Tag Archives: computer issues

Monday 29th July 2019 – JUST IN CASE …

… you were wondering what has been happening just recently, I didn’t die (although I just smell like I did) I’ve had yet another in a long series of equipment failures.

Yesterday morning it was the turn of the portable ACER laptop that has been my constant companion for 5 years to bite the dust. I mentioned that it seemed to be taking an age to load up. Well the truth of it was that it just never loaded up at all.

But it’s no big deal because it was rubbish when I bought it and it’s gone from bad to worse over the years, creaking and groaning its way along hundreds of voyages into different parts of the world.

The only surprise is that it’s kept going as long as it has.

All that has been lost is about 10 days worth of work and that wouldn’t have been lost had I had the space to back it up so it’s no big deal. And anyway I’m not yet convinced that it’s gone for good … “and it wasn’t either – it was all later reovered, every last bit and byte of it” – ed.

And there is a bright side to it, more of which anon

So having gone off to bed depressingly early last night, I was awake on several occasions right up to the alarm. I had the medication and then some porridge, followed by another sleep.

For a change I awoke in time to pack everything up and hit the road, heading for the Walmart across the State Line in North Dakota.

First though I found a pawn shop so I stuck my head in to see what they might have, but one look at the customers and the staff behind the counter made me change my mind.

At Walmart in Grand Forks they had a laptop that might have done the trick but the staff there was so unhelpful that when they eventually told me what I wanted to know and they they didn’t have one in stock anyway, in the traditions of the best News of the Screws reporter, I made my excuses and left.

Down the flat featureless highway to Fargo, the biggest city in North Dakota. The land here is flat as a pancake for miles around with no feature to break up the relief. Luckily it’s not as monotonous as it sounds with a few trees here and there and different crops, and piles of railway lines exploiting the various produce of the region.

My eye did once rest on a hill, but closer inspection revealed it to be Fargo’s waste disposal facility

At Fargo I put some fuel in and asked the girl at the counter if she could direct me to Walmart. There are a couple here and I’m grateful that she sent me to the one that she did for I struck gold.

After looking for a while at the various items on display my eye fell (don’t ask me why) on q Lenovo Ideapad 330, 1TB hard drive, 4GB RAM and an Intel Core 13 processor, reduced from $349 to $279. Cheap as chips.

I drew the assistant’s attention to it and she said that it was out of stock. And so I asked if she would do a deal on the display model.

It turns out that the box was damaged, all of the accessories except the power cable were missing, and no-one in the shop could work out how to delete the Walmart splash-screen advertising screen-saver.

So after very much debate and discussion, I walked out of Walmart with it under my arm for a mere … wait for it … $125:00. I really can’t believe my luck. It makes losing 10 days work quite palatable.

Leaving Fargo, I went west, like my old computer. Another flat featureless road heading in a straight line, through one of the longest road repair section I have ever seen (we had to wait hours).

Eventually we started to hit the hills. I found Standing Rock, an old native American spiritual site which seems to be a menhir stuck into the ground, and then a scenic byway took me down the valley of the River James, the world’s longest non-navigable river, so they say.

It’s a huge historical site dating back to the early settlers of the 1880, old abandoned farms of the period and everything, and piles of old abandoned cars everywhere.

Eventually, finding an old nuclear rocket and a stern-wheel paddle steamer at the side of the road in Lamoure, I noticed a motel at the side of them. It’s rather early for me but here in the sticks a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush especially as there was a free room.

It’s seen better days, but then again so have I. And I’ve paid much more money to stay in far worse places than this.

In Walmart I found some vegan protein-broth so I heated some up to eat with bread. But although I’m feeling better, my stomach wasn’t quite up to this.

So another early night. I hope that I shall feel better in the morning.

Sunday 28th July 2019 – I WASN’T FEELING …

… all that much better this morning, even though I slept a lot better than I thought I might.

Consequently I rang up the motel manageress and asked to stay an extra night. Not a problem so when she checked in for work I strolled up to the reception and paid.

There’s no point in my hitting the road when I’m feeling as bad as I do. A few more hours sleeping it off and I’ll feel so much better in early course.

Not that I’m eating anything right now though. The secret to this illness is to purge my body of everything and then start again in a few days time. And if nature is doing that, then all well and good. I have some grape juice and some vitamin-enriched mineral water.

So I lounged around for a couple of hours, not doing very much at all except for dealing with a very slow laptop that doesn’t seem to be very interested in doing too much. But then that’s not a surprise, because neither do I.

Later on in the afternoon I went for a little walk along the river. The area around Grand Forks was formerly a huge railway interchange and there are quite a few relics to see, although today there’s just one line through the town.

But down on the water’s edge I fell in with a security guard who was supervising the turnstile for a fishing competition. He’d been in the Air Force and had been based in the UK so we had quite a chat about old UK television series.

The fishing competition was exciting though. It’s a weekend thing and the top five prizes are astonishing. A team of two can net almost $4,000 and that’s impressive in anyone’s language.

I carried on with my walk after that and had another look around. But I didn’t stay out too long – I wasn’t up to much and this latest bout of illness has taken it out of me. I went back to my room and had a lie down.

And that is where I’m staying until I feel better.

Tuesday 16th July 2019 – A NICE …

… pleasant surprise awaited us yesterday evening. We would be passing into a different time zone during the night and so we have set our clocks back one hour.

An extra hour in bed is always welcomed, especially these days when I don’t seem to be getting enough. But then that’s the story of my life, isn’t it?

Mind you, that’s not how it worked out, because we had the roughest seas yet. There were doors banging closed all over the place and trying to sleep under those conditions with all that noise going on was not easy. I also had to make a trip to the bathroom on one occasion, after having warned myself yesterday about the folly of drinking tea too late at night.

So all in all it was rather disappointing.

I made it up before the third alarm but don’t ask me how because I wasn’t feeling much like it, and then a stagger up on deck to take a few photos. And there wasn’t much to see except the rear end of the ship swaying about violently in the high seas, which was in itself quite impressive.

Instead, I went back down and started to edit a few more photos. But not as many as I would have liked because firstly the mouse froze and then when I went to restart the laptop it wouldn’t fire up correctly and I was there for hours.

Abandoning the laptop for a while I came up for breakfast. And we were rather few in number because of the weather, although as the morning wore on, the bad weather did subside somewhat. Nevertheless, it was quite interesting watching the chefs try to cook omelettes in the raging storm.

After breakfast the laptop still hadn’t fired up so I went to a talk on the “Vikings” (not the “Norse”, which annoyed me intensely) in North America. And what a dismal performance that was. Our lecturer insisted that the site at L’Anse aux Meadows is “Vinland”, even though not even the Ingstadts who excavated it have committed to that point of view.

Furthermore, he insisted that the Norse only ever came to North America for three years, even though there is written documentary evidence that they were still visiting “Markland” for timber until at least as late as 1347, and quite possibly much later too.

Finally he insisted that the Greenlanders simply “returned home to Iceland and Norway”, even though it is on written record that various Icelanders, Danes and Norwegians visited Greenland on several occasions over the next three centuries looking for them, which they would surely not have done had they known that they had “returned home”.

His lecture was full of falsehoods and incorrect suppositions and all in all, I was as disappointed by this lecturer as I am ever likely to be about anything. I was close to denouncing him as a fraud.

Round about 11:30 the laptop finally staggered into life so I was able to attack the photos and that took me up to lunchtime. And, to be on the safe side, I backed up the data

After lunch, I finally managed to buttonhole the ship’s naturalist (not “naturist”) and showed him my photos of sea mammals. he told me that they were white-beaked dolphins. They hunt in packs, with one acting as the principal fish-scarer, aiming to panic the fish into a big huddle so that the other dolphins could catch them easier.

It was a busy afternoon. Next we had a visit to the bridge where the cadet officer explained the ship’s equipment to us, and then there was a lecture on the basics of the language of Greenland – basically an Inuit-based language with Danish influences.

Finally I was summoned to the cruise director’s office. Being a non-American, the ship can’t take me beyond Greenland unless I am in possession of an Electronic Travel Authority. I actually do have one so they took a photocopy of it.

Dinner this evening was rather different. I ended up at a table hosted by the ship’s photographer. There were about 6 of us and we all had quite a lengthy chat for about two hours and decided to form a little on-board photography club. That’s always good news because anything that gives any sort of help whatsoever is always well worth it.

This evening there is a folk music concert by two Icelandic musicians but I’m not in the mood. I’ll crack on with some more work and seeing that we’ll gain another hour at some point during the night as we move into Greenland time, I’ll have an early night too and hopefully make the most of it.

Wednesday 1st May 2019 – BANE OF BRITAIN …

… strikes again!

There i was, up before the final alarm clock, breakfasted and tidied up, and even on the point of starting work, and wondering why I hadn’t heard the kids going past on their way to school.

And then suddenly it struck me. It’s the 1st of May today, and in France that’s the Fête du Travail and in France they celebrate the Festival of Work by … errr … taking a day off work.

It’s a Bank Holiday today and usually I celebrate Bank Holiday by switching off the alarms and having a lie-in. And that’s when I remember of course.

Despite the early start there was plenty of time to go on a nocturnal ramble. Last night there was something going on in the place where I was living where we had been overrun by the enemy or a new political party or something but there were people wearing blue tee-shirts and pink shorts like footballers who seemed to be in charge and the general view was not to resist them. But you can imagine me – I was having none of this at all. This was unfortunately all that I could remember – there was much more of this. There was something about a concert (I couldn’t transcribe this as I didn’t understand it) and I was riding a horse in this and despite all of the difficult arrangements of the course and the way that it had been set out and how it had been set out to please the invaders I managed to get round there with no faults which impressed almost everyone who was watching me.

There was more too but I shall spare you the detains seeing as you are probably eating your tea or something.

After I’d organised myself for the day and started work, I had a telephone call from Rosemary. And so we were chatting away for quite some considerable time.

Once I’d gone back to work, I started on the dictaphone notes. That took me up to lunchtime and another load has disappeared into the “filing” drawer. Only another 211 to go, so I need to get a wiggle on.

Lunch was inside again, and then I had a couple of duties to perform this afternoon.

Fighting off the fatigue I got in touch with Acer. Being as impressed with the Solid-State Drive in this computer and having an old laptop with a failed hard drive in an accessible position, I enquired as to whether a Solid State Drive would work in it. I explained that it was working on Windows 8.1 but he was talking at great length about Windows 7.0 and how my laptop wouldn’t be compatible with a Solid-State Drive.

I suppose that I’ll have to buy one and try it and see.

This was the cue to go for an early walk.

And with it being a Bank Holiday I wasn’t alone out there. Not only were there hordes of people taking the air this afternoon, we were being entertained by a group of hang-gliders likewise taking the air.

I’m absolutely certain that I wouldn’t like to be up (or down) there doing that.

The main reason for me being out and about early was that I had an appointment this afternoon.

As regular readers of this rubbish will recall, a few weeks ago I caught them opening up one of the bunkers of the Atlantic Wall.

I met the guy yesterday and he told me that they were preparing an exhibition for D-Day and he wondered whether I might like to speak to any English-speaking visitors who might be present.

The boss was due to be there at 15:00 so I turned up at about 15:15, only to find that he wasn’t coming at all.

I had a conducted tour of another bunker as recompense. This was one of the ones that overlooked the approach to the harbour and was fitted with a 105mm gun of the type that would be carried on a submarine.

They are hoping to be able to obtain one to mount in here as a display once the bunker is opened to the public

Back here, I rang up my bank in Canada. My bank card has expired and I won’t be back at the Branch where it’s held until September. However, I’m planning on being in Canada much earlier than that so I need access to my account.

After a lengthy discussion they agreed to post it to me here instead.

That left me just enough time to deal with the outstanding photos for the recent blog entries – and they are now up-to-date as far back as my trip to the High Arctic.

I’ll need to press on with that.

Tea was exciting though. all kinds of bits and pieces left over, like a couple of mushrooms, a bit of a pepper, an old potato and so on, so I cooked it all up into a curry with some bulghour and had it with rice and veg, followed by the last of the rice pudding.

On my walk this evening there wasn’t much going on, except the fact that Thora has appeared in harbour again.

What drew my attention to her was the fact that she had a shipping container on her deck. I’ve no idea what there might be in but it must be something important.

And with the rather rapid turn-round that they seem to be doing in the harbour these days I wonder if she will still be there in the morning.

So with shopping tomorrow, I’m going to have an early night. There’s plenty to do and not much time to do it.

hang glider pointe du roc granville manche normandy france

fishing boats baie de mont st michel granville manche normandy france

hang glider pointe du roc granville manche normandy france

bomb damage pointe du roc granville manche normandy france

fishing boats baie du mont st michel granville manche normandy franc

beach plat gousset granville manche normandy france

4th December 2018 – FIVE SCREENS OF DEATH …

… and that’s my lot today. The desktop computer seems to have been working so much better today. Especially as all 5 of these screens of death occurred in the last half-hour as I tried to use the Duplicate File Finder program to eliminate the duplicate files.

Because there were thousands of those. You have no idea of how many hidden directories and partitions I have found. Loads of files for which I have been searching for years and many of which I have even forgotten all about.

Most of them have now made it onto the portable hard drive and when the desktop computer has cooled down tomorrow I’ll have another run through it and see what else I have missed.

But there won’t be much time tomorrow though, because I’m going out in the afternoon. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that I had a considerable amount of health issues over Christmas last year and I don’t want to have the same this year. And so I have made an appointment to have a ‘flu injection.

It’s free here (at least, I am reimbursed 100% for it) so as much as I hate the idea of injections, I’m going to have it. And I hope it works.

But back to the computer again.

I had it running again last night and it was doing so well that I let it go. And it was at about 02:30 when I finally decided to switch it off and go to bed.

So even though the alarm went off this morning at the usual time, I took little notice. It was more like 07:45 when I came round far enough to haul myself out of bed. And as a result it was a rather late breakfast.

Once all of the nonsense was out of the way I have spent all day with the big computer extracting the files. I’m doing it while the doing is good because I’m not sure how long it will keep going.

We had lunch of course, indoors these days, and then a little later, it was time for my afternoon walk.

Neptune was still in the harbour but Thora must have crept in on the morning tide because she was on the point of leaving the port at 16:00.

For a while I stood around watching her manoeuvre and I took several photos of her passing out.

By the time I got back home I could see Thora rounding the headland of the Pointe du Roc and heading out to sea past the Ile de Chausey

Opportunity for a good photo was looming so I loitered around for half an hour and took several photos of her disappearing into the sunset.

And given the lighting and weather conditions out there, some of them came out quite well.

On the way back, I bumped into Gribouille. He came for his stroke but could smell Minette on me from last night so he wasn’t too impressed.

The laptop was playing some of the old-time radio shows in the background while I was working.

And you have to admire Leslie Charteris. We had another episode of The Saint with my favourite Simon Templar, Paul Rhys in the title rôle.

And we had the immortal exchange of conversation
” ‘Orace, old chap. Things have been a bit dull for a while. Do you feel like a spot of action?”
“I’ll just load the revolver, sir”
You can’t beat the good old days.

Tea tonight was a vegan burger on a bap with the last of the potatoes. And talking of potatoes, when I went to open the pineapple slices for pudding, I found that I had opened the tin of new potatoes instead. It’s not my day, is it?

But that soya dessert stuff that I had bought – it went down really well with the pineapple slices when I eventually opened the correct tin.

Just me again on my evening walk tonight.

Neptune was still at her quay with her hydraulic hatches wide open.

I’m not sure of where they are up to with loading her but things must be progressing and she’ll probably be on her way tomorrow if they get a move on. I’ve never known her loiter in port for this long.

But there’s something else going on round by the place Maurice Marland just right now.

There has been talk of some kind of repairs to the city walls but tonight I tripped over some kind of crane or machine that was just dumped here without any warning.

And it’s pretty dark down here at night, you know. I could have done myself a mischief.

But the Christmas decorations around the town are advancing.

In the rue Paul Poirier, where I lived when I first came here, they have been out stringing up the fairy lights.

And it all looks quite pretty down there right now with the overhead lights in the foreground and the artificial palm trees in the background.

Round the corner in the rue Notre Dame Minette was sitting on the roof of a van. In order to come down to my level, she sat on her rear end and slid down the windscreen. I haven’t seen anything as funny as that for quite some considerable time.

With no desktop computer right now (it’s cooling down) I’m going to have an early night. After my exertions last night I reckon that I deserve it.

breville sur mer brehal granville manche normandy france

holiday camp donville les bains granville manche normandy france

trawler cancale baie de mont st michel granville manche normandy france

trawlers baie de mont st michel granville manche normandy france

trawler baie de mont st michel granville manche normandy france

neptune thora port de granville harbour manche normandy france

thora port de granville harbour manche normandy france

thora granville manche normandy france

thora ile de chausey granville manche normandy france

north end ile de chausey semaphore lighthouse granville manche normandy france

thora ile de chausey granville manche normandy france

thora fishing boat ile de chausey granville manche normandy france

crane place maurice marland granville manche normandy france

night neptune port de granville harbour manche normandy france

Monday 3rd December 2018 – FIVE SCREENS OF DEATH

four mouses frozen
three keyboard crashes
two total failures
and a partridge in a pear tree.

You can tell that not only am I in the festive spirit for a change, but I’ve been working on the old desktop computer.

While I was poking around in there this morning after breakfast, I found yet another wad of interesting files in another partition. There must be tons of stuff on here that I have forgotten.

Certainly, there are all kinds of programs and utilities that I can’t remember what they do, and the only reason that I know that they are there is because there is a relentless stream of error messages telling me that they have failed to load.

But seriously, who remembers the Myspace Instant Messenger? Or Pigdin? Or the Crystal Media Player? Stacks of programs, all of which have long-since gone to that great Windows Exploder in the Cloud.

It seems that I built this computer in the winter of 2001 and I worked with it, screens of death and all, for five long years until I went to live in the Auvergne. And every time that I came back to Belgium for something too, until I finally sold Expo.

So far, I’ve extracted about 40GB of files from it today, and there are still plenty more to go at. I’ve no idea how many because it’s quite clear that my filing system back in those days was lamentable. However did I cope?

If you ever hear me complain about any new laptop or something, please have the courtesy to whisper “Windows 98 SE” in my lughole, just to remind me how lucky I am these days.

After the awful voyage of Saturday night, last night’s little voyage was much more pleasant. And I’d tell you all about it too except that by the time I came to type it out, it had gone completely. I must finish the unpacking from Canada and rescue the dictaphone again.

Having completed breakfast, next task was to book my rail journey to Brussels for Christmas. And as you might expect, there are no cheap fares or discounts for the days on which I would like to travel and I am having to pay full price. I don’t much like that idea at all.

And then to work. I attacked the big computer and we were doing just fine until the external drive was full. I’d tried another one beforehand but the computer didn’t recognise it, and I was wondering whether to use the huge dashcam drive or even to use one of the big external IDE drives. And I should have done that first, because it was in changing over the drives that I started to have problems.

There was an interruption from the church – they wanted to invite me to a carol service and they wouldn’t take “no” for an answer, even when I told them that I wouldn’t be here.

I don’t do too well with churches. The first time that I went to church someone stuck my head in a bucket of water. The second time, someone gave me this strange woman to share my house. So I’ve finished with churches. If anyone wants to drag me to a church in future it will be over my dead body.

We also had a little … errr … repose.

What with one thing and another I forgot to defrost some hummus. I had to attack the jar of red pepper spread instead. But that’s no problem. I like these jars. They make handy spice jars when they are washed and cleaned.

Later on I had my afternoon walk, out in the hurricane that was blowing.

And Neptune is back in town too.

I said the other day, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, that it looked as if we were going to have a gravel boat in very soon, and here she is.

There was a pile of mushrooms left over from the weekend, so I decided to make a curry. I had some dodgy potatoes, some peppers, a leek or two, a tin of lentils so I went into the kitchen and fried it all up. It wasn’t until I finished eating it that I remembered that I hadn’t added the mushrooms.

It’s not my day, is it?

Out again this evening for my usual evening walk around the walls.

By now the wind had dropped dramatically. Neptune was still at the quayside, still loading, and Minette was sitting on her windowsill waiting for her evening stroke. She was the only living creature that I saw.

So now that the big computer is up and running again (for now) from its latesT crash, I’ll carry on downloading the data. I’m not sure how long it will take but it’s not going to be finished this week.

However did I manage with that computer for all that time?

storm baie de mont st michel granville manche normandy france

night port de granville harbour manche normandy france

Friday 30th November 2018 – THE THINGS YOU FORGET

Computers that take hours to load. Documents that take weeks to open. Files that disappear into the ether. Screens that hang up for half an hour.

And who will ever forget the Blue Screen Of Death?

Yes, I’ve been working with the old desktop computer today. And I had completely forgotten just how unstable it was, and how unstable all computers were back in those days and how we were resigned to it.

It makes all my problems with the modern generation of computers look pathetic by comparison.

What I have been doing is (trying to) extract the files from it onto a portable hard drive. And the fact that the USB ports were on the back (they were quite a new invention in the days of Windows 98) was the least of the problems.

We had two Blue Screens of Death, a keyboard that hung up, a mouse that hung up, Windows Exploder that hang up I really can’t remember how many times. When I built this computer, I remember being proud of the fact that it had 512k of memory and 256k of video and this was almost unheard-of in those days.

But imagine that today? No wonder it doesn’t want to do what I would like it to do. I’m struggling to make 8g of RAM to work effectively. I have a feeling that this is going to be a very long process.

This morning I had a really good sleep, right the way through to the alarm. And much to my own surprise, I was up and about fairly quickly too.

After breakfast I had a pile of work to do but something made me look through a folder that I had brought from the Auvergne in August and in there I found a document for which I have been searching for quite some considerable time.

It was the date on it – July 2008 – that made me decide to look for the corresponding paperwork and that was round about the time that the desktop computer was being retired from use, so I went to have a look on one of the hard drives (there are eight in there – well, eight partitions on two drives) to see if I could find it.

And regular readers of this rubbish will recall that I have spent the last I don’t know how long looking for a batch of images that I knew that I had and couldn’t find. And there they all were, on one of the partitions in the desktop computer.

And after all of this searching over the past few years too. I was convinced that when I was up at the old apartment in Brussels in 2011 just before I sold it, I had taken all of the images and data off it. But apparently not.

There is a short-cut to dealing with the data. I could take the hard-drive out, because it’s in a snatch-out carrier, and put it in an external IDE caddy, which I just happen to have around here. But the carrier has a lock to prevent it being removed, and Brain of Britain didn’t bring the key with him, did he?

Apart from all of that, I’ve been for both my walks. And it was nice and pleasant out there. And I would have had a nicer and more pleasant time had I not run out of memory on the SD card in the camera.

For tea, I found some vegan burgers in the fridge (I’ve been tidying it out too today) that were past their sell-by date. So I made some pasta and veg and tomato sauce and it was delicious.

Another thing that I found in the fridge that is past its sell-by date is a roll of puff pastry. There’s some pie filling in the freezer so i think that tomorrow I’ll buy a couple of leeks and make a large pie.

That should keep me out of mischief for several days.

Sunday 25th November 2018 – I WAS REALLY …

… Looking forward to my good night’s sleep, having made a determined effort to have an early night. But it all went wrong round about 01:45 when I awoke with a severe attack of cramp. So severe was it that all of my usual methods of relaxing the muscles failed to work and I ended up hopping around the apartment in agony until I could reset the leg;

It didn’t take me long to go back to sleep either. And when I did, I was away with the fairies again. On board ship, yet again, but this time on the way to Whittlesea Bay where Mrs Povey was busy organising the support for the local carnival. I really must stop listening to all of these episodes of the Navy Lark.

The body clock was working fine and I was awake before the two alarms. As a fall-back I have configured an older mobile phone to work as an alarm clock when it’s important, in case we have another upgrade.

No breakfast – just to back up the computer onto the travel memory stick attached to the keyring. And then to make my sandwiches, pack my rucksack,take out the rubbish and do some cleaning up.

It was raining outside, so I sorted out my raincoat again and had a rather wet and weary trudge through the dampened streets.

The tide was in so there were several fishing boats tied up at the quay by the fish-processing plants, unloading last night’s catch.

This one here has a great set of lights for seeing what it’s doing. It might be the same brightly-lit one that we’ve seen on a couple of previous occasions just now.

The town was quite deserted, as you might expect at this time of a sunday morning.

I mentioned the other day that they had begun to install the Christmas lights and I’d noticed last night that some of them were illuminated.

And so I suppose that I had better take a photo of them illuminated while there is no-one abot.

At the station I reckon that whoever had used the coffee machine before me had had a hot chocolate, because my coffee didn’t half taste strange.

There was a very friendly cleaner on the railway station and we had a very interesting while waiting for my train to arrive. There are all kinds of changes happening on the railways with the Caen-Rennes trains being diverted to pass by Granville, the doubling of the line between Dol-de-Bretagne and Avranches and the reinforcement of the shuttle service between Pontorson and Mont St Michel.

This is all good news, because there has been some talk about the possibility of closing the railway station and putting everyone on buses. But here we have an example of stopping one of the buses here (the bus to Folligny station) and increasing the rail connection. I’m keen to see how this is going to develop.

The train wasn’t all that full at first, although I had a couple of people witting opposite me. But slowly, little by little, the train filled up as advanced towards Paris. By the time that we arrived at L’Aigle the train was packed.

Somewhere between L’Aigle and Verneuil sur Ayre we stampeded a herd of deer in a field by the railway line. It must be that time of the year now, with the hunters starting to come out.

As we pulled into Paris, I admired the courage of the lady opposite who started to reapply her lipstick as the train rattled over all of the sets of points. I didn’t get to see the finished job but it must really have been something

The station at Montparnasse-Vaugirard wasn’t quite the chaos that it has been for the last few Sundays but it was crowded all the same. The Metro was pretty crowded too and I had to stand all the way up to the Gare du Nord.

At Gare du Nord I was lucky to find a seat where I could eat my butties but we had a rather curious incident there.

Some woman pushed a goblet with money in it under my nose. Thanking her, I took the contents. It was several Moroccan coins and a British sixpence. I put them in my pocket.

She then made a gesture, pointing to her mouth, saying “money – eat”.
I told her that she would break her teeth, eating money.

She then pointed to her belly, saying – “eat – baby”
I replied that if she has eaten a whole baby she would get indigestion.

This kind of desultory conversation continued for a few minutes and then she wandered off elsewhere.

Our TGV was packed to the gunwhales. Not a spare seat anywhere.

Luckily I was one of the first on board so I didn’t have to scramble for my seat, which was right down at the far end of the coach.

I spent most of the journey in a deep and profound sleep – with just one awakening to let my seating companion out, and another one for me to visit the bathroom.

We were bang on time in Brussels but so was the 15:42 to Leuven, which meant that I missed it. But there was another one right behind – at 15:56 to Eupen

That was 5 minutes late so there was quite a crowd gathered for it. Luckily I was right at the front so I was able to grab a seat but those who boarded the train at the middle had to walk the whole length of the train before they could find somewhere.

Here in Leuven it was freezing cold and foggy and I had a bitter walk all the way to my digs.

I’m in a room at the top overlooking the courtyard – I’ve not been in one of these before.

Tonight is pizza night so I had a stroll into town in the rain to the place that does my special pizzas.

They’ve put up the Christmas lights in the Tiensestraat, although they seem to be somewhat feeble. I was expecting to see much more than this.

It’s a sign of the times, I suppose.

Back here, I had my tea, and then a shower and clothes wash.

And it seems that I’ve forgotten to bring a spare pair of trousers so I hope that these will dry for the morning.

With the computer locking up, I decided to have an early night. 121% of my daily activity is enough for any man and I have a busy day tomorrow?

rue lecampion granville manche normandy france

Saturday 24th November 2018 – WHAT A SHAMBLES!

And, just for a change, we aren’t talking about events on the North Shore of the English Channel either.

Up at the Stade Louis Dior this eveningin the beautiful sunset watching US Granville play US St Malo. Granville came straight out of the traps and missed two complete sitters in the first five minutes.

Granville scored the first goal after about 20 minutes and looked as if they were doing wuite well, but then they started to lapse into the usual lack of concentration and silly, stupid schoolboy mistakes.

Just after half-time they scored a second goal. This new n°10 whom they have just signed and who was playing a blinder, the smallest man on the field, rose highest at the back post to a deep cross and headed in.

But then, an astonishing thing. Granville went to sleep. This new n°10 drifted into anonymity and was later substituted, and St Malo then took the game by the scruff of the neck. They pulled one back after 74 minutes and a second, from a panic-stricken penalty, with five minutes to go.

And as the game drew to a close, it was Sr Malo who looked the most likely.

This bizarre behaviuor by Granville has cost them yet another two points. They’ve signed a whole raft of new players this season with the cup money, but they have still kept the same old habits, and they will cost them dear.

Last night was another reasonable night and I was away on my travels again – although I have absolutely no idea when or where I went.

And up reasonably early too, medicined and breakfasted.

With it being Saturday, it’s my usual practice to go to the shops today. But with my going off tomorrow morning, I decided against it. No point buying food that I don’t need right now.

I did go out, however. A nice walk around the docks.

But first I had something to do. Remember the story the other day of the railway line at the side of the docks?

I followed it a bit further along the docks and found a spot where the two rails merged into one. And so now I’m having third thoughts about my theory of the railway crane.

The tide was well out today so not only were the harbour gates closed and I could walk over them, I could satisfy my curiosity about how the harbour empties.

The harbour would have to slowly lose water over the course of the day as the tide goes out, so that the water inside could go down slowly and the gates could be opened before high tide

And there’s the drain, down there at the foot of the wall.

There are tidal markers too at the side of the wall so we can see the state of the tide. I’ll have to be down there one day as the gates open so that I can see the height of the water when they open the gates.

I carried on with my walk around the quayside to see what else was going on.

And it looks as if whatever has been going on with the Aztec Lady in the ship repairers has now finished because she’s now tied up at the quayside.

There was no-one about on the boat so I was unable to make further enquiries;

I was intrigued by the yacht that was moored next to Aztec Lady.

Closer observation revealed that she’s the Spirit of Conrad and we ought to know about this because she’s actually owned by one of my neighbours and if my memory serves me correctly I’ve been to a birthday party on board.

One of these days, I might even go for a sail on her because she goes off occasionally to the Arctic too.

Leaving the quayside, I off up to the railway station to collect my rail tickets for tomorrow morning. I always like to have them in my hand before the day of departure. There has been more than one occasion when the ticket machine hasn’t worked, and the booking office isn’t open by the time my train leaves.

After lunch, I did a little tidying up and cleaning up in here – not that you would notice the difference. But the microwave has been steam-cleaned and now looks a little more healthy.

And I had a play with the big tower computer too. But that wasn’t very successful – the CMOS battery is flat and the settings are erased. I’ll have to buy a new CMOS battery and reset everything.

Not that it’s any surprise of course. This computer hasn’t run since March 2011.

A little later I went off to the football, as I mentioned earlier.

The other day we had seen them putting up some Christmas lights around the town.

The main shopping street – the rue Campion – would ordinarily be the best place to start, but this is something of a disappointment.

I’m not much of a one for celebrations and festivities but I would have expected the Christmas decorations to be much better than this. I hope that they are going to add some more in early course.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that bad parking is a regular feature of this blog.

Here in the boulevard of the 2éme et 202éme de Ligne there’s yet another example, and while it might not be a BMW it’s a Volvo, and that’s almost as bad.

I don’t know why he needs to take up two parking spaces with his vehicle, but it’s clearly pretty selfish of him.
But what do you expect from a Volvo driver?

I eventually returned home and set about making tea. Something out of a tin as usual on a Saturday when there’s football, and then some more tidying up, including cleaning the coffee machine.

Now it’s bed-time, having had a very pleasant hour or so reprogramming the CMOS on the tower computer. It’s amazing how much I have remembered from my T223 course all those years ago, and it’s running along quite happily. Although for some reason or other I’ve programmed in the wrong settings for the video card. I’ll have to look at that when I come back from Belgium next week.

But now it’s an early night. There’s an alarm call in the morning.

Friday 16th November 2018 – THIS WAS A …

… really bad day today.

Mind you, this was only to be expected considering that I was still awake at 02:30 this morning working.

It takes quite a while to extract the data files from the failed hard drive on the other laptop and to make sure that absolutely everything was saved onto the external back-up drive.

In fact by the time that 02:30 came round and I was seeing double or even treble and there was still a long way to go, I created a little batch program to do it automatically. It’s amazing how much I can remember of T223 when I put my mind to it.

The net result of all of this was that when I awoke at 06:00 it was all done.

And then I had the job of configuring the other laptop.

This is one that I bought a few years ago when I was living on the farm. I wanted a cheap laptop to work the auto-diagnostic kit. It had to have a CD-ROM but not much else, and someone produced one in which the on-board mouse wasn’t working. And an external mouse is no big deal.

But going back to the issues of the UK’s engagement with the EU, I decided that I ought to go back to having a desktop computer as a main set-up. There’s a company in Stoke-on-Trent that is well-known for making bespoke computers and they would do whatever it was that I needed.

So I sent them a mail and the reply was “we don’t sell our products abroad”. Yes, the UK has never ever got to grips with the idea of the European Union. After all, it’s not the first time that this has happened. Far from it, in fact.

And the Rosemary rang me up and we had a good chat for an hour and a half. We were laughing at the clueless rabble who are running the UK right now, where the guy who negotiated a deal with the European Union then resigned because he didn’t agree with the deal that he had just negotiated. Does it get any more clueless than this?

Finally I could get down to dealing with the High Arctic, only to be immediately interrupted by the pompiers. You can tell that it’s getting close to Christmas – they are now collecting their funds for the annual p155-up, selling their calendars.

This was the cue to have a little doze – hardly surprising – and when I awoke it was almost 13:30 so another late lunch.

This afternoon, I really did attack the High Arctic Day Three and spent a good deal of time on it.

That was despite an interruption to join the crowds milling around the Pointe du Roc in the glorious late-autumn weather.

It really was a beautiful afternoon and I spent quite some considerable time watching the waves come crashing down on the rocks just offshore.

It was a typical late autumn scene out there today

Walking around the headland to the point overlooking the harbour, I noticed that we seem to have a new arrival in port.

I don’t recall having seen this boat before so I can’t tell you very much about it right now.

What I’ll have to do one of these days is to have a wander around down to the harbour one day if she’s still there and see what I can find out about her.

Despite these interruptione, I’d finished all of the meta tags for the photos on Day Three of the High Arctic, split the page into four (or is it five?) and started the meta tags for the pages, when I was overwhelmed.

Not just slumping with my head on the desk either, but on the bed under the covers flat out for well over two hours. And you’ve no idea just how painful it was to awaken. It took me a good 20 minutes to gather up my wits which is a surprise seeing how few I have these days.

Tea was pasta and falafel and then a walk around the walls of the medieval town.

Now provided that nothing else goes wrong, I’ll have an early night and catch up with my beauty sleep. You have no idea just how much I need these days.

Tide on the rocks

Diving platform on the beach at Plat Gousset

The beach at the Plat Gousset

The tide coming in at the Plat Gousset

View across the town of Granville to the Port de Plaisance

Restaurants down on the port de plaisance.

Thursday 15th November 2018 – I’M FEELING …

… a little better right now.

After having a couple of really good days, it was odds-on that sooner or later I would have a bad one. And yesterday evening I could feel myself sliding down into the abyss.

By the time that I had finished writing my blog from last night, at about 22:00, I was feeling so miserable that I went straight to bed.

It didn’t take me long to go off to sleep either. And apart from one brief awakening, and I’ve no idea when that was, I slept right the way through to the alarm.

The first time for a while that I have had a decent sleep, and as you might expect, when I awoke, I felt even worse. But that’s not really due to the sleep, but due more to the fact that I was having a health crisis.

It took me a considerable while to tear myself out of bed and an even longer time to force my breakfast down.

Eventually I went into the bathroom for a shower and a shave and a good clean-up for it’s shopping day today. In Caliburn too and for several reasons, not the least reason being the fact that on Saturday we might be having a few blockades on the road so I needed to do a big shop today.

LIDL had nothing special, but the next stop – the Leclerc drive-in – certainly did. I’d had an e-mail on Tuesday to say that my printer had arrived and needed picking up. Today was as good a day as any.

At NOZ I swapped the glasses that were broken, and I bought a few other things. Including a 2-foot high Christmas tree complete with 6 silver balls and a set of fairy lights – all for €3:99. I’m really getting into the Christmas spirit, aren’t I?

Leclerc itself came up with nothing special and I was soon back home again, to find that I’d had a power cut while I was out.

However by now I didn’t even have the strength to put away the shopping. There was some coffee in the pot so I poured one out and came to sit down in here – where I promptly crashed out. And I was gone for an hour or so too and it was very uncomfortable.

This meant that I had a rather late lunch. Inside the apartment of course because it was quite misty outside.

This afternoon I had a very pleasant surprise. The people who had organised our voyage to the Hugh Arctic had sent me a promotional video of our journey. And it brought back many happey memories. There was a beautiful shot of Yours Truly and His Nibs on our way to the Brother John Glacier at Etah in Greenland.

And not only that, one of our party was lucky enough to be filming an iceberg when it suddenly capsized in front of her – and she had a beautiful film of it going over. She sent it to the company and they have sent it to us. It is really phenomenal and when I finally manage to organise myself I shall post a link to it.

This afternoon I started to feel a little better and I made some more progress on my third day in the High Arctic

We had the usual afternoon interruption for a walk. I have to keep this up as best as I can.

The tide was slowly going out and there were several people down there on the rocks searching in the rock pools for crustaceans and molluscs and so on.

Which, I imagine, they share with their friends because, as I have said before … “and on many occasions too” – ed … that one mustn’t be selfish with one’s shellfish.

They weren’t the only people out there interested in the local marine life.

Out there just offshore close to the old diving platform were two men in a boat. One man and a dog short of Jerome K Jerome’s famous story of his trip up the River Thames.

I’ve no idea what it is that they catch just down there. One of these days I’ll catch a friendly fisherman and make suitable enguiries.

There was much more excitement on the car park round by the lighthouse on the end of the Pointe du Roc.

Parked up there was a pretty rare Triumph Thruxton.

I remember very well the original Thruxtons from the late 1960s – a series of Triumph Bonneville motorbikes specially modified for competition. However the modern reincarnation of the company launched a limited range of sports motorcycles with the same name in 2004

Back here and back on the High Arctic pages, and t won’t be long now, I reckon, until Day Three is finished. Always assuming that I can find it because the laptop has now crashed and it won’t restart at the moment. I’m having to type this on the laptop that I use as the media centre.

All of this took me up to teatime and I had a nice plate of steamed vegetables and vegan sausages. But once again, the vegan cheese sauce failed to thicken. I notice that I’m using a different brand of soya milk to the one that I usually use, and that might account for it.

I went out for my evening walk as usual after tea.

Despite the fact that the moon is a long way from being full, there was plenty of moonlight about. I hadn’t taken the tripod and the zoom/telephone lens with me so I had to make the most of the equipment that I had

Considering that it’s a hand-held shot, it hasn’t come out at all too badly.

Around the corner, I nearly collided with someone lurking away in the darkness. But he was the only person whom I saw, apart from the people loitering around at the bar and the pizza van.

But now I’m off to bed – something of a late night I’m afraid. I’ve managed to get the laptop to fire up but that’s all that it’s doing. Using a technique that I dredged from the back of my mind with good old T223 at the Open University, I’ve been able to force access to the files and I’m now copying them onto a back-up drive.

I can see me having to do this every couple of hours rather than every night. I don’t want to be losing work like this.

Fishermen in a boat near the old diving platform at the Pointe du Roc

Tuesday 3rd October 2017 – SO LAST NIGHT …

… wasn’t such a good night as it might have been. Not that there was anything wrong with the motel where I stayed – it was just that there were things wrong with me, I reckon.

I couldn’t sleep very well al all – very difficult to make myself comfortable, and the odd trip down the corridor didn’t help much either.

Mind you, I was back on my travels again. Round at the farm as it happens doing some repairs. And they certainly needed doing too because one of the walls had entirely disappeared and was just propped up with tree trunks.

But anyway, back to the plot. And don’t worry about the lack of photos right now. I’mm having an “upload” issue that might not be solved until I return home.

So read the stories and you can come back to look at the pictures next week or so.

I didn’t feel like any breakfast right now – I’d rather let the time slip somewhat – and so I tidied up everywhere in here and prepared for the road.

We had free coffee to take away, which is always a good plan, and with plenty of ice around I was able to fill up my water bottle with stone-cold root beer.

But having seen how many motels these days have fridges with little freezer units, I’m going to pick up a cheap ice cube tray from somewhere.

And it’s true!

I thought that I had seen a sign for “Hicksville” – the traditional name for every small-minded mid-west town – and while this might not be the town itself, it’s the next best thing.

It must be embarrassing to tell people that you actually live and work in Hicksville though.

And so we hit the road. I’m not in a great hurry. According to my timetable I have two days to travel 8 hours or so, so it’s not going to be a big deal.

I find a motorway service station to stop and eat a couple of bagels with jam, and to exchange cheery greetings with my neighbour.

There’s ascenic turn-off (why don’t they call them “scenic turn-ons”? That’s much more appropriate) on the side of the Highway overlooking the Mystic River.

Despite being only a short river (3.5 miles or something like that) it’s almost entirely tidal.

It’s also famous in that the European settlers attacked a native village here in 1637.They destroyed the settlement and massacred all of the inhabitants and, according to contemporary writings, were quite proud of the fact.

My attention was however diverted by the ship over there. A traditional three-master was what it seemed to be.

Mystic River was formerly an important shipbuilding area and in 1929 it was all turned into a maritime museum.

The ship that you can see is the Charles W Morgan. Built in 1841, she’s said to be the last of the wooden sailing whalers in existence and probably the oldest merchant vessel still afloat.

Laid up for many years, she was donated to the museum on her 100th birthday and has undergone a full programme of restoration. She’s now completely seaworthy, apparently.

Next door in a northwards direction from Connecticut is Rhode Island, or, to give it its full official title, the State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations.

This is the smallest State in the USA despite having the longest official name of all of them, and although there was a shorter route which would have saved me half an hour (and a lot more as it subsequently was to turn out) I arranged my journey so that I would pass this way.

One more State off my list then.

The capital of Rhode Island is Providence, and the Highway takes us right through the centre of town.

It’s said to be one of the oldest cities in the USA, being founded in 1636 and named in honour of “God’s Merciful Providence” that brought the early settlers here.

Today though, you can see that it’s just like every other big city in the USA – no difference at all. You are hard-pressed to say where you might be in the USA’s urban environment.

Having come this way, there is no alternative but to wrestle with the Boston traffic.

There’s an inner ring road and an outer ring road. I pick the outer one, which costs me about 15 minutes in journey time but saves the congestion, or so I thought.

And I was glad that I was travelling north, not south. Just look at that lot over there!

So I said at the time. But it wasn’t long before I was decanted into the traffic queues.

I knew that Boston was a nightmare and so I had picked my time carefully and picked my road too. But it wasall of no avail.

40 minutes we inched along the outer ring road and it did make me wonder whether I should have bitten the bullet and gone for the town centre.

But at least it wasn’t the 6 hours of New York traffic from yesterday.

We’ve been to New Hampshire on many occasions, but here’s a reminder of where we are now.

New Hampshire, at least down on the coast, is another one of these places where you blink and miss it, so I wanted to make sure that you and I didn’t.

It’s still quite early too – only about 17:00. Despite the hold-ups in Boston I’m making good time. Only 6 hours or so to the US/Canada border.

Much to my surprise, Portland in Maine is comparatively quiet. And so like Jackson Browne in “Nothing But Time”, I can “roll down (or in my case, “up”) I-295 out of Portland, Maine” without any inconvenience – except for the barrage of toll barrages.

In the end, totally, fed up, I leave the Interstate and try Highway 2 – and that’s even worse as I seem to be stuck behind every slow-moving vehicle on the planet. It’s so frustrating that in the end, I see another “Interstate 95” sign and bite the bullet.

As I approach the town of Lewiston, it’s 18:00 and there’s a “Motel” sign on the side of the Interstate. Unfortunately in Maine, they don’t tell you the names of the motels on the signs like they do in most other States so it’s pretty much pot luck.

Having had good success in the past, here I strike out (well, i’m in the USA!). One look at the cars in the car park tell me that this place isn’t for the likes of me.

But never mind. Lewiston is a biggish town. Bound to be some more.

And famous last words they were too. I’ve never seen a town with so little in the way of accommodation – at least, at my kind of price. The commercial centre is out to the north so that’s the place to look – but that comes up empty too.

Still, I head north on the grounds that something will show up sooner or later. But by 19:20 at Livermore Falls and low on fuel in the pitch blackness, a very vocal local yokel in the petrol station tells me that at 15 miles up the road in Farmington are a couple of cat houses that will do the job.

He’s not wrong either!

The Colonial Valley Motel in Farmington conjures up an excellent room for just $70:00 all-in and I’m quite happy here. Even breakfast is included in the price.

The manageress adores my accent, but I’m not sure what she is going to make of the registration formalities –
Identity – British passport
Proof of address – French Driving Licence
Vehicle registration – New Brunswick plates
Mobile ‘phone – Quebec number
Payment – Belgian credit card

Yes, sort that lot out!

There’s a microwave here in the room so tea is a couple of tins of stuff slung into it. Cheap and quick.

But here’s a problem – my *.ftp server has corrupted and I don’t have the settings to reset it. That means that I can’t upload my photos to the internet.

So you’ll have to do without for a while until I return home.

Tuesday 22nd August 2017 – I DUNNO …

… how Rachel must be feeling right now but I’m certainly getting myself stressed out over this accounting thing, and I’m supposed to be here relaxing on holiday!

It took the alarm at 06:00 to awaken me this morning and after an hour or so on the laptop trying to find a solution for this stuck keyboard, I managed to grab breakfast and be in work (!!!) at 08:00.

This morning I was errand boy running around to the Post Office, the supermarket and stuff like that, as well as brewing up and entertaining the customers who were waiting.

This afternoon though, I was receptionist for the telephone and the counter fielding some of the more simple enquiries without bothering Rachel too much.

Darren and Hannah returned from the tractor pull in Bowling Green (Hannah came 15th out of 62) and went off to unload the trailer. But Hannah came back just before closing time to go through the accounts again.

It was an early finish for us tonight – we closed and locked up by 18:30 and then round to the bank to cash up before going home.

Only a scratch tea tonight because everyone was tired and exhausted, and now I’m having an early night.

At this rate, I’ll need another holiday to recover from this one.

Friday 18th August 2017 – SO HERE I AM …

… sitting on the coach station in Montreal waiting for my bus to Florenceville, totally exhausted. Luckily there’s a seat right by the gate that I need because I won’t be able to crawl much farther – I’ve had a hectic day!

I had another good sleep last night – which is hardly a surprise after all of the walking that I did yesterday, and then spent half an hour trying various key combinations of the laptop to see if I could fire up the keyboard, because you’ve no idea how inconvenient this external keyboard really is.

But all to no avail.

I nipped out to Tim Horton’s for breakfast and, much to my dismay, we were having a torrential rainstorm. What a way to finish my last day in Montreal.

Back here I started to pack and despite having emptied some stuff out of the suitcase, it seems to be even more full than it was before and it’s becoming something of a struggle to close it up. Either I shall have to dump some stuff or Strawberry Moose will have to go on a diet.

First stop was round at Josée’s. She works as a co-ordinator of some kind of project for reinsertion of people into the mainstream and part of their work includes running a series of craft workshops. It’s Zoe’s birthday tomorrow and I wanted to buy her a present, and I’d seen some stuff there that looked really nice.

So braving the rainstorm off I set, and I did have quite a lucky find. I stumbled across a second-hand computer shop where they had 50 laptops for sale, all of which seemed to be at bargain prices. Far from being the latest spec of course but if this one is about to give up the ghost I can organise a quick replacement.

Taking my leave of Josée I wandered up the hill to see what was going on. I noticed that a corner of the park had been closed off.

It seems that there’s an open-air music concert this weekend and they were all there setting up the stage.

Well, I wish them all the best of luck and I hope that the weather improves because it will be rather miserable if it doesn’t.

These people can give you much more idea of what the weather is doing right now.

I bet that you wondered what happened to all of the Routemasters that were phased out of London. The Londonders might not appreciate them but the rest of the world does and they are scattered all across the globe.

This is JJD274D with its top cut off being used as a sightseeing bus and the passengers are clearly enjoying it despite the rain.

You’ll notice that the rear platform has been “turned” for “driving on the left” operation

The weather slowly started to clear itself up so I headed back into town.

I’d heard about “Chinatown” and on my walk with Josée the other day I’d actually gone past it, so it seemed like a good idea to go into town that way.

But I do have to say that despite the banners and artificial arches it’s something of a disappointment. I’m not sure what I was expecting but I was expecting more than this

By now it was approaching lunchtime so I made my way into the big Complexe Desjardins.

There’s a huge food court in the basement and also this magnificent fountain that’s really well-worth admiring – a performing art in its own right.

I had a good prowl around the different food outlets but ended up as usual at the Subway for my 12-inch vegetarian without cheese, and mustard sauce.

And here’s a thing!

Do you know what the must surprising thing in the world is?

It’s to discover that you are sitting on one of these toilets that has an automatic flush that sets itself off into motion about 30 seconds after you’ve closed your eyes for a little doze.

You may remember from yesterday that there were some ships in port but I was unable to read their names.

The weather wasn’t right for sunbathing so I reckoned that I’d go for a walk along the docks to see what they were.

That was however not counting on some kind of invasion by some kind of colonial troops. Not British “redcoats” quite clearly, but there was obviously something going on somewhere.

But I wasn’t in the mood to go and check it out – despite the depressing weather there’s an ice-cream van selling vegan ice-cream down at the Old Port and I reckoned that I deserved a treat.

We’ve seen the clock tower – the war memorial to the Canadian merchant marine victims of World War I – on several occasions, but never from this angle.

I’ve taken a little detour round to the offices of the Montreal Yacht Club to make “certain enquiries”.

One idea that has gone through my mind on several occasions is the idea about hiring a cabin cruiser for a week or two to have a cruise down the St Lawrence, and the Yacht Club seemed like the best place to make enquiries.

But apparently that possibility doesn’t exist on the St Lawrence, which is very depressing.

There are however plenty of “organised” river cruises something similar to this one, but that idea doesn’t appeal to me too much.

And Josée told me about the cruise liner that sails from Montreal to the Iles de la Madeleine, but regular readers of this rubbish will recall that we saw that ship in dry dock downriver a couple of years ago and we had a good look over it.

We were at the Gare Viger yesterday and although the building is still there, it’s difficult to see where the railway lines ran, due to modern construction that seems to have wiped out part of the track bed.

But not far away is this road viaduct that doesn’t seem to be serving much or a purpose these days.

It made me wonder if the railway lines passed underneath here at one time as they curved round to join up with the lines that run through the port.

There were steps up to the roadway so I climbed up. This was the road out of the city to the east and so I followed it.

Underneath in the shadow of the Pont Jacques Cartier is this weird building that looks like some old steam pumping house.

The slogan carved on the walls is “Concordia Salus” which is the official slogan of the City of Montreal, so it was formerly a municipal building of some description.

This on the other hand is a building belonging to the Quebec Provincial Government as you can tell by the Quebec flag that’s flying from the roof.

If you are thinking to yourself that this has something of the air of being the local nick, you are quite right – it’s the “Prison des Patriotes” – the old “Pied au Courant” gaol where the perpetrators of the 1837-1838 rebellion were incarcerated.

It’s now a museum.

but let us turn our attention to the Pont Jacques Cartier for a brief moment, seeing as we are passing underneath it.

That bit that we see here isn’t even half of it. That’s the Ile Sainte Helene over there – not the south bank of the river, and there’s just as much, if not more bridge on the other side of the island leading over to Longueil

While I was wandering around the docks earlier I fell in with a couple of Port security guards, so I asked them about the Manitoba.

They hadn’t even noticed that it had been there moored up for over a year so they couldn’t tell me what was going on with it.

But they did say that it was attended and that there was the occasional maintenance crew aboard, so it wasn’t abandoned or laid up.

Nevertheless, according to my own research, she’s been in port now for 486 days – since April 17 2016/

The next ship in at the docks is the Damia Desgagnes.

She’s a gas tanker of about 15;000 tonnes and has arrived in port from a voyage around the Great Lakes via the Welland Canal.

You’ll remember that we stuck our noses into the Welland Canal on our trip in 2010

Way over there in the distance we have the huge Algoma Guardian.

Not as huge as all that though – a mere 23;000 tonnes and built in 1987.She’s come in from Quebec, having been on a voyage down through the Great Lakes.

And even as I speak she’s back on her way up the lakes again.

Final ship – at least – that I could see, is the Ferbec, a bulk carrier of just over 27;000 tonnes.

Owned by the Canadian Shipping Lines, as you can tell, she arrived in port almost 3 weeks ago on a marathon journey that started on Christmas Eve in Shanghai.

Yes, I’ve been having my money’s worth here in the Port of Montreal, haven’t I?

It’s a long walk back into the centre of town and so, dodging the hordes of beggars that seem to be on every street corner here in ?ontreal; I headed back down the rue Ste Catherine Est.

And no surprises for guessing what I have stumbled upon here. I’ve heard about the installation of speed cameras here in Quebec and this is what one of them looks like.

But judging by the state of the roads around here, I wouldn’t want to be doing any more than 50kph. I’ve seen parts of the Trans-Labrador Highway that are in better condition than this.

I don’t know where the City is spending all of its money, but it’s certainly not on the public highway.

For those of you with a musical bent, you’ll enjoy Montreal right now.

I talked earlier today about the open-air concert and we’ve mentioned the public pianos when we’ve been here in earlier years.

They are still here – at least, this one in the rue Ste Catherine est is – and the guy who was tinkling away at the ivories wasn’t all that bad at all.

Not only that, while I was having a coffee outside the Tim Horton’s; some giutarist came and set himself up to busk in the street.

“I’ll take a photo of him in a minute when I’ve finished my coffee” I mused to myself” but by that time he had packed up and cleared off. It had been a long day and I was pretty exhausted.

But my luck was in – if that’s the correct phrase – higher up the street.

I happened to catch a performance by the worst bagpiper in the world – and I’ve heard some bad pipers, I’ll tell you that.

Everyone has to learn and that everyone has to start somewhere, that’s for sure, and I’m all in favour of live music, but there ARE limits all the same.

I’d be embarrassed to be out on the streets playing like that for money.

While I’d been on my travels I’d been looking out for a likely place to eat, and I’d noticed another falafel place. That was my next stop as by now it was after 19:00.

But to say that I was disappointed was an understatement. The food was reasonable but the price ended up being utterly extortionate so I’ve crossed that place off my list for next time.

A stagger back to the hotel for my suitcase which I had left in the cupboard, and then off round the corner to the bus station.

The bus was in early so I could grab a comfy seat, which is always nice and useful. Internet and electricity too so that I could listen to some good music.

And the irony of having spent a good hour or so crawling underneath the Pont Jacques Cartier is that we actually drove over it on our way out of town.

Didn’t stop at Longueuil though – no-one wants to board there apparently, so next stop is the Sainte-Foy interchange on the outskirts of the city of Quebec.

Wednesday 16th August 2017 – WE HAVEN’T FINISHED …

… with our series of calamities yet.

First thing is that the keyboard on the laptop has now seized. I’m not sure how that has happened – it must have been when I closed the lid in a hurry and trapped a pen in between the keys, and this has somehow triggered off the key-lock combination.

Having tried all kinds of combinations that I (and several gallant friends) could remember, it’s still stuck firmly solid.

I discovered this this morning when I went to type of the results of my travels during the night. I was in charge of two young girls – aged about 9 and 5 – and I had to make a sandwich for them. The 9 year-old was straightforward enough but for the younger one it was the tiniest lump of baguette with next-to-nothing on it. It was clear that this wasn’t going to do her much good but I told her to eat it and if it wasn’t enough she could have a bit more. She was quite clear that she needed more than this. Nevertheless, I told her to eat it “and then we’ll see”.

I was awake at 02:30 this morning but no chance of me staying awake, even had I wanted to. I went back to bed and to sleep. 05:00 was much more like it.

I’d put the Canadian mobile phone on charge in something of a forlorn hope last night. USB data cables clearly don’t work so I’d tried the mains charger and it seemed to have done the business.

But here’s the next problem – in that there’s no credit on it apparently even though I had put $100 on it just before leaving. And so that’s never right. Just one more thing sent to try me, I suppose.

And yet another calamity surrounds the hotel. I’ve stayed here before but that was due to having to leave here at about 05:00 long before breakfast would be ready. This time though, there’s no issues about breakfast so I was quite looking forward to it – only to find that the place doesn’t serve breakfast.

The nearest Tim Horton’s is a fair walk away but nevertheless off I trotted for bagels, coffee and orange juice.

While I was there, and having a think – which I occasionally do – WhatsApp came to mind. using the Tim Horton’s wi-fi service, I downloaded it and configured it on my Europe phone.

My European service provider supplies a service for North America at €29 per fortnight and this doesn’t work out to be much more expensive while I’m here than my Canadian phone supplier would be, and the interesting thing is that I can use that in the USA.

All I need now is for Rhys to tell me the final two digits of the phone number that he’s using so that I can check that I have it and add it in.

Off I trotted down the street to reserve my bus for New Brunswick, and much to my surprise and delight, there are evening buses at the times and on the days that I want them. So I’m off on Friday evening at 21:30 to arrive Saturday morning at 09:00. But there’s a wait at Ste-Foy and … err … 2 hours wait at Riviere-du-Loup.

Next stop was the Dollar Store to organise a North American USB transformer for the phone. It takes about a week to fully-charge off the laptop. And it came up trumps with that and some other stuff too.

And outside, we had a strange sight. Loads of nursery-age kids wandering around the streets with guardians and the like. A couple of groups were in multi-pushchairs like the old “knife box” stage buses of the 1870s and I wasn’t quick enough with the camera, but I was for this arrangement that I thought extremely interesting.

At Bell Telephones I found the reason for my difficulties. The contract that I have has been abolished and, not only that, an upgrade to the system has rendered my phone obsolete.

And when I told the people that I wasn’t interested in buying a new phone, they lost interest in me completely. So that’s the end of Bell Telephones, then. I can’t say that I’m sorry.

It did occur to me afterwards that this was the same Bell shop that threw me out a few years ago. Perhaps it’s just an issue with this place and its manager, but I couldn’t care less now.

Not too far away is a computer shop, so I popped in. And popped out again with the cheapest USB keyboard in the place. If this doesn’t work then I’m stuffed (and it clearly does, because that’s how I’m managing to type this).

I’d arranged to see Josée so off I went to her place of work. The street where she works is a strange one – there’s a southern half and a northern half, with a bit missing in the middle.

And so, of course, Brain of Britain walked along a street that passed through the gap in the street so I had gone miles beyond it before I realised. And so I had to retrace my steps.

That had given me an opportunity to see a part of the rue Sherbrooke that I had never seen before. You might all recognise what that it up there, because we’ve stood on that point a few times before.

That’s the belvedere up on Mount Royal where there is that stunning view over the city that we’ve photographed on a few occasions. We’ve not seen it from this angle before though.

And what we have here is the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts. We’ve not seen this building before either.

The First Nation totem pole – yes, I can go along with that, but the purpose of the pile of used vehicle tyres totally defeats me. It’s nothing that I would call Fine Art, but then regular readers of this rubbish will recall that I do have issues with this kind of thing.

Here’s a view that we all might recognise, because we’ve seen this before too. And had I known that Josée worked right here I would have been here in a flash without all of this messing about.

This is the park in the rue du Parc with Mount Royal park on the left and the Parc Jeanne Mance on the right; and Josée’s office backs onto the big skyscraper where I came in 2011 to talk to those guys about wind turbines and the like. It’s an uncomfortably small world these days.

And who was Jeanne Mance when she’s at home – if she ever is? She was the first lay (non-religious) nurse of the infant Montreal community and is the symbol of nursing here in the same way that Florence Nightingale is in the UK.

What with all of my prevarications, Josée had gone to lunch when I arrived and remembering that there was a “Subway” around the corner, I went and grabbed myself a butty too.

After lunch I finally met up with Josée. And being aware of my plight, she had brought in a spare mobile phone that she had lying around. Not only that, she knew a place where they would do a decent contract for a couple of months at a price far less than Bell could offer and with far more functions too.

That was well-worth a coffee so off we went for a drink and a chat and to catch up on everything that had happened since we had last seen each other.

With it being such a nice afternoon we set off to walk down to the river.

I was distracted on the way by this notice carved onto the wall of this building just here. Near this spot was where Marguerite Bourgeoys had her school for girls.

We remember her – she was the woman who came out with one of the very earliest groups of colonists to Montreal to look after the welfare of the women and children of the colony.

When we were at Troyes we went to see her birthplace, if you remember.

We didn’t actually make it as far as the river. It was a beautiful, warm afternoon and the pedaloes on the little lake looked so inviting. And besides, I don’t have enough exercise as everyone keeps on telling me.

And so we took to the water and had a really good pedal around the lake for half an hour.

There’s quite a strong current in there too so heading upstream was quite a fight. And we ended up being quite out of breath by the time that we finished.

And do I remember this from last year? Or is it new?

Whatever it is, it’s a Big Wheel of course and part of the entertainment that’s provided along the old port of Montreal, although right now it’s not doing very much entertaining because there’s no-one about.

I don’t imagine that the view of the city is up to much though, because we are quite low down here and we are surrounded by tall buildings.

Seeing as by now Josée was exhausted and that I’d paid for the pedalo, she summoned up a taxi to take us to our final port of call – the jazz club in Montreal. There was a live act on and she had booked a table for us.

It has to be said that the live act was, well, not up to the standard that I might have expected given the nature of the venue. Even worse was that despite having ordered a vegan meal, they could offer me … errr … nothing.

I ended up with a salad and that was my lot. And with a bottle of water and the cover charge for the entertainment my bill came to $37!00. I shan’t be going there again, that’s for sure.

We put the world to rights on the way back and I ended up having an early night. My first day in Canada and it was a long one too. I was ready for a good sleep.

EPIC HALL

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