Tag Archives: vegan cheese

Friday 4th December 2015 – I’VE LEFT …

…the hospital today and I’m back chez Liz and Terry. And the first thing that Liz did for me was to make me a tea of baked potato, vegan cheese, baked beans and a side-salad. And wasn’t it lovely to have some real proper food properly cooked for once? Never mind eating it – I could have dived into it and rolled around in it.

Last night, with my late night, I didn’t seem to get very much sleep. I lost count of how many times I had to go to the bathroom – it was at least 5 times and could easily have been more. And then we had the usual interruptions of people sticking their heads around the door, people coming to give me injections, all of that kind of thing.

But I did manage somehow to get out and about on my travels too. Not that I remember anything much about it, but I do recall a separated couple being involved, and despite having agreed as part of the terms of separation that they would refer to each other as vous , but we did notice, with smiles on our faces, that they were back to referring to each other with the more familiar tu.

So having had breakfast and so on, I went for yet another shower. I’m really making the most of this. And then we had the bad news. It seems that my medical appointment for later this morning has been cancelled. They still haven’t been able to complete the analysis of all of my examinations.

Mind you, this might be good news. I imagine that they would look for the most serious options first and then they would work their way up the ladder, and the longer that it takes to find the problem, the less serious it might be. But of course, I’m ruling nothing out.

But apparently I’m to have an anti-coagulant injection twice a day at home for the next THREE MONTHS, and a blood test twice a week, and I’ve been given a prescription for a lorry-load of medication. Not only that, Liz has bought some vitamin B12 tablets and some iron tablets, and has found a fruit juice that has B12 in it. I need to make the most of my recuperation and keep a close eye on my diet for a while while I sort myself out.

And I did query the “three months” bit too. Would I still be here in three months? But the doctor did confirm that, in his opinion, there was every likelihood that i’ll be here then, and long after that too. And that’s good news;

At the pharmacy in Pionsat, the bill – just for the first month – came to €474. That doesn’t include the smelling salts that they used to bring me round. This is going to be an expensive illness, I can see that.

So after a good evening’s relaxation, I had an early night. We’d bought an ice -pack and we’d had it in the freezer for a couple of hours, so I put it on my swollen arm to draw the heat and give me a good night’s sleep. But it was totally unbearable after about half an hour so I ended up taking it off. But never mind – it had done the rick and, at least for the moment, the discomfort had gone.

I did warn Liz and Terry to make sure though that when they went to bed to wear plenty of garlic around their necks, just in case I feel thirsty during the night.

Tuesday 24th November 2015 – NOT AGAIN!

Yes, I had another bad night.

As most of you know, I’m a night person rather than a day person, and so being awake at midnight is no big deal to me. In fact last night at midnight I was watching a film on the laptop. It’s a good job that I’ve downloaded all of those films and radio programmes from www.archive.org for when I go off on my travels.

The result of all of this was that from about 04:30 we had a new type of dawn chorus – a relentless stream of nurses and doctors performing all kinds of rituals on me. By the time breakfast came round at 08:30 I had given up trying to go back to sleep.

No blood transfusions today – just a prise de sang and a change of vitamin pochette.

After lunch, Liz came round to visit seeing as how she’s teaching here today. Amongst the things that she brought me was a form to sign from my insurance company about paying my bills, and also a vegan cheese and tomato sandwich, which was the nicest thing that I’ve eaten for a while. The mobile library came past too and I liberated a couple of books.

Later on, the doctor came by with the news. It seems that they are ruling out leukaemia for the moment and focusing more on lymphoma. This can be fatal in some circumstances but they reckon that in my case it’s not very profound and so there’s quite a bit of hope.

The plan is that I can be liberated tomorrow and go home (although it seems that I’ll be going home to Liz and Terry) for a week. And then when the results have been collated (which might be a week or so) they’ll call me back to see what they can propose for me.

The important thing is that I’m likely to be here for a good while yet. You aren’t going to get rid of me that easily.

Friday 13th November 2015 – I’VE HAD ANOTHER DAY …

… where I’ve not done anything much at all. I really need to snap out of this.

However, the day wasn’t suitable for doing much outside – grey and overcast – although that hasn’t stopped me very often before. And furthermore, the weather has gone colder and I can smell winter in the air.

I spent today revising what I’ve learnt over the last two weeks on my course about Hadrian’s Wall, and it seems to have worked because I took my test this afternoon and ended up with 93%, with which I’m quite satisfied, although I fell down on transcribing the inscription on a Roman monumental stone which is a disappointment because the only Latin that I can remember from my schooldays is due to my keeping it up by reading monumental stones. So Puer amat mensam, say I.

This evening I went off to St Eloy and shopping and due to my bulk purchases last weekend I spent a mere €14:00, mainly on fruit and veg, and also on the rice that I forgot to buy. And the grapes were beautiful, so much so that I bought two bags, one of which I ate on the way home and the second I’ll eat on Sunday. Not tomorrow though because I’m off to Enval tomorrow night for the football and do you know what? I’m going to buy myself a cooked pizza for tea and eat it in Caliburn on the way home.

You might be wondering how it is that I manage to eat pizza when I’m out, being a vegan. That’s because whenever I go to Brussels I buy a load of the vegan cheese slices that are on sale at the health food shop opposite where Marianne used to live. There’s always a pack or two in the coolbox wired into Caliburn’s ignition circuit and so when I order my pizza, I order it without cheese and ask the pizza place if they will stick three slices of my cheese onto the the pizza.

Of course, it’s a waste of time doing that at one of these big pizza chains, but most smaller pizza places and pizza vans do it quite happily, and I know for a fact that the one at Mozac (on the way home) will do it with no problems as I’ve had it done there before.

But depressing news at St Eloy. There was a “dispute” at LIDL between two shoppers that ended up with a punch-up outside the shop. I left the UK to get away from aggressive confrontations like this and it dismayed me to see this kind of thing over here. Mind you, St Eloy is a little … well … down-at-heel and depressed and I suppose that some of the locals relieve their tensions and stresses with alcohol and the like.

But it’s still a sad thing to witness. I’m dismayed.

Saturday 10th October 2015 – MY QUIET WEEKEND CONTINUES

I had a nice relaxing night last night in my motel room doing not very much at all. At least I had a really good sleep and a nice warm shower this morning.

And by the time that I was ready to leave, the rain was on the verge of stopping but we were having a really high wind and that was depressing.

First stop that I made after driving through the Appalachain mountains was at the small town of Matapedia.

Apart from the town itself and its position on the junction off across the river and into New Brunswick, the interesting thing about the town itself is the railway station. The railway line that runs from Halifax to Montreal along the coast passes through here and, much to everyone’s surprise, there’s a passenger service

But as you can see, the passenger service, run by VIARAIL, runs just once per day (and then not on Tuesdays).

And the station looks like it too. The building is almost derelict, the woodwork is rotting away, it’s overgrown with dust and weeds, and the rails are rusted. It’s really in quite a deplorable state but at least it’s here. Any complaints and a demand for an overhaul, and VIARAIL will probably just pull the service.

And it seems that I’m not the only one to be concerned by the lack of attention that VIARAIL is paying to the Atlantic provinces, and that’s good news.

There’s an organisation called Transport Action Atlantic which seems to be involved in revitalising rail transport in New Brunswick and this organisation seems to be doing something here at Matapedia as you can see here.

It’s not that the aims of this group are utopic – far from it – it’s just that the organisations with which it is dealing is so intransigent that any form of negotiated agreement is impossible. But nevertheless, I wish them luck.

I found a road that led down to the head of the Baie des Chaleurs too, so that I could take a photo of it.

There’s a good view of the Sugar Loaf mountain over there to the right, and the huge pulp mill at Atholville in front of it.

I stopped at Campbelltown to use the internet at Tim Horton’s and then to do some shopping at Sobey’s. And then I was off into the mountains to the western side of New Brunswick

And what do you think about this then?

I can’t remember when was the last time that I saw one of these in the UK, never mind North America. It’s a Hillman Minx, badge-engineered as a “Sunbeam” and dates from the late 50s or very early 1960s and it’s as rare as hens teeth.

But I’ve been saying quite a lot that in the space of 20 years Britain went from selling its cars all over the world to not even being able to sell its own cars in its own country. It’s probably the most dramatic collapse of industry in the whole of the history of the world and has contributed to the decline of the UK from a major world power to an insignificant offshore island.

Seeing vehicles like this in isolated corners of the world just goes to underline it.

I ended up in Perth Andover at a little motel. I always spend my last night on the road in a motel so I can clean and tidy everything. This one is nicely-situated just off the highway near a pizza place (so I can use up my vegan cheese) and I can wash all of my pots, pans and crockery in perfect peace.

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Thursday 1st October 2010 – I’VE HAD A DAY TODAY …

… where I don’t seem to have accomplished very much at all – at least, as far as distance goes.

But there’s a reason for that – namely that after my week or so out there in the wilderness I’ve had a lot of sorting out to do. And we started off by having yet another red-hot shower. And how much I enjoyed that too!

But working my way through all of the paperwork I was disturbed at 09:40 and again at 09:50 by the cleaners who wanted to attend to the room, even though check-out time was 10:30.

After the second time I gave up and decamped to Tim Horton’s, stopping along the way for a very lengthy chat with a young guy in charge of sales in a caravan place. They are agents for Palomino slide-in truck campers (called caravan autoporté in French) and as that company makes exactly the camper that I want (the collapsible 600 model) it’s always useful to chat to the agents. Who knows what second-hand model might come their way.

Working at Tim Horton’s seemed to take ages and it was, would you believe, 14:00 when I hit the road again. First stop was to the supermarket to stock up on food seeing that I have none left – at least, of bread and salad stuff. Fuel was next and I had a long chat with the woman whom I know who runs the little Ultramar service station opposite the supermarket. I’ve called there every time that I’ve gone past there because I’m sure that she remembers me and we have had some interesting chats.

Third port of call was at Pointe Lebel where I stopped to eat my butty. I’m not buying hummus now, no matter how much I like it. I have a load of vegan cheese that needs to be eaten as it’s been hanging around since last year and it won’t last another year.

From there I went off to look for Outardes One.

There are several big rivers that run down to the St Lawrence, and they are all dammed for the generation of hydro-electric power. We’ve done the Manicouagan and seen some of the dams there, and we’ve seen some on the Outardes too, but Outardes One, the very first one that is close to the shore of the St Lawrence has long been abandoned and is very difficult to find. I’m determined that this year I’ll track it down.

I passed by quite a few places that I’d seen before and before long I ended up at the Pointe aux Outardes.

There are a few houses down here today but formerly this was the site of a reasonably important settlement. The church has long gone but there’s still the old cemetery here and a parking place for the little country park down at the end where there’s an incredible view across the St Lawrence to the town of Matane

the river isn’t particularly wide here, it’s not very deep and it’s a long way down from its mouth. And so it’s very hard to imagine that during World War II two German submarines, believed to be-69 and U-132 – were operating in the river around here and not only sank a couple of ships, made a successful getaway too.

There’s a couple of ferries across to Matane too. One, from Godbout, we’ve sailed on a couple of times but the other, from Baie Comeau itself, i’ve not yet taken but I’m saving that delight for another time. I’m planning to head west upriver.

But it’s a beautiful evening and as the sun sets down in the west, I’ve decided that I’m going to stay here the night. There’s just the odd car pulling in to turn round and I don’t think that that will disturb me too much, and with the little breeze that is rocking Strider I should be quite comfortable tonight.

And it ends up being a late night too. Well after 23:00 in fact. I seem to have been carried away with one or two things that I was doing on the laptop and I didn’t intend to end up this late before retiring. I hope that I have a good night’s sleep to make up for it. And then tomorrow I’ll be ready to continue the hunt for Outardes One.

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Monday 14th September 2015 – WHAT A HORRIBLE NIGHT

No sooner had I settled down than we had a rainstorm. And while it might not have been as intense as the other night, a rainstorm it most certainly was. And it went on and on and on until I never thought that it would end. Certainly, for four hours it kept it up because I remember looking at the time when I went out in the middle of the night to check that the stream right by my tent wasn’t going to burst its banks and sweep me away.

And that’s a shame too because for once I was comfortable in here. Now that I’ve rearranged the inside of Strider I can actually reach the bed and I pinched the mattress off it and that made quite a difference. And I must have dozed off during the proceedings because I was on my travels again. We needed to obtain some information from a certain guy and the best way to do this was to find someone to impersonate his secretary. She was a small blond who did her hair in a special way with a long pony tail, so we found a girl who resembled her from a distance and who, with a hairpiece, could pass close enough to fool the security cameras. So when this other girl went to lunch we infiltrated our girl into the building, but while she was in the ladies room checking her hair, the real secretary came in and was astonished to see her doppelganger. Our girl solved the problem by knocking the real secretary into next week with a frying pan and that was that.
But later, I was on the move again in my old van (it might even have been Bill Badger, the Austin A60 van that I had for years) with, of all people, my brother. He needed coal and there was just one place to go in Crewe for bagged coal, so off we went. When we arrived there, I was absolutely whacked and so I sent him in while I had a sleep, but anyway he came out to say that there was no coal (I’d heard this conversation anyway). I asked him if he’d asked if there was anywhere else where he could get it but he said that he hadn’t. But he knew where we could go, so I told him that I wasn’t going to mess up my van by putting loose coal into it. He’d also needed to post a letter (price £0:09) but they only had a stamp for £0:08 in there so the sales lady there sold him that stamp and told him to go to the post office and tell them that he’ll post anther letter with a stamp for £0:01 in it, and the’ll accept that. Such weird things as that happen when I’m on a nocturnal ramble, but even in that kind of state I knew enough that it seemed simpler to me to simply stick the stamp for £0:01 on the outside of the letter with the stamp for £0:08 and save the discussion.

And so while you admire the very basic, very primitive and very very free camp site on the outskirts of Greenville, I woke up to an inch of water inside the tent in the bottom corner, which was rather disconcerting but not surprising given the amount of rain that we had had during the night.

Water will always leak in around the zip and so you always pitch your tent with the entrance pointing downhill and you sleep in the uphill bit and even if it does rain in a little you can stay relatively dry. But I’ll go to Walmart, buy some more of these super-duper heavy duty tent pegs that I bought the other day, and stick the big tarpaulin that Rachel gave me over the top next time that the weather looks threatening.

A quick coffee and I was off down the road into Greenville

Parked up here in the town centre, I had a very nice piece of entertainment.

It had been seaplane fly-in weekend at the weekend here on Moosehead Lake, and there were still two left tied up at the quayside. And as I left Strider in order to admire the view, one of them started up, left his berth, and came right across to where I was standing, right by the paddle-steamer Kathadin, which you all saw in 2013 when I was here because, in the famous words of the legendary Jimmy Ruffin, “I’ve passed this way before”.

And so he (the seaplane, not Jimmy Ruffin) did a few laps of the bay in order to warm up his engine to operating speed, and then shot off down the lake.

After a run of about a quarter of a mile he heaved himself into the air and off he went.

And off I went too, to see about this log cabin.

And I was disappointed too. It seems that prices have increased considerably since I was here and what I want has priced itself out of the market. Not only that, many of the items that were included in the price back then are now optional extras and so what looked two years ago like $20,000 on the site all in and delivered is going to end up being twice that, and twice as much work too.

In fact, I can go as far as to say that my journey for the first month of my stay in North America this year has been a period of 30 disappointments. “But smile!” they say. “Things could be worse!” And so I”m smiling – and you know what that means.

But it’s not all doom and gloom.

Over the road was a hardware store and they are agents for log cabins. Nothing like as de-luxe as what was available back where I’d just been, but then neither was the price, and this looks much more “like it” from that point of view. I’m going to have to give this some further consideration.

Ably assisted by The Lady Who Lives In The SatNav, I left Greenville by the main highway that goes south-east to Millinocket and you can see what a beautiful road this highway is. Very reminiscent of the Trans-Labrador Highway.

Strider, as befits any good ranger, took it in his stride … "ohhh, very good" – ed … and I can see the benefits of having a solid truck with decent all-weather off-road tyres. The Dodges that I used to have wouldn’t have lasted five minutes down here

I had to stop for a minute or two for a gypsy’s, and found myself right by the rapids on the river just here.

This river goes down eventually past Millinocket, and while you’ll see hundreds of timber lorries down the roads here, even as late as the 1930s it’s suggested that they were still floating logs down here to the huge lumber mill down there, even past rapids like this.

If you were with me in 2013, you’ll remember our discovery of the grave of a flotteur de bois that we discovered at the foot of another series of rapids not too far from here.

At Millinocket, I nipped onto the Interstate for half an hour and then took the old road up to Presque Ile

This is another one of those roads that can be classed as one of the most beautiful roads in North America. It’s all up hill and down dale and shows Upper Maine at its beautiful best.

It’s another one of those roads that can only be driven properly on a big old single-cylinder long-stroke motorcycle and a beautiful 600cc side-valve Panther solo would be a pleasure to drive up here. And I deeply regret the one that I missed out on a few years ago.

But that’s not looking too optimistic, is it? That’s right over Presque Ile where I’m going. I don’t fancy camping in that.

And at Presque Ile I had a little success. Walmart did indeed have one of the slimline air beds that I need for the bed that I’m going to need for Strider, and they also had (at just $8:00) a little wooden fold-flat table, the size that you’d have by your chair for your coffee and cake. This is a good size for Strider, to cook on, eat off and use as a desk.

And at the Super Save shop, that has a good vegan range of food, I treated myself to a pot of carrot-flavoured vegan hummus.

It was pitch-black by now, even though it was only 17:00 and suddenly the storm broke. And how it broke too! I wasn’t going to camp in this – not under any circumstances.

And as I left Presque-Ile, the “Budget Traveller” motel appeared in the gloom. $59:95 including breakfast, and I was entitled to a discount on that rate too. I’d had a free night last night and so I wasn’t going to miss out on any of that.

There was a microwave in the room too and so I treated myself to a vegan pizza (I have plenty of my vegan sliced cheese) and that was gorgeous;

But now it’s 20:28 – I’m watching film, but my bad night last night has caught up with me and any second now I’m going to drop ….

ZZZZZZZZZZZZZ

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Wednesday 9th September 2015 – HERE, IN ONE OF THE BRIEF …

… dry moments of today, here’s a photo of my little spec at the North Beach Campgound.

It’s actually my second site. I was misled into believing that when they said “by the beach”, they actually meant “by the beach”. I didn’t realise that there was an abandoned railway line on an embankment in between.

And if that wasn’t enough to be going on with, it was the lowest part of the camp and so all of the water was streaming by in a raging torrent. A move was clearly on the cards.

In the photo above, you might just have been able to make out the lakeshore in the background. Having been for a walk around the campsite this morning, I found a much better pitch with a beautiful view over the lake, and if I walk 20 metres down the slope (because I’m much higher up here) I have this view out across the beach.

In fact the beach is only about 100 metres away from where I’m sitting and as soon as the sun comes out (which it never did, by the way) I’ll be down there with my folding chair.

And so today I’ve had a nice relaxing day of doing nothing at all, and I needed it too as I had had a very bad night. I hadn’t taken the camp bed into the tent (you have to unpack half of Strider to reach the bed and I wasn’t doing that in the pouring rain) so my night’s sleep was rather uncomfortable.

I did manage to make it out to the shops though. There is a Hannafords store not too far from here and of course, they have a decent range of vegan food. I bought some hummus as well as another pile of vegan cheese. I’ll be getting some more of that cheese too before I move on as it’s difficult to find in certain places and I don’t want to be caught without.

And so that’s basically that for today. Not gone far, not too concerned about it either. The only thing that could have been better is if the internet connection had been good. The strength of the signal is fine – no complaints there at all – and the speed isn’t too bad either. But there’s a problem with the router in that it keeps on dropping connection to the outside world and so we are cut off. It’s a good job that I stocked up with films off archive.org so that I have things to keep me occupied while I sit in my tent watching the rain come streaming down.

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Wednesday 26th August 2015 – I HAVEN’T MENTIONED …

… the rain as yet. But every morning this week, at about 06:00, we’ve had a rainstorm for about half an hour, and then it’s gone off on its way. This morning though, it loitered around for most of the morning and at times it was quite wet.

After breakfast I went up to the shop for a while but then Strawberry Moose, Strider and I set off out to Woodstock, and by the time we got to Woodstock we were half a million strong, so it was pretty crowded inside Strider.

The junk shop came up with nothing at all – no books or CDs – and I had to stop at Zoe’s shop to pick up her waste bin that was rolling around the car park, and then for a coffee at Tim Horton’s.

After lunch I went across the road to the County Planning Department to discuss my plans for Mars Hill Road. My friend Gerrit has moved on but the new guy was just as helpful and doesn’t see a problem. He gave me a great deal of useful tips and hints that should make the project go easier.

And there’s good news on this front too. 4 or 5 years ago, connection to New Brunswick Power for electricity was compulsory for a new-build, but today, it’s not. You have to submit plans and they are considered on their merits. If you have 110-volt electricity, it needs to be certified but if you have a 12-volt DC system with an inverter, you need a certificate for the inverter and an electrician’s certificate for the 110-volt system that you have installed from the inverter onwards. As for a DC circuit, he’s never encountered one, so he suggests just submit it and see what happens. But solar panels and wind turbines developing 12-volt is quite a common thing these days.

They are even encountering people who wish to live with no electricity at all. 5 years ago, that wouldn’t be tolerated (people equated lack of electricity with poor quality of life) but now, it’s not uncommon to receive applications where the details of electricity installations are described as “none”.

As for rainwater harvesting, he doesn’t see any problem at all with that, but a certified sewage disposal system is an essential and there is no way around it.

But to cut a long story short … "hooray" – ed … I’m giving serious consideration to going towards a 48-volt system with 12-volt lighting and 110 volt power.

At the organic shop across the road, the girl who runs it was very helpful. There are apparently three co-ops in the area where vegetarians and vegans combine every two months to place bulk orders for their supplies and she gave me their addresses.

And if that wasn’t enough to be going on with, Sobey’s has greatly increased its supply of vegetarian and vegan food and we now have several different varieties of vegan cheese, although vegan ice-cream is only available next door at the Atlantic Superstore.

In other worlds, even in fairly-rural Canada, things are looking very much up.

If that wasn’t enough to be going on with, I hit the jackpot at Canadian Tire. There’s a clearance sale going on there, and a big reinforced plastic tool box, a Flexible 3/8 drive ratchet with spark plug sockets and extensions, a big set of wobble extensions, two big sets of 1/2 impact sockets (AF and metric), a converter from 3/8-drive to 1/2-drive and one or two other bits and pieces – all of that came to just over $100 – or £50:00. Add that to the tools that I have already that I need to pick up from my box at Montreal and I now have enough for almost anything. And if I can make it to Marden’s in Presque Ile and see what they have too, I might well end up with a very decent tool kit. You can’t have too much of this.

So it was hardly surprising that I didn’t do all that I had intended to do today. It was 19:00 by the time that I returned and then after supper I helped Darren repair and service the lawn-mowing tractor (which is bigger than my Kubota) and we overhauled a fridge that was in the basement.

But I have made a decision – and that is that on Friday early morning, I’m moving on. I’m becoming far too comfortable here. I’ll be trying to Enter the Dragon and go southwards through the forest to the Hudson valley then back up to Montreal for my stuff.

Saturday 27th December 2014 – I DID MENTION …

… that we had some wind last night, didn’t I?

I wasn’t joking either, as you can see. Here’s a tree at the back of Virlet that has been blown down overnight by the gales that we had.

I went off to Montlucon today to do some shopping, and in particular to buy the stuff that I need for the stairs and so on. I didn’t feel much like it this morning, listening to the icy rain clattering down on the roof. However, at about 09:00, a small amount of sun broke through the clouds temporarily and that was the signal for me to get on my way and not miss the gap in the weather, seeing as we are about to descend into deep midwinter.

And I’m glad that I did because not long after I returned, the weather broke and by 21:00 we were having heavy snow. Now, at least, I’m set up for a week or two.

In Montlucon I was able to buy most of the things that I required. No wood for fairing off the ends of the plasterboard though. The good pine planks were in Brico Depot but they don’t cut, and in Mr Bricolage, where they do cut, the pine boards were rubbish. I’m going to have a go at cutting the pine boards that I have here, and see how I do.

I couldn’t find any paint that I wanted either. So in the end, I bought a 10-litre tub of white emulsion and a tube of yellow paint dye. I’ll have a go at mixing that up and see how it turns out. One of these paint mixers driven by a portable drill should mix it up nicely I reckon, and I have one of those somewhere.

I didn’t buy much that was special, although I did stock up with the usual stuff. And in Amaranthe they had some Edam-style vegan cheese so I’m going to give that a try over the next few weeks. They had jars of Tajini -at quite a price, it has to be said, but I bought another one. At least I can keep my supply of home-made hummus going.

And diesel at €1:09 per litre. It’s not been that cheap since about 2006. I fuelled up Caliburn and now here I am – with no plans to go anywhere until Spring.

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Saturday 13th December 2014 – WOOO HOOO HOOO!

Yes indeed. after many many years of Yours Truly’s canvassing and campaigning, the “Amaranthe”, the local health food co-operative in Montlucon has now started to sell vegan cheese.

And it’s “Cheezly” too, which is even better news.

It is at “a price” however, but that’s only to be expected. It’s a big deal that it’s now available in the vicinity and that should ease the minds of my friends, who each time that they travel to the UK they are buried underneath a pile of mails from Yours Truly soliciting orders for vegan cheese.

As you might have guessed from all of this, I’ve been to Montlucon shopping today, buying all of the special items that I need for Christmas as well as doing some normal shopping.

I spent a fortune there, and I should have spent even more but I forgot half of the stuff that I meant to buy. I did fuel up Caliburn though – at €1:12 per litre which is astonishing. I also took the oportunity to give Caliburn another good wash. You’ll remember that I washed him a couple of weeks ago, but then almost immediately I ended up right up that field in the deep mud towing that old abandoned Transit out of that shed.

I’ve bought myself a couple of presents too, but I’ll have to wait until Christmas until I can see what they are. And at Brico depot, I bought, inter alia, the catches that I need to complete the power board in the barn.

Finally, I went to the swimming baths just down the road from Brico Depot and had a good swim around in the water for an hour, followed by a warm shower – nothing like as good as the shower at the swimming baths at Commentry but a shower nevertheless.

Tonight, I’m going to change the bedding and put my nice and clean body into some nice clean sheets. it’s Sunday so if I’m lucky I might have a really good lie in. I cannot tell you how much I’m looking forward to it.

-2

Saturday 28th June 2014 – WELL, JUST LOOK AT THIS!

Yes, who do you recognise on the left in the photo here? Quite right. It’s Yours Truly on stage and playing bass in a rock band, somewhere in a damp beer cellar in Munich, with the Roland Cube bass amp in the background.

Make the most of it for as far as I am aware, it’s the only photo extant of me playing bass live on stage, and you have had to wait for 40 years for this. And I wasn’t only playing bass but singing and I did the lead vocals on the old Kinks number “Lola” from 1970 or whenever it was. Shame no-one recorded it.

And not only that, Hans said that e-mail me his playlist so that I can practise at home and the other guy on stage, whose name I’ve forgotten, was very appreciative of my help on the vocals – and that’s a first by any standards.

It’s not actually in Munich to be fair – it’s in Eching which is a suburb of Munich and this is where I’m staying. The sofa was extremely comfortable and I had a good night’s sleep. In the morning we went out for breakfast to a small bakery near here where you can buy German bread rolls (German bread is the best in the world) of all kinds of varieties, helpings of strawberry jam and coffee too.

From there, Hans took me to show me a few places in the vicinity and where he worked, and then we took the metro and the tram into the city. And Brain of Britain hadn’t brought his camera, had he?

We ended up the afternoon going out to the Olympic Park and a mega-music shop nearby, and then came home. A small bio shop produced some vegan cheese which was a surprise, and so Hans made me a pizza base and toppings. That led to us all trooping around to the Pub around the corner and this is where we celebrated Hans’ birthday – three of us on the stage to a crowd (if you can call it that) that might have at one stage reached the dizzy heights of 20 people. Still, from little acorns, and all that.

So what is tomorrow going to bring I wonder?

-4

Sunday 17th November 2013 – NO FOOTY … GRRRRRR!

And I checked before setting out, too. I rang up Fabien who has now taken over the running of FC Pionsat St Hilaire from Bernard, so I am given to understand, and he said at first that today’s 2nd XI match at Charensat was on. But shortly afterwards, he rang back to say that following a mid-morning pitch inspection, the game was off.

Seeing as it was Sunday, I wasn’t feeling too much like a 13:00 start anyway, especially as I didn’t crawl out of bed until abou 10:30. So that was the cue for a leisurely morning.

The afternoon gave me several possibilities – I could see if there were any clubs in the vicinity (Le Quartier, the Goatslayers, St Maurice etc) were playing, or whether Terjat or St Marcel’s matches were on, or else I could stay in and do the rock programmes for Radio Anglais. Common sense and logic suggested that I did the radio programmes and so for once, I took my own best advice (not like me, I know) and dashed out January’s rock music. So that’s out of the way.

This evening I was summoned to appear chez Liz and Terry so that Liz and I could do the rehearsals for our recordings on Friday, and I could have a quick glance at the Fiat Punto that has ground to a shuddering halt (might possibly be that a big end cap has come off, although it’s significant that it started to go wrong after a local garage changed the water punp – has someone dropped a bolt or a spanner down a waterway?)

Liz also sprung a surprise on me – could I help her translate some technical information about the work that is done in a casting foundry. That 18 months I spent in an in-depth study of the evidence of the Tay Bridge disaster, during which about 100 pages was spent in discussing foundry practice and principles, stood me in good stead here, that’s for sure. And I’m not really complaining because Liz also sprung on me an apple crumble and vegan custard together with a doggy bag to take home, as well as another supply of vegan cheese from the UK.

On the way there though, I noticed rather ominously that the sides of the Puy-de-Dome, the Mont Dore and the Puy de Sancy are well-covered in snow. Winter is drawing inexorably closer with every day.

I’m also having a little change of procedure about the bateries in the barn right now. As you know, the charge controller has packed up in there (the second in as many years) so I’m by-passing the charge controller with a flying lead with crocodile clips on each end. Anyway, the battery that I’m using is fully-charged and I don’t want to overcharge it by leaving it coupled up all day, but before all of these charge control issues there were three batteries that were, well, not too bad, and they gradually lost their charge in the absence of a charge conroller.

What I’m doing then is to charge up for just half an hour the battery that’s there, and then swap over the charge to the three precious ones. If we have a good week or so of decent weather it might actually put some charge in them. Who knows? But it’s worth a try.

-13

Sunday 23rd June 2013 – I WAS IN CHESTER …

… during the night in the street where I first went to live when I moved there in September 1972, only last night it was where I was working. Parking in this street was usually problematic but last night it was snowing lightly and there was hardly a car about. It had me worried – was it a working day or not?
But anyway I went in to my building which was a modern building of brick, concrete, aluminium and glass, well spread-out but not too tall, and with a couple of friends we went to the restaurant. But with having spent so much time talking, we arrived just in time to see the aluminium shutters lowered down, for it was 10:00, the time that the restaurant closed.
Just after this, there was a fierce banging from the other side of the shutters- it seemed that someone had been locked in behind them. I went off to the reception area where there were three women, one of whom by her behaviour clearly had the air of being in charge, and so I told her about this person behind the shutters. “That’s too bad” she replied. “She’ll just have to wait there until 11:00”
“Can’t you unlock a service door?” I asked with surprise. “There must be a way out of there”
“No – I don’t have access so she’ll just have to wait”. Our conversation after this became rather heated, but she still wouldn’t budge.
At this point the front door opened and a group of kids, dressed up as an American marching band, complete with instruments, came marching in, and behind them came three men, clearly officers of some import and wearing képis and cloaks of the style of the Royal Dutch Army. The senior of these was an enormously tall métisse, probably close to 7 feet tall, so I went up to him and told him the story of this woman locked in the restaurant behind the shutters. He went over to the woman at reception and said a few words to her that I did not hear, but she went bright red and took a set of keys out of the drawer in front of her and went down the corridor, opened a door, and let out the woman who was locked in the restaurant.This woman, for reasons that I did not undertand, was wearing an orange rotating light on her head.

That was another one of these dreams that it seems a pity to leave, but leave I did because Cécile bought me a cup of coffee in bed, which was extremely nice.

Yes, it’s Sunday, which means a day off, or, at least, it’s supposed to. But Cécile has so much to do at her house (well, I’m not convinced, but she is) and only a short time in which to do it, so we ended up repairing cupboards and moving shelves around and so on.

Sunday is also pizza day and Cécile cooked a lovely example for lunch (thanks, Rosemary, for fetching the vegan cheese), but as we were about to restart work, one of Cécile’s friends came round for a chat. Consequently we were late for Liz and Terry’s.

Terry is now a very happy bunny, seeing as he has all of the slates (and a darned sight more as well) to do the roof on his new extension, and I am aslo an extremely happy bunny, having been repaid in Liz’s home-made chocolate cake.

And after running through the radio programmes for tomorrow, back here and that was that. Tomorrow is another day;

-5

Friday 21st October 2011 – TODAY WAS ….

… a quiet day or at least it should have been. But Terry and Rob came round to fix Lieneke’s barn and no-one can sleep through the kind of racket that those two are capable of producing.

But what about last night,hey? Temperature plummeted to -1.9°C. A minus temperature – winter is flaming well here, right enough. I’m even contemplating lighting a fire shortly if we don’t have an improvement

However, never mind that for a moment – three hours and more on the computer and my visit to Trois Rivieres is well-advanced.

Trois-Rivieres is on the north bank of the St Lawrence between Montreal and Quebec. It’s the oldest industrial site in North America and the newsprint capital of the world. In fact all of my visits to the area have been overwhelmed by the smell of wet paper from the pulp mills so I’ve always kept well clear.

This year though I found myself in the town and my opinions of the place rapidly changed. The town seeps history from almost every pore and I’ve completely changed my opinion about the place.

This afternoon though I had to wait for Terry to move his van before I could get out to the post office and post that parcel. And I fell through the floor when I found out the price. I bet that it’s cheaper to fly to Canada and deliver it by hand. It makes excess baggage charges look a bargain

To the bank after that to sort out a few financial details, and then to Bill’s to fix his computer again.

This evening it’s POETS day of course and so I finished early – spending half an hour or so sorting some papers that date back to 2004. And there’s so many of them that it’s going to take a while.

Tomorrow it’s shopping and as I have so much to do it’s going to be a St Eloy les Mines quick half hour-type of shopping. And the washing is building up here and so I might visit the local launderette and sort it out.

>But I’m not really looking forward to tomorrow. I’ve finished all of my stock of Canadian vegan cheese slices and that is a catastrophe.

-2

Sunday 11th September 2011 – SAINT ANDREWS

Dawn rose early over the Bayside ferry terminal, and so did I. It was rather cold in fact – a mere 8°C and that was probably what did it. But I do remember being completely comfortable last night and I didn’t feel a thing.

Anyway, I’ve made a note of this little place and added it into my little mental directory of suitable places to stay the night.

back down the road along the Saint Croix River, I can have a better view of Saint Croix Island, the Ile de Sainte Croix, than I did last night.

One thing that I could never understand however was the attitude of the British Government in giving so much away to the USA after the end of the War of Independence. Even though the Ile de Sainte-Croix was the site of the first-ever French colony on the coast of North America and thus by all accounts and rightful claims a French (and subsequently British by right of conquest) possession, the British allowed the USA to occupy it due to the fact that it was south of the main water course.

From here I went to Tim Horton’s for a coffee – and I wish that I hadn’t. 6 members of staff on duty, but only one serving and she was a trainee. And the guy in the queue in front of me orders, would you believe, 16 breakfasts. I was there for hours.

It’s the 11th of September today so Strawberry Moose gives the Americans a timely reminder, and also something else to think about.

A 21-gun salute across the Saint Croix River into USA territory at Eastport in Maine is just the thing for this morning and as usual, His Nibs is always keen to oblige whenever the need arises.

I’m at the blockhouse that’s situated on the bank of the Saint Croix River just outside St Andrews. This was one of the ones that was built in response to American aggression on the border here during the War of 1812 but by the time it was finished, the panic was over.

Just like everywhere else in Canada, it was badly damaged by fire in 1993 but was subsequently

There’s a long pier that goes out from the quayside here, and from there, there’s a very good view back towards the town.

The town dates from 1783 and was another United Empire Loyalist settlement created after the end of the War of Independence. In fact, it’s often said that some of the settlers brought their houses with them, floating them across the river on rafts.

This was where I was last night in the dark.

The town is laid out in the typical North American grid pattern that you will find in almost every city. And since then, it’s been a ferry port connected to Grand Manan island, a centre for irish immigration and, latterly, according to some tourist stuff that I had read, “Canada’s first seaside resort community”.

Talking of tourists, while I was wandering around, a tour bus from the USA pulled up and disgorged a load of passengers.

half an hour later, this boat sailed past me with a full load of passengers, presumably from the aforementioned, on their way to do a bit of whale-watching.

And I don’t know why the leader of the party needed a microphone to speak to his passengers – I could hear him quite clearly from over here.

Another thing that I do when I’m in a strange town is to look at the house prices. And I reckon that I might just be able to afford this kiddies’ garden play house.

Cheapest property in the Estate Agent’s window is a mere $63,900 and that’s just a small cabin, so residents of St Andrews can now breathe more easily. I will not be coming to join them. I can do better than that for a quarter of the price up on Mars Hill.

There’s a lighthouse here too at St Andrews. It’s the Pendlebury Lighthouse, right at the entrance to the Saint Croix River and dates from 1833.

It was disaffected in 1938 and gradually deteriorated. Some time in the early 1960s the sea wall was washed away and the lighthouse tilted over. It was eventually righted and in 2002 was moved 50 feet inland to protect it, as another section of the sea wall was observed to be on the point of collapse.

And that was just as well because in the following winter, the sea wall and the site of the lighthouse were washed away. Since then, there’s been a thorough restoration of the lighthouse and the sea wall and it’s been restored to its original location.

My route took me round by Passamaquoddy Bay and down a road that was signed as a “dead end”. The Lady Who Lives In The SatNav told me to do a U-turn in 500 metres, but she was clearly joking – or so I thought at the time.

It turns out that the island over there is called Minister’s Island and its claim to fame is that Covenhoven, the summer home of William van Horne.

And who might William van Horne be? Well, he was the power behind the Canadian Pacific Railway and this was where he came to relax.

And why is The Lady Who Lives In The SatNav not pulling my leg about this U-turn? That’s because you will have noticed the ramp over there on the island. It’s not a ramp as such, it’s part of a road because there’s a road that runs over there that is accessible at low tide. It’s only at high tide that the island is cut off.

A few times today, an old car that I thought might be a Ford A drove past me while I was wandering around. A short while later, I happened to stumble across it and I reckon that I may well be right.

It was sitting here in the drive of a house just outside St Andrews and it was not alone. It had several other old vehicles to keep it company, one or two of which will be quite exciting when they are finished.

There were a lot of roadworks going on here so I went for a closer look to see what was happening.

It’s the Digdeguash River that flows by here and it’s crossed by a bridge that has the date 1938 carved upon it. Although it crosses the river no more as it has collapsed. And it looks as if it’s been collapsed for quite a while too. hence all of the roadworks.

Next town down the road is St George and it has the most beautiful post office that I have ever seen.

St George is known as the “Granite Town” due to the fact that it had a granite quarry that for over 60 years gave up some of the best granite blocks ever seen in this part of Canada. What we see here in the post office, and some of the other buildings around here, are just seconds, believe it or not.

Just down the road at L’Etete is a ferry that goes over to Deer Island. I don’t unfortunately have the time to do over on it, so I’ll content myself with admiring it.

But interestingly, one of the members of staff told me that there’s another ferry on the other side of Deer Island that goes over to Eastport in Maine. Now isn’t that an interesting idea for an unusual crossing into Great Satan?

Down at the end of the road at Green’s Point is another lighthouse. It’s through the channel that ships travelling to St Andrews and St George used to travel and so it was logical that a light should be installed here.

At first, there was just a steam-powered foghorn installed, and the light followed as recently as 1903. The light was automated in 1996 and the keepers cottage is now used for holiday letting.

Whilst admiring the view and the water flowing by, I fell in with a guy from Toronto who was renting the cottage. He comes here every year and when you see the view you will understand why

While we were having a right old natter, our attention was drawn to three boats circling around about a mile or two offshore, with a disturbance in the water in the centre of the circle.

I took a photo with the telephoto lens and although I couldn’t see much, a little crop and enlargement produced something quite spectacular. According to my new friend, who was looking through his field glasses, we had been watching a Minke whale.

I had to dash back to St Andrews to meet Colleen but yet again I was sidetracked. I was having a good day for old vehicles, wasn’t I? In fact I’d seen many more today than those that I’m featuring on this page.

The engine was still in this one so I could tell that it’s a 6-cylinder side-valve (flathead) engine and judging by a few bits and pieces in the cab, it’s an International. And it’s just sitting here.

On a final note, Colleen and I went out for a meal (good job that I had some vegan cheese for my pizza) and we met a few of Strawberry Moose‘s admirers.

I stopped and took a few photos of them while His Nibs went over to make their acquaintance. Colleen gave him directions to her house and we went home for a coffee.

What a nice day!

EPIC HALL

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

Tag Archives: vegan cheese

Friday 4th December 2015 – I’VE LEFT …

Tuesday 24th November 2015 – NOT AGAIN!

Friday 13th November 2015 – I’VE HAD ANOTHER DAY …

Saturday 10th October 2015 – MY QUIET WEEKEND CONTINUES

Thursday 1st October 2010 – I’VE HAD A DAY TODAY …

Monday 14th September 2015 – WHAT A HORRIBLE NIGHT

Wednesday 9th September 2015 – HERE, IN ONE OF THE BRIEF …

Wednesday 26th August 2015 – I HAVEN’T MENTIONED …

Saturday 27th December 2014 – I DID MENTION …

Saturday 13th December 2014 – WOOO HOOO HOOO!

Saturday 28th June 2014 – WELL, JUST LOOK AT THIS!

Sunday 17th November 2013 – NO FOOTY … GRRRRRR!

Sunday 23rd June 2013 – I WAS IN CHESTER …

Friday 21st October 2011 – TODAY WAS ….

Sunday 11th September 2011 – SAINT ANDREWS

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