Tag Archives: canada

Thursday 26th September 2019 – HERE I AM …

… sitting on a bed in another one of these places where you don’t rent the room for the night, you buy the motel.

Last night I was dead to the world and slept right the way through the night until the alarm went off without disturbing myself once. There was the tail-end of a dream going round and round my head so I managed to dictate that – such as it was – before it disappeared completely. Nothing exciting though, unfortunately.

Having done a few things, I went upstairs to the kitchen and tried to make a coffee. Eventually, I managed to figure out the machine so that was good.

Sandra came to join me later and we had breakfast and a good chat. Then I had a shower and packed Strider ready to leave. We swapped the cars over and I headed off into the torrential rainstorm.

I was right about the turn of the cards – my wish hadn’t come true. But then I never really expected that it would. But the combination of Ottawa and the events of the past six weeks together with a music track appearing on my playlist and a “memory” about my farm all collided together at a vulnerable moment and I ended up in a deep, deep depression that has followed me around all day and won’t go away.

The weather didn’t help of course, and neither did the roadworks. It took an age to negotiate myself out of Ottawa and I must have passed the same guy on the same street corner three times until I had come to terms with the roadworks.

On the highway the rain was dreadful and the first of a long, long set of roadworks put the evil eye on just about everything. I was soaked going to the bathroom, soaked fuelling up Strider and then in Montreal amidst the major road reconstructions there I ended up being unable to join the lane that I wanted due to standing traffic. I was pushed sideways to the west and instead of going up Highway 40 and over the ferry at Sorel, I ended up on Highway 15 and over the new Champlain Bridge.

So here I was and here I stayed.

I stopped off for a coffee at Tim Horton’s at St Hyacinthe, home of many a tractor pull, and then continued through the storm.

At Quebec I misread a sign (Riviere du Loup for Trois Rivieres) and ended up going over the Laporte bridge by mistake. I had to turn round and fight the rush-hour traffic to pick up my route again.

So here I am in Montmagny and here I’m staying for the night. The Motel Centre-Ville. I’ll have a good night, a shower in the morning and then continue on my way.

So if anyone wants to contact me, don’t be shy. I have another three weeks here at least.

And who knows? This wish might even come true. You never know.

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Wednesday 25th September 2019 – I’VE BEEN SPENDING …

… my money again today. And how!

Sandra’s sister’s husband’s son-in-law (yes, real Happy Families) owns the largest second-hand CD store in Ottawa, coincidentally in Cooper Street, and so I was invited down there to see what was going on.

And by the time I left I was loaded up with 7 CDs – and I hadn’t even finished checking the Bs.

There were some magnificent finds in there too – including a rarest-of-the-rare Live album by Atomic Rooster from 1971. I’m looking forward to hearing that.

Last night was another good night for sleeping but once more there was another hour or so of disturbance. And for a change Castor didn’t put in an appearance – for as far as I can remember because I haven’t listened to the dictaphone as of yet.

Sandra was up early so I joined her for breakfast and then we hit the streets. She had a Spanish lesson so she dropped me off at the Tim Horton’s in Bank Street to await the opening of the CD shop around the corner.

Afterwards we went for a drive down to Wellington Street West in the city where there is a vegan restaurant called The Table. There you make up a plate of food and you pay by weight. Delicious it was too.

And I thought that I recognised it, because I have been here before. Saturday, to be precise.

We visited a map shop for a railway map (no luck) and then a Thrift shop to look for a charger for the Sony handycam but no luck there either.

Sandra’s sister had called us during the day so we were invited around there for the afternoon which was very nice. We went for a walk and saw the devastation that had been caused by the tornado a year ago – houses still empty and others smashed.

Later in the evening we went to Brian’s armed with vegan burgers and he cooked them on the barbecue while he played us some music by a singer called Amy Macdonald – and I’ll be checking her out in due course.

Back here, Sandra pulled out her fortune-telling cards. Apparently my secret wish is going to come true, which will come as a hell of a surprise to Castor, and I’m going to live for ages and be rich and happy.

It got my age wrong too.

When I mentioned all of this to Sandra she told me not to be so negative. And she’s right – I have to be positive and think positive thoughts. Rather, I suppose like the boxer Jack Johnson who once said that the secret to a perfect composure was “to eat jellied eels and think pleasant thoughts”.

So now I’m off to bed. I’ve a long day tomorrow so I need to get some sleep. But for some unaccountable (or maybe not so unaccountable) reason I’m not ready yet and I think that tomorrow for a very good reason I’m going to be one extremely unhappy and disappointed bunny.

Tom Petty summed it up completely –
“A red-winged hawk is circling
“The blacktop stretches out for days
“How could I get so close to you
“And still feel so far away?
“I hear a voice come on the wind
“Sayin’ you and I will meet again
“I don’t know how, I don’t know when
“But you and I will meet again”

Nothing is more certain than that. So let’s finish on a positive note, hey?

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Tuesday 24th September 2019 – I HAD MY …

… nocturnal voyage last night of course, but don’t ask me where I went because I have no idea.

All I know is that there’s another rambling 10 minutes or so on the dictaphone and it all seemed to have happened over an hour or so starting round about 02:45.

Np prizes for guessing who was accompanying me though. Having had a couple of days of rest, certainly Castor was back on duty during the night. I wouldn’t have not remembered that.

The alarms went off at 06:00 as usual but it was … errrr … some time later that I roused myself. Plenty of time for medication and to do a few things that needed doing before Sandra came down and we had breakfast together.

After breakfast I had a shower and Sandra washed my clothes for me which was very nice of her.

Then I hit the streets. I was aiming for the centre of town and the museums. The most important one here in Ottawa is the Aviation Museum but it’s closed one day a week as regular readers of this rubbish will probably realise, its day of closing is Tuesday.

That left, inter alia the Houses of Parliament. But the notice that I had read on the internet that amongst the items that I’m not allowed to take into Canada’s Parliament building are
“any pointed object (e.g. knitting needles and letter openers), electric stun guns, martial arts weapons or devices, slingshots, replica guns, explosive devices, ammunition, fireworks, knives of any size, razors and box cutters, tools, blunt instruments, flammable or harmful substances”.
So what’s the point of going if I can’t do any of that?

That left the War Museum so I went there. I arrived at 10:00 for what was expected to be a 2.5 hour visit, but I left there at 16:00.

Finding the place was exciting. There are road works all over Ottawa and I couldn’t turn right into the street where the museum is. That led to a frantic 10 minutes trying to find a way in and I passed the same road three times.

In the end, I drove right through Gatineau across the river and out around the back so that I could line myself up correctly.

And the car park has a height limit of 6’6″ so the roof bars on Strider made a mess of one or two of their signs.

Part of the time was spent looking at the military records of my great grandfather Thomas William Cooper. He was 50 when he signed up to fight in World War I but he lied about his age and his medical record shows that he “looked about 34” in 1914.

What they made of him having a son aged 20 who enlisted at more-or-less the same time isn’t recorded. But the Canadian Army was desperate for men and they couldn’t care less, especially as he had prior military service in the British Army in India and South Africa.

However, when he was demobilised due to ill-health in late 1917, they had his date of birth – 1864 – correct and his card is marked “age 53 – looks his age”.

I was then let loose on the exhibits and spent most of my time looking at the vehicles in the basement. They even had an early Fordson E83W van in there, and they bring back many happy memories for me because when we were small, my father had two of them one after the other – KLG93 and XVT772.

We used to travel all the way down to Kent in them in the late 50s and early 60s and it was a nightmare cramped inside there at a maximum 35mph for 250 miles.

We were so delighted when my father traded XVT in and bought a CA Bedford 967NVT. A beautiful van, complete with windows down the sides and proper seats for us kids, but the bodywork rotted off that right before our very eyes.

By 16:00 I was ready to leave and having checked that the car park would be open later, walked into the city.

I went to the Supreme Court to check it out and to work out an escape route for when I’ll be in there. And I managed to find a good way out too. I’l be back tomorrow to stash some civilian clothes and cash there. But one thing though – it took me longer to pass through “security” than it took me to case the joint.

Up to Parliament Hill to check that out too but it wasn’t so successful. Ottawa is a mess right now, everything is under repair and the Parliament buildings are surrounded by fences, piles of gravel and workmen. All disappointing.

Back at the War Museum and found it to be all locked up, including the car park. I did a couple of laps of the building before I found an intercom. A voice at the other end told me to go to the main door and wait – so I did.

After waiting a while someone came for me so I said “I’m sorry to have kept you waiting” – and he looked through me as if I had two heads.

But then he had to answer his radio, and he spoke in French. So when I said “je m’excuse pour le derangement” and he actually replied.

A monolingual Francophone in Ottawa. Who would have thought it?

The payment machines had been switched off so they needed to be switched on again. And then my card didn’t work on either floor so I had to use a new one.

Then I could rescue Strider – and he left his mark on a couple more signs on the way out.

Tea tonight was leftover pasta and then I decided on an early night.

After all of the excitement today, I’m keen to see where my voyages are going to take me. But before I go, seeing as I’m in a little maudlin mod right now,
here’s a certain little relevant something for one of the people who I believe is currently reading this blog.

I hope that it means something to you.

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Monday 23rd September 2019 – THE ANSWER TO …

… last night’s question about where I might end up during the night is “I don’t know”. Or, more to the point, “I can’t remember”. Yet I was certainly somewhere. And on at least two occasions too (and maybe more) judging by the files that are on the dictaphone.

As of yet I haven’t listened to the tracks so I can’t even say with whom (if anyone) I was travelling last night. And that’s always the exciting part of course. I can’t wait to get to grips with the dictaphone notes and type them all out. That will mean editing the blog back as far as … gulp … 26th June. So that’s really going to be a labour of love, isn’t it?

The alarms went off as usual at 06:00 but it was a good hour later before I showed a leg. What with the medicine and all of that and a general tidy-up I was upstairs in the living room at 08:00. Sandra came to join me a little later and we had breakfast and a really good chat for ages.

A little later on, once the tremendous rainstorm had subsided, we went for a walk to buy groceries for tea tonight. She lives on a new housing estate tucked on down a side road right at the end of a commercial zoning area and this area is alive with ethnic shops and restaurants from the Middle East and the Indian sub-continent.

We stocked up with tons of stuff of all kinds of varieties, had a look at the big cinema across the road (nothing there that tempted me at all) and then went for lunch. There’s a place that covers pitta bread with various toppings (I had vegetables), toasts them in a gas-powered pizza oven and then folds them over to eat.

Absolutely delicious they were too.

But while I was out, I did a very foolish thing that maybe I shall come to regret – but ask me if I care.

There’s a pawn shop along the highway nearby and we went in more out of curiosity. And my eye was inexorably drawn towards a Genz Benz 200-watt combo amp and 15-inch speaker with tweeter.

Way overpriced at $CAN 350 but nevertheless this is a serious piece of kit and the guy in the shop lent me a bass guitar to sit down and have a play, which I did for over half an hour. It needed a good clean (which it had at the tender mercy of my fair hands) and then quite some use before the dust on the potentiometers disappeared, and then it had the most wonderful sound that I have ever heard.

Anyway, to cut a long story short, it’s now joined the Fender practice combo in the back of Strider and I didn’t pay anything like the asking price for the outfit. One very happy bunny here.

All I need now is an opportunity to go out and put it to work while I’m over here in North America. I have everything that I need, including a guitar strap that I managed to negotiate into the deal. High time I started bringing in some money isn’t it?

This afternoon we went for a walk. There’s an abandoned railway that runs past the end of Sandra’s street right along the riverside and it’s been converted into a cycle path and pedestrian walkway. The weather was quite nice so we made the most of it, walking all the way down past the Belltown Dome towards the city as far as the public beach at Britannia Park.

The beach cafe was closed (this ridiculously short tourist season in Canada gets on my wick, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall) so we walked back again. Sandra went off to practise her Spanish and I did a few chores on the laptop.

For a change, I made tea tonight. One of my pasta-and-bean-in-tomato-sauce surprises (the big surprise being that it was edible) and it went down really well which is always good news.

And then we tried to fire up her ancient Sony Handycam 8mm camera to watch some of her old family videos, but to no avail. Dead batteries (as you might expect) and no battery charger. Anyone have an old Handycam going spare for a few days?

After another really good chat (we seem to find tons of things to talk about ) I’ve come to bed. An early night and hopefully a voyage that I might actually remember. It’s no fun going anywhere if you can’t remember where you’ve been.

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Sunday 22nd September 2019 – STILL IN OTTAWA

Yes, I’ve not quite outstayed my welcome yet. Haven’t disgraced myself at the dining table or trod on the cat or walked around with holes in my socks as yet.

But the week is young. Plenty of time to do that.

Plenty of time to sleep too. With it being Sunday, it was a Day of Rest as you might expect. I’d had a wonderful sleep in this comfortable bed, dead to the world and never felt a thing.

No files on the dictaphone either, which means that I don’t remember in my conscious or even my subconscious mind going anywhere either. So much so that when I awoke at 07:30 I was rather disappointed.

having had my medicine, at about 08:15 I went upstairs to the Land of the Living and had a coffee and some breakfast. That always makes me feel so much better, especially as Sandra had bought in some special breakfast food for me.

Sandra, Brian and I had a chat for most of the morning and then I went off for a shower and a change of clothes. Need to make myself beautiful. Then back for lunch, which was the remains of the curry from last night. And as everyone knows, left-over Indian food allowed to marinade in itself for 15 hours or so tastes even better than it did the night before.

While I’d been at the shower, Sandra had made certain enquiries which led to us being driven out of town to the “Diefenbunker”. That’s the Government of Canada’s underground former nuclear disaster control centre. Disaffected since 1994, it’s now a museum with guided tours.

Sandra had arranged for tickets which was nice of her and we had a guided tour around the premises followed by plenty of time to have a wander around. And the thing that will surprise most people is that the Prime Minister would be expected to come to the bunker but to leave his family outside at the mercy of radiation.

From there we went to the Nepean Sailing Club where Sandra’a sister and husband joined us. He’s an interesting character – owning a second-hand CD and LP shop in the city (and yes, I’ve arranged a visit tomorrow).

We had supper there but nice though the food was, we were back in the Belgian customer service here. No idea why anyone would serve up a vegan burger with mayonnaise, and when I asked for a replacement, I ended up having the plate thrown at me by the chef.

I posted a report on the Nepean Sailing Club’s page but had the message “This post will be reviewed by the site owner” – presumably meaning that they weed out all of the bad reviews and just approve the good ones.

It was a shame because the meal was excellent when I finally received it.

And I learnt something today that quite surprised me. Regular readers of this rubbish in one of its many previous incarnations will recall that as well as me, my cousin Gary Jewell in Montreal also played the bass guitar. But, surprisingly, one of Sandra’s brothers does too.

It seems that bass guitars have quite a connection in our extended family.

Back here, Sandra and I had a really good chat for hours and listened to some music before bedtime.

So I’m hoping for another good sleep. I have a second-hand record shop to visit tomorrow and who knows who else there is to meet?

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Saturday 21st September 2019 – OTTAWA!

So here we all are, people, despite all of the prophets of doom and gloom. Strider, Strawberry Moose and Yours Truly nicely settled down in Ottawa in the bosom of another branch of family – one that I never knew that I had until I posted a casual remark on a page on the internet.

This world is far too small for my liking, as I have said before, except for my cousin Sandra.

And do you know what? It’s two years TO THE DAY that we met on the only other occasion, in Kingston.

A rather late-ish night last night but a really good sleep, and awakening to find no less than FOUR voice files on the dictaphone, one of which goes on for 00:08:42 and I’d love to know what that is all about.

I had a laze around for a few hours and then a shower, a shave and a general clean-up before slinging all of my gear into Strider.

A walk took me around the shops to buy some deodorant as I have run out, and some food for the next stage of my journey. And the crisis is over, it seems. Epinette, or Spruce Beer, is back in the shops. They are minus two bottles now.

On the road now for Ottawa and fighting my way through the roadworks and traffic jams and breakdowns. It took me ages to pass through Montreal this afternoon.

But soon I’m on the clear road and Strider and I can open up a little. I’m doing 100 kph – the legal limit on the highway – and everyone is going past us as if we are standing still.

What’s the matter with Canadian drivers? Don’t they understand anything about speed limits?

There’s a rest area ahead so I pull in for lunch. Baguette, tomato and hummus again. A ride on the porcelain horse and then a trip down the road to the service station where I saw fuel at $1:13 a litre (I saw it at $1:09 a little later) even though Strider didn’t really need it.

Back on the highway in the heat and I’m in Ottawa in about 90 minutes. Roadworks everywhere of course. But I find the chocolate shop to buy some chocolates for cousin Sandra who is kindly hosting me for the night.

Sandra has a lovely house right by the river, so it’s a good job that I have o holes in my socks or anything to let the side down.

Recently, I had heard from “a reliable source” that there was a really good Indian restaurant in Ottawa. “Ohh yes” said Sandra. “It’s on the corner here” so off we trot. A tiny place and we have to wait 20 minutes for a table and then another 45 minutes for the food. But I do have to say that the food made it worth every minute of the wait. It was delicious.

Sandra’s sister was passing briefly so she called in for a chat too.

Back at the house we exchanged family stories and then I went off to bed. Sunday morning so a lie-in, I hope. I think that I’ve earned it.

So now that I’m in Ottawa, what will tomorrow bring me?

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Friday 20th September 2019 – I’VE HAD A …

… bad day today.

Back here in mid-afternoon with nothing accomplished of what I had hoped to do, crashed out on the bed where I stayed for about three hours.

My exertions of the drive up from New Brunswick and the day spent walking around the city yesterday took their toll on me today.

And it all started off so good too. Four sound files dictated on the dictaphone during the night. And one of them – the last one – is of particular interest because it steps me back right into the exact spot where I left an earlier nocturnal voyage. And not the previous one, or even another one of last night’s journeys, but one from a couple of nights ago which I had briefly mentioned at the time.

And did I get the girl? Not ‘arf I did! Not quite with the same intensity of that which occurred to the well-known inmate of a certain religious establishment situated in a province of the modern-day Czech Republic but it was pretty damned near. What wouldn’t I have given for another 15 minutes of sleep on that occasion?

As I have said before, and on many previous occasions too, the life that I lead when I’m off on one of my nocturnal voyages is much more interesting and exciting than any kind of life that I have led in the real world and I wish that I could stay in that state rather permanently. In fact, several of my friends would certainly offer to help me in this respect.

Despite the alarms it was a struggle to leave the bed as I desperately tried to go back to sleep to carry on where I had left off, but to no avail unfortunately. So I left the bed and did a few things around here that needed doing.

At 10:00 I went off to find an adapter for the camera charger. And the price of carelessness and thoughtlessness worked out at just over $20:00 at Walmart. As I have said, I don’t ever make mistakes. I just learn some very expensive lessons.

The housekeeper chased me out of my room at midday which was just as well as the camera battery was now properly charged, and I took the metro to the Andrignon Metro terminus – the last terminus I had to visit on my tour around the Montreal Metro.

With it being a beautiful day I had a good walk around and eventually found a supermarket where a couple of bread rolls, a couple of tomatoes and a tub of hummus (on special offer) fell into my sweaty little mitt for lunch.

I took my supplies down to the Parc Andrignon and sat on the grass by the lake watching the ducks and feeding my face. A little walk afterwards and that was when I crashed. Not an ordinary tiredness but one of these deep intense ones that I have every now and again and which I haven’t had for a while.

These days I can recognise the symptoms so I fought them off as best as I could (which wasn’t very efficient) and caught the metro back here. And here I crashed out for three hours. Totally and completely. And I haven’t done anything of what I really intended to do.

Later on I took the Metro back to town. I wasn’t all that hungry – just a little snack would see me right. I alighted at the Baudry Metro station and walked along the rue St Catherine Est to see what was going on. There seems to be a new Mexican restaurant, the Tacos Frida, open and it served snacks too so I went in to have a try. I’ve had better food than this, but I’ve also had worse, and the price was quite realistic, which is important.

Mind you, their idea of piquant and mine are quite remarkably different.

The journey back was not without its moments, due mainly that the Papineau Metro Station does not have an entrance in the rue Papineau but in another one and that confused me for a while.

No Epinette in the supermarket next door now. I had the last bottle.

Now I’m making plans to move on. Fate awaits me tomorrow as I shall head off further west to Ottawa. “Travelling Eternity Road – what shall I find there?”, as the Moody Blues once sang. It’s been a while since I was in Ottawa but this time it’s not for tourism. I have other reasons to be there and I need to be on my best behaviour.

But let’s go to sleep first. Who knows where I’ll end up tonight? I imagine that my phantom reader from Celbridge in Ireland is gripping the edge of his seat in eager anticipation.

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Thursday 19th September 2019 – ISN’T IT NICE …

… to be awoken by the dulcet tone of a friendly voice?

It reminds me of the time many years ago on one of my coach trips with Shearings where a passenger asked me if I would awaken her at 06:00 one morning. “Certainly” I replied. “Should I knock on your door or give you a nudge?”. In those days of course you could say things like that and people would laugh and joke about it. But today you couldn’t say a thing like that. No one has a sense of humour any more.

But anyway, just as the alarm finished ringing, the telephone rang. Rosemary had sent me a message yesterday so I has messaged her back to tell her to ring me round about midday her time.

We had a good chat about all the things that had happened to us since we parted company in Greenland in late July. I told her about my more recent adventures on The Good Ship Ve … errr … Ocean Endeavour and she burst out laughing. “Ohh Eric” she snorted. “That’s the kind of thing that could ONLY happen to you”.

And she’s right of course. Looking back, it was all quite amusing really and I’m not sure why I took it all so seriously. But then again, I don’t think that I really did.

I’d had a good night’s sleep too. After all of my efforts yesterday I was in bed by 21:00 and out like a light. I remembered nothing until the alarm went off, although there is a sound file on the dictaphone from last night. I wonder what’s in it.

For breakfast I went down to Tim Hortons and purchased some bagels and coffee to bring back here. Eventually. For it took a good few minutes to find my way into the place.

And then I hit the streets for my storage locker. Pretty easy to get to from here too, except for the traffic. At one point I was in a queue surrounded by brand-new cars with Montreal licence plates. People in suits on their way to an office somewhere. And there I was, faded baseball cap, tatty tee-shirt in an elderly tired Ford Ranger on my way to empty out a storage locker. It looked like something out of the Beverley Hillbillies, but ask me if I care.

Yes – I can remember the Beverley Hillbillies from 50-odd years ago, but ask me what I had for lunch yesterday …

Somehow I’d left the *.mp3 player in Strider playing last night, so when I switched on the radio I had “Foxy Lady” by Jimi Hendrix blasting its way across the airwaves.
.
That’s a significant track, and for two reasons too. Firstly, when I played in a rock group with Jon Dean and Dave Hudson back in the mid-70s, that was one of the numbers that we played and it always went down well.

But secondly, it has a much more significant meaning for someone else who I met much more recently than that and she’ll understand why. The lyrics are quite relevant too, given the particular circumstances.

At the storage place I had to wait for a trolley as they were all in use. But I was soon in business. A pile of stuff was binned but a pile more (much more than I expected) was loaded into the back of Strider for further review. And then I handed back all of my paperwork and cards (and had to negotiate to receive back the deposit on my card).

And that was that. The end of another era. All of my sleeping-out stuff into the bin. But at least on one occasion and probably two I’d managed to spend every night sleeping out on the trail around Labrador, but I’m only fooling myself by pretending that one day I might be able to do it again. It saves me $33:00 per month by binning it all, but it was still an emotional moment.

But we did have a little fun there. I was brandishing a large crowbar when one of the guys came up to me. “That’s huge” he said. “It must be a metre long (it’s actually 1200mm). Why do you need a pry bar that big?”
“I drive an old Ford” I replied.

On the way back we were all carved up by some moron in one of these big Volkswagen SUVs. But I had my own back by running him up to some roadworks amd blocking him in while we all went past. He was not amused – but we were!

Back at the motel I had a shower and a clean-up, and washed my clothes. I need to keep on top of all of that while I can if I’m on the road.

Down to the Metro and off into town. From Berri-UQAM I walked down past the Gare Viger, my favourite building in the whole of the city (and what are they doing in the car park?) and down to the old harbour. A couple of ships in there but I just had a good walk right round.

Up then to rue Sherbrooke and then all the way down to the Atwater Metro Station, thinking all the time about how much I hated Montreal and everyone and everything in it. I could feel myself building up into an emotional rage. But then again, regular readers of this rubbish will recall that I have a very hard time throwing my stuff away, for reasons that any good psychiatrist could explain and it’s all probably to do with that.

I took the metro to the terminus at Cote Vertu (falling asleep for part of the way) and went to the fruit wholesalers. There, I bought grapes and bananas while the buying was good. And then across the road and the Indian cafe for tea. And when was the last time I walked away from a table leaving a half-eaten meal behind? Excellent though it was and perfectly spiced, I was bloated. Having cut right down on food over the last few weeks is certainly working…

On the way back I tried several different places and it wasn’t until the very last place just near here that I was able to find a bottle of Epinette. The last in Quebec, I reckon, and we are now facing a crisis of Brexit-like proportions if I can’t find any more.

So now it’s bed time. I’ve already crashed out twice (and so has the internet) and I’m on the verge of going again. I’m hoping for a good sleep because I have things to do tomorrow early. The battery has gone flat in the big Nikon camera and Bane of Britain has forgotten to bring the Canadian charging lead for the battery charger.

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Tuesday 17th September 2019 – I’M HARD-PRESSED …

… to remember what it was that I did today. I must have done something or other I suppose, so I’ll have to dig deep.

One thing that I do know is that it should have been an early night, but totally destroyed by a wicked attack of cramp just as I was going to bed. And that was really my lot unfortunately as far as that was concerned.

But I did end up going to sleep eventually – at least until about 05:30 when I was awakened by yet another bad attack of cramp.

Somewhere during the night though I must have been in some kind of consciousness because there’s an entry on the dictaphone – 00:02:05 of it too and I would ordinarily listen to it to see where I was and who I was with, but I’m listening to some Hawkwind right now.

What is exciting about this album – or, rather, the original digital track – is that due to “contractual difficulties”, the tracks featuring lyrics and vocals by sci-fi writer Michael Moorcock (who I particularly enjoyed whenever he fronted Hawkwind) were omitted from the original vinyl album. But on the digital master tapes they are all there in all their glory.

On a rare night off from work, I saw this concert at the Free Trade Hall in Hanley. This was live Hawkwind at its finest and I remember being totally overwhelmed by it all.

As usual, I took the girls to school and then went shopping for a few things. And to my mailbox out on the River du Chute road to see if Strider’s licence tags had arrived. And I was in luck too. So they are on his licence plate and we are all legal. Insurance, safety and licence. What more could any vehicle require?

Up at the shop I hung around for a while, handling a few of the customers (I’m funny that way) then at lunchtime I came back home. A few things to do, some packing to organise, a shower to clean myself up, some lunch, and then I made a curry.

Par-boiled some potatoes and carrots and while they were doing, I fried some onions in olive oil with cumin, coriander and turmeric. When they had browned I added the garlic and mixed it all round.

Once that was looking nice, I added some mushrooms and peppers and had them thoroughly fried. And then tipped in the par-boiled potatoes and carrots. Add some coconut milk and a vegan stock cube, and leave it to simmer for 15 minutes. Finally some bulghour to thicken it out.

Up at the shop I loitered around again.

But here’s a thing. The car fairy has been to visit.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall the ancient 1-tonne Ford with the big aluminium body that has been laid up at the garage since 2000 without turning a wheel since.

Well, today it mysteriously disappeared as if by magic and it’s miraculously turned up here back at the house. I wonder how that happened.

My curry went down really well tonight. Our little visitor left the table with a wiped-clean plate and told me that it was the best meal that she had eaten here.

Mind you, I’m not sure whether that says more about the curry or more about the rest of the meals that I have cooked while she’s been here.

This evening I’ve been downloading again. First off is Every Which Way. That’s an album by a group of musicians put together by Brian Davison, the former drummer in The Nice. Rare as hen’s teeth and my album is totally worn out after a frenetic spell in the late 1970s and early 1980s. A couple of tracks on there are really good.

The second download though breaks a habit of a recent lifetime in that I don’t actually own the album. But it appeared on the list right after the previous one above and I heard it by accident. And it so impressed me that I downloaded it and I’ll find a CD or a vinyl in early course.

I’m sure that very few – if any – people reading this post will have heard of Gay and Terry Woods. They were a couple of Irish folk singers who were invited into the first incarnation of Steeleye Span by Ashley Hutchings. Although they performed on the album “Hark The Village Wait” they didn’t stick around and for a brief period performed as a duo with various eclectic musicians.

It’s all just a faint glimmer in the back of my mind from 1971 and I hadn’t really any idea that they had released an album. But here it is, in all its glory.

This evening I finished off the lemon swirl vegan mousse, performed a computer back-up and I’m ready to hit the road tomorrow.

But part of the back-up involved the dictaphone files and I had a listen to the famous recording – all 00:08:02 of it – of the nightmare that I had the other night. And I’m astonished by the depth of emotion that I spat out. Like I said at the time, I thought that I had put all of that behind me a long time ago.

But apparently not. And that fills me with dismay. Who knows what other demons are lurking in the shadows waiting to be unleashed? That’s the bit that’s filling me full of dread for the future.

But then, as Alfred Whitehead once famously wrote, “It is the business of the future to be dangerous”.

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Monday 16th September 2019 – STRIDER HAS BEEN …

… a busy boy today.

Back at the house after the school run, Zoe gathered up all of the glass, aluminium and plastic that she could find and we loaded it up into the back of Strider.

Then down at the bottom of the field by the lean-to we dragged the trailer out of the undergrowth. That was already loaded with a huge mound of stuff so we coupled it up to Strider’s tow hitch. Not for nothing did we fit a decent tow bar on him last year.

And that wasn’t the work of five minutes either. A trailer that hasn’t moved for a year or so and there’s quite a weight in it too. And, of course, the electric connections needed to be cleaned off so that I would have lights.

On the way down the road we hit a bump and the back door of the trailer opened up. As I have said before, I seem to be leaving a trail of possessions all around the world these days. But this time we were quick off the mark and we had it all back on the trailer and the door closed before anyone noticed.

At the garage we loaded more stuff up and then went on a tour of a few places to collect more. Off then to the recycling centre at Bath to weigh in the whole lot of it.

On the way back (for by now it was almost lunchtime after all of that) we went to Tim Horton’s where Zoe bought me a coffee and where I left my bag behind and had to run back and pick it up. It had taken ages to unload it all and separate it, and I question the wisdom of putting heavy glass into cardboard boxes and leaving it on a trailer for a year in the rain.

And inside the back of Strider now smells like a Babylonian boozer’s bedroom.0

The trailer door came open again on the way back (luckily there was nothing in it) and I stopped to pick up a sandwich. By now I was thoroughly exhausted.

And that’s no surprise either. I’d had another miserable night where I didn’t go to sleep until about 03:00 and then a fitful night of tossing and turning.

I don’t remember much of where I went but I remember three different segments. Segment 1, and then Segment 2 which was completely different and bore no resemblance to the previous, and Segment 3 where I stepped right back into where I was at the end of Segment 1. And if you think that that is confusing, imagine how I’m feeling.

And I do recall at some point the welcome return of a young girl who accompanied me on several voyages three or four years ago, and I wonder what has suddenly brought her back into the picture.

We had the school run of course and then the recycling, and then this afternoon I was hauling animal feed for a while, and then we replaced the rear brake caliper on the big Chevy truck that somehow manages to feature quite regularly on these pages just now.

As well as all of that, I’ve ordered my fuel economy chip and also made enquiries about my jacket at the hotel in Calgary.

Back at home I put back the trailer – and I do have to say that despite being out of practice I was totally impressed with my reversing skills – putting the trailer exactly where I wanted it (and in some tight corners too) every time, right on the button.

Not many of us here tonight so I made my usual vegan standby – stuffed peppers – for the two of us. And then I downloaded some more music. Two albums, both of which are vastly underrated.

Nektar’s album Down To Earth is a very interesting curiosity – am album by a British rock band that was totally ignored in the UK but became something of a phenomenon in Germany and eventually the musicians relocated there.

It’s one of these “take it or leave it” albums that I like to play every now and again but I can really live without it.

On the other hand, House On The Hill is a magnificent album. I’ve heard quite a few albums by Audience and was never particularly inspired but House On The Hill is another one of those that comes out of nowhere and stops you dead in your tracks.

It was one of the “Jackie Marshall cassette recordings” from the mid-70s and I bought a vinyl version in the mid-80s, probably the last vinyl album that I ever bought. And somehow I overlooked to purchase a CD version when I was modernising my collection.

As an aside, I’m only hunting down album tracks for albums that I already own and not for anything that isn’t already in my collection.

Now it’s bed-time and I’m hoping for better luck tonight when it comes to sleeping. I really can’t carry on like this and I’m back on the road on Wednesday.

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Sunday 15th September 2019 – I MISSED …

… an exciting day today up in Grand Falls. Apparently they were having a drag racing afternoon.

Nothing more exciting than watching a bunch of men dash round a town while dressed in women’s clothes, but I had other fish to fry unfortunately and I was quite disappointed to have let the opportunity pass me by.

In fact I was out near Meductic moving furniture. Zoe has, as I mentioned earlier, bought herself a little house and she doesn’t have much furniture, but someone was disposing of a clean two-seater bed settee that transforms into a double bed and that will be just the thing.

And so having emptied out Strider, we set off for Zoe’s where she and a friend clambered aboard and then we all shot off southwards towards Fredericton.

Putting the bed in the back of Strider was the work of a moment and it was soon strapped in place. Back at Zoe’s, we unloaded the sofa and then I came home. Totally whacked. I just can’t do things like this any more.

Mind you, I don’t know why, because it’s not as if I had much of a difficult night. In bed comparatively early and apart from a brief foray down the corridor to ride the porcelain horse, disturbing our overnighters on the way, and a few interruptions to record things on the dictaphone (and I wonder what they are?) I had the kind of lie-in about which I have only been able to dream just recently.

09:00 when I finally surfaced, and just loitered around until it was time to go and deal with Zoe.

This afternoon, I’ve had a shower and, would you believe, a haircut, and I look almost human. As well as that, Rachel was having a marathon clothes-washing session and I’m now up to date with all clean clothes ready to leave here Wednesday morning for Montreal to clean out my storage locker and hopefully to go for a meal with Josee.

But having seen the fuel in Strider evaporate before my very eyes, I’ve been searching on the internet with Darren and we have finally found a performance chip which claims inter alia to offer an 8mpg fuel improvement.

And I tell you what – that if I could get an extra 8mpg out of Strider I will really be impressed. So tomorrow I shall be on the case.

For tea tonight we had baked potato – the carnivores with salmon and we vegans with a bean medley. Quite delicious and prepared with my own fair hands. And if I can find the time tomorrow, I’m going to make a curry.

But I’ve been a busy boy this evening. I’ve tracked down the complete digital tracks to two more albums that I own. The first one is Taking Tiger Mountain By Strategy by Brian Eno. That was his second solo album after Roxy Music and was such a surprising album that it left me speechless when I first heard it, and that’s not something that happens every day, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall.

But it’s one of those albums that grow on you quite quickly and it’s always been in my top 100 albums out of the couple of thousand that I own.

The second one though is an album that means a great deal to me and for many reasons too.Warrior On The Edge Of Time features work that probably represents Michael Moorcock’s apogee as a science fiction writer, and several of the lyrics, adapted from works by Shelley and Wordsworth and set to Hawkwind’s space-rock music will penetrate deep into your bones.
“The golden void will speak to me
“Denying my reality
“lose my body, lose my mind
“blow like wind, I flow like wine
“Down a corridor of flame
“Will I fly so high again?”
Yes, what wouldn’t I give to be able to write meaningful lyrics like that after some of the things that I have done?

The album was thoroughly panned by the critics in the same was that A Passion Play was, and for the same reason too – that the critics didn’t understand what the musicians were trying to achieve.

The Melody maker wrote that Moorcroft’s poetry was delivered “with all the emotion of Davros being exterminated by renegade Daleks”, totally overlooking the fact that this was precisely the effect that Moorcroft and Brock wanted.

And when Lemmy wrote that ” ‘Opa-Loka’ was a lot of f***ing rubbish”, what he really meant to say that he didn’t play the bass line on it. It transpired much later that with Lemmy off on one of his little jaunts playing Hell’s Angels, Dave Brock refused to hang around and wait but played the bass line himself.

It’s quite true that Hawkwind has never ever recorded an album on which I have liked every track from start to finish, but “Warrior On The Edge Of Time” will be up there with the best of them.

But it has much more of a personal significance to me too. When the album was released I was dating Jackie Marshall. She worked at the Nantwich Library on Saturdays and used to scan the new rock albums that arrived, secrete them in a drawer, smuggle them out for me to record and then take them back next week. This particular album, she bought me for my birthday and inscribed a beautiful little message on the album cover which meant quite a lot to me – and still does.

But her parents hated me with a passion (like I said, I was a different person in those days) and so our fate was destined to unwind.

Strangely enough, I was driving a coach around North Shropshire a few years later and needed some cash, so on my lunch break I called in at Barclay’s Bank in Whitchurch. Who should be working there behind the counter as cashier but the aforementioned?

I had the briefest of moments to exchange pleasantries like you do, but not enough time to chat, so I determined that at the next opportunity I would go back.

And so I did – and on a couple of occasions too – but I never saw her again. We’ve often talked about TOTGA – The One That Got Away – but that particular girl was from a very different time and a very different era. Jackie was TOTGA from quite another epoch in my life and is probably the original one from which all standards are made.

Sometimes I wonder whatever happened to her.

Having had a play around on the bass, I’m ready for bed. The house is as quiet as the grave with everyone having retired and I suppose that I should really badger off to. But I’ve found the digital track to another album and I’ve made a start to re-record it.

But I’ll tell you all about that in the morning.

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Saturday 14th September 2019 – FOR THE FIRST …

… time in I don’t know how long (you can scroll back for yourself to see) I actually had a decent night’s sleep last night.

In bed by about 22:30, on the internet for a short while, and then away with the fairies.

A brief awakening and a trip down to corridor at some point during the night (I’ll have to cut out these evening tea-drinking sessions with Rachel) and that was that until the alarm went.

A look on the dictaphone showed me that there are two tracks on there that weren’t on there when I went to bed so clearly I had been on my travels during the night. But as for when and where and who with, you’ll have to wait until I find the time to transcribe them.

For a change I was up and about quite early which was just as well because I had work to do. Rachel had a stall at a craft fair at the ice rink so I went along to carry her stuff and mind the stall.

And among the interesting things to take place there was a woman from the Netherlands so I spent a good few minutes talking in Dutch (well, Flemish in my case) to her. I’m back in Leuven shortly for a blood transfusion so I need to keep up with my Flemish and practise it when I can.

We were hit by a torrential rainstorm, as I discovered when we went to reload the cars afterwards. A really miserable day in fact.

Strider and I went on down to Woodstock afterwards to Sobeys for some more shopping. By the time we got to Woodstock we were half a million strong so it was rather crowded in his cab but we managed. And now we have enough food to make vegan pies and pizza as well as piles of other stuff – including some mixed fruit vegan sorbet.

Back home I crashed out for an hour or so and then made a lentil, pepper and mushroom spaghetti for the two of us vegans here. I made some home-made vegan garlic bread too, so our little visitor can’t complain that we are starving her.

Later that evening the two young girls went off to a friend’s for a sleepover, and Darren and Rachel had visitors over. Consequently I’m in my room working and playing guitar.

And I’m in luck! Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that when I bought this laptop it had the stupid Walmart IPOS splash screen on it that I was unable to move and Walmart was of no help.

You might recall that I was in BIOS mode the other day, so this evening I had another look deep into the bowels of the computer and, sure enough, the password that controls it is only recognised and functioning on the Windows interface.

Consequently, in BIOS mode, I could simply delete it without needing to know the password. Well, delete a few of the more important files such as the password files and then go back into Windows and use the “uninstall” function to remove the rest.

And it seems to have done the trick too, which is a big surprise to everyone, not just me. Anyone care to guess why the “techies” at Walmart couldn’t tell me that?

Tomorrow Strider and I have a settee to move for Zoe so, for a Sunday, it will be an early start. I’m hoping for a good sleep so that I’ll be on form.

But two good nights in a row is being rather optimistic, especially as Rachel and I have just had another cup of tea. Tomorrow, if I were a Native American, you would probably find me drowned in my own teepee.

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Friday 13th September 2019 – WHAT A NIGHT …

… that turned out to be!

It’s one thing to be accompanied on a nocturnal ramble by people such as Castor and Pollux, but it’s quite something else when a dramatic appearance is made therein by my father and my brother.

And when all of the action (including five children all riding on the same push-bike at the same time) takes place in Edleston Road in Crewe, then that is the stuff from which nightmares are made.

And so it should be no surprise to anyone that I sat up bolt-upright at about 01:30 in the morning in a state of shock, anger and emotion and drenched in a feverish sweat.

I’m not going to go into the gory details of all of this, which I remember totally vividly without having consulted the lengthy notes on the dictaphone, because you are probably eating your lunch right now. But let’s just say that I’m a different person today than I was 30 or so years ago and the rage and anger that was consuming me at the time and for which there is no Statute of Limitations was, I thought, long-since dead and buried like a couple of people I could mention and that I’d moved a long way further on from there.

Consequently the emotion, the violence and the anger that was going around in my head when I awoke was something that took me completely by surprise and knocked me right off balance. It’s a good job that I don’t have too many wits these days because it took me quite a while to gather those that I still have.

Going back to sleep for a while was quite out of the question so I vegetated in bed for ages, musing over the events that had led up to my rather rude awakening. And it ended up as being one of those really uncertain events – did my family connections YET AGAIN contrive to put a spanner into the works and do their best to spoil any kind of enjoyment that I might be trying to have, or did my family all club together once more to save me from a fate worse than a fate worse than death?

Bearing in mind the vicarious pleasure that they once enjoyed from watching me skid towards the precipice a long time ago, I suspect the former. But things have a strange way of working themselves out for the best if you are able to stand back and review them from a detached point of view, and you are quite often able to find a totally different perspective.

Eventually I was off on yet another ramble at some point, to such an extent that I distinctly remember dreaming that I was dictating into a dictaphone some notes of a dream.

I didn’t quite manage to beat the alarms this morning, but I was good and ready for the girls when it was time to go to school (in nice weather too).

And I was right about the garage being empty this morning. There was a queue of vehicles, including a potato lorry, right across and down the yard awaiting attention this morning. We were rushed off our feet.

At lunchtime I came back home for a shower, a change of clothes, some butties and to do some work, such as converting to *.mp3 format a live concert that I tracked down on the internet last night.

The afternoon was spent running to Florenceville for parts and shunting cars around the yard as the pressure slowly eased off. And, of course, fighting off an enormous wave of fatigue.

This evening we had burgers for tea. The carnivores had bison burgers and we two vegans (and Amber) had vegan burgers, followed by lemon whirl vegan mousse.

With it being Friday night, everyone is relaxing. But I have too much to do right now so I’m working.

And I might be some time.

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Thursday 12th September 2019 – IT’S NOT BEEN …

… a particularly good day for me today.

And that’s hardly a surprise bearing in mind the events of last night.

It’s totally pointless going to bed early and trying to sleep because right now we are in the grip of forces much stronger than ourselves and as I have been told by various members of the medical profession, I need to conserve my strength and energy for the battle that lies ahead.

And so the last thing you would think that I was needing was yet another extremely mobile night. Once more it seemed that every 20 minutes I was waking up to add something to the dictaphone. And then going back to sleep again and dropping right back in to where we left off when we awoke.

The proof of the pudding is in the dictaphone with a file from the night as long as your arm. And looking back through the pages of this blog (one of the reasons why I keep it) it corresponds with the period round about the turn of the year 2016 when I had been first diagnosed and they were fighting to keep me alive. Pages and pages of rambling notes about where I had been and what I had done during the night and when we had all kinds of weird and wonderful people making guest appearances.

Not quite how it’s working out though right now because (until I listen to the entries and transcribe the notes) it’s basically the same two or three people accompanying me around. So after having had a night off on Tuesday night, welcome back Castor!

But as to whether I’m rueing all of these nightly interruptions, then the answer is “far from it”. Oscar Wilde’s friend Frank Harris once said that “man takes his pleasure whenever and wherever he can find it” and as I have said before, and on numerous occasions, what I get up to during the night is far more exciting and interesting than whatever goes on during my waking hours – one or two recent events being the exceptions of course.

The alarms went off at the usual time but I didn’t pay much attention. The morning stampede at 07:22 quickly brought me to my senses and a bang on the door shortly afterwards told me that my services were required.

Just for a change, it was a nice morning when I drove the girls to school. Not like the last couple of days when I’ve had thick fog and heavy rainstorms to contend with.

The morning passed completely uneventfully and I went home at lunchtime – to make some sandwiches and to deal with the download that I had done yesterday. That’s all up and running correctly.

So 20 minutes for lunch, 40 minutes for the music, and a blasted hour and a half trying to catch Cujo the Killer Cat and put her in the place in the house where she won’t disturb the alarm. Difficult at first, but once I found the cat treats the rest was easy.

I leapt into Strider to go back to the depot and the first thing that I heard on the *.mp3 player was –
“We need new dreams tonight
“Desert rose
“Dreamed I saw a desert rose
“Dress torn in ribbons and in bows
“Like a siren she calls to me
“She stands with a naked flame
“I stand with the sons of Cain
“Sleep comes like a drug… In God’s Country” and I couldn’t agree more. The events of recent nights (and one or two days too) are clearly getting to me

This afternoon we finished the pickup that had had all of the work done on the springs and that was driven away. I thought that it would never be finished and end up like a Canadian 21st-century version of Crawshay Bailey’s steam engine. Going “to Cardiff College for to get a bit of Knowledge” wouldn’t have solved this problem

The garage is now finally empty so we can tidy up, but the rush starts at 08:00 tomorrow.

But I was totally wasted afterwards. I was right out of it, sitting on a chair, for an hour or so. The stress and the strain (and my illness) are getting on top of me now.

The cash balanced first time round to just a $0.01 difference, and seeing that one cents are no longer valid in Canada, someone has forgotten to do the rounding.

We were in a rush back here so I made the vegan meal for the two vegans amongst us. So well did it go down that the remainder was purloined for a young person’s lunch tomorrow, and I’ve been invited to cook again. So Rachel and I spent well over an hour planning vegan recipes.

But you’ll be amazed at just how complicated a simple task like wrapping a parcel can be when you aren’t in the mood. But once it was done, I found a couple of live tracks (over 37 minutes each) of a Welsh rock group called Lone Star from the 1970s who featured on my radio programmes ages ago so I’ve been editing and engineering them ready for further use.

Not only that, I had a play around with the bass to work out the bass line to the song that I quoted just now. If I’m going to have random music roaming around my head, I may as well work out how to play it.

But I’ll finish that off tomorrow.

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Wednesday 11th September 2019 – EVEN THOUGH …

… I promised myself an early night last night, it didn’t quite work out like that. Just after I had finished writing up my notes, the heavens opened and we were soaked in a torrential downpour.

There are many advantages of tin roofs over the old-fashioned shingle roofs, but soundproofing qualities is not one of them, especially when there is a metal trailer roof parked right underneath my window.

As a result it was long after 23:00 when I finally nodded off.

we had what seemed to be the usual wake-up round about 04:00 and we must have been on a voyage at one point or another because there are some files registered on the dictaphone. No idea what’s in them yet but, as usual, I’m keen to find out.

The alarms went off as usual but I hid down the bed until Amber banged on the door. It seems that I’m doing the school run again today. Not that I mind of course – I have to make myself useful here and earn my corn.

The last time that I took the girls to school we had a thick fog and mist. Today we were having a torrential rainstorm. The next time I take them it will probably be a plague of locusts.

At the shop there were errands to run. I ended up having to go back to the house, rescuing a couple of pushbikes, bringing them back to the garage and overhauling them. It’s a long time since I’ve had to do that – I’ve not had any real involvement with pushbikes for almost half a century I reckon.

Once they were done I had to wait until lunchtime and then go back to Amber’s school to take her some money for the cinema tonight and to deliver the bikes (good job that I have a truck).

While I was at Amber’s school we had a delightful conversation –
Amber – “some boy called me a dumbass in class this morning”
Our Hero – “really? When’s his funeral?”

This afternoon we were having printer issues. The accounting program wouldn’t permit any printing so Yours Truly was required to look into the situation.

Eventually, after much binding in the marsh, I worked out that it seems that the program had performed an automatic upgrade at midday and for some reason that I have yet to understand it had created a clone of the accounts printer and was sending instructions to the clone, not the veritable one.

When I tried to transfer printers over, it still refused to accept the change – it simply stopped sending out any printfile instructions.

Finally, after about an hour, by going way back in my mind as far as 1998 and what I could remember about BIOS settings, I managed to make the program recognise the letter printer on another port and it’s now printing really satisfactorily from there.

But there have been so many printers connected up to that setup over the years that if it were me, I’d go through and delete every printer and device that is no longer active and go for a leaner, fitter machine. But it’s not my business, not my company, not my set-up etc.

This afternoon I was hit with another wave of fatigue. I’d been on the ropes once or twice during the morning but this was serious.

But what I couldn’t understand is that I had been swinging myself in and out of the back of Strider like I might have done before 2014 with no pain or effort whatsoever. Past experience tells me though that whenever I feel really well and really energetic, it usually means that I’ve had a substantial drop in blood count and that there has been a release of adrenalin ( as if there hasn’t been enough adrenalin released just recently). And still at least 30 days (and maybe more) until my next blood transfusion.

We were away from here fairly early tonight and back here Darren and I fixed the door (it has become unhinged since I’ve been here and who can blame it?) while Rachel fixed tea. Another one of her delicious herb-laden vegetable stir-fries in olive oil. Hannah lent a big hand to the mixture so there was plenty of garlic.

And I’m well-impressed (as always) with Hannah. She’s just had her annual appraisal at work – the end of her first year’s employment. “Above and beyond expectations” was the result.

Now I’m in my room with the bass guitar, hoping for another early night. Rachel is cooking chicken soup so the whole house smells of food, Zoe is doing Hannah’s fingernails (she’s off to Wisconsin in the morning) and the other two are out at the cinema.

But searching around on the internet I came across one of the albums of the days of my youth, featuring a bassist who I admired greatly.

Long out of print now, my album is scratched and damaged beyond all recognition these days (two years of living in vans and various squats in my youth didn’t help matters) so I hunted down a file ripper and downloaded the tracks.

That took an age but converting them to *.mp3 was quite quick. Now I’m up and running, over an hour later than I had intended.

So I’m off to bed. I’m not sure what the plan is tomorrow but I’ll work it out as I go along.

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