Tag Archives: centreville

Sunday 23rd October 2022 – DAY FOUR …

… of my enforced hibernation and I’ve actually made it out of the house.

And even as we speak, I am hurtling through the night and the Canadian Maritime Forest somewhere in between Miramichi and Bathurst. Well, not exactly “hurtling” because the speed of this train is, shall we say, “disappointing”.

Last night I went to bed early with the idea of having a decent 10-hour sleep but in actual fact I didn’t sleep at all. Not for a minute. I saw every minute of that ten hours and probably much more besides.

When the alarm went off I arose from the bed, did some paperwork and then packed everything ready to go. We had a hot drink and then headed to the bus stop in Florenceville. We arrived early for the bus too – regular readers of this rubbish will recall that on one occasion it came early and left me behind.

The drive down to Moncton in the frost was quite uneventful.

coach atlantic prevost 1921 maritime bus fredericton new brunswick Canada Eric Hall photo October 2022There was also quite a lot of fog everywhere this morning as you can tell in this photo taken at the company’s offices in Fredericton.

We stopped there to pick up passengers and the wait meant that we could nip to the bathroom at the petrol station next door.

As it happens, I’m a big fan of these Prevost coaches. They are nice and big and comfortable. Although this one is registered in Nova Scotia you’ll notice that the licence plate says “apportioned”. What that apparently means is that the road tax is shared between Nova Scotia and the other Provinces in which the vehicle operates.

You’ll see that it carries passenger authorisation plates for Nova Scotia and New Brunswick.

Our bus was not actually all that late, which makes a change. But now there’s a four-hour wait for the train, always assuming that it’s on time of course, which is unlikely.

When they opened the check-in, I deposited my suitcase and staggered over to the chemist’s for some medication, and then across the road to Sobey’s for some supplies for the journey. I suppose that I’m going to start eating and I want to have some food when I’m ready.

general electric GE ES44AC 2754 canadian national EMD SD60F 5551 moncton railway station moncton new brunswick Canada Eric Hall photo October 2022Waiting here in the waiting room at Moncton station a train suddenly appeared, so I photographed it thinking that it was mine.

However it turned out to be a passing freight train, double-headed with a Canadian National locomotive that I couldn’t identify at the front. If it’s 9551, it’s a GP40-2LW built in 1975.

The second locomotive is 2754 and is in the livery of Citibank’s “Citicorps Railmark Incorporated”, a company that leases railway equipment to various railways, but she was apparently actually purchased by Canadian National earlier this year.

She’s a model ES44AC built by my former employers, General Electric, and a similar locomotive carrying that number was built for the Union Pacific Railroad.

viarail train moncton railway station moncton new brunswick Canada Eric Hall photo October 2022My train pulled up a short time later, double-headed by two locomotives that I was not able to identify. She was only 20 minutes late, which is something of a record,

As you can see, the train went past the station and then reversed in to the platform which seemed to me like a strange way to do things but it obviously works for them.

Once it was in at the platform we had to walk almost the whole length of the train to the carriage that was apparently allocated to us

For a change, I’m in the modern part of the train. It might be much better fitted out but it’s not as comfortable which is rather bizarre.

So off we went with me coughing all the way, and I’ve eaten a banana and a lump of baguette, the first food that I’ve had for 72 hours. So now I’m going to settle down and try to sleep. Surely I can’t go 48 hours without any sleep at all?

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Saturday 22nd October 2022 – DAY THREE …

… of my enforced isolation saw me have very little sleep as this ‘flu raged away, and even Cujo the Killer Cat could do little to comfort me.

Before going to work Rachel made me a mug of hot lemon and honey and then I went and had a shower and a clothes-washing session.

There were three trips outside today too – the first to hang up the washing, the second to rescue some possessions from Strider and the third to rescue the washing later.

The first trip out was the most exiting. As I went outside Gilligan, the young long-haired cat came scampering down the bank to show me the mouse that he had caught. Very proud of himself, he was. And after I’d congratulated him he took it off to play with it.

When Rachel came back she plied me with medication and we had a long chat about our plans for tomorrow before I went off to bed, ready for my 27-hour marathon.

Well, I’m not actually ready for it. This has been one trip too many.

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Friday 21st October 2022 – DAY TWO …

… of my enforced isolation while I try to shake off this ‘flu. I’ve probably been out of my room half a dozen times at most, mainly for the bathroom and to find water.

So far I’ve been 36 hours without food because the whole back of my throat seems as if it’s on fire.

None of the foregoing has prevented me from wandering off during the night. There was something like an old abandoned gas terminal on the border somewhere in Jersey that was being offered for sale as a private mooring and was being offered for sale for £30,000 but I can’t remember anything more about it.

And later we were at a National Express turn-round spot. A coach had just come up from Abingdon with the southern part. Someone had come down from the northern part and swapped over ready to go back. We talked about a white coach that the company down south had bought. Then it came round to being in the hospital. I was in hospital and one woman asked the doctor “does it really matter what I wear if I come to visit him?”. The doctor said “to me, no but other people might find it quite disturbing if you were to wear something that would display more than it ought etc”.

Let’s see how Day Three unfolds

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Thursday 20th October 2022 – JUST IN CASE …

… you’re wondering what is going on, I’ve caught the ‘flu. And this is the ‘flu to end all ‘flus. I’ve never felt as bad as this.

Normal service will be resumed when I’m feeling better.

For a while I was actually not too bad and even managed to run down to Fredericton in Strider to deliver some feed from the mill and to do a little shopping ready for going home, but things just went slowly worse throughout the day.

But in the meantime, I’ve been going off on quite a few voyages. I was moving into my house in Winsford. I was talking to someone on the internet. They were also planning on moving in to a new house so we were just basically chatting about that. My father and his second wife were around. Suddenly a vehicle identical to the one to which I was just talking pulled up in the drive of the house and all these people got out. They began to move suitcases etc about. I could see that they were to people to whom I’d just been talking. It looked as if they were going to be my neighbours just across the road. We began to chat a little then we moved out of their way to give them room to manoeuvre their suitcases.

And later we were going somewhere. I can’t remember who was with me now. We were in Caliburn. We came to a set of road works controlled by traffic lights. We were let through when they changed to green but had to wait a moment while a tarmacking machine went past. Then we had to set out to climb this steep hill to a road junction. They had really freshly tarred it so trying to find a grip on it was pretty much impossible. There was a great danger that we would slide everywhere. By now, instead of being in Caliburn I was on a bike. That made things a hundred times worse. There were people coming from all kinds of directions. I didn’t want to have to swerve around too much in case I’d fall over with there not being any grip on this road as yet with the hot tar.

My friend from near Ellesmere was going to come over so I had to make all kinds of arrangements with her. I had to speak to a pub landlord about making sure that she was welcomed etc so I had to fill in a questionnaire. I was in this pub with someone else while the pub landlord was reviewing the questionnaire. It was also the birthday of one of the daughters of my niece so I found an envelope and had to write a little message to her but I kept on confusing the names and was writing this message to my friend but of course it was to my niece’s daughter to whom I wanted to leave it. On the way out of the pub I had to pick up the questionnaire that I’d filled in. I saw that he’d given me 11 out of 11. He said in some rudimentary and basic French that my friend would be welcomed over there when she passed through so I picked up the paperwork and began to walk out.

At another moment I was with my friend from South Carolina. We’d been in a chemist’s shop and asked if he had a box. A chemist’s shop in a shopping precinct. he thought that he’d thrown out all of his boxes but in the end he found a box that he gave to us for which we were grateful. Then we were wandering around this shopping mall. Next morning we had to leave quite quickly. I was chatting to a Welsh tutor about some kind of problem that had arisen that had had him talking to his students for hours during the night. We were wondering how many other tutors had been disturbed by this and their families upset at ridiculous hours. My friend stopped to have a cup of tea. I didn’t think that we had time but he did anyway. He took the tea and someone asked me if they’d made it properly. I said “as long as the water is poured when it’s absolutely boiling that’s absolutely great”.

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Wednesday 19th October 2022 – I’VE BEEN DISPLAYING …

… my culinary prowess today. And considering that I have been doing it in the house of someone who is a fully-qualified chef with years of commercial experience and who actually ate what I prepared, then that’s something of a feather in my cap and no mistake.

This morning Rachel sent me a message from work to the effect of “why don’t we have a curry for tea?” and I took that as a hint.

There was plenty of time to make one too because there wasn’t a great deal on the dictaphone and I’ll attend to that in due course.

So once I’d raised myself from the dead, had my medication and checked my mails and messages I set to work.

Yesterday I’d been thinking that I ought to stir my stumps and head out earlier, but when I saw the rain cascading down in sheets, I was glad that there was something to do.

It’s difficult cooking in someone else’s house because you don’t know where everything is, and Rachel doesn’t have the types of spices that I use but I managed to make something quite respectable in the end.

Not too spicy though because Darren’s palette isn’t the same as ours. It reminds me of another time and place when we used to have these communal meals. I’d take a lentil and pepper “curry”. All of the French people would be gasping for breath and fanning their mouths while the British people would be going “what’s this insipid nonsense?”.

When it was ready I heaved the cats out, much to their disappointment, and then headed for the mill.

First task there was to find enough cardboard to wrap an amplifier. Three years ago in Ottawa I’d bought one of the best bass amps ever made but I hadn’t sent it to Europe, planning to do it the next year. But Covid had put paid to that idea. So hopefully, this year it’s going back with the sunroof that I have ordered for that Ford.

Eventually we headed for home where everyone enjoyed my curry. And then I transcribed the dictaphone notes. I had to catch a train so I ran. We were on a railway station. It said that there was an additional train running and would be in the station in a couple of minutes. I had to run down the platform, run across the bridge, run down the other side and jump aboard. Whoever I was with, I remember saying that I couldn’t have done that a year ago. The train was one of these multiple units, the type that plied between Stoke on Trent and Manchester in the 70s. It was pretty crowded but I found a place to sit by the door so that I could say goodbye to whoever I was with and the train pulled off. Somewhere along the line there was a girl who had some kind of connection with me, whether she was an adopted daughter or cousin or something I dunno but she was big for her age. We’d left her somewhere; When we returned on this train she’d dyed her hair. We made a few comments about her hair, that kind of thing. She was wearing these jeans with holes in the legs. I was talking to some Indian guy. He was wondering why I seemed to have had preferential treatment about seats and so on on this aeroplane. I showed him a voucher that I had which showed that I was a member of some kind of flight plan with this airline. He rummaged through his papers and found that he had one as well. I asked him why he never said anything. He replied that it was all too late by now to do anything.

And now I’m off to bed. Early as it may be, I’m busy tomorrow. The feed truck missed a customer today so they need several sacks of grain delivering to somewhere around Fredericton. it’ll be a good run-out again.

However there’s been a heavy cold going round the mill and the tyre depot and it’s my turn to come down with it. I hope that it’s just a 24-hour thing and I can shake it off tonight. But having no immune system, it’s not so easy.

We’ll see how things develop.

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Tuesday 18th October 2022 – A FUNNY THING …

… happened this morning. But anyone who knows anything about cats will know that there is nothing whatever strange about it.

The alarm went off as planned at 05:45 ready for my Welsh lesson but immediately (and I DO mean “immediately”) Cujo the Killer Cat jumped on me and trapped me in bed.

She refused to move until she’s had a good 20 minutes of strokes and consequently I was late for my lesson.

Once the lesson began she came and sat on my knee for an hour or so, hogging the camera while the lesson continued.

At last I think that I’ve sorted out the best way to deal with the Zoom meetings on this computer.

A year or so ago I upgraded it by swapping the hard drive for a solid-state drive but the processor is still quite slow. Zoom uses up all of the resources which means that when I open the course book *.pdf the Zoom window stutters. However if I minimise the Zoom window so that it shows “active speaker only” then it doesn’t work too badly.

As for the lesson itself it passed quite quickly and it wasn’t too bad. In fact I did rather well in what I was asked to do. But I really need to work on my vocabulary. Well, more than that actually. I’m feeling that I’m falling way behind.

After the lesson finished I … errr … relaxed for a while and then had a listen to the dictaphone to see where I’d been during the night. We were at an archaeological dig last night having to clean some of the artefacts. There were quite a few of us there. I found some kind of switch made from bakelite from the 1950s. It was extremely delicate and took me ages to get into all the nooks and crevices etc to scrape away years years of dust. Then I had to go to work on some kind of miniature man, wrap him in ivy seeds and ivy runners. It was called a “gorseinon” whatever that might be. I didn’t have a clue how to do this but there was some young girl there who was making one who gave me some instruction as to how to do it, hanging part of it around his neck and twisting it round so that the whole length of whatever it is that you had was covering his whole length to varying degrees.

Then I was out with Rachel. We were shopping somewhere. She was telling us about all the chaos there had been over the Christmas shopping. She had a list of shops that she wanted to visit but there was so much chaos on the roundabout and traffic junctions that she never actually managed to make it to one particular shop which was a pretty important one on the list. She was describing to me how people just take so much time doing their shopping because they would want to talk to the counter clerk, inane, banal things. She was imitating some of their conversation in this perfect Canadian accent while everyone in the queue with us was listening and smiling. We’d already had some kind of chaos on the roundabout with telling some stories to my brother who was in the car behind and was so intent on listening that he ended up being in the wrong lane coming into this roundabout and caused an almighty snarl-up of his own while he tried to sort himself out and get him on the right track

There was also something that I vaguely remember about a gold BMC1800 “ADO17” being parked up at a house in Canada. And that’s a surprise because the car was never available in North America as far as I can tell.

After lunch I headed off down to the mill again. It was quite busy there these days especially as they are loading up the feed truck to go on a delivery round. But these days I’m in no condition to help out as I used to.

But at least I think that I’ve worked out why the transmission in Strider might be slipping occasionally. There wasn’t a drop of oil in the gearbox so I topped it up – with about a litre of hypoid.

Strider has been stood for three years, I know, but I didn’t think that the oil would leak out over time. I shall have to put him up on a ramp and see of there’s a leak. Gone are the days when I could crawl underneath.

We were there until quite late this evening and when we came home, we were in no mood to cook. Consequently we ended up with leftovers. I had what I had yesterday except with a baked potato instead of the spaghetti squash.

Rachel and I chatted for a couple of hours and made plans for the future, and now I’m off to bed. Tomorrow I’m going to start to pack as I ought to be thinking about going home.

Not that I want to, but I can’t stay here for ever. Apart from anything else, I have no fewer than 6 hospital appointments in Leuven a week on Thursday. Things are hotting up.

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Monday 17th October 2022 – HAVING GONE TO ..

… bed quite early last night, I ended up not going to sleep for quite a while. In fact, it was almost midnight when I finally went to sleep – at least as far as I can remember.

With no-one coming to see me during the night, there was plenty of time for me to go off for a wander or two. I went to Spain last night, a small town just over the border. what had happened was that again I was having loads of problems and issues etc in work (and isn’t this a regular occurrence?). As I was well-past retirement age I didn’t really care much so one morning I just didn’t go in. I had a piece of music from a rock group on an old LP that was actually the National Anthem of a group of revolutionaries somewhere. They had borrowed my LP because at 07:00 every morning they played the National Anthem on their radio station and had a little speech. They asked me if I wanted to join them so with nothing better to do I decided that maybe I would. I turned up there at 07:00 and they kitted me out with some equipment but no arms and they sent me off on a foot patrol around Shavington. That’s how I ended up on this foot patrol in Spain. I walked around the outskirts of this town a little, and then I found the town centre. It was full of all dubious characters and old British cars as well, and old cars that I didn’t know what they were. I was in a real paradise looking at these Reliants and Ford Anglias, all sorts of stuff. As I was walking down this alleyway I went past a house where a woman looked at me, noticed that I was British. She tidied up her cat out of the way and asked me if I wanted some Coca-Cola. I said “no” but we started to chat.

Later in I was back in Spain again, back in this dream and wandering around the town trying to find a place to hang my towel rail. In the end I found some kind of shop where there were crowds of people who might have had some screws but he told me that there was some kind of communal field on the edge of town where everyone took their clothes to hang up and dry. He pointed it out to me and said that that was where I had to go.

Finally I was in the Welsh Premier League headquarters. There had been a complaint than a Welsh club had entered the English FA Cup and was therefore ineligible to enter the Welsh Cup. It seemed that the Welsh FA had missed it so I went down to Premier League headquarters to lodge a complaint on behalf of the fans. I met someone there, some woman, and we had the same acquaintances in Welsh football. We were discussing things but she wouldn’t keep to the point. She kept on going off on a tangent and it was very difficult to haul her back into the matter that we were discussing. She sent all of her colleagues out for a tea break for half an hour while she talked to me as well. I’d no idea what her intention was at that particular moment. As I’d set out, I’d left the apartment with my partner and her child. I had to go back for something but found that she hadn’t locked the apartment door. I sent her a message but because I didn’t have anything to write I used my thumbnail to make an impression of the letters on some obje0ct or other and left it so that she could see it.

Interestingly, back in 2006 when there was talk in the Welsh FA headquarters about reorganising the league competitions, I was chosen by a group of fans to be their representative to go down to headquarters to meet the Competitions Secretary to discuss the concerns that the fans had.

Once everyone had gone off to work I dragged myself out of my bed and had my medication. And then I sat down to transcribe the notes from the dictaphone.

In the middle of all of it, Cujo the Killer Cat came to sit on my knee. In fact she didn’t sit but turned round and round, climbed up and over me and then once she had attracted my full attention she ran to the front door and asked to be let out. She knows the score well enough.

When I’d finished the dictaphone notes I went and had a shower and a clothes-washing session to pretty myself up, and then had lunch. Toasted cheese with tomato.

Once I was ready I went up to the mill to chat to Rachel and Zoe until throwing-out time. And that was rather later than usual too. Back here I had to wait for everyone else to turn up and to talk to a couple of guys who needed roadside assistance.

Tea was a vegan burger with onion, garlic and tomato and, totally new for me, spaghetti squash. Not my favourite but it’s nice to try something new.

Back in here I had to write out the dictaphone notes again because for some unknown reason I seemed to have wiped out the file but I really don’t know how or why, and then I wrote out the notes for today.

And early though it might be, I’m off to bed. I have a Welsh lesson in the morning so it’s another 05:45 start. But I’m more interested in what time it will finish.

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Sunday 16th October 2022 – IT’S SUNDAY TODAY …

… and yet even so, I had an alarm set this morning. It may well have been set to 07:30 this morning but that is 12:30 in real money and that’s plenty late enough to be in bed, Sunday or no Sunday, even if in real terms it was actually about 03:00 when I crawled into bed.

And even if I was unfortunately alone in bed last night. Cujo the Killer Cat decided that she would stay elsewhere, presumably in her laundry basket. It’s quite strange really. There are three cats here in this house and each one has its favourite place in the house where you would be sure to find it.

Consequently there was plenty of stuff on the dictaphone and so after I had arisen from the dead and in the absence of anyone else moving around, I transcribed the notes. We’d been doing some stuff with some new type of London double-decker bus. We’d had to go back and pick up another one from the makers but it wasn’t ready. They didn’t know when it was going to be ready so this girl and I had to hang around for a while to receive some further information. There were other people coming and going in this building. She said to the man whom we’d seen that there was something called “Wall of Silence” that he had to attend that was on the weekend of 18th/19th December. I was trying to work out what this was. I didn’t really have a clue. It sounded strange to me but this person had obviously heard it because as soon as this girl said that it was €42 for 2 tickets the guy coughed up quite willingly. I made some remark. She said that the group that was appearing was called Pink Floyd. Then I suddenly realised what it was – that it was a tour to re-promote the album “The Wall”. The guy asked where it was taking place. The girl replied “it’s at Calveley near the old airfield”. They started talking about the airfield. The girl said that it wasn’t actually on the airfield. That’s going to be used for over-parking, excess parking. The next thing was that we were actually out there having a look around. There was a woman with a little girl with very long red hair who were walking around somewhere on the main Chester road not too far away from where we were.

Later on there were two people, one discussing hiring a housemaid from the other. They were talking about her in the most disparaging terms. The conversation drifted from there to other things that she was able to do which I thought was extremely out of order, this kind of discussion.

I was then in Canada with someone whom I knew from Crewe in the old days. There was something about some kind of antiques fair in Palo Alto in California. He wanted me to take him there. We had to work out a route, where we were going to drive past, where we’d stay etc. It turned out that as well as the two of us there were several other people, a couple of women with their daughters who he wanted to bring along as well. It ended up that we would be seven people in Caliburn which I thought was way too many but we started to go ahead and plan this particular route and trip.
I was then walking through Sandbach. For some unknown reason I had a goalkeeper’s jersey with me that I’d just washed and was looking for a place to hang it. I was wandering around the back streets around the Third Avenue area and came across the rear wall to Sandbach Ramblers football ground. We talked about the club and ground for a bit saying that it’s now the Corporation’s lorry park. Then we walked back. There was a place to hang the football shirt on a wire that was coming off a telegraph pole or something but I couldn’t get it on there. A little further down there was someone else’s goalkeeping shirt that had been presumably thrown by a couple of kids and had caught on a wire way above the ground. It was impossible to reach it. You’d need a big pole or an enormous ladder to get to it. I wondered what on earth that was doing there. What was the story behind that particular goalkeeping shirt.

Finally, we were living in Gainsborough Road. There were a load of people around answering the phone and working on the radio etc. They had left the place really untidy, these kids, when they had gone. Nerina had gone to do a taxi job so I started to clean up. I found some awful stains on the floor by the sofa so I became quite angry about that. No-one else volunteered to clean it so I had to clean it and there was a great deal about that. I put away the cleaning stuff and then had to go and make some tea. We didn’t have many tea-bags, we had very little milk so I was outside making the tea. Nerina came back. She got out of the car and started to talk to a few people. My hands were full so I was bringing back the stuff in 2 or 3 trips. I mentioned that we needed some new camping equipment. She said that she knew about that and someone was organising it. I was trying to tell her about these stains in the living room but for some unknown reason she didn’t want to listen. I had some papers in my hand. I dropped one. I thought “should I pick it up and make the place look tidy or just leave it because my hands were full?

Eventually everyone collected in the living room so we set off for Woodstock. And it was pretty crowded in the Golf because by the time we got to Woodstock we were half a million strong. Zoe and Chris, her partner, had already arrived and so we all went for breakfast. And it was my turn to pay as well.

On the way back we stopped off at Sobey’s for a few groceries and then came back. While Darren went off to reassemble a back axle, Rachel and I attacked a pile of squashes. We microwaved them for a short while, peeled and diced them and then put them for freezing.

This is an agricultural area famous for corn and for potatoes. In fact, this is where all of your McCain frozen potatoes come from and the factory in Florenceville was at one time the largest food-processing plant in the world. And there’s a huge movement here amongst the locals to go “back to the land” and Darren and Rachel are quite committed to it. There are tons of veg around this house and several large freezers that are quite full.

That took most of the afternoon and then it was time for tea. I had some vegan sausages baked in onions, garlic and tomato and we made piles of veg along with some baked potatoes. Right now I’m totally stuffed.

Just walking around the kitchen with the squash and then doing the washing-up, I ran up over 3 kilometres on the fitbit and right now I’m exhausted so even though it’s early I’m going for a lie down and that’s going to be that. Setting the alarm and leaving the bed early is all well and good and I can do more than I otherwise might, but it takes it out of me at the end of the day.

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Saturday 15th October 2022 – GUESS WHO …

… had company in bed last night?

And before I went to bed too, because I was still sitting on the edge of the bed starting to undress when Cujo the Killer Cat jumped on the bed miaowing. And as soon as I settled down under the bedclothes she snuggled up and that was that.

She stayed for quite a long time too but when I eventually awoke, she was gone. Still, it was nice while it lasted. It’s the best offer that I’ve had for quite some considerable time.

Plenty of stuff on the dictaphone from the night too. We were babysitting this girl of about 11. I got on really well with her and spent a lot of time with her. Her father came to pick her up afterwards. My father told him that the bike that he had found for her was a Raleigh or something. I went into the hall to look and there was a kid’s bike there, a Raleigh, the type that you would have in the 1960s for a child so I took her to try it. It was a little big for her but nothing that you couldn’t adjust out. On the way we saw a circus across the road. She looked and said “that looks great”. I replied “guess where we’re going to come the next time you come round?”. I could see that there was a look of disapproval in her father’s eye but the girl seemed to be reacting a lot more with me than she did with him. You could see that he was disappointed by that.

This next one was another long, rambling dream with loads missing. It involved a funeral and burying a coffin. There was a big argument about the grave. They’d dug out the grave but it wasn’t really big enough but these people insisted that they knew what they were doing. In the end they prepared the coffin to drop into the grave but found that it wasn’t going in because the hole wasn’t big enough. They had to lift it out again and enlarge the hole. In the end I had them dig a huge pile out to make an enormous hole because that was the only way to stop the bickering and the arguments, to make sure that there was more than enough room to drop the coffin in and then back-fill it but it was one of these typical small village things where everyone knew better than everyone else. There were the local experts who had never done this before, that kind of thing, and it went on for hours.

Finally I was at work. I’d just come back from lunch 5 minutes early so that I could cut my hair. I was there busily shaving it away and the manager came in, rounded up everyone and said that a file was missing. He gave us the number and insisted that we searched the entire office for it. He said “when you’ve finished cutting your hair of course”. I replied “I’ll go and look for it now and cut my hair later”. We all stood up and went our separate ways searching everywhere to see if we could find this file. There was a cheque that needed issuing on it and we needed the file to check the validity.

After I had finally come round from the dead I went up to the mill in the pouring rain. We weighed the two parcels and I was surprisingly accurate in my guesses. I thought 25kg and 20kg but in fact it’s 30kg and 20kg. That’s not too bad.

They were really busy up there today but I couldn’t help them any as shifting sacks of grain is rather beyond me these days but I waited around for quite a while chatting.

Back here I had beans on toast for lunch and then transcribed the dictaphone notes from yesterday which are now on line, and then I made a start on last night’s.

When Rachel came home we started on tea. We discussed all kinds of cookery recipes and in the end I made a pyrex dish with my veggie balls, tomato, onion and garlic to go with the baked potato and vegetables that she was cooking to go with the lamb chops. And my meal was delicious.

For dessert I had a surprise. On her was home Rachel had called at the home of the old lady whom we had visited yesterday and she had made me a “demonstration cake” of egg-free molasses cake.

And that was delicious too.

After tidying up I came in here to finish off the dictaphone notes and then wrote up today’s entry.

And now I’m off to bed. We’re dining out tomorrow morning so I won’t have too much of a lie-in. And I probably won’t have any lie-in at all if Cujo the Killer Cat comes to visit me.

Not that I’m complaining, of course.

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Friday 14th October 2022 – THE NEXT PERSON …

… who tells me that there’s a recession will receive a smack in the mouth.

This afternoon I went down to the border between the USA and Canada at Houlton as I had heard that there were a couple of freight forwarders with offices there. The idea was to talk to them about shipping this sunroof back to Europe.

When I eventually found the offices (thanks to a helpful officer in the Canadian Customs Post), the guy in the first office, that belonging to Kühn and Nagel, couldn’t even be bothered to leave his seat to come to the counter. The gist of his information was to tell me to clear off and not bother him.

Mind you, that was better than at the second office. There, there was a notice to the effect that they are not welcoming personal callers.

And there’s the rub. I have all of this money burning a hole in my pocket and it needs to be spent, and it’s far too much effort for anyone to come and take it. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that this is a regular occurrence. Nobody these days wants to earn any money and I’m completely on my own when it comes to dealing with this.

It’s not the only thing for which I’m completely alone either. I was completely on my own last night too. Cujo the Killer Cat didn’t come to share my bed, something that quite disappointed me.

Consequently there was tons of stuff on the dictaphone from last night but I haven’t transcribed it yet.

And there was a good reason for that. Once everyone had gone to work I left my bed and while I was checking my mails and messages I had the old-time radio on the computer. And on came a “Paul Temple” episode, all 3 hours and some more of it, so just for a change I did very little except listen to it.

At a certain moment Cujo the Killer Cat came to join me so we listened to it together.

After lunch I set out for the border and after my disappointment there I went to Woodstock to buy fuel , and by the time we got to Woodstock we were … etc.

Next stop was the bank at Florenceville and for a change I followed the west bank of the Saint John River and crossed over the river at Hartland on the world’s longest covered bridge where I got the protocol about crossing horribly wrong and annoyed just about everyone.

The tyre depot was extremely busy so we never had time to weigh my packets so I’ll have to do that tomorrow, but I had a lovely chat with a very verbose 4th grader who was waiting for her father who was having a tyre changed.

And it’s not just very verbose 4th graders that occupy my time either.

mill cat centreville new brunswick Canada Eric Hall photo 14th October 2022The mill here is full of corn as you might expect and so it’s quite an attraction for the local wild rodents which upsets just about everyone concerned. Consequently there’s a fleet of mill cats here, as you would also expect.

They are extremely wild, ferocious cats whose job is to tear to shreds any unsuspecting rodent that falls into their clutches. You can see just how wild and ferocious they are by looking at this photograph.

Honestly, if you were a wild mouse bent on stealing some corn from a corn mill, wouldn’t you be frightened to death on encountering such a savage beast as this?

eggless molasses cake new brunswick Canada Eric Hall photo 14th October 2022On the way home we called at the house of an old woman in the neighbourhood who is a friend of Rachel, and had an interesting chat. And she gave me a recipe for egg-free molasses cake.

When I returned home later I tried it out and it was quite delicious. But I wish that Canadians and Americans would use weights for their ingredients rather than volume. And what is a “cupful” anyway? How dos anyone know how big your cup is?

It all goes back, I suppose, to Pioneer days when no-one could afford scales or just didn’t possess them, and a cup was a standard size sold by the Sears, Roebuck or Hudsons Bay Company traveller

Surprisingly I had a lot in common with this lady and we talked about churning butter, water-powered fridges and the like.

We were there for hours so I’m running quite late yet again. A “left-over supper” of my Chinese vegetables, potatoes and burger followed by rice pudding was quick and easy, and now having written my notes, I’m off to bed.

Eventually I managed to transcribe all of the dictaphone notes. We’d been talking about the shop round the corner at the top of the street in Wardle. Someone was saying that they weren’t very friendly and didn’t seem to want to help anyone out and wouldn’t do deliveries. That really surprised me because if I were living in a small village like that and a shop I’d have one of these Vespa-type scooter freight delivery vans. I’d be happy to drop off anyone’s shopping anywhere for an extra £1:00 or so a time. I’m pretty sure that that’s the way to go and it would be a success but these people at Wardle didn’t seem to be interested at all.

And then I was going skiing. I was ready to go but I suddenly found myself without my skis, boots, and bag in which to put them so I had to go back to the apartment where I’d changed and I couldn’t find them there. Then I thought that I’d been in my brother’s apartments so I thought that I’d go there. I had to persuade him because he didn’t want to let me go back in again. Eventually I did and I had a really good hunt around. I couldn’t find what I needed. In the end I had to go. There were several buses going past his apartment which was something like one every hour carried on to where I wanted to be. While I was waiting for it I was doing some work sitting at a desk but I hadn’t quite finished it when the bus came so I missed it. I decided that I’d set out and walk. It was pretty dark. Nevertheless as I was walking down the track from one bus stop to the next I came across a couple of small families with young girls who were out for a walk. One of the young girls didn’t want to go at all and started to make a scene. There was a church so I popped in. They were celebrating the death of someone with the same name as me. I sat down for a couple of minutes to listen to it. Then I wanted to get back up again and carry on but I had to disturb the people sitting in my row and possibly the row in front and behind in order that they could make space to leave but I didn’t feel like embarrassing everyone to make them do this in the middle of e ceremony.

At another moment I was dictating to my hand again. I was playing in defence for a football team last night. There was the local Sunday league team training and was a player short so I helped out at left-back for them. I was totally exhausted in the warm-up. We were kicking the ball around. One guy who looked very much like Cedric Pény was always kicking it out of play and I had to leap over the barbed wire fence to get it. I did that once and then after that let someone else do it. On one occasion it had been tormented by a wasp or something like that so I went over to see. Someone asked what it was. I said that it was a bestiole but they didn’t know what that was. There was a rabbit so I threw the ball at it to move it but the rabbit grabbed hold of it and tried to run off. In the end Cedric Pény picked it up like you would a cat and threw it out of the door. It was all completely surreal. I remember the times that I’d been playing in goal for this team during the dream and of course I’ve never played in goal for anyone for 40 years. This was what surprised me the most was reminiscing about turning out for this team a couple of times in goal because it seemed to be so real and so vivid as well.

This is another one of which I only remember bits. Of the bits that I remember, we were going to a dance but we couldn’t get the usual car going so we got this old Rolls-Royce to go. We encountered a girl who said something about the Rolls-Royce so I said “well we don’t usually bring it out in the rain but we thought that we’d give it a bit of a run-out today”. I didn’t like to mention that the Rolls wasn’t taxed or insured or MoT’d or anything and shouldn’t have been on the road anyway but it was the only car that we had when the first one wouldn’t start. There was lots more to it than this but I can’t remember.

With a bit of luck we’ll weigh these packets tomorrow and then I can press on with my plans. And hope that I can find a way of posting them without having to rely on a commercial courier.

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Thursday 13th October 2022 – I WAS NOT …

… alone in bed last night. I’d just curled up and settled down quietly to go to sleep when suddenly there was a thud on the bed and some thing pushed a black and furry head into my chin.

Sure enough, Cujo the Killer Cat had decided to come to join me. She curled up next to me and went to sleep. All in all, she was there for an hour or so, changing position every 15 minutes or so to make herself more comfortable while I of course was becoming even more uncomfortable, but in the end she jumped off, ate a couple of cat biscuits and went off for a prowl around the house.

Anyone who knows anything at all about cats will know that this is simply normal, usual behaviour. When we were married Nerina and I had four cats so you can imagine how that worked out. Here, there are three cats but so far only Culo the Killer Cat has found me on a permanent basis. Oscar, the ginger and white cat, found his way onto the bed at one point but Gilligan, the young long-haired cat not at all.

With Cujo waking me up during the night, I forgot about a dream that I was having. I was having a lovely dream, but with Cujo the Killer Cat coming to join me I awoke and most of it went immediately out of my head. But there was some woman telling me that she’d let me know if something happened again and so on. Unfortunately I can’t remember what that was or anything but it was really nice wonderful comfortable dream.

And later, we were talking about defence in World War I and how the new German heavy machine gun was supposed to be the best. They fortified all of their railway stations and places like that with examples of their heavy machine gun

I stepped back into that dream some time later .Our unit had been badly shot up in World War I and we were being evacuated from the Front with a pile of wounded. One of the wounded was a French private and I spent a lot of time chatting to him. He was in complete agony. Eventually we found some road transport that brought us into the city centre of Verdun. Luckily he was one of the first off the transport into the hospital. I asked the nurse if he’d been shot with a machine gun. She replied “yes”. I asked what were his chances of recovery because he had a seizure. A few of these nurses came rushing round to him but he pulled his way through this seizure. They turned to me and said “he’ll be OK now that he’s gone through that. There will be no worry with him”.

Finally, I’d gone to a mobile phone shop because I wanted to download from my mobile phone an album that had been supplied free with the ‘phone. I couldn’t find which directory it was in despite knowing the name of the musician … "it was Steve Winwood" – ed. The first thing that I noticed was that he typed my phone n° into his computer and immediately had access to the contents of my phone via some kind of remote connection. He could see everything that I had on my phone, what my desktop was, etc. He hadn’t asked me for permission to do that and in any case I didn’t think that he could use his computer to view the contents of my phone from his desk. I was absolutely appalled. I was going to write to as many people as I possibly could to make this kind of thing known to them. I thought that it was awful that they could just type my number into their computer and see on their screen the contents of my phone and what I had visible on my screen at that moment.

When the alarm went off there were still people moving around the house and so I waited until everyone left before I arose from the dead.

The first thing that I did was to transcribe the dictaphone notes, that you have already seen.

Next plan was to book some accommodation for the next couple of stages of my journey. I’m leaving here in 10 days so I have to make sure that I have somewhere to stay.

It’s not easy because I have no Canadian ‘phone these days for the bank to send me some verification instructions for payment, so I have to book into these “pay on arrival” places and there aren’t too many of those

Next step was to try to find some freight companies to ship this sunroof back to Europe. After much research I found a couple of freight forwarding companies in Saint John and I’ve been in touch with them. Whether or not they reply is something else completely.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that receiving replies to e-mails that I send off to try to organise something or other is something that very rarely happens. Everyone complains that there’s a recession and that business is difficult but my own experience is that no-one really wants to do any work.

After lunch I had to go and measure my parcels. Having turned out the cab of Strider I couldn’t find my tape measure. Luckiiy though when I was in IKEA in the summer I’d picked up a measuring tape and it was still in my little bag so I managed to do it after a fashion.

They need to be weighed but I can’t lift them on my own. I shall have to wait for assistance.

One thing that I’d noticed was that it looked as if someone had been growing potatoes in Strider’s cab. I found an old yard brush and swept out as much as I could. He really needs a good vacuuming too as he’s full of dust. I’ll bet that he’ll go 5mph faster when I’ve done all that.

While I was out there, I noticed something quite amusing. Cujo the Killer Cat lived up to her name and brought back a live mouse to the front of the house. She dropped it off in front of Gilligan, the young long-haired cat, and was teaching him how to hunt it.

He performed a few practice pounces on it but after a while he lost interest. Cujo couldn’t incite him to continue so in the end she picked up the mouse and wandered off into a quiet corner to deal with it herself.

However I’m not sure what had happened because back in here I crashed out – and for all of three hours too. I must have been completely exhausted after all of my efforts for the last couple of days.

Tea tonight was more of my Chinese meal from yesterday and then I spent a good while chatting to Rachel. Consequently I’m late going to bed.

There’s plenty to do tomorrow so I need a good night’s sleep. That is, unless Cujo the Killer Cat comes to join me tonight.

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Wednesday 12th October 2022 – JUST FOR A CHANGE …

… I had one of the best sleeps that I have had for a long, long time. So much so that there was absolutely nothing at all on the dictaphone. I must have been really deep in the arms of Morpheus.

In fact, I was in bed quite early too. I fell asleep while I was listening to the radio but I must have awoken at some point to switch it off because the laptop was off when the alarm went off.

There was no time to hang around this morning. For a start, I had to clear off a huge pile of ice from Strider’s windscreen. We’re in the grip of autumn here with sub-zero temperature through the night and cloud-free crystalline skies.

But when I could see where I was going, I set off for Woodstock.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that the Saint John River isn’t far from here. It runs in a deep valley and early in the morning at this time of year there’s a hanging cloud in the valley, slowly rising up.

Up here we’re well above the cloud but Woodstock is deep in the valley and I couldn’t even see my hand in front of my face. At one point I drove through a red traffic light that I couldn’t see was there

Having fuelled up, I went to pick up my passenger and we set off for the hospital at Fredericton, about 110 kilometres away.

Following the river valley on the Trans-Canada Highway, we were sometimes in a fogbank, sometimes above it. But by the time that we arrived in Fredericton the fog had cleared away.

My passenger alighted at the hospital and I went to Tim Horton’s for a coffee and bagel – my first visit to a “Timmy’s” for three years – and where the guy at the counter got my order completely wrong.

Next stop was at Bulk Barn. People from Crewe will remember the “Weigh and Save”, where produce was displayed in barrels and you bagged and weighed as much as you wanted of it. It was an excellent shop but Bulk Barn will knock it for 6.

And I had some really good luck there. They had the artificial rum and brandy essence that you can’t buy in France so I bought a few bottles. Now I can make my Christmas cake and Christmas pudding with the proper ingredients

Value Village was next. They don’t have charity shops in Canada as they do in the UK. They all club together and have just one outlet in a town and the price labels are colour-coded so that you know which organisation is which. I bought a couple of books and a couple of CDs to add to the collection and I would have bought more but like most charity shops these days, their prices are somewhat exaggerated.

My passenger wasn’t ready yet so I loitered around in a Sobey’s until she texted that she was ready so I went to pick her up.

We stopped half-way home for coffee and toast and then went back to Woodstock the pretty way where I dropped her at home and she gave me some vegetables for Rachel.

My next port of call was the Scotia Bank at Florenceville to make “certain arrangements” and then went on to the mill.

Just before I left Canada in 2019 I ordered a chip for Strider to curb his enthusiasm and improve the fuel consumption. Darren had fitted it when it finally arrived and I have to say that the fuel consumption has improved slightly and the racing spirit had evaporated somewhat, which is good news for me. Strider has an old-type 6-cylinger long-stroke engine and it’s not made for high revs in low gear. It’s much more comfortable using his torque to pull him along.

After much discussion we all decided on a take-away from the Chinese restaurant in Florenceville so I drove down there to pick it up. I’m not a big fan of Chinese, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, and this was nothing special. But I’m going to have to like it because there’s enough for several days.

So now I’m off to bed. There’s nothing to do tomorrow so I’m going to have to find a shipper for this sunroof and book myself a hotel back in Montreal for when I’m on my way home. It’s only a short stay this time, nothing like the usual three months, so I need to organise myself so much better and so much quicker.

As if I could do something like that.

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Tuesday 11th October 2022 – THE CAT SAT …

… on the mat, as the old saying goes.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Monday 10th October 2022 – WE HAD A …

… tactical substitution during the night.

When I finally crawled into bed last night, Cujo the Killer Cat climbed onto the bed and curled up next to me. Of course it’s not too easy to sleep when someone is continually head-butting your arm demanding strokes and the like.

oscar the cat centreville new brunswick Canada Eric Hall photo 10th October 2022Eventually though I fell asleep but when I awoke with the alarm (you can tell that I’m full of all good intentions) Cujo the Killer Cat had gone at some point and curled up against me on the other side of the bed was Oscar, the ginger and white cat.

He’s a cat that Hannah brought back from University. He had been effectively abandoned by his previous owner and she couldn’t see him allowed to go feral.

Cujo the Killer Cat took a great deal of exception to this intruder and does her best to keep him under control, but he’s learning to fight back.

oscar the cat centreville new brunswick Canada Eric Hall photo 10th October 2022But anyway, here was was on my bed this morning, which is quite unusual. He’s not usually this affectionate with me.

But there was an undefended stomach there that demanded attention and so I duly obliged. And once I started to tickle it he grabbed hold of my arm and held on to it, refusing to let go. Consequently we stayed like this for some considerable time, and neither of us complained at all

So much for my good intentions.

In fact, had it not been for the necessity of my going for a ride on the porcelain horse, the two of us would probably still be there now.

With the time that was left I managed to do some of the work but with it being a Bank Holiday there was one of Rachel’s legendary breakfast brunches with which I needed to contend. People travel miles for one of those and it’s no surprise.

Darren and Rachel had recently bought some wooden furniture for around the pool and it needed wood treatment. Darren went to rig up the compressor and the spray gun and I went as labourer and we spent a happy couple of hours in the sun this afternoon giving it all the treatment.

Later on Rachel wanted to go down to the mill to feed the mill cats so I went along for the drive. We went visiting while we were out and I ended up having a really good chat with someone about the Norse in North America. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that this is a subject in which I have quite an interest.

Tea tonight was made by making use of all of the leftovers that have accumulated over the last week – I’m not the only one who does this. However, it wasn’t a curry but a stir-fry of rice, vegetables and black beans. Things like this are just as delicious as when they are cooked, and sometimes even more so.

However, at last I’ve managed to finish the dictaphone notes. There was actually some stuff from last night that I had recorded. We’d been coming back from a works outing somewhere. The coach was coming up the bank past Wistaston Manor. The driver said that there were a couple of people to alight here. He couldn’t remember their names. There was a huge pile of paperwork that I’d collected which was totally in chaos. I couldn’t find the names either. I was just so disorganised and had stuff everywhere. I only had half the passengers on the bus. In the end I went back and enquired as to who they were. We stopped and a couple of people alighted. I made a note of their names. Then a few more alighted as well but I wasn’t sure why. I imagined that the next stop would be somewhere round the top of Ruskin Road but there were people milling around so much that it was actually impossible to have them sit down so that I could enquire where they wanted to be. All in all it was a total chaotic situation. Only the driver seemed to have any kind of control over anything and even then it was only by the sheerest luck.

There was also something about me being on an express double-decker coach on another occasion last night but I can’t remember anything else at all about that.

The notes for the last couple of days are now on line too so now I’m off to bed for an early night. There’s a Welsh class again tomorrow so I have to be up and at the computer at … gulp … 06:00 and I’m not looking forward to that.

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Sunday 9th October 2022 – AFTER ALL OF THE …

… non-events of yesterday I have had quite a bad day today.

In actual fact, what I mean to say is that I had a very bad night. And quite honestly, I hardly had any sleep at all.

Had I not actually seen anything on the dictaphone I would actually have said that I didn’t sleep at all. But there is a small file on there (that I have yet to transcribe) quite late on.

And despite it being Sunday I’d set an alarm for 09:00 as we were going out. However I forgot that the alarm programme isn’t set for a Sunday so it didn’t actually ring. Nevertheless I was actually up and about when it should have gone off.

After we had done all of the household chores like feeding the cats (there are three of them here) we set out for Woodstock. We were going to a café for a breakfast.

We were actually in the Volkswagen estate (about which you might hear so much more in due course) but we really should have gone in a fleet of buses because by the time we got to Woodstock we were half a million strong.

My meal was home fries with onion and mushroom followed by toast whilst Darren and Rachel had a fried breakfast. It was totally delicious.

On the way back home we had to make a little detour. There’s a taxi job that I have to undertake on Wednesday from Woodstock to Fredericton and return so I needed to find out where the pick-up will be, and then we came home.

Later on, while we were preparing the Thanksgiving meal, I had quite a wobble. So much so that I went to lie down. And while I didn’t actually go to sleep, I was well away with the fairies for a couple of hours. Anyway, once back on my feet we finished the meal.

Zoe came round with her partner for the meal. I’ve not me him before and he seems quite a nice guy. I’m glad about that. Zoe deserves someone nice to share her life.

And the meal was excellent. I had vegan sausages with all of the usual trappings and there wasn’t anything at all that disappointed.

The washing up and tidying up probably took longer than the preparation of the meal but at least we left the place looking tidy. And now I’m in my room writing up my notes. And that’s not easy because Cujo the Killer Cat is crawling all over me and the computer seeking attention. It seems to be my lucky night.

It’s the best offer that I have had for a considerable period of time and I intend to make to most of it.

Tomorrow it’s a Bank Holiday here but there will be an alarm all the same because I need to organise myself so much better. I have plenty of work to do, such as to transcribe all of these dictaphone notes. There are quite a few of those and I’m hoping that there will be even more in the morning.

But in the meantime, here are the ones from last night. I was driving around Crewe. I might even have had a very young TOTGA with me, so “hello” to her. I’d seen in the distance a huge overhead water tower that might have related to the railways so I wanted to go and have a look at it. However I was side-tracked by a house that was for sale, a 3-bedroomed Victorian terrace with an outbuilding at the back that could be converted into apartments on sale at £55,000. We went to have a look at it but lost our way. Then we took a wrong turning and ended up outside a cemetery where there were loads of funerals taking place. We had to turn round. Something came up about sports matches in which the 2 or us had played in 2 or 3 consecutive games where people had committed a foul by using their hands to score a goal. I was saying that maybe we ought to do the same tactic. She said that we hadn’t really been in a position to score a goal as yet.

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