Tag Archives: strawberry moose

Saturday 1st July 2023 – FOUR YEARS AGO …

… today I was on the deck of THE GOOD SHIP VE … errr … OCEAN ENDEAVOUR in Aberdeen, Scotland (for the benefit of those who don’t know where Aberdeen is) waiting to cast off forr’ard and left hand down a bit on our way to Kugluktuk on the border between the Far North of Canada and Alaska.

When I set out I didn’t really have much of an idea when I’d be back home (if ever at all) and it wasn’t until late October that I finally returned to perch upon my little rock, having made a brief stop in Morocco on the way back.

That was some voyage. Rosemary came with me as far as Greenland of course, and HIS NIBS did the full circuit with me.

A great many of my lifetime ambitions were realised. I finally managed to visit the site – Hvalsey – in Greenland where the last known record of the Norse colony was recorded, and next stop, I went to visit Leif Ericson’s house at Brattahlid,

Higher up on the Canadian side of the Davis Strait I walked upon the site of one of Franklin’s camps – at Beechey Island – and visited the graves of some of his sailors and inspected the remains of the cabin and the boat that later explorers left for him and his party (in vain) in case they even made it back to civilisation, and I passed through the mythical North-West Passage.

Not only that, but when I had to leave the ship for a couple of weeks in Greenland when that party of schoolkids joined (I don’t have a North American police check of course) I flew out to the Rockies to continue my journey along the Emigrants’ Trail to California and walked up South Pass – the North American watershed where east drains into the Atlantic and the Gulf of Mexico, and the west drains into the Pacific – to see the tracks of the covered wagons that made the journey between 1846 and 1861.

There was also standing on the stage where my grandmother performed with a variety of famous American music-hall artists in Winnipeg, the house where she lived, the church where she married and the grave where her first husband is buried.

And not to forget the rather “strange” encounter that I had over a period of three days right at the end of the voyage … “strange encounter?” – ed … “I told you not to mention that!”.

How I wish that I could go and do it all again but I’m struggling these days to even walk to the door of the apartment.

It was even a struggle to get out of bed this morning. I was dead to the world when the alarm went off.

That might possibly be something to do with the fact that I didn’t go straight to bed last night as I said that I would. I ended up having a nostalgic session on the guitar for quite a while – blow all the cobwebs away. So with not going to bed until late, I was not in the mood to do very much.

Nevertheless I did manage to struggle out to the shops this morning. And considering that I didn’t think that I’d need very much, I spent a small fortune.

Noz was quite expensive today, something not unconnected with the fact that they had some digestive biscuits in today. They were quite expensive, but ask me if I care.

LeClerc was expensive too but a lot of that was due to the fact that I’ve almost run out of coffee and I’ve not seen any on special offer for ages. It had to be stocked up at any price, so watch it be on sale next week.

On the way home I had to call at the pharmacy by the Agora – the only one on my route that it’s convenient to visit with a vehicle.

That’s because I had an e-mail from the nerve specialist yesterday that is a prescription. By the looks of things it’s for a blood test so I’ll have to talk to the nurse when he comes to give me my Aranesp on Monday.

There’s a whole pile of stuff that needs to be checked, including Hepatitis B and C, and also the creatinine in my urine. So I needed a sample pot and they are obtained from the chemist.

But looking at this list, it’s really quite ominous, the things that they want to check, and I’m wondering if it’s anything to do with a hospital admission. As the policeman said, when he was told about the hole that had been blown in the wall at the nudist camp, “I shall have to look into this”

After I came back home and had my coffee and cheese on toast, I went back into the bedroom – and passed out completely. All of the exercise today has totally worn me out. While I was asleep I was in Whitchurch living in a room somewhere. There was a fête on somewhere out in South Cheshire and I’d arranged to go there. It was becoming late and no-one had been to pick me up. I decided that what I’d do would be to set out and walk there. It might be 12 miles but the chances are that I’d meet the people for whom I’m looking on my way. Even if I didn’t the walk would do me good. I had to sit and think about how long it was since I’d actually been on a walk for that long. I was busy preparing myself. I had a half-eaten apple that I needed to finish. I was thinking that I’d better set off soon because otherwise if I had to walk it’ll be all over by the time I’d arrive. The thing about this dream was that it was just so real that when I awoke I actually began to think about leaving for this walk.

It’s no surprise that I didn’t feel very much like doing anything particular after that. It’s actually quite beyond a joke how tired I seem to be these days.

But having drank my very cold coffee I had a listen to the rest of the dictaphone because there was plenty on there from the night. We had a whole tribe of Zulu warriors, native African warriors of all ages in the jungle who’d gone to intercept a party of European girls. The girls had managed to put them to flight and chase them away. I’ve obviously been watching too many SAINT TRINIANS films. But each one of these Zulus was created as I’d create a figure in 3D as if it was some unseen hand guiding everything around, although of course the hand wouldn’t have been unseen because I could see it manipulating these 3D figures.

It actually reminds me of the old, hoary joke
“I was playing cards with some Africans last night”
“Zulus?”
“No. I won a fiver.”

I was on holiday with a young girl and we were sharing a room. Something had happened and she was absolutely outraged. I don’t think she was all that happy. Then we had to go to the bathroom to get ready for bed. First she went and then I went. I then went back in the bedroom getting ready to go to bed. There was a little kitten sitting there, obviously waiting for the two of us to go to bed because it would join us. It looked ever so cute. The girl seemed to be pleased to see it. We got into bed and the kitten joined us. Next morning we were in like a restaurant looking out of the window. We weren’t sure which town we could see. Someone asked me if it was Kherson. I said that Kherson was somewhere “over there. It might be Almaty or something”. While we were talking away 3 people took our seats. We said “hey we were sitting there”. The woman there said “you were talking Welsh. I didn’t realise what language you were talking”. In the end because the place was so full we all squidged up and sat around this table, all of us. One of their children came to join us too so we were all really crammed into this little café restaurant type of place like sardines.

Finally it was the birthday of a couple of kids. They were 11. They’d had a bike each for their birthday. Their father was really angry and annoyed because he said that the bikes were wrong. Someone tried to explain everything to him but he wouldn’t listen so they wandered away. he turned round to me to say this is what they said etc, laughing. I replied “you’ll probably find it even more funny when you find out later that they are totally correct” at which point he went berserk. In the end we bought two new bikes and measured them. There was absolutely no doubt about the measurements. We began to assemble them right in front of him. They went together completely naturally just as they ought to do with no adjustment or manoeuvre. It was quite obvious that the measurements for the 2 bikes that he’d been given had been perfectly correct.

That’s not all that happened last night but you really don’t want to know the rest, especially if you are eating your evening meal or something.

Later on I was invited out to visit some neighbours. There was a nice couple who were living here when I first moved in but my reputation had clearly preceded me because they left a short while after I arrived. But they were visiting so we were all invited for a chat.

Usually I’m not a very sociable person, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, but I forced myself and stayed for a couple of hours and that surprised even me.

Consequently my evening meal was late. Chips and salad and one of these soya burgers in breadcrumbs. That’s the last of that batch and I’ll have to start now on the ones that I bought a few weeks ago

So later than usual, I’m off to bed. It’s Sunday so I can have a lie-in and won’t that be nice? I must say that I can do with one, especially if I can go on some exciting voyages.

It’s quite a shame really that all of the excitement that ever happens to me these days takes place when I’m asleep. At least they haven’t descended into the chaos felt by the poet Charles Sorley at the Battle of Loos
“When You See Millions Of The Mouthless Dead
Across Your Dreams In Pale Battalions Go …”

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Wednesday 28th June 2023 – I REALLY MUST …

… remember that the bottle of tabasco sauce doesn’t have a drip feeder.

After tonight’s leftover chili I’ve had to put the toilet paper in the fridge. And if there ever would be a damsel in distress stuck in my apartment and a knight in shining armour came to rescue her, I’d make pretty short work of him. Who needs a dragon after my tea tonight?

Well, actually, I needed a dragon this morning to get me out of bed because I was flat-out in the arms of Morpheus when the alarm went off.

It was quite a struggle to rise to my feet before the second alarm went off but I managed it. And I staggered into the living room for my medication feeling like the Wreck of the Hesperus.

Today I’ve been organising stuff for the radio now that I’ve finished (for the moment) updating the directories on the computer. Another pile of stuff went the Way of the West today and I do really wonder why most of it hadn’t been filed away correctly.

And having organised that, I’ve been back in Cartwright down the Labrador coast.

At the moment I’m out in a small boat at Muddy Bay. That was the site of one of these Residential Schools about which so much has been written over the last few years and was something that I had wanted to see.

However this one is rather different in that it wasn’t designed for imprisoning native children who had been forcibly removed from their parents like most of them. This was effectively an orphanage opened in 1919 to house the children who had lost both parents in the Influenza epidemic that devastated the coast and who had nowhere else to go.

There have been several accounts written by residents and in the main it seems to have been a respectable and reasonable place. However two boys obviously didn’t think so as they burnt it down in 1928.

There’s also the mystery surrounding Marguerite Lindsay.

She was one of the Grenfell Association’s “WOPs” – volunteer workers who came “With Out Pay” to help the coastal communities and taught sport to the girls in the orphanage. In August 1922 she went for a walk – and never came back.

Four months later they found her body frozen in the ice with a bullet wound.

The official verdict was that she fell and landed on her pistol which discharged itself with the shock. But as you can imagine, conspiracy theories abound.

The cleaner came round today of course and we had a good chat. She doesn’t think that my neighbour will ever recover her health after the bad fall that she had, and that’s sad.

There was plenty of stuff on the dictaphone from the night. I was doing some research into suicides amongst children for a University thesis. I was busy compiling a whole list of case studies and statistics of everything that I could find going back several years. I found so much stuff that I was having difficulty trying to think how I would write it and what information I would use. I didn’t just want to discuss one case after another, I wanted to write about them in groups or something like that where each group had a common factor. I came across something very interesting while I was doing it, a kind-of game similar to American football where you’d throw an object down a field and a cat would chase after the object, catch it and bring it back. I ended up being totally engrossed in this idea, reading all about famous cats and famous games in which these cats had played “fetch”. That was something that would sidetrack me completely because it was much more interesting than what I was doing. Some of these cats were quite impressive with some really high-class performances that took me by surprise.

And isn’t that the story of my life? When I was at University I had a thesis to write but was side-tracked completely and while what I wrote was well-researched and well-written, it went totally off-topic and I received a miserable mark for it. I would make a useless academic. I went for an interview once to see about doing a PhD but I was told quite frankly that I didn’t have the temperament to sit and concentrate all my efforts into one narrow sphere.

Then there was someone from Crewe in the Victorian era who went to explore the High Arctic and was lost. He was due to marry and his finacée had a nervous breakdown. Everyone was trying to console her. She actually worked in a building in the Town Centre, a kind-of early 5 or 6-storey skyscraper that was one room on top of another on top of another etc, called Robles and Co, an art-deco kind of 1920s dark red brick building.

Later on I was at a party in the Auvergne with a lot of people from the Alternative Society, one of these ecological meetings. I was feeling really bored because I didn’t really think all that much of most of them. Just wandering around and someone introduced me a girl there. We began to chat. It turned out that she was a folk singer from San Francisco. We began to talk. She asked me if she could borrow something or other so I took out my wallet to get it. It was a card with my number on she wanted. Of course I had a pile of railway tickets there and they all fell out. That made her smile. I picked everything up. We carried on chatting. I kept on asking her questions and getting everything wrong, like I mentioned LA and she said no, she came from San Francisco etc. In the end she was showing me posters that she still had on her of when she first played different gigs etc. I was just on the point of asking her if she’d like to get together to maybe have a jam some time when I awoke. That’s typical isn’t it?

Finally I’d found myself a little job working part-time in a DiY paint shop in Crewe town centre, Market Street. I was just there for a couple of hours helping out the girl who ran it. The first time that I was there she gave me a couple of things. The second time she gave me two big brushes. When it was closing time I locked up the shop. As I was leaving I bumped into my brother who was leaving his clothes shop a couple of doors away. I walked home to Macclesfield and on the hills at the back of Macclesfield it was snowing quite heavily. I heard someone whistle behind me but I didn’t pay any attention. It whistled again so I turned round. It was the girl who lived a couple of doors away who was rather ethereal. She had a big stick about 2 metres long, very straight, that she was carrying. I said “that’s a fine staff to go to a solstice with”. Just then a circular saw in the neighbourhood started up so I had to repleat myself 2 or 3 times. By this time I was carrying a large stuffed toy. She mentioned stuffed toys so I told her that it was to be a companion for STRAWBERRY MOOSE which she thought was quite funny. That was when I awoke.

What’s interesting about last night was that it’s usually my family or someone like that who comes along and sticks their oar in when I’m having serious chats with nice young ladies, but last night, just as things were becoming interesting, my subconscious awoke me, obviously trying to tell me something.

Not that it has any need to do that, because the chances of me encountering any presentable young ladies right now is absolute zero and even if I were to do so, the chances of enticing them back into my lair and into my evil clutches would be even less than that.

And talking of Zero, whatever happened to her and TOTGA and Castor?

What was disappointing about today was that I lasted until about 19:00 before crashing out. Even though I was exhausted today, I was hoping that I could keep going all day but it wasn’t to be.

Tea was, as I said, the leftovers in the fridge with a small tin of kidney beans, rice, veg and rather too much tabasco sauce. I’ll know all about that tomorrow.

But I have to go to sleep, and that I’ll be doing right now. There are lots of things to do tomorrow so I can’t hang around. And then if I have time I might go off to Cartwright and another adventure.

That’s actually the kind of town where I wouldn’t mind being stuck for a while. And if that doesn’t bring property prices crashing down over there, I don’t know what will.

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Monday 29th May 2023 – I’M GOING TO HAVE …

… to stop watching all of these HARRY POTTER films.

As regular readers of this rubbish will recall, while I’m eating my tea I’ll be watching a film on the DVD, gradually working my way around my collection of DVDs. Right now, the film that’s on the machine is HARRY POTTER AND THE HALF-BLOOD PRINCE.

And so during the night I had to go to a wizards’ conference to learn something or other on a course. Wondering how I was going to go there, someone turned up and said that they’d take me. They had an umbrella that was like a helicopter blade. I hung onto them, they hung onto the helicopter blade and off we went. We flew past the house of someone whom I knew. I always suspected that they were rather strange and there were 5 people hovering over their house on broomsticks. I waved. Suddenly we came down to earth. The guy said “I’m going out of my area now so you have to get off and walk”. I asked “how go I come back?”. He replied “you come back to this spot and I’ll pick you up”. “So how do I come back here?”. he replied “you could always call a taxi”. I said goodbye to this guy and set off to walk. When I arrived at this place they were burying a cat that had been hit by a car. I thought that the collar might have special magic powers so I was wondering if I could have it. But they were obviously intent upon burying the cat wearing the collar so it was probably inappropriate to ask. They carried on with their plan to deal with the cat while I prepared myself for this weekend course.

It’s actually a film that I remember very well, having been to see it with Marianne when it was doing the rounds of the cinemas. And I remember thinking, when Dumbledore took out his wand to clean and rebuild Professor Slughorn’s house, that I would give all that I own and more besides to have a wand that would do that

A couple of weeks ago, it was the 10th anniversary of her voyage to meet her maker. It’s bizarre how quickly time flies. It seems like only yesterday but a lot has happened since then.

So retournons à nos moutons as they say around here, and in particular, about today.

It all started off with me once more raising myself from the dead before the alarm went off. And once I’d had my medication and checked my mails and messages, I made a start on the radio stuff that I’d dictated on Saturday night.

There wasn’t any rush today so it took a while, but in the end I finished up with two more programmes completed. There are only notes for two more, and then I can begin work on the next batch. But I’ll have to take it easy because I’m now 9 months in advance of broadcasting. I know that I want to be well ahead, because you never know when the bell might toll for me, but this is becoming rather excessive.

Being that far ahead isn’t really a good idea. I remember back in the old “Radio Anglais” days when I wrote and recorded a programme about Chris Squire, only for him to shuffle off this mortal coil the morning the programme was due to be broadcast. I don’t think that there’s been a radio programme rewritten as quickly as that one was.

Anyway, eventually I managed to finish the programme, despite the interruption from the nurse who came to give me my injection this morning.

One thing that I was going to do was to take out the rubbish to the bins but we have another hurricane blowing around outside. That’s the problem with living in what is one of the windiest places in Europe.

Mind you, it used to have its compensations. In this kind of weather I’d be out on the headland with the camera taking photos of the sea roaring over the sea wall into the harbour but these days I can’t even open the door of the building.

Instead, I transcribed the dictaphone notes. I’ve already mentioned one of them but there were still several others. I was just dropping off to sleep when I heard the physiotherapist shout to me. I don’t know what happened there but there have been a few times here and there over the years that I’ve had this phenomenon of people calling my name when I’ve been asleep and it’s awoken me with a start. I’ve never worked out why.

But strange things happen when you are asleep. I knew someone who dreamt that he was awake, and when he awoke, he was!

Later on I had to take my overtime sheet to the supervisor to have it signed so that I could submit it for payment. She began to ask me all kinds of strange questions about my hours etc that really weren’t anything to do with overtime. Then she asked me about lunches. How did I cope with lunch?. I replied “every so often I’d go to buy some meal tickets and hand over a meal ticket when I picked up my lunch”. She said something like “your brother will buy a spaghetti with his lunch money. Why don’t you do that?”. I couldn’t understand what was the issue or why she was making such a fuss out of something like this. All I wanted was my overtime sheet signed and none of this had anything to do with that.

At another moment I made a start writing a humorous book about an estate agent as well during the night but I didn’t get very far with that unfortunately. And when I awoke I couldn’t remember any of what it was that I’d written in my sleep.

With what time has been left, I’ve been sorting through the notes for 2017. It’s going to be a very long and laborious effort because Strider, STRAWBERRY MOOSE and I travelled about 12,000 miles during those 5 weeks.

Right now I’m in Pictou in Nova Scotia on my way to see my niece’s daughter who was at University in Antigonish at St F-X.

Tea tonight was a stuffed pepper with pasta and veg. And we had something of a calamity in that the pepper was too tall to fit in the air fryer. That’s something that I need to watch for the future. Frozen peppers wotk well enough in the air fryer but the microwave makes them sodden and the oven would take years for them to bake from frozen.

Nevertheless, it wasn’t the disaster that it might have been, and there’s still plenty of stuffing left over for a taco roll for tea tomorrow.

There’s no Welsh lesson tomorrow as Coleg Cambria is having a week off. I might do some revision for a change and then continue with my 2017 notes. I’ll be pushing on up the Cape Breton coast towards Sydney and the ferry to Newfoundland.

And then I’ll be pushing off.

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Sunday 28th May 2023 – A BIG HAPPY …

… birthday to Caliburn. He’s growing up – sixteen years old today.

And we’ve had plenty of adventures together, usually accompanied by the third member of our team, STRAWBERRY MOOSE. We’ve been to about half the countries in Europe together, battled our way through snowdrifts and mountain passes, towed mini-diggers all the way from North Lancashire down to the south-ish of France non-stop on a 34-hour journey, gone off to photograph a suspension bridge 2 hours down the road and not come back for almost 3 weeks and endless shuttles from Brussels to Virlet overnight in the early days of our relationship

At his last controle technique the examiner told me that he still has a few years left so it’s likely that he’ll outlast me, so here’s to many more years of happy Caliburn motoring.

The only regret was that I never succeeded in taking him over to North America for a run around. We had all of our ducks in a row at one time but then Strider came along and he was a much more appropriate vehicle with which to attack the sub-Arctic byways. Caliburn, good as he has been, would never have got down to that abandoned iron mine at the abandoned town of Gagnon.

It seems that I’m being overwhelmed with nostalgia over the last few days and I’ve no idea why. It’s probably because I have too much time on my hands right now. Perhaps I ought to do something about that – like “go back to bed and sleep it off”.

Last night was one occasion when staying in bed sounded like a good idea because it’s a Sunday and that’s always a lie-in around here. I’ll get up at any time you like for 6 days of the week, but never on Sunday. Everyone’s entitled to a day of rest.

So even if I awaken at something silly like 09:00, 10:30 is much more like a realistic time to show a leg.

It took me a while to gather my wits which, seeing how few wits I have these days, is quite surprising. But once I’d entered the Land of the Living the first thing that I did was to listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. We started off with something happening about oil filters on vehicles, yellow heavy-duty plastic spin-on ones rather than filter cartridges that you’d have to change but I can’t remember very much about this dream at all.

And then I was working as a lorry driver for someone. We were extremely busy. Someone had gone off sick and I’d had another spell of ill-health so I ended up taking a couple of days off. He had a lorry loaded with waste that needed tipping somewhere so he rang around and ended up speaking to a woman who was a lorry driver and asked her if she would do it. He explained the urgency of it, which I thought was strange because it would give this woman a lot of power over him if she knew how urgent the job was. I could hear the conversation because I was in bed in the next room. She sounded dubious and asked him “what had happened to so-and-so?”. He replied that there was something the matter with him. She asked what was the matter with me. He gave some sort of reply that basically he thought that I was malingering, which I thought was a horrible thing to do because I’d never ever missed a shift as long as I’d worked for him and had volunteered to do all the extra stuff.

After breakfast, or lunch, or whatever you might call it, I sat down and made a start on work.

Yesterday, I mentioned that I was going to go on the attack with my Labrador stuff so I sat down and reviewed the directories that I’ve been keeping.

Up to 2015, everything is all shipshape and Bristol-fashion. But then I had all of my hospital issues and then went to live in Leuven and since then everything went haywire and it’s just a complete mess.

For a start, I can’t find any trace whatsoever of any of my notes from my 2017 trek around Labrador so I’ve decided that I shall have to go back to basics and start from the very beginning.

There are the dictaphone notes – well, some of them – and then the blog notes from the relevant periods and that seems like a very good place to start.

But then you won’t believe this but I had to have a really good hard think because I’d forgotten how I write my websites. Back in the old days I’d be churning them out on a regular basis but since my health issues over the last 8 years I’ve not written more than half a dozen.

That’s the problem with growing older thought. Two things happen to you when you reach my age. The first thing is that you forget absolutely everything.
… “What’s the second thing?” – ed.
“I can’t remember”

Anyway, even just collating the stuff from 2017 is going to take an age, never mind adding it in to the earlier voyages.

What’s worse is that I can’t find the mileage notes.

With travelling several years over the 2100 kms of the Trans Labrador Highway and taking a couple of thousand photos, it’s important to have them all in the correct order and in the correct positions. And although I noted the mileages because I anticipated this problem, I’ve travelled the highway in both directions so the eastbound mileages are not the same as the westbound mileages of course.

Back in the past (or past in the back if you are George Bush) I managed to identify a couple of identical views taken from each direction on different occasions so I used them as reference points and calculated all of the mileages of every photo from every trip to correspond with those marker references. But if I can’t find my notes I’ll have to go back and do it all again, I reckon. That’ll take a while and no mistake.

There was a break while I made s batch of pizza dough, seeing as I’d run out. It rose quite nicely too. Two lumps went into the freezer later on and I made a base with the third. And once more, we had a magnificent pizza. Using these small cherry tomatoes cut in half and putting them on top of the cheese is definitely the way to go.

So before I go to bed I’m going to make a start on editing the radio notes that I dictated last night. I had a go recording them directly onto the computer now that I’ve configured it, however the quality was really poor and it all ended up in the bin and I redictated it using the ZOOM H8.

Had I been of a mind, and had it not been 01:00 when I finished, I suppose that I could have filtered out the interference and enhanced the quality, but I’ll have to work on that for another time.

Tomorrow I’ll finish off the radio programmes and then carry on with the Canada 2017 stuff. Right now I’m on a bus heading through the mountains to pick up Strider. There’s a really long way to go yet.

We haven’t reached the funny part of the whole trip though and I’ll dine out on this for ever, I reckon. That year I went to see my friend in St John’s so that meant the long sea crossing across the Gulf of St Lawrence to Argentia instead of the short (as in 9 hours) crossing to Channel Port aux Basques.

“Roaming” was switched off on my telephone of course because it’s quite expensive in North America but as we were sailing along the southern coast of Newfoundland the phone suddenly went berserk with missed phone calls, messages and all of that kind of thing and at first I was bewildered.

However there’s a French colony – St Pierre et Miquelon – on an island in the Gulf of St Lawrence and obviously my French mobile network supplier provides the service to it. For a brief moment my telephone connected with the network and caught up with everything that I’d been missing.

That explains all of that, but it still doesn’t explain the situation in 2019 when we were in mid-Atlantic, 1000 miles from just about everywhere on board THE GOOD SHIP VE … errr … OCEAN ENDEAVOUR, and I suddenly picked up an internet connection out of nowhere. I’ve never been able to explain that.

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Friday 12th May 2023 – AS BARRY HAY …

… once famously said – “What else can I say except IT’S ALWAYS GOOD TO BE BACK HOME“

As I have said before … “and on many occasions too” – ed … out of all of the places where I have ever lived, the only place where I’ve ever experienced homesickness when I’ve been away is this beautiful building here with the spectacular scenery and wonderful neighbours.

Mind you, it was a struggle to get back here. having crowed so lustily about the outward trip, the return was nothing like the same.

It always seems to be at railway stations where it all seems to go wrong, as witness my rather dramatic and spectacular fall on a railway station in Montreal in October.

And so it was today. To pass through the automatic barriers at the Metro at the Gare du Nord in Paris you have to move smartly. I wasn’t smart enough and ended up being trapped as the barriers closed between me and my backpack. It took the combined efforts of three passers-by to free me from my trap.

And the struggle was clearly far too much for me because I had another bad fall straight away afterwards, and a couple of people had to pick me up because I couldn’t pick myself up.

One of the guys was going my way so he took my backpack and helped me onto the Metro as far as Montparnasse. Ahh well.

As usual, when I have a reason to leave the bed, I have a fitful restless night. And so it was last night. But when the alarm went off at 06:25 I was up quite quickly.

Once I’d packed, I was down to the railway station and as usual with the SNCB it was an antediluvian AM80 that came in this morning and I have all kinds of difficulties climbing into one of those. And climbing out at Gare du Midi in Brussels too.

The TGV was already in but they wouldn’t let us board for ages. And we had a “security issue” that delayed the loading even more.

The train did however set off on time and I spent the journey doing some research for my High Arctic photos of 2019. And you have to admire the naming conventions of James Rae as he roamed around the High Arctic explaining his reasons for the names that he gave to the geographical features that he encountered, such as, for example, Bence Jones Island in the Rae Strait “after the distinguished medical man and analytical chemist of that name, to whose kindness I and my party were much indebted for having proposed the use of, and prepared, some extract of tea for the expedition.’”.

One of the Inuit ladies I encountered on Devon Island gave me some of her native Labrador Tea to try. I shall probably have to name my new apartment after her because the tea was “much enjoyed”. She was so pleased that I enjoyed it that she performed a drum dance for STRAWBERRY MOOSE and I’m sure that you think that I’m making this up.

At the Gare du Nord I had my “issues” but with an aching leg and wounded pride I made it down the Rue du Départ to Montparnasse and my train without encountering anyone I know. And with catching a later train out of Brussels this morning I didn’t have long to wait.

The train was acually half-empty but for some reason they had me sharing a seat with someone. But once I was sure that evryone who was on was on, I went across the gangway and had a seat all to myself.

At Granville we pulled into one of the older platforms that the Caen-Rennes diesels use and with our train being higher you’ve no idea the struggle that I had to exit the train.

The leg is definitely weakened though because hauling myself into Caliburn was a struggle and I was back to how I was in January without the force to press the brake pedal properly. As I’ve said before, each time that I have a fall, it takes longer and longer to recover.

back here I made a nice strong coffee and came in here to collapse in a chair, from where I didn’t move for hours.

Earlier on, I mentioned my restless night. Tons of stuff on the dictaphone to prove it too. I’d bought a property last night. I’d paid a lot of money for it but I could afford it. It was in rural Normandy somewhere. We were discussing plans to move into it etc but I wanted to have a closer look at what was involved. I managed to dig up an old sale brochure for it from years ago where there was a house, an annexe and a Plaxton Embassy-bodied coach that had been converted into a race car transporter with some kind of car that had been modified for racing. There was a big garage and workshop area. I thought that this was absolutely fine if I could find someone else to come to share it with me. We’d be away with all of this if it turns out to be the same kind of place.

Someone wanted a letter posting but for various reasons they weren’t able to do it. They asked me if I would go. After much persuasion I went on the pushbike. The first thing that I noticed was that there were no brakes on it. I thought that I’d be really running a risk going all the way to the post box particularly as I’d have to cycle through Crewe town centre. But cycle I did, nearly knocking people over, taking wide turns and nearly ending up on the wrong side of the traffic island. I eventually reached the cinema which was absolutely packed because there was an extremely controversial film being shown. There were 2 pillar poxes outside, one of which had a stamp machine attached. I didn’t know which pillar box to put the letter because the time of the collections was exactly the same. It looked as if they were both receiving the correct attention. In the end I simply put it in the newer one of the two.

And then I was in a fast-food restaurant last night in the USA. I tool a banana. There was a guy there mopping the floor. He took three bananas and put them on the scales with mine. I told him to clear off and it led to a strange argument where he insisted that I was paying for his bananas. The clerk behind the counter also thought that I was. We had something of an argument for about 5 minutes. In the end I took my banana off the scales, pout $0:60 down on the countertop and began to walk away. That ended up into another discussion that turned out to be much more friendly and I’d no idea why. We ended up talking about shift rotas etc. The cashier showed me how her shift rota worked and how she had to change a few things round. I bet that you’re really enjoying these exciting moments.

We were working on something for the radio. We needed a troupe of dancing children. We recruited a couple of kids whom we knew but we were short on numbers. I went past a sports field and there was a group of kids there. There were two who were controlling the crowd and dancing in time to some music that was going on in the background, a boy and a girl. They looked quite good so I thought that I’d go over to talk to them. I went over and said “hello”. They replied “we aren’t allowed to talk to strange men” … “obviously your reputation is spreading wider than you realise” – ed … “and there’s no teacher here at the moment”. I said “no problem. The headmaster knows me from something else so I’ll give you a note, you can give it to him and he’ll decide what to do”. The idea was to write a little note to the headmaster say what was happening and take the matter from there. Going through my pockets, first of all I couldn’t find a pen. I asked if anyone had a pen. One of the people standing around, I could see that he had some pens in this top pocket but he didn’t volunteer. Eventually I borrowed one from someone but then I couldn’t find any paper on which to write. I thought “here I am snatching defeat from the jaws of victory yet again!”.

Finally I wanted a new ladder so I was going to go to the DiY shop. Half a dozen people said that they wanted things so we all piled into my van and went. I bought my ladder and a couple of things. Someone else bought a roof ladder etc. Then I had to go to pay for it. Then we’d all go to sit in someone’s car. There were quite a few people crowded around in cars and it was really cramped. I told the driver to pull down the road and stop. I had to pay with a credit card. he said “ohh not another credit card”. I replied that it’s far better walking around the streets with a credit card than a wad of cash. I was about to give him a few other good reasons but the guy in the back began to be annoyed because we were driving through an area full of local police. For some reason he didn’t want to involve them. The guy in this car wasn’t going to stop. It looked as if he was going to take me all the way home to drop off this ladder and for me to pay him. Then of course I had to return to pick up everyone else and pick up Caliburn. I thought “for just a simple ladder, this is something else that’s becoming extremely complicated” and that wouldn’t be a first time, would it?

Tea was sausage chips and beans – some of the vegan sausages that I’d bought in Jersey and beans with vegan cheese now that I’ve found a reliable and hopefully constant source.

But I dunno about going to bed because as usual after all of this effort I can’t relax. Back in the old days when I was stressed out after chauffeuring around Brussels I’d go for a long run around the area where I lived. These days though I couldn’t even run for my life.

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Tuesday 9th May 2023 – JUST FOR A CHANGE …

… this morning I was flat-out fast asleep when the alarm went off at 07:00. And looking at the timestamps on the dictaphone files it looks as if I had a peaceful night.

Consequently I have absolutely no idea at all why I crashed out not once but twice this afternoon. But stranger things have happened as far as I’m concerned, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall.

Nevertheless, despite everything, I did manage to beat the second alarm. And after the medication and checking my mails and messages I revised for my Welsh class.

The Welsh lesson was something of a mess and the improvement that I’ve been making over the last few weeks seems to have disappeared.

During the lesson, I was having to do my best not to speak Flemish and I’ve no idea why, so what will probably happen over the next few days when I’m in Leuven is that I’ll be speaking Welsh to everyone rather than Flemish.

When the lesson was over I went off for a shower because the physiotherapist would be coming round. So once I was nice and clean and tidy (well, relatively, as much as I can be) the physio rang me up to say that he couldn’t be round today. And that’s quite typical, isn’t it?

First thing that I did after my lunchtime fruit was to listen to the dictaphone. There was some stuff on there from during the night. I was with a couple of cats last night. There was a girl round at my house. I can’t remember who she was. We were talking about the cats, talking about how I’d trained them to do certain things. One of the things was when it was food time I just took a box of Munchies and shook it. They came running from wherever it was that they were and I made them their food – a handful of dry biscuits with some wet catfood. I gave her a little demonstration that worked quite well. I have a feeling that there’s much more to it than this but I can’t remember now.

Our four cats would actually do that too. If ever I wanted them for some reason, I’d just go outside and shake a box of Munchies. And then be trampled to death in the stampede. I must admit that I’m missing a cat or two.

Later on I’d been in midwestern USA staying in a motel. I got up next morning and got on my motorbike and headed off. I was listening on the radio to an interview about people living in Tennessee who had a kind of natural spring that was pumping compressed air instead of water. They had all kinds of inflatable objects that they were blowing up and putting in their yard. There was a company with a whole fleet of inflatable diggers and pump machinery. I rode past a place that had a load of inflatable cars there including an early 1950s Vauxhall Wyvern. I continued along the road but it suddenly petered out into a circle by an old demolished factory. I had to turn round and go back. I thought “at least it will give me an opportunity to take the photo of that car”. I turned round and set off back but for some reason I can’t have been concentrating because I left the road on the motorbike and slammed myself head-on into a tree trunk and did myself a mischief

The rest of the day has been spent filling in forms, printing off rail tickets and packing my bags ready for my trip to Leuven tomorrow. Not that I’m looking forward to it, trying to make my way around Paris on crutches. The Metro isn’t particularly disabled-friendly and there’s the long walk from Gare Montparnasse to the metro stop.

Add to that the fact that the last time that I was in Paris, the escalator from the platform up to the Gare de Nord was out of order and I had to climb up all the stairs, about 60 of them, with my huge suitcase and STRAWBERRY MOOSE. I won’t forget that trip in a hurry.

As well as all of that, there has been talk of changing all of the metro ticketing. Of course I have a batch of the old magnetic strip tickets that I hope are still operational, because being on crutches I’m going to be rather stuck for time if I have to queue to buy some more.

Having been quite careful about what I ate over the last few days, there wasn’t anything really in the way of leftovers to make a curry. However, it was a curry made of tinned bits and pieces that I made for tea.

And a big double-helping too because I’m taking the other half with me to eat in Leuven tomorrow night. I seem to remember a microwave oven in the hotel where I’ll be staying so I can warm it up. There’s a fritkot over the road but their vegan burgers are prepacked with tomato ketchup, which I detest with a passion.

But all of that is tomorrow. Tonight I’m off to bed ready for my 07:00 start tomorrow. Caliburn will whizz me off to the station and then I’ll be in the lap of the Gods. Heaven help me!

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Sunday 9th April 2023 – MY AIR FRYER …

… is pretty good at baking biscuits too.

Searching around on the internet I came across a generic recipe for biscuits – basically sugar, margarine and flour in a ratio of 4/8/10

Consequently I made up some dough with 200 grammes of flour and then added some desiccated coconut, raisins, nutmeg, ground ginger, vanilla essence and orange essence and mixed it all up.

Once it had seet for half an hour in the fridge (it won’t rise of course because there’s no yeast) I rolled it out and with my biscuit cutter there was enough for 20 biscuits.

The shelf in my oven is only large enough to take 16 and that meant that there were four biscuits left over. So no time like the present to try out the air fryer.

And I do have to say that at 160°C for 12 minutes (turning them over halfway through) they were cooked to perfection and tasted delicious. After all, you have to try them out.

There was probably too much margarine in there if the truth is known, but it’s all down to trial and error considering that I’ve never made any before. But rest assured – I shall be making more of them again

And while we’re on the subject of baking … “well, one of us is” – ed … the pizza that I made tonight was far and away the best ever.

It’s taken me several years to realise it but over this last few days I’ve worked out where I’ve been going wrong. So what I did today that made a difference was that I put the sliced tomato on the pizza last of all, on top of the cheese.

So not only were all of the mushrooms and onions cooked properly, the base was nice and firm, not soggy, and the tomatoes were nice and crispy.

And that’s something else that I’ll do again as well.

Another thing that I’ll do again is to have a good night’s sleep. Because at least I wasn’t disturbed last night as much as I have been just recently, and no-one bothered me at all with the ‘phone or anything else.

There was still plenty of tossing and turning but that’s par for the course. nevertheless I stuck it out until 10:30 when I reckoned that it was time to show a leg.

After the medication and checking the mails and messages I didn’t do very much at first. I had a really nice leisurely morning right up until lunchtime and my porridge, cheese on toast and coffee.

This afternoon has been spent on tracking down biscuit recipes and then making and baking the aforementioned. As I said earlier, it’s something of which I’ll be doing much more, and it will be so much better when I have a bigger oven.

While I was at it, I found a recipe for custard creams but I don’t have any custard. However, I have had a great deal of success making chocolate sauce in the past instead of custard so I wonder if a chocolate cream biscuit would follow the same principle.

There’s only one way to find out, isn’t there?

While I was waiting for everything to happen, I had a listen to the dictaphone. And I travelled miles during the night. At one point I had to go into work which was in Brussels. I was in a canoe, actually a kayak. This meant going from the north of the city through the poorer areas, underneath a couple of railway bridges and down some back streets to the centre of Brussels. I had to do it in a kayak even though of course there wasn’t any water. That was interesting. There were a couple of other people on their way there who were following me but they soon realised that I knew the way far better than they did through the side streets so they let me carry on. They all followed me.

And then there were several concrete lamp standards that wanted moving from somewhere into Crewe. Seeing as they weren’t very heavy I said that I’d take them. I didn’t have any transport and no-one had sorted out anything at all. I was left with these lamp standards. In the end I just picked one up and put it on my shoulder with the other end trailing along the ground and set off I was pushing one of them towards Crewe. I arrived near Rolls Royce and the stream across the river was flooded. I’d arranged for a vehicle to take me across. It was a case of crossing the bridge, a flat-bottomed affair that was partly submerged. Getting the first one or two over on this vehicle then carrying on wasn’t a problem but by the time I went back for the third one the river was a raging torrent. I tried to time the approach of this vehicle so that it would get on the downstroke of this bridge but it was going to be too complicated and I could see it ending in tears. There was a better, more modern bridge not too far away. In the end I abandoned the idea. I left STRAWBERRY MOOSE (who hasn’t appeared in these pages for quite some considerable time) there to guard the bridge and took my concrete post off with me to go over the other bridge. A girl there was watching the events. She went over and began to talk to Strawberry Moose. I carried on pushing the lamp-post. I ended up on an aeroplane. I was sitting on this aeroplane, about 20 of us on board this thing that could take a couple of hundred passengers. It was due to depart at quarter to. I looked at my watch. It was now 46. We were already running one minute late and there was nothing like as many passengers as you would expect there to be on this aeroplane so what’s happening now?

Later on I went back into that dream. There had been some kind of confrontation taking place at this fraud. A group of people had been arrested and charged with assault. As the trial started and more and more evidence came out, the judge became of the opinion that a more serious charge ought to be preferred against one of the defendants and that person give evidence. he decided that he himself would issue a summons to the person referred to for a charge of violent conduct. Have him arrested and tried on the spot while this court case was going on.

Later still I was at work. We were extremely busy. Everyone was getting in my way trying to do things. I was speaking to a girl whom I knew who was a colleague of Nerina’s. We arranged to meet for a cup of tea in the canteen. Something cropped up – someone came to talk to me and completely distracted me. I didn’t go. In the end I was speaking to another girl whom I knew. The subject of coffee came up so i went down at that moment and met her. We started to talk about all kinds of different things going on in the office etc. Later on that night I ended up at her house in bed, in a separate room etc. She brought me a cup of tea in the morning. I said “this is nice. It brings back many happy memories of lying in bed being brought mugs of tea”. She gave me a computer program that she’d used, called Walt Disney’s Imagination, for enhancing photos and videos that we’d talked about previously.

The funny thing was that after dictating that dream I put the dictaphone down and started to look around for the cup of tea. Of course it wasn’t there and you’ve no idea how disappointed I was

“Life’s too short to read” said Gail who had given me another book. And I really did dictate it too, just like that. Later on I had stepped back into that dream with those girls with whom Nerina worked and so on and of course I was impressed that I remembered that that the name of one of the girls was Gail.

There was much more to the night than that as well, but I’ll spare you the discomfort if you are currently eating anything.

As for tea, I mentioned that just now with my perfect pizza so now I’m off to bed.

Monday is usually an early start at 06:00 but not this week. It’s a Bank Holiday tomorrow and although the nurse will be coming to give me the injection he won’t be here at 06:30 (and that’s Famous Last Words, isn’t it?). The alarm usually rings at 07:40 on a Monday as well and so everything will be switched off until then.

And here’s hoping that I will be too.

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Friday 30th December 2022 – I HAVE BEEN …

… out and about this evening socialising.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that there’s something going on in the background here in this building that might burst out into the open at some point in the future. Consequently I’ve been out to see one or two people in the building for a meal and for a good chinwag while we work out a cunning plan.

It certainly pays dividends to have the right people on your side at moments like this because you end up on the inside track when it’s all filtering through. But how things develop, we shall have to see because there’s many a slip ‘twixt cup and lip.

One of the slips was that I nearly didn’t make it. When it was time for me to go I was actually asleep on the chair in the office and I had quite a job to drag myself out and upstairs.

Not that you would have thought so because I was in no rush this morning to leave my bed. WHen the alarm(s) went off I could hear the howling gale roaring around outside. And so in the words of the old song, REMEMBERING MORNINGS, SHILLINGS SPENT, MADE NO SENSE TO LEAVE THE BED.

It was actually about 09:00 when I finally did leave the bed and for a change I had no pangs of guilt whatsoever. It’s clearly getting to me, this strange mood in which I find myself.

First things first – I had to do the finances for the end of the year to see how I stand. And to my surprise, I can actually afford my little project without making too much of a special effort.

And no-one is more surprised than me. When I embarked on this plan back in early November while I was lying in hospital I thought that I might be pushing out the boat a little too far but apparently not. So let’s get on with it. Unfortunately it doesn’t really depend on me – I’ve done all that I can for the moment and I’m waiting on others to extricate their digits.

When the streets had quietened down for lunchtime, I went out for a play in the pouring rain with Caliburn. He struggled into life again so I took him for another good run, but it’s still not made starting any easier. It sounds to me as if the starter motor must be on its way out. I’ve put the spare battery on charge and at some point I’ll swap them over to see whether that improves things.

In case you are wondering (which I’m sure you are) I’m not going far in Caliburn in busy times because with having no force in my right leg, braking is proving to be something of an issue. I’m having to leave plenty of space in front of me just in case an emergency arises

This afternoon I’ve had to register with URSSAF, the body that deals with minor self-employed people. My “cleaner” (and how embarrassing is it for me to admit that I have one?) is actually employed under these regulations and so I have to pay URSSAF for her services and they deal with all of the paperwork and any tax liability for all of her clients.

There’s some good news about this too (and it’s been a long time since I’ve had any) and that is that because I’m over 65 and suffering from a serious illness, I can actually claim part of my payments to be offset against my income tax. The French Social Security system is certainly up to the mark.

Although it had taken me ages to go off to sleep last night, I must have fallen asleep at some point because there was this huge, long rambling dream about me being in Crewe with STRAWBERRY MOOSE, my three sisters and all their kids and dozens of cats etc. I even ended up at a couple of their houses. I’ve no idea what was going on there but it was one of these things that went on for just about ever.

And then I’d been on my travels later on last night. I bumped into Claude and his daughter and her kids. It turned out that there had been some kind of water fair near where I’d been living and they’d been to see it that morning. They’d even bought some boats and had been sailing around on the canal. I couldn’t understand why I hadn’t gone, never mind not seen them. One of the things that was taking place was the throwing of some kind of mechanic’s tool like a set of Stilsons and embedding it in a door. This had all finished but I was throwing one or two things about and having some good results. I felt a shame that I’d missed the early part of this where it had been competitive and I might have had a good score. In the end after much messing around someone gave me a set of Stilsons to try. I threw it and it bounced off the door into the canal. I had to go to fish it out. Eventually I had to leave. It was like leaving one of these spaghetti western type of things with the plains and the shot in the distance, riding on a horse across the plains up the side of a hill into the mountains and disappearing out of the shot.

When the alarm went off for the first time I was with Beth I used to know from my time on the Scottish borders trying to relax her for an interview that she was due to take. I would have loved to know how all of this unfolded.

When I came back from my evening out I watched the football. Y Drenewydd were playing Aberystwyth and the least said about this the better as Aberystwyth were simply swept aside. It was really no contest and how the score was only 1-0 at half-time was one of the Seven Wonders of the World.

But 10 minutes of madness shortly after the restart saw Y Drenewydd rattle in 4 more goals and they scored a sixh later in the game that was the result of some of the worst defending that I have ever seen in my life. Aberystwyth scored a goal out of nothing in the dying minutes of the game but the game was long-since finished by then.

Tomorrow I’m having a little shopping done for me. Some mushrooms and peppers ready for my meals next week but that’s about it. Walking around today, I seemed to be moving a little easier and I might have been tempted to have another go on the bus into town had it not been a day when we might have the crowds out in the streets doing their shopping for the New Year.

And i’ll try to make an effort to haul myself out of bed at some reasonable time too, except that its already much later than it ought to be. I’m going to have to organise myself much better than this.

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Monday 12th December 2022 – YOU MAY NOT …

… believe this, but Caliburn actually started up this morning on the battery that was on the van. And that’s astonishing, especially as he hasn’t run for over 11 weeks. There’s a small leak in the electrical circuit somewhere that slowly drains the battery so I was expecting it to be dead by now.

What wasn’t nice though was that I’d left open the window in the driver’s door. It had rained in somewhat but one of my neighbours had stuffed a black plastic bag in the door and taped it up to keep the worst out.

Nevertheless, fancy Caliburn starting. I gave him a couple of laps around the block to warm him up and charge up the battery but I’ll tell you something for nothing, and that is that driving him in my condition is a nightmare.

And so as you can imagine, I’ve been outside this morning, and in the freezing fog too. I had to take some rubbish to the bins across the road and even though it is just “across the road” it took me an agonising 25 minutes to do it, going in baby steps. I thought that having had a good relax and a gentle easing off of the stiffness would have made things better, but far from it.

This trip to Leuven for 2nd January is therefore looking less and less likely.

In other news, Strawberry Moose is back home. On eof the reasons why I put a battery on charge last night and then went to start him today was that a couple of guys from the radio had told me that they would be around today at lunchtime.

It was my intention to ask them to help me carry the battery downstairs and to couple it up in order to start him but that wasn’t unnecessary. But they brought back my suitcase completr with His Nibs.

It was interesting too because they work for the local council and they were able to give me some useful hints about dependent living. Having had some kind of impromptu interview, they told me that someone would be in touch.

And I’ll need it too after last night, which was another awful, horrendous night. I kept on waking up, went for one or two walks down the corridor and so on. I was also on my travels quite considerably during the night in another sphere as well. I was with my friend from the Scottish Borders last night. To my surprise she was heavily involved in Black Magic and Spiritualism. She had one of the original books from that period and she had lent it to me. Every time I tried to make a start on reading it someone came past and I wasn’t comfortable about reading this book in full view of whoever it was so I kept it hidden below the desk or down the bed or something until that person had gone. After a while my friend became frustrated and quoted some phrase in the book about “whoever has taken me from my possessor” or something like that. I explained that I hadn’t actually done that. I’d explained what I was doing but she thought that I had to be a lot more forthright about reading the book even though I was uncomfortable. In the end there was always a piece of music that I played that stopped us arguing. She handed me my guitar and asked me to play this piece even though I hadn’t played for quite a while. My performance was bound to be suspect but I thought that I’d give it a go, although I felt that this was just a sticking plaster over a wound and wasn’t actually solving the problem of me getting down to actually reading this book. Whether or not I has an interest in Spiritualism I had an enormous amount of curiosity and I was intrigued just as much as anyone else to see what was in this book and how everything would unfold. However just glancing through a couple of pages made me seem to think that she had at one time or another said something about almost everything that was in there

There was something in there as well about working in the suburbs of Brussels, how some people were complaining that it was expensive. The question was then asked “why don’t they move even further out? That way they could find somewhere more affordable”. The reply came back about the cost and time of commuting which would put them back to Square One even if they were to do that.

Percy Penguin sent me a text to ask me if I could run her to a doctor’s appointment in the afternoon. I replied “yes I would” but then I had a realisation that there was no MoT or tax on the car. I had to send her another e-mail straight back. She said that she had cancelled her transport at work so now I was pretty-much obliged to take her unless I could find someone else or someone else would volunteer. Then I was with friends walking around Middlewich. I was pushing something like a pram or a push-chair or whatever. We came off the street around some kind of semi-circle parking place to try to get through to where Walgrens and Marks and Spencers was. We’d been talking about the traffic problems being caused by people turning into their car park. I said that they should get all the nouveau-riche pretentious people, put them in Marks and Spencers and Walgrens and then drop a bomb on the place. That didn’t go down too well with my friends. We were trudging round this semi-circle car space with a cinder base thing. I suddenly wondered if we could get through to Walgrens from here. They replied “no, we should have gone through somewhere else”. On the skyline 100 yards ahead of us were these most peculiar buildings, tall and really narrow. They looked most unsafe. It turned out that these were single-bedroom flats for single occupancy. We were thinking that maybe Percy penguin could find a place there. Then we thought that they looked so delapidated that they would be bound to be closing down these places and demolishing them soon. Nevertheles we went in. There was only a small ladder on the ground floor on the inside. I thought that we had to climb up this ladder, look out of the top by poking our heads through the roof to look out over the top to see how we could get to where we wanted to go. If this ladder wasn’t tall enough for us to be able to do that then we would have a great amount of difficulty. I didn’t fancy leaning too much against the wall of one of these buildings in case we pushed it over because it was really unsafe.

I was also having a dream involving Rosemary. A Government had arbitrarily cut some kind of rate on bankruptcies. She couldn’t see a problem except that someone else had noticed and pointed out to me that it had wiped out the whole market for Insolvency Practicioners. This led to a big discussion about the acounts already agreed with Brussels. The only difference was that the dissident who was supposed to have been held in Moscow at some time but turned up eventually in China. She had a talk that they had a benefit concert for this guy in China but the two people who contributed most in bringing his name to the forefront never actually turned up for it. That name rang a bell with me.

When the alarm went off at 06:00 I felt absolutely awful and I was all ready to stay in bed but I forced myself out. I’d already written half of the notes for my radio programme so I finished the rest, recorded and edited them and then assembled everything.

For a change, I was working backwards so I fell about a minute short so I had to expand my notes and re-dictate some of them. Therefore I didn’t really save as much time as I might otherwise have done.

Then I had Caliburn who required attention, and then my visitors.

Once everyone had gone I had a play around on the computer but fell asleep on my chair. That prompted me to go to bed, something that I have been trying not to do but there was no alternative as I have never in my life felt so tired, as all of … errr … 7% of my daily target will testify.

When I finally crawled out of bed (due mainly to a need to go and take a ride on the Porcelain Horse otherwise I’d probably still be there now) I ended up doing … shock! Horror! … some tidying up. Not much but just enough to take me up to tea time.

So now I’m off to bed. I have a Welsh lesson tomorrow so I need to be on form and then I’ll (hopefully) take Caliburn for another spin. See how I feel and maybe in a few days I’ll pluck up the courage to go to the shops.

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Friday 4th November 2022 – RUMOUR HAS IT …

… that there’s a new sound engineer twiddling the knobs in our new recording studio at the Centre Pierre et Marie Curie in Granville.

No description has been published so far other than the fact that he has a pair of rather large antlers

Another rumour that is circulating right now is that it’s raining in Caliburn through the gap in the windscreen thanks to that mess of an installation last year that I had to patch up on my way home from Germany.

A third rumour that is circulating is that they are about to throw me out into the big, wild world.

That’s rather worrying because while it’s certainly true that this virus has improved considerably (but not by any means 100%) nothing has happened about my right knee, the pain in which is getting worse and worse.

As well as that, I now have pain in the right side of my groin whenever I move my right leg.

And as I have told the medical staff here on numerous occasions, I would trade absolutely everything to have my right knee fixed.

This morning I mentioned it yet again to the doctor who came to see me and do you know what he told me?
“Mr Hall” he said, “you are lucky to be alive. When you came in here on Thursday last week we didn’t think that you would survive.”.

That’s as maybe but what I really need to be done is this knee issue that has brought my activities to a dead stop.

And then there’s the breathing issue, more of which anon.

Last night, once again, I fell asleep without any artificial aids whatsoever. And whether anyone came and checked me for anything during the night as usual, I really don’t know. I felt nothing whatsoever.

At about 04:00 I awoke but despite taking advantage of a stray orange that was loitering about I was nothing like as lively as I was yesterday. It took until the arrival of breakfast before I was in possession of all my faculties.

During the day I fell asleep a couple of times and on one occasion I had some notes to add to the dictaphone notes that were already there from the night.

There was something about me travelling to somewhere in Canada last night to meet a girl who was the daughter of someone. Someone else had gone before me. I was on a specific train. The arrangement was that somehow I’d sit in a special waiting room for these strange people and somehow she’d be able to identify me. I can’t remember very much about this at all except that once she had done, virtually the same thing happened again but this time I was leaving rather than arriving and the trains were on a very tight schedule. I was afraid that if I missed this one due to me running late it would throw my entire plans right out of the window

I fell asleep in mid-afternoon and found myself playing bass with the Gibson in a group with a young Peter Telford there playing a guitar with the machine heads in the body and several other older guys. They’d made all kinds of notes in pencil of the chords on pieces of music for me to make a start to follow. They were talking about some old guy who had been their mentor and had mentored some of the group and was possibly responsible for bringing everyone including me together for this first-night practice.

In fact many years ago I did play bass in a group with Peter Telford, but that’s another story.

On another occasion I was shaken awake by a hospital porter who wanted to take me for an examination.

This one was a cardiac examination where they gave me the same set of tests that they gave me last time, with, rather predictably, the same results.

This interview took place in Flemish, which was good. But when I asked him what he examination showed, he replied “there’s nothing wrong. Everything is normal”.

So her I am, back to where I was 6 months ago, and 18 months ago with no identification of my illness in sight. I’m beginning to think that this breathing issue is imaginary and I’m going to ask for counselling about my imaginary illness.

It’s Ingrid’s birthday today and although it took me a while I finally made contact with her and we had a good chat for 45 minutes.

My e-mail account was busy too. As well as helping one of my colleagues with a project, the Post Office had contacted me again with rather more urgency so as another of my colleagues works in a building nearby, I arranged with him to go and rescue the perishing.

In between everything I’ve also had plenty to read.

At first I stumbled upon a report by a Board of Trade examiner about A TRAIN FIRE AT BEATTOCK in 1950 that has many interesting facts about the outbreak and spread of fire.

As well as that, I’ve finally managed to track down a downloadable copy of THE OLD STRAIGHT TRACK for later perusal. This book is really the meanderings of the mind of a rather eccentric elderly gentleman in the 1920s and which were picked up by the “New Age” movement and popularised as “Ley Lines”. That’s my reading for my return journey, if ever there is such a thing.

On that point I’m packing up and going to try to sleep, without a sleeping pill if I can. And see what tomorrow will bring. There won’t be any examinations this weekend as all of the specialists have the weekend off. I’ll have to gather my strength for the onslaught on Monday.

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Thursday 3rd November 2022 – I CAN’T REMEMBER ..

… how many times I’ve been out of my room today for an examination of one sort or another nut I’m sure that the wheelchair folded up in the corner of he room knows its own way across the campus to the clinical part of the hospital.

And in a wheelchair too, not fenced into the bed and being pushed lock, stock and barrel. Things must be looking up.

All of this is in fact very reminiscent of the old days when I had my taxi company in the 80s.

There’s a dispatching office and a crew of about 50 porters here, each porter with a tablet-type of computer.
A specialist will ring up the ward to say “patient X needs to come to such-and-such an examination at such a time”
The ward sister will ring up Dispatching to say “Patient X needs to go to such and such an examination at such and such a time”
Dispatching then sends a message to the nearest porter to pick up patient X and take him to such-and-such an examination
Porter then goes to the ward to pick up Patient X and take him to is examination.
Porter then tells the Dispatcher that he’s free
Dispatcher sends porter off on his next pick-up.

It’s all very reminiscent of having a very busy fleet of taxis.

Last night was rather busy too.

To my own great surprise, and probably to yours too, I fell asleep without actually taking a sleeping pill. Every now and again I awoke to find myself being poked and prodded by various members of the medical staff but I went back to sleep quite quickly.

By the time 03:30 came around I couldn’t go back to sleep and when the alarm went off at 06:30 I was already up and working, having had a really nice orange to start the day.

Breakfast was late today because at 08:00 I was dragged off for the first of the many examinations that I had.

On one of the examinations that I had, round about lunchtime, they wanted to put a camera up my nose and down my throat. “Over my dead body” I said but the doctor was very persuasive and insistent and you have absolutely no idea of how much I suffered, physically and also mentally

This particular examination took place in a very out-of-the-way part of the hospital and it took an absolute positive age for someone to come and pick me up to take me back to my room.

Another visit was to have my throat investigated by one of these Stargate time-travelling things. Not one made by General Electric, my former employer. All of those have been replaced, so I was told. That company has really gone downhill since I stopped working there.

As for the other examinations, there were probably more. I really can’t remember.

Examinations aside, I had several visits from various doctors and specialists

And also a dietician who told me that I’m eating too much fruit and salad and that’s something else that will surprise you just as much as it surprises me.

Good news is that I’ve had a telephone call from the Post Office. Apparently they tried to deliver a “parcel” but there was no reply. So we chatted about it and they said that if it’s not claimed within 14 days it will be returned “to Roissy” which, for those of you who don’t know, is where Paris Charles de Gaulle Airport is situated.

And so it looks as if STRAWBERRY MOOSE has finished his wanderings and wants to come home. But if my friend Thierry doesn’t get a move on and reply to me, His Nibs might be off on yet more wanderings.

But the only wanderings that I’m going to do right now is to wander off to bed. It’s almost 23:00 and I’m going to try once more to go to sleep without a sleeping pill.

There’ll be a nice little stock of those in my drawer here by the time that I’m finished if I’m not careful.

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Wednesday 26th October 2022 – STRAWBERRY MOOSE …

…. is missing!

He and the rest of my luggage failed to meet up with me in the baggage claim area of the airport this morning.

The fact is that he’s probably aware of the fact that this was our last great adventure together and seeing that Canada has always been a happy hunting ground for him, he’s stolen all of my equipment, made good his escape and gone off adventuring on his own account.

Anyway, even as we speak, enquiries are being made.

Mind you, strange as it might seem, in the peculiar circumstances of the moment my luggage not arriving at the airport is something positive. It means that I don’t have to maul that huge suitcase around with me for the final stages of my journey.

To be honest, I’m totally done in. This was one journey too many and one journey too far in my state of health right now.

It was another night when I had had no sleep whatsoever. How many is this now over the last week? I coughed and spluttered through every minute of the long flight, and it was long too because despite leaving only a handful of minutes late, we were 1:20 late landing in Paris.

And shame on Air Canada who wouldn’t pay for a proper terminal but wanted to decant us in the middle of the runway. And on a greasy, slippery set of metal stairs too.

There was no chance whatever of my making that with my backpack full of heavy electrical equipment. I sat inside with the other disabled people (this is how I’m seeing myself now) waiting for the wheelchair lift.

That promptly broke down so in the end I was helped down by one assistant while another carried my bag.

My helper passed me through the express route into France, where presenting my carte de séjour at the same time as presenting my passport means that I don’t need my passport to be stamped. And then the eternal waiting in vain for STRAWBERRY MOOSE

Eventually I filed a lost luggage complaint and then crawled wearily the entire length of the airport (and you’ve no idea how long the airport is) to the railway station.

TGV Réseau 38000 tri-volt 4520 pba gare tgv paris charles de gaulle france Eric Hall photo 26th October 2022Here was just about my only bit of luck for today. The TGV from Rennes to Brussels was running over an hour late which meant that it would be here in 7 minutes. Just time enough for me to buy a ticket and get to the platform.

Sure enough, just as I made it down to the platform, it pulled in. One of the Tri-volt PBA (Paris – Brussels – Amsterdam) trainsets that leaves Rennes at the crack of dawn to to go to Brussels direct without passing by Paris.

Once or twice I’d thought about catching this train from Rennes. It would certainly be more convenient for me except that it departs too early for a connection with trains from Granville. But I never thought that I’d be catching it from here.

Once on board the train, I had a beautiful, blissful sleep of all of about 5 minutes.

hotel de france boulevard jamar brussels belgium Eric Hall photo 26th October 2022At Brussels-Midi I bought some banana-fjavoured soya milk, a couple of bricks, and then walked to my hotel. It’s 400 metres from the railway station yet it took me 20 minutes and I almost fell over twice.

It’s a different hotel than usual. Slightly more expensive but much more luxurious and better finished. I stayed here one a good few years ago. And I’m not disappointed either. Luckily even though I was early, my room was ready for me, and it’s a nice room.

First thing was to have a shower and wash my clothes. The only clothes that I have with me are the ones in which I’ve been travelling and I’m very mindful of something Rosemary once said to me. After I’d been on the road for a couple of days once she told me that I looked like a tramp. And to be honest, today I knew that I did. With my hospital visits tomorrow I have at least to make a pretence of civilisation.

Having done that I came in here, crashed out on the bed and went away with the fairies for three hours.

When I awoke, I had a packet of crisps and then got into bed ready to wait until tomorrow morning.

Talking of eating, do you want to know what I’ve eaten since Thursday lunchtime last week? well, 2 bananas, half a baguette, 2 slices of pizza, one airline meal and a packet of crisps

My appetite has gone completely, and so will I if this carries on much longer.

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Tuesday 25th October 2022 – MY WELSH LESSON …

… this morning was a disaster.

At least though I was there. And in spades too. When the alarm went off at 04:45 I was actually up and about. With having had no sleep the night before, I made sure that I was in bed early last night but even so I didn’t have much sleep. I was awake by 02:30 and had given up trying to go back to sleep round about 04:00 I hauled myself out of bed.

At one point I had been on my travels. There had been some kind of visit. We had a friend staying with us so I wasn’t working on the coaches that night. I was taking him and Nerina around showing him the town. Some girl had driven the coach that I should have been driving and she had STRAWBERRY MOOSE with her. It was late at night and we were on our way home and were discussing going down to the end of Beachey Head to show the guy the view from there night when we met the girl coming the other way in a kind-of Mini Moke machine. She flagged us down so we stopped. She gave Strawberry Moose back and said that she’d see us back home in a minute. After she left Nerina said “if we’re going there it’ll take us longer than a minute”. I replied “she was the one who made the arrangements. She’ll have to wait for us” and something about a song. There was a coach that had a certain song to perform so its registration number needed to be changed. Two of the coaches were identical but Nerina changed the number of the wrong one. I pointed it out to her but instead of changing it back and then changing the second coach’s number she went to change the number of the second coach first. That way she’d end up with two identical numbers and she wouldn’t know which one had been the original one which had been changed back. I could see that this was going to be extremely confusing but wit the woman turning up in this car she’d interrupted our train of thought in mid-action. This was bound now to lead to all kinds of confusion that we didn’t want to have and never be able to sort out.

With steam-driven internet, my loss of voice and all of that I couldn’t concentrate on anything so I just sat there and observed without contributing anything.

When the lesson finally finished I had my leftover slice of cold pizza and with checkout being at 11:00, I set the alarm for 10:00 and went back to bed. I didn’t sleep but just relaxed ready for the corvée that is to follow.

At 11:00 I went down to reception, stored my luggage in the still-incomplete after all these years annexe and went for a walk in the sunshine.

In the Rue St Catherine I stocked up with medication. And then sat for a couple of hours in the glorious weather. In fact I shall be sorry to say goodbye, maybe for ever, to Montreal. Sitting here in the Place Gamelin in short shirt sleeves in Summer temperatures with not a cloud in the sky watching the leaves falling at my feet.

At 14:00 I went back to the hotel, picked up my possessions and began the long, slow crawl to the bus stop The bus was actually there but the driver was having a break so we has to sit around and wait for him to finish.

Driving down the Boulevard René Levesque we hit every traffic light on red and then at our final pick-up we had to retrace our steps somewhat because of the roadworks and deviations.

Apart from the heavy traffic on the highway it was an uneventful drive and we were there by 15:20. By now I was pretty much played out so I staggered off to the check-in. Having checked in on-line last night my aisle seat was already reserved. I handed over my suitcase and drank my last can of energy drink

While finishing my drink I noticed that there was only a handful of people waiting in the queue for Security so I thought “sod it – I may as well go now while it’s not busy. Better sooner than later”.

And I don’t know what has happened here, but I have made many remarks about how the Dorval Airport – called these days the Pierre Trudeau Airport – has the rudest, most uncivil staff in the world but today I was impressed by their politeness and amiability. Times are certainly changing.

There was several hours to wait but a radio thriller of 150 minutes passed the time quite nicely. I’ve downloaded tons of old radio plays and shows to which I wan listen. It help pass the time

air canada aeroport pierre l trudeau airport dorval Montreal Canada Eric Hall photo 25th October 2022My plane pulled up eventually at the gate.

This was the best way that I could find to photograph It. I couldn’t see the registration number and the radar plot was “confusing”, so unfortunately I’m not able to identify it. There wasn’t even a guide in the seat pocket to tell me what model of ‘plane it was.

To my surprise, for a Transatlantic flight, the plane had several empty seats but I was on the end of a row of three.

And we were crammed in too because I had a lot of stuff with me. There are new rules on aeroplanes that you have to carry on board with you all of the electronic items that you have. And as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, I have plenty of that.

Our take-off was about 10 minutes late and everyone settled down to sleep except me because I couldn’t sleep with all this coughing that I’m doing.

We were served our evening meal in the dark – probably a cunning plan so that we don’t get to know what we are eating. I was assured that my meal was vegan but I remain unconvinced.

And then we hurtled off into the night

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Monday 24th October 2022 – TODAY WAS ABSOLUTELY …

… awful.

It started with me struggling to fall asleep on board this train and finished with me having yet another spectacular fall, this time on the platform of the “Berri-UQAM” Metro Station. It doesn’t get any worse than this.

Last night I mentioned that the carriage in which I was travelling was more modern and luxurious than the one on which I travelled down to Moncton. That much was true but that was all that could be said for it. The seats didn’t recline at all and I just couldn’t make myself comfortable.

Nevertheless, I did manage to go to sleep for about three hours and there is even something on the dictaphone to prove it. I fell asleep listening to “Murder on the Orient Express”. The train pulled into a station in a big city. I alighted and went through a door, down some stairs and found myself in the cellar of this railway station where there was a ticket booth or similar with 3 clerks sitting in it. I turned round to retrace my steps but couldn’t recognise the route that I’d taken. I was sitting there scratching my head thinking “how am I going to find my train?” when I heard it start up and pull out of the railway station.

Later on we were on the train with a pile of stuff. We weren’t supposed to let it congeal together. I had this cough that was keeping me awake and annoying all the other people too. I must have fallen asleep because I didn’t remember anything after that. Then an alarm went off. I thought that it was mine so I sat bolt upright. My eyes were stuck together with this liquid stuff that is coming out of my eyes. I couldn’t see anything and I didn’t know how to separate them either.

And finally we were going somewhere as a family. I don’t know who was with us but someone was coming to pick us up. It was a long way and we had to be ready by 04:00. I heard that person coming while I was asleep and I awoke to find them coming to the door. Pretending that I was wide awake I said something in a very cheerful voice that we were all ready and raring to go. Then I found that I’d gone back to sleep again and none of the rest of my family had got up yet either

The rest of the journey was spent coughing all the way to Montreal, nibbling on a bit more baguette and eating a banana. No coffee though. There was a tea-trolley service on the train down but not on the way back. Luckily I’d stocked up with liquids. As I’m not eating, I still have to keep myself hydrated.

In the morning I awoke to find us pulling into the railway station at Ste-Foy on the outskirts of Québec. And having done what we wanted to do there, we reversed back out of there and carried on

victoria bridge st lambert lock observation deck st lawrence seaway Montreal Canada Eric Hall photo October 2022So here’s our fist view of Montreal

We’re actually following the sough bank of the St Lawrence River here, coming up to the little office building and observation deck of the St Lambert Lock at the entrance to the St Lawrence Seaway

That’s the canal that by-passes the rapids at Lachine and enables ocean-going ships to sail up the Great Lakes to places like Chicago and Detroit. There’s a rise here of 15 feet and there are other locks further on.

Montreal from victoria bridge Canada Eric Hall photo October 2022The bridge in the background of the previous photo was called the Victoria Bridge, opened in 1859 and rebuilt subsequently on a couple of occasions.

We’re crossing the bridge but actually using the diversion lines built in 1958 and I’ve no idea why that would be. These lines are only usually used when a ship is passing through the canal at this point but I can’t see one.

As for the bridge, it cost $6,600,000 and when it was completed it was, at almost 3 kilometres, the longest bridge in the World

city centre Montreal Canada Eric Hall photo October 2022We’ve crossed over the river now and are coming into the city centre and the railway station.

It’s a bizarre railway station, lost in the middle of a large shopping precinct, the “Place Bonaventure” part of the Underground City and the Halles de la Gare

It’s also quite modern, being built in the 1930s and opened in 1943 to consolidate all of the railway services in one place, and in the past we’ve visited some of the abandoned ones. But they needn’t have bothered because rail services in Canada are “sketchy” to say the least.

The agonising journey (which I would have enjoyed in other circumstances) drew to a halt about 15 minutes late (which was a surprise for everyone, a mere 15 minutes) and I staggered onto the platform.

I could feel that there was something not quite correct but I pressed on. And I was glad that there was an escalator up to the upper floor because I would never have made it up the stairs.

Having collected my suitcase with HIS NIBS I set off on the marathon crawl to the Metro Station.

Any disabled person thinking of wandering around the subterranean labyrinth of the centre of Montreal needs to think again. They have some escalators here and there that take to mezzanine floors where you have steps to take you the rest of the way.

And some of the escalators don’t work and you have to walk down and had not a friendly, helpful youth not carried my suitcase down to the bottom of one of them I’d still be there now.

And then some of the corridors are carpeted which means that your rolling suitcase comes to a dead stop with a velcro-like effect.

The metro ride to “Berri-UQAM” was uneventful but at the station itself I encountered some of the worst of humanity. There I was, collapsed on the platform and I asked some man if her could help me to my feet. He just looked away and walked straight past. A couple of young girls came to my rescue and with a great effort helped me to my feet while several other people just stood around.

In absolute agony I crawled to my hotel. Of course the room wasn’t ready but I know the people here and they soon had it ready which was nice of them. There’s no lift here though and I had to crawl up the steps to the first floor.

Luckily I was able to leave my luggage downstairs. The chambermaid brought up my backpack and the manager brought up my suitcase later.

By this time I was flat-out on the bed asleep. And I managed a couple of hours of, for once, blissful sleep.

A little later I had a nice hot shower and washed my clothes, and then got back into bed. Not that I slept but it was simply to rest my leg and take it easy.

In the early evening I tempted fate and went out again. I think that I’m keeping alive the entire Canadian pharmaceutical industry right now because with the stuff that I bought in Moncton not having any particular effect, I went to the chemist’s down the road and received different advice.

On the way back I went to try a slice of pizza but I could only eat half of it. This complete loss of appetite isn’t a fiction at all. So guess what I’m having for breakfast.

Back here I went straight to bed. I have a Welsh lesson in the morning at … errr … 05:00, not that I’m feeling in the least like it, but I have to push myself on.

But honestly, I’ve never felt as bad as this and I’m worried about the next couple of stages of this journey

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Tuesday 11th October 2022 – THE CAT SAT …

… on the mat, as the old saying goes.

But this morning, she didn’t. As I found out when I went to sit on the chair to take part in my Welsh lesson.

Of course, at 05:55 it’s quite dark and you can’t see all that much. And as I’m half asleep anyway and my eyes aren’t focusing properly after another miserable night, seeing a black cat on a dark blue chair is not easy.

However, she soon let me know that she was there. Poor Cujo, the Killer Cat.

The Welsh lesson itself was quite awful. I wasn’t in the mood, I was tired, I was having to juggle computer screens around and at one point my microphone stopped working. I was really glad when the lesson ground to a halt.

cujo the killer cat centreville new brunswick Canada Eric Hall photo 11th October 2022Cujo the Killer Cat had forgiven me for my faux pas earlier because during the first part of the lesson she was on my knee.

She cleared off at some point but as soon as the lesson ended she came back again. For an hour or so while I was dozing after the lesson I didn’t mind but when I wanted to work she just sat on the laptop on my knees and that was that.

No chance whatever of actually doing any work this morning so I relaxed instead.

Later on, I went for a shower and a clothes-washing session, and having rounded up all of the felines, I hung up my clothes in the wind. Then Strider, STRAWBERRY MOOSE and I headed for Woodstock.

And by the time we got … errr … etc. etc.

This sunroof is enormous. It only just fits into the back of Strider. It’s heavy too and sending it back to Europe is going to be astronomical. Buying it hit the limit on my bank card so that’s grounded out right now and I had to use my European card for the balance.

It was a good job that I had some cash on me for my purchases at Sobey’s afterwards.

From there I drove to Florenceville to go to the bank to sort out my card, but I wonder is any of the regular readers of this rubbish would recall which day of the week is the one when the Scotia Bank closes early?

Round to the mill in Centreville to see what was happening there but, falling asleep, I ended up going back home for a coffee and a doze.

There was time before tea to transcribe the dictaphone notes from last night. I had joined some kind of internet chat room but the nickname that I had chosen, I didn’t really want to advertise so I only published it as a form of coded URL so that only a certain few people would be able to know the URL and know that it was me but that’s really all that I remember of this at the moment

I should mention somewhere that Hannah and Jake were involved in this but I can’t remember how or why.

But I remember a bit more about that dream now. We were having a party somewhere in North America. I’d had a friend on the internet, a girl whom I knew. They wee talking about travelling so I said that if ever they were to find themselves in the UK they can come to Crewe and I’d be quite happy to put them up, cook a meal, that sort of thing. She said that that wouldn’t be possible because she and her partner were lesbians. The authorities would look very dimly on the idea of a pair of lesbians travelling with a very young girl and sharing accommodation with her, that kind of thing. They needed to be very careful about it which I thought was ridiculous.

Tea was a burger with baked potatoes and the left-over beans from yesterday’s brunch. I had a long chat with Darren and when Rachel came home we had a good chat too.

But right now I’m off to bed. It’s early but I’m exhausted and I have a long day tomorrow. I need to be on form, and I also need to avoid sitting on any cats. If they want to sit on me, that’s fine. But not the other way round.

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