… an absolutely excellent nights sleep last night. Out like a light although I did have to get up to go for a gypsy’s in the middle of the night

This morning however it’s not as gorgeous as all that as far as the weather goes because there’s a low hanging cloud or mist all over the place. Its all grey and overcast and misty damp and clammy not very nice at all.

Nevertheless I managed to make my way to Home Depot where I managed to purchase my weed control blanket, but not a brush-cutter. There was nothing suitable so I’m going to have to see about getting a second hand one. I managed to organise a few other exciting bits and pieces while I was there, including some cheap metal shelving clips that will make nice and ideal straps for holding solar panels on the roof of the car.

I had an interesting chat with one of the sales staff there. He’s called Danny and comes from Croatia. And so we had a good chat about Slovenia, Hungary and Croatia and places like that, reliving old journeys that we had made.

And then down to the University of New Brunswick where to find my way around campus I stopped a girl but she didn’t understand any English. So when I asked in French she didn’t understand any of that either so I asked her what language she did exactly speak thinking that I might summon up something and she said Persian. So how she is going to study in New Brunswick at the English-and-French-speaking University is anyone’s guess.

Its Doctor Chang with whom I need to speak about my wind turbines and he’s not in, as you might expect and so I’m going to have to come back here again. I hope that he will talk to me because judging by the leaflets that I saw about what he has been doing he could be an extremely useful person to know.

And I heard that lorry that sounds like an old Foden 2-stroke diesel when it’s slowing down so I dashed out to see, and it’s a Western Star. Thats not too much of a surprise as at one time Western Star had a major interest in Foden junior’s ERF lorry manufacturing business down the road in Sandbach.

But what has just come around this corner here at these traffic lights is something that I haven’t seen for I haven’t a clue how many years and that is a Honda 6 When was the last time I saw a 6-cylinder Honda. Of course we are talking motor cycles here, in case you are wondering.

So with a couple of hours to kill, I can go for a wander around Fredericton.

This white building is the legislative Office of Conflicts of Interest Commissioner, and that’s an enigmatic organisation if ever I heard of one. I wonder what he does and what cases he’s considered during his tenure of office.

But it is a nice building, isn’t it? I could live in a place like this with its nice round turret

Here’s another nice building almost next door on the corner of King Street and Secretary Lane. And it also has a nice round turret of the type that would appeal to me.

It’s the Maison Jewett House, whoever Jewett was when he was at home if he ever was. Ahhh – yes, he was a local doctor and, strangely enough, he wasn’t the first owner of the house. It’s now being used as government offices

I always like to have a look at war memorials and Canadian ones are quite surprising to a European such as myself.

In Europe, there are usually at least 5 times more victims recorded for World War I than there are for World War II but here in Canada, the numbers are about equal. However, that’s rather misleading. The population in Canada was much smaller in 1914 than it was in 1939

This is the Christ Church Cathedral and while I’ve seen many bigger cathedrals than this, I’ve also seen one or two smaller ones.

If you think that it’s small and that you might have seen it before, it’s said to be a copy of St Mary’s church in Snettisham, Norfolk and having seen the church when I visited my friend Lorna who lived nearby, I can see the resemblance.

The cathedral was built between 1845 and 1853, and its claim to fame was that it was struck by lightning on 3rd July 1911. it did make me wonder what they had done in the cathedral to have incurred this sort of divine wrath.

There used to be a railway line or two here in Fredericton but today it’s one of two provincial capitals (the other one being Charlottetown on Prince Edward Isle) to have had its railway lines ripped away.

The track bed is now a riverside walk and the bridge across the Saint John River is a walkway and cycle path.

It was on here that someone wished me a “good evening young fellow” so there’s clearly a vacancy for a good optician in the city.

Down along Queen Street is the Legislative Assembly Building for the Government of New Brunswick.

It dates from 1882 and replaced a previous building which, for the benefit of those of you who have not yet come to terms with life in Eastern Canada, was destroyed in a fire in 1877. The dome, by the way, is over 40 metres high.

To the left is the old Education Building dating from 1816.

Fredericton is actually situated in York County, New Brunswick, and over there is the old York County Building of 1855

It also served as the County Court back in the old days, and what was unusual about it was that back in the early days it had a market underneath with the Court buildings on top. I suppose that if they set up the stocks outside, the spectators wouldn’t have too far to go to find the rotten fruit and vegetables.

Despite what you might think, this really is a lighthouse. The Saint John River used to be navigable to paddle-wheelers as far upriver as Perth-Andover. There were 21 lighthouses along the river, and this one at Fredericton was the farthest north.

12 of them remain today, of which 7 still serve their original purpose, such is the volume of pleasure traffic that might be found on the river

This is something that really gets on my wick.I always understood that Christians were supposed to turn the other cheek, forgive people their sins, and pardon the wrong-doer. I read nothing in the Bible that states that sinners and wrong-doers would be towed away.

It’s this kind of hypocrisy that brings the church, Christians and Christianity into disrepute. Didn’t St Paul say something about “be not afraid to entertain strangers, for thereby, some have entertained angels unawares”?

This is Officers Square where there is a museum that preserves relics of life in the area in bygone days.

It has a considerable military significance and every day tourists can witness the Changing of the Guard, followed by, at the Royal Canadian Bank down the road, the Guarding of the Change.

There’s also going to be a stage here for the Festival tomorrow.

As far as the festival went, I was at the Hoodoo House tonight.

First on stage tonight was a guitarist called Morgan Davis, and he started off by giving a pro-active demonstration of playing on a cigar box guitar.

Next up was Geoff Bartley, who plays like an early T S McPhee when he lets go and ups the tempo, which is unfortunately something that he didn’t do all that often. But he did let rip with a superb version of Chuck Berry’s “Nadine is that you”.

Rambling Dan Stevens certainly lived up to his name. He a real rambling blues singer who sings just like an old blues singer should. His version of “My Baby Don’t Need No Loving” was excellent and the jam that he did at the end with Geoff Bartley was magnificent.

The main group tonight is Joe Murphy, Garrett Mason and the Water Street band, with a keyboard player who looks just like Mini-Me
. Murphy did a lead-guitar type of thing with bottle neck slider and his guitar fell to bits in the middle of it.

They are pretty good and they really rock when the mouth organ player pi … errr … leaves the stage. He spoils it after a while. You can have far too much of a mouth organ. If he’s not there they are really tight and they really rock. I quite enjoyed them.

And now we have torrential rain storming down outside and one of the venues has been flooded out. I won’t be going for a late-night photography walk-around tonight I’ll tell you that.

And thanks to Dave and his wife from Nottingham and now New Brunswick who looked after me so well here this evening. They have given me quite a few hints to follow up.