… that I decided in the end to go to Noz while I was out at the shops because I had a lovely tea tonight, and I’ll be having more of the same over the next few days.
Last night though I wasn’t all that sure and I was still undecided when I went to bed. And although it took me just as long as usual to go off to sleep I had a better night’s sleep for once, such as it was.
When the alarm went off this morning I was dead to the world and it was quite a battle to haul myself out of bed before the second alarm went off.
After the medication I caught up with a few bits and pieces and then set off for the shops.
What made me decide to go to Noz was that there was a parking space free right outside the front door so I didn’t have to go far.
And I did well in there today with quite a lot of stuff. Some of those frozen Chinese things that I had a while back, some Kale and Quinoa burgers, a new light fitting for the toilet, and a small pyrex bowl (I’ve been after one of these for a while) smaller than the standard size to fit in the air fryer with room to spare, and some other stuff too.
But pide of place was some more stuff from that German vegan company, such as a bake-it-yourself vegan apple and cinnamon roll and some vegan chocolate ice-cream. So my pudding tonight was marvellous. I’ve given up having dessert but as long as there’s this cinnamon roll and ice-cream I’ll carry on and make an exception.
And there are dramatic new developments at LeClerc. They are now selling vegan cheese of course and have been for a while, and they had some more in the short-date clearance bins too (“had” being the operative word here ‘cos it’s not there now, the ground’s all flat).
But now, even more progress is being made because they are now stocking vegan sausages. Wonders will never cease. We’re definitely being dragged kicking and screaming into the 21st Century here.
Although I have a few packs of vegan sausages in the freezer I bought another one today. Not because I needed it but as a sign of solidarity. It’ll encourage them to keep on stocking them.
But two weeks on the run they’ve had no cheap frozen peas in. Just expensive ones. I think that someone has really been taking the peas over this.
Back here I made my cheese on toast and some nice strong coffee but regrettably crashed out. And crashed out good and proper too. Not once but twice and that’s depressing.
When I’ve not been asleep (which wasn’t often) I’ve been working on my Canada notes, hunting around the cemetery in Cartwright for the grave of Garnett Lethbridge.
The story told around Cartwright is that Lethbridge befriended a young fox-fur farmer called Clarence Birdseye whose farm at Muddy Bay was failing, and taught him a little technique that he’d learnt for freezing his catch of fish when he was out on the ice.
Birdseye took copious notes and when his fox farm failed in 1917 he went back to the USA to develop the technique that Lethbridge had taught him.
Birdseye went on to make millions while Lethbridge caught the flu in 1918 and died in poverty, being buried in a pauper’s grave.
Well, he would have been, except that the pauper objected so he had to have one of his own.
As an aside, in the Census of 1911 there were 49 inhabitants of Cartwright. And 17 people were buried in the cemetery who had died of flu in November 1918.
As another aside, in the period 1911-1921 the population of the island of Newfoundland rose by 8.5%. In the same period in Labrador the population fell from 3949 to 3774 despite a net migration gain of 106 people.
But returning to Lethbridge, his grandfather was an interesting character. He came from Devon and was one of the first settlers on the coast. A tinsmith by trade, he came to Labrador with Hunt and Henley when their salmon-canning factory opened .
When the Hudson’s Bay Company bought out Hunt and Henley’s business they closed down the plant. Lethbridge senior was so incensed that he refused to have any dealings with them and on his deathbed ordered that all of his possessions, including his boat, should be burnt so as not to fall into the hands of the company.
There were exciting times on the Labrador coast all those years ago. I would have been quite at home there.
Especially when you have a close look at the Censuses for that period, and two columns that caught my eye. The enumerators had to record the number of people who were “crazy or lunatic” or “idiotic or silly”. And I’m sure that you think that I’m making this up.
There was also time to go through the dictaphone and see what happened during the night. There was something going on in Guildford to do with some wrestler’s wife who was going to take on some kind of role in running the town and maybe going to be given the keys to the treasury. That led to some kind of scandal. Members of the council ended up being impeached. As a result of a huge press campaign coverage it never happened but there was a little more contentious issues of a similar nature somewhere else in the vicinity too that attracted a lot of attention
Later on a group of us had been out somewhere in Germany on a tram. We’d been out and had to catch this tram. The tran station was absolutely heaving. When the tram pulled in we had to fight to board. Everyone was on one side of the track but we noticed that it was a single track and there was a platform on the other side. When the tram pulled in we swung round the other side where there were fewer people and swarmed aboard. We managed to grab a seat. It was an extremely uncomfortable seat but we managed it all the same. At some point we alighted. There had been some issues about the railway line. We’d been cutting up these railway lines. We suddenly realised that we’d cut the railway line for the tram. We were sitting here with this big square-profile length of wood like a chevron or a demi-chevron or something. We suddenly realised that this was our tram. A couple that had gone past weren’t actually ours. They were much smaller anyway. We eventually ended up back at home, or at least I did. Something had happened and the washing machine hadn’t been put back in the right place. There was some coffee in the pot so I poured it. It was cold. I went to put it in the microwave. I thought that I would have to move the washing machine before I go. I wondered how I was actually going to do it. I suddenly had this eerie feeling that here I am in the house, the doors are open and there’s coffee around but there isn’t anyone. There should be people so why aren’t there any people? It was really weird, all this, about what was actually happening in this house.
Tea was a salad and chips and something that I found in the freezer that had been in there since the Dawn of Time. “Surely not very old” I hear you say. “Well, geologically speaking, I suppose not” I reply. And followed my a bit of the cinnamon roll and ice cream.
Tomorrow is Sunday so I’m having a lie-in. And I have to make some pizza dough too because I’ve run out. The big question is whether there’s enough room in the freezer to store the excess, but I’ll worry about that at the appropriate moment.
Right now I have other fish to fry, like a nice warm bed.
