of Light, I had to go to Germany for a week and my car was in the garage so I was obliged to borrow one of a colleague. I didn’t have half my stuff with me, and the only music in the car was “Live in the City of Light”. If it had been most albums, it would have bored me to tears after a day, but not that. In fact it’s never been off my playlist ever since.

So that’s about 50 albums recorded. No matter what happens, I’m not going to be short of music in Canada.

-2

Saturday 27th August 2011 – I’ve found a really interesting …

… plastic bag to wrap all of my tools and electrical bits into when I put them into my suitcase. And I’d love to have a remote camera in there to take a photo of the face of the security guard when he opens it. No sense of humour, these people. Am I the only one to notice that all of the humour and levity seem to have gone out of life these day?

But not to worry. I’ve also put a protractor, a set square, a set of logarithm tables and so in inside the suitcase. They are in a plastic bag labelled “Weapons of Maths Instruction”.

OK – I’ll get my coat.

And so it’s Saturday. And just for a change, I haven’t been shopping. There’s nothing I need to buy before I set off from here on Tuesday to go to Paris. And so I had a very leisurely breakfast – interrupted from my reverie by a large Ford Transit that came bouncing down the track here. “What does Simon want at this time of the morning?” I uttered. But a second glance revealed that the vehicle had French plates. “Is Terry back already?”. But no, it’s the baker in a different vehicle delivering the bread. That livened up the day.

So now wide awake and shipshape, I started to pack. Bill has lent me a big suitcase and Strawberry Moose fits nicely into it. Then, I’ve fitted all of the tools in there, some of the electrical stuff and also the slow cooker. Now I need to fit the rest of the electrical stuff, all of the paperwork and some clothes in there too. I’ve also sorted out some clothes to take – all colour coded and with logos on. I’m into colour-coding and corporate clothing and all of that stuff.

This afternoon I carried on working outside for a change. I finished off the pointing on the wall – at least all that it’s feasible to do right now until I take off the rest of the corrugated iron roof.

I’ve reached right up into the apex of the roof as you can see and over across to the other side of the roof. That’s over half of the roof finished now and while it would have been nice to have found the time to do all of it, I’m reasonably satisfied with that.

It won’t take long to do all the rest and then fit the wind turbine.

Once I decided to retire for the day, I took down the ladder and fitted a couple of tarps over the bit where there’s no roof.

This is only going to be a temporary measure while I’m in Canada of course. Once the rest of the wall is pointed and the wind turbine is up, then I can roof it over properly.

Considering it’s Saturday, I’ve been extremely busy today and I’ll be glad to have a decent lie-in tomorrow – I’ve earned it.

Tomorrow if the weather is nice, it’s the Virlet brocante – one of the best in the area and I’ll go for a look around. I also have to plant some winter lettuce and cabbage and there’s some post to deal with – a few letters, two things to proof-read (one for Dave and one for Rhys) and half-a-dozen e-mails to reply to. When I’ve done that I can knock off because that will be everything that needed doing before I leave.

What? Up to date? Me? Perish the thought.

And in other news, at weekend I usually allow myself a handful of sweets. So this weekend I’ve finished the last of the root beer flavoured sweets because next weekend I can buy some more. They are only on sale in North America.

-2

Friday 26th August 2011 – I was up early again this morning …

… at about 08:30 in fact, even though it wasn’t until 04:30 that I went to bed.

Mind you, no-one could sleep with the amount of raid that was cascading down, and the noise that it was making. By the time that I had made my coffee, I reckoned that it was about 8 hours since I had taken the stats, and in that time 27.2mm of rain had fallen. And by the end of the day, we had had over 37mm all told. It never stopped raining and it was as grey as any November or February day that you might mention.

No possibility of working outside and so I started to collect together the tools that I’m taking to Canada. That led to something of a (very insignificant) tidying up on the first floor, and then a much-more-important tidying up up here and finding bits of paper.

But we did have a tragedy though. Do you remember the other week about the impressive media wall that I had built? Well, while I was sitting here drinking a coffee, the whole lot crashed to the floor and there were video cassettes and DVDs all over the place. Talk about chaos.

This afternoon was spent therefore cleaning a load of old bricks, finding lengths of wood and then making some shelves.

You can see them in the photo – a nice cantilever arrangement at the top as well. That all works quite well and I hope that it lasts until I’ve finished the ground floor of the house and settled in, whenever that might be.

I was also interrupted – and very welcome interruptions they were too – by a series of phone calls. Dave from Hexham rang me and we talked about all kinds of things, including that he plans to come down here later this year and teach me plumbing. That ought to be exciting but I think that he’ll be plumbing the depths a little just there. I’ll definitely be out of my depth anyway.

Also ringing up for a chat were Bill and Percy Penguin. And that was nice too – I like talking as you know, and of course Percy Penguin isn’t mentioned in these pages half as often as she deserves to be.

I’ve also started copying some CDs to take with me to play in the hire car. I’ve done three just now, and having read this blog quite often just recently I bet that you can guess what they are.

Yes, Colosseum Live, Made In Japan and Liege And Lief. Say no more. It just happens that I’m listening to Made in Japan right now.

And it’s still raining as well.

-2

Thursday 25th August 2011 – Well, what a day!

And I had so much to do as well and I’ve ended up not doing very much.

Working unti 04:30 was one thing but another thing was being dragged out of the bed almost at the crack of dawn (well, 9:50, anyway) by the phone. Of all people, it wss the bank. Could I go down there?

That was eerie but what followed was certainly different. It appears that there has been some confusion at the bank, a sum of money hadn’t been paid, and a girl due to fly out to Canada on Saturday didn’t have any of the paperwork necessary. And so until about 12:45 I was engaged in negotiations down in Pionsat and then out at St Maurice pres Pionsat, which despite its name is nowhere near Pionsat.

Back at the ranch, I then had to make a few telephone calls to Canada, and thanks to Katherine for giving me some help as to who to call. All in all, I was involved in this for hours.

Having said that, though, I was flattered that the bank had called me in to help. It’s definitely a sign of progress.

And what else? I now have some web pages in French for my business web site, thanks to Marianne who made a few corrections to my text, I’ve almost finished this battery box idea thing, I’ve a proof of no-claims bonus for my Canadian car insurance, I’ve my train tickets, I’ve booked a motel in Montreal for the first night, I’ve rented some storage space in Montreal – ooooh, lots of things.

What with the late finish, the early start and all of the excitement I’m whacked so I’m off to bed. To listen to the wind in the trees as a strong wind has started up. It’s a beautiful breeze blowing through here.

-2

Wednesday 24th August 2011 – Well, I was up early this morning.

We had the most astonishing storm – rain coming down in torrents. And as I was lying in bed listening to it, it suddenly occurred to me that I might have left Caliburn’s doors open.

That made me move quite sharp-ish, I can tell you, and I was downstairs in no time flat. In vain though – I had closed them. But seeing as I was up, I made breakfast. And watching the rain fall was also astonishing. There’s a digital electric rain gauge outside, with a remote sender in the verandah, and the water level rose from 0.7mm to 4.5mm in the tine that it took to make a coffee. No wonder I was drenched just running to Caliburn.

This morning on the computer, I translated into French the work that I had done on my business web site. Quebec and a small part of New Brunswick are very partisan about their right to speak the French language, and so two can play at that game as well. After all, I need the work and I’m not going there simply for the good of my health. I intend to take Canada by storm! Rather like the storm this morning.

I’ve also done the first half of the second series of programmes for Radio Anglais. That will be the programmes for October. I won’t have the opportunity to do anything like that while I’m in Canada so it needs to be done before I go.

This afternoon, in view of the weather, I made a start on assembling the control box for the battery that I will be buying in Canada. It has the two connectors of course, an American plug of the type that I use for 12 volt, and a cigarette lighter multiple socket, into which Ill be fitting one of the two small inverters that I bought in Clarenville in Newfoundland last year. That’s for charging up the laptop, working the slow cooker, etc etc.

Later on in the afternoon it dried up for a little while and so I took advantage and went for a quick dash up the wall with a bucket or two of cement.

I’ve finished the pointing right into the apex, and now I’m on my way down a little, stretching over to the other side and that’s not easy up there like that.

Anyway, I’ve reached my revised target with a few days to spare and I’m pleased about that.

But just as I moved all of the food out of the verandah into the lean-to because it was all far too hot, that really IS the signal for the weather to break, isn’t it?

-4

Tuesday 23rd August 2011 – I was fed up this morning.

Well, I’ve been fed up for a few weeks actually about the question of food storage and what put the tin hat on it was on Monday when some tinned vegetables in an airtight container in the fridge had gone off, after just 3 days. And then a tin of beans came out of the tin already cooked. This morning though, a carton of soya milk had also gone off – after just three days as well.

I know that the fridge that I have isn’t up to much and a new one is very much on the agenda, but the temperature in the verandah isn’t helping. It’s been over a week that we have had temperatures well over 50°C in there and there aren’t too many fridges that would cope with those conditions.

And so late this afternoon I moved some of the boxes in the lean-to, made some space, and moved the food cupboard and the fridge into there. That gave me an opportunity to clean the fridge and the cupboard, to sort out the food and bin a lot of time-expired stuff, and to do something about the state of the verandah because where the cupboard had been was … errrr … rather in need of cleaning.

But I hope that in the lean-to, everything will keep cooler during the rest of the summer. The temperature in there only reaches about 28°C maximum.

This morning I started work on my business web site. It’s something of a mess because I’ve neglected it for so long, and so it’s high time that I bring it up to date, especially as I’m going to be plugging myself quite a bit in Canada. But it might well take more time that I have available as I can see me running out of time yet again.

I also had to nip into Pionsat. The guy in the mairie had found some information for Radio Anglais and I have to do that as well. I also saw Mike and Simon – Mike helped me load his old oil tank into the back of Caliburn and to unload it back at this end. And it isn’t exactly the same as Simon’s – it’s larger and so it wouldn’t fit fully into Caliburn. In the end I had two of the legs balanced on the back bumper and held in with a strap.

What a way to go! I thought I’d grown out of doing crazy stunts like that.

-2

EPIC HALL

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