Tag Archives: djervushka

Sunday 15th January 2017 – I WAS RIGHT …

… about suffering today for my efforts of yesterday.

Although I had a brief awakening at about 06:10, I don’t really remember anything until 07:00 when the alarm went off, and although I remember switching it off again, the next thing that I remember was the alarm going off at 07:15 for the second call. That’s not happened for months, if not years, that’s for sure. I didn’t even have to leave my bed during the night, never mind going on a nocturnal ramble.

I was alone at breakfast and once I came down here, I crashed out until 09:30. And then I wasn’t up to much for quite a while. And aching too! Yes, I knew that I had had a tough day yesterday.

Once I’d gathered my wits, which doesn’t take long these days, I rewrote yesterday’s entry – all 2004 words of it – and included the photographs that I had taken. That took me most of the day, as it happened. It’s not very often that I din’t feel up to that kind of thing.

For lunch I had my butties, using the loaf that I had bought yesterday morning. And I was joined by the boy-friend who was making a coffee. It’s the djervushka‘s last day today and she said goodbye to me. But I’m not alone. There’s an Asian woman here as well as some others on the ground floor whom I have yet to meet. I’m not even sure if there really is anyone there, but there is certainly some kind of noise from down below.

My pizza and garlic bread tonight was excellent. I think that I’ve finally sussed out the little table-top oven because everything came out superbly. I thoroughly enjoyed it.

coconut vegan chocolate fennel flavoured sweets aachen germany january janvier 2017Talking of enjoying it, I forgot to mention these yesterday.

While we were in Aachen yesterday we walked into a shopping arcade where there was an absolutely overwhelming smell of licorice. Further enquiries revealed a stall selling home-made sweets, some of which were fennel-flavoured.

Having checked that they were vegan, I treated myself to a packet. And they are delicious.

Not only that, in an ordinary run-of-the-mill supermarket, they were selling vegan chocolate. And one lot was made with coconut milk and contained coconut gratings. And this is the nicest chocolate that I have have ever tasted.

I’m well-impressed with this and it makes me feel much better.

So now, it’s early-night time yet again. And I’ll probably have a bad night tonight seeing as how I’ve done nothing at all. I seem to sleep so much better when I move about during the evening.

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Friday 13th January 2017 – I WOKE UP THIS MORNING …

… du deh du der deh … to find that the snows of winter have once more been covering our landduring the night.

Nothing like as impressive as the other morning (not that that was particularly impressive) but snow just the same. And just like me, it didn’t last all that long either.

And that’s right – I didn’t last long either. I’d had a bad night and had an awakening at about 03:15, but this time I don’t know why I awoke like that. At 04:15 I was still awake too and I didn’t feel at all like going back to sleep, but nevertheless I must have done because the alarm awoke me yet again.

I was alone at breakfast at first, but someone whom I didn’t recognise at all came to join me later. A new tenant because I had to show him around and show him how everything works in the kitchen.

Back down here I did some work, reading this paper that I talked about the other day, and then I had some real work to do. I didn’t mention it yesterday but I had made a start on defrosting the freezer compartments in the fridges here. I have spoken about the oven chips and how they come in big bags. There is in fact the space to put a bag like that although you might not think so seeing how the ice compartments are full to the brim with ice, the doors having been left open at some time. With my mini-wok and boiling water, I managed to defrost everything after a while and clean them out. Now we have room for all kinds of stuff and quite rightly so.

Just before lunch I went out to the supermarket for the baguette, and ended up having a good chat to the girl who seems to manage the place. We were there for about 10 minutes chatting, although I probably understood as much as one word in 20.

After lunch, I went down to Caliburn to bring back some more stuff and the laundry sop – braving the snow because by now the snow was teeming down quite heavily – although it didn’t stick at all.

The launderette was next and I washed a ton of stuff. And now I have all clean clothes, as well as three odd socks and I’ve no idea how I managed that. But it always happens, doesn’t it? There’s a sock goblin living even in launderette washing machines.

Back here I had a crash-out and then made tea. A quick tea out of a tin seeing as tomorrow I’m footballing and Sunday is pizza night.

The djervushka is still here too, but with a young boy in tow tonight. So I can cross her off my list, which is a shame. It also means that I won’t have much of a sleep as her room is directly above mine and we know how these beds creak.

I’m still going to try got an early night though. If the weather is reasonable tomorrow there’s a possibility of a day out. We shall see.

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Thursday 12th January 2017 – I’M STILL STRUGGLING …

… with these perishing sleep issues.

An early night, a film on the laptop and there I was, gone. Only to wake up a short while later and take an absolute age to go back to sleep again.

But I was on my travels too during the night. My niece Rachel was in Canada trying to work out some connections with associated companies and was phoning around. She asked me to help out too, and one of them that I called was a taxi company in … errr … Detroit, about 1,000 miles away. And when I did phone them up, the girl who answered the ‘phone had the air of being totally gormless, and I couldn’t understand why Rachel would – firstly – want to associate her business with a business so far away and – secondly – why she would want her business to be associated with a firm that was so clueless.

Alone again at breakfast, and then back down here to carry on with my research. I’ve been wading through this report from these Finnish geologists and found some more exciting stuff that might change a few of my – and other peoples’ – perceptions.

And that is that the Moravian missionaries in the north of Labrador kept very detailed records of day-to-day life in their mission stations for a period of more than 150 years. And you’ll see where this is leading.

In my writings, I’ve commented on several occasions about how certain places, such as the Norse landing sites, don’t look like the kind of places that I would choose for landing. But my opinions might have to change.

Labrador and Newfoundland were, in the Ice Age, covered with ice to a depth of at least 4,000 feet and that has an enormous weight. Since the end of the Ice Age and the melting of a lot of the ice, the land has slowly been rising. Obviously the weight of the ice had compressed the earth, the soil and the rock, and now the pressure is off the land, it’s springing slowly back into shape.

The Moravians kept records for this at some of their stations, and a change of level of a rise of 15 feet was recorded at one station “in one generation”. Extrapolate that out over 1,000 years and you are going to have a totally different shape of coastline, and the raised beaches that you see all along the coast of Labrador and Newfoundland give ample testimony for that.

Looking at the coastline today may give you a totally different idea of what the land might have been like in recent history.

At lunchtime I went out for my baguette and then at some point in the proceedings I crashed out for half an hour or so. A brief exchange of pleasantries with my djervushka and then the second half of my mega-meal which was just as delicious as last night.

I’ll try again to have a decent sleep and tomorrow I have work to do. I need to go to Caliburn for the washing soap, and then to the launderette to wash my clothes. I’m running out.

But winter is on its way. Snow is forecast for the next few days and the temperature is threatening to drop.

Minus 9°C might not be cold in Canadian, or even Auvergnat terms, but it’s cold enough for here.

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Wednesday 11th January 2017 – WHAT A BAD NIGHT!

Just as I said, I was in bed early last night, and was soon asleep. But then I awoke at about 00:45 when a noise on the radio awoke me, so I switched off the laptop and went back to sleep.

And then it all happened.

All I can say is that I must have had a nightmare, because I had one of those dreams that was extremely disturbing and which made me sit bolt upright. and it wasn’t just the fact of the dream either but the person who was the central character and all of the people who surrounded her. It was such a graphic, disturbing dream that I couldn’t go back to sleep and ended up typing it up on the laptop to make sure that I didn’t forget it.

But I must have gone back to sleep because the alarm awoke me at 07:00, and for some reason we had a most astonishing cacophony from the church bells and I’m not quite sure why. But never mind anyone else in the building, it probably would have awoken the dead too.

At breakfast I was on my own, and then I came back down here to carry on with my research. I started to read the report of that Finnish expedition to Labrador. And it’s come up with a couple of interesting facts.

  1. There’s a lengthy discussion of the Churchill Falls and the Bowdoin Canyon into which the Falls descends. A huge pile of statistics that will be of great interest when I start to write about my trip out in the Wilderness of Labrador to visit the Falls
  2. Even more interestingly, you need to remember that this is the period 1937-1939, long before the discovery of the Norse remains at L’Anse aux Meadows on Newfoundland. And yet there’s a map in the preface of this expedition’s report where they discuss the Norse settlement of Newfoundland, and as far as the small scale of the map can isolate, the expedition places Vinland in round about the same area that Helge Ingstad discovered the Norse remains (although Ingstad hesitates to identify them as “Vinland” and as you already know, I don’t think that it corresponds at all with the description given in the Norse Sagas). It’s a little-known fact that L’Anse aux Meadows was identified in 1914 as the location of “Vinland” by an insurance agent and amateur historian called William A Munn in his book “Wineland voyages;: Location of Helluland, Markland, and Vinland”, but Munn isn’t listed as a source by the Expedition, and so I’m now more intrigued than ever before about the source of this Expedition’s information about the location

Just before lunch I went out to the supermarket on the corner for a baguette and came back with a black plastic box as well – another one in the waste bin and I now have a dozen of them ready for packing, whenever that might be.
And I also had a major crash-out this afternoon too, but that’s hardly a surprise.

Tea was delicious – potatoes, carrots, broccoli, gravy and a vegan Linda McCartney pie. That was the best meal that I’ve had for quite a while. And my djervushka from the Ukraine was there too. I have to make the most of my time with her because she’s leaving on Friday, having found a studio for herself. I wonder if she needs a flatmate?

And there are more new people here too – but I’ve not had the pleasure of their company as yet.

Tonight I’m looking forward to my bed. As well as having a shower and a shave, I have a clean bedroom and fresh bedding. I’m all set up for a good night’s sleep but whether or not I’ll have one is another thing.

Who – or what – is going to interrupt me tonight then?

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Tuesday 10th January 2017 – I TIDIED UP …

… this morning. In fact I spent a good 45 minutes making sure that my room was in really good, tidy condition (just for once).

Yesterday afternoon I’d had a knock on the door from the landlord’s sidekick. Would it be okay if they came by at midday and cleaned my room and changed everything around?

Of course it would, and so I spent all of that time making sure that everything was tidy and in its place, and then just before midday I headed into town.

I took my time, bought a pile of stuff in the Delhaize and then slowly wandered back here – to find that they hadn’t been. And here I am at 21:30 and they still haven’t been.

Last night I had my early night and was well-away. But at 01:30 I awoke to a loud noise on the laptop radio. And so I turned it off again and went back to sleep. And that was how I stayed until the alarm went off.

During the night I’d been travelling too – onto a stage where I was playing bass and singing in a rock group. But for some reason I couldn’t co-ordinate the singing with the bass playing and it was all coming out wrong. In fact it was quite a nightmare.

At breakfast I was joined by my Polish housemate (but not, unfortunately my Ukrainian djervushka which was a big disappointment. And immediately after breakfast, the Pole disappeared off with his suitcase. There’s a new arrival in his room but I don’t know who it is.

So apart from shopping and tidying up, I’ve been researching again today. I’ve found some exciting stuff too – the report of a Finnish archaeological expedition to Labrador in 1937 that came to an abrupt halt as the Finns were swept up in the Winter War against the Soviets. What’s exciting about this is that they report a story that they had heard in Newfoundland about a child in Labrador who was killed by a dog-team. This was denied by the inhabitants of the town, so they report, but yet I’ve seen a death certificate of a child in the town where the death has been described as ‘killed by dogs”.

And she’s not the only child so killed either. Look at the entry for 5th July 1941 as an example.

Not only that, there was some talk of the ancient lost (if not mythical) city of Brest being at Brador Bay rather than at Old Fort, following a discovery in 1968 of Basque artefacts there. But I also found the report of an archaeological dig at the site in 2014 where they concluded that it was actually an Inuit site with Basque artefacts having been recovered from elsewhere and reused
by the Inuit.

I was alone for tea, where I finished my kidney bean whatsit (and it was as good as I expected too) and now I’ll try for yet another early night. It’s quiet in here so I may as well take advantage of it. After all, it’s doing me good.

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