Tag Archives: heath robinson

Saturday 28th September 2019 – IT’S REALLY EASY …

… to see what’s going on when you have a lead-light, the correct facilities and the correct tools.

We managed to move Strider this morning by climbing underneath with a light and a spanner and manually putting him in neutral. Then I started him up and Darren (who is braver than I ever imagined) climbed back underneath while my foot was on the brake of course, and with the spanner knocked him back into second gear.

Like that, I could drive him into the workshop and straight over the inspection pit where we had a closer look from a much more comfortable position with a proper inspection light.

And sure enough, everything seems to work exactly fine as it should, except that we could see that the plastic clip that (in theory) holds the cable onto the pivot is no longer there.

In principle, we could quite simply wedge the cable in place with some kind of Heath-Robinson invention, but there’s nothing as permanent as a temporary solution, I’ll forget about it, and it will let go when I’m somewhere in the depths of darkest Labrador 300 miles from any kind of help, in the middle of a snowstorm.

May as well do the job properly first as last, and I’m not so desperate for transport right now, so there will be a new gearchange cable and clip coming on Monday.

Last night despite an evening rather later than I had hoped, I had a decent night’s sleep. But still tons of stuff has mysteriously found its way onto the dictaphone during the night. So I wonder what that’s all about.

I didn’t have much time to lounge about though because I had to hitch a lift up to the tyre depot with Rachel who starts work at 08:00.

Just settling down with my morning coffee and my bagel for breakfast when Rosemary rang me up. She’s in the UK right now watching the chaos as the UK sinks beneath the waves. It seems to be quite exciting there right now, but I’m not in a hurry to find out.

We were quite busy today and it wasn’t until about 11:45, 15 minutes to closing time, that we could deal with Strider.

For a change I came home with Darren in the big Chevy lorry, bringing my bass with me. High time I had another run up and down the scales.

The girls all left to go shopping so I made myself some sandwiches and then knuckled down to work.

What I’ve been doing today is to start to add into the blog the missing entries from when I was on board The Good Ship Ve … errr … Ocean Endeavour. I had hoped to wait until I was back home when I could deal with the photos as well, but my fans are clamouring to know what I got up to while I was away and I can no longer resist the pressure.

At the moment I’ve just come back from visiting the Dynjandi waterfall in Iceland and by the skin of my teeth I’ve managed so far to avoid too many faux-pas like treading on the bombe surprise, whistling on board ship or knocking someone base over apex out of a zodiac.

But it’s early days yet and there is plenty of time for me to get into mischief. If you start here and work your way forward, you’ll see how far I’ve come to date.

Another thing that I’ve done is to book my flight in the general direction of homeward. And, sad as it is to say it, my regular hotel in Brussels is booked up so I’m having to go to another disreputable cat-house somewhere.

God help me!

Tea tonight should have been a flatbread pizza but could I ‘eck as like find them. That is, until I was halfway through cooking something else when I put my hand straight on them. They will have to do for another time now.

So now it’s late. Darren is asleep, Hannah is back but the others are still gallivanting about somewhere. And why not? Tomorrow is Sunday, a Day of Rest with the wonderful Taylor Breakfast Brunch that brings visitors from miles around.

High time we had a few luxuries around here.

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Wednesday 25th March 2015 – I DID WELL …

… to light a little fire up here last night. I awoke to a relatively balmy 16.2°C and yet outside we had 5cms of snow. So much for Spring, hey?

And I’d been on my travels during the night too. I had aroused the antipathy of the factory bully who ended up chasing me around the factory brandishing an enormous club. He was intercepted by a few of his colleagues who persuaded him to use a slightly smaller club. But it all ended happily ever after as I ended up walking across the park towards some buildings in the distance, hand in hand (and later, arm round the waist) of a girl who, over the past two or three weeks, has appeared out of nowhere to accompany me on several of my nocturnal adventures. I’ve absolutely no idea at all what has prompted the strange inclusion of this unexpected companion, no matter how sweet many of the people in the park described the pair of us last night.

After breakfast I used up the rest of the cheap varnish on the window and the shelves in the wardrobe, and then I varnished the floor with the first coat. After that, I went off to Montlucon as I predicted.

First stop was Pionsat to sort out the boulangère. Sophie, the regular Friday livreuse, is off sick and so they’ve been taking on anyone that they can get. That explains all of the confusion about the delivery of Friday’s bread, and I hope that we’ve managed to sort it out.

At the LIDL I witnessed a very disagreeable incident of a young guy verbally abusing the young female cashier over the price of an article (but he cleared off before I could have a word in his shell-like) and then at the Auchan I stocked up with the next month’s major supply of food.

At Brico-Depot I managed to forget the floor-join and the brush for the bedroom door but I managed to fix myself up with some tackle to make a couple of Heath-Robinson hanging rails for the wardrobe, as well as a couple more 4-watt LED light bulbs. I also bumped into Pete Marsh and his friend, who were stocking up on supplies for their next contract.

I was disappointed though – the cheap but good varnish is no longer carried. It seems that the supplier has closed down. So to be on the safe side, I bought another large tin of the expensive stuff just in case. If I don’t use it, it’ll come in handy for the ground floor.

Problem solved though over the road at mr Bricolage. They had big tins of cheap clear varnish on offer so I bought one,as well as the glass that I need to do the window over the door. I’ve managed to bring that home in one piece – it’ll be interesting to see if I can manage to get it into the doorframe without dropping it.

NOZ came up with nothing so I came home, crashed out for an hour and then made myself a Heath-Robinson meal of a handful of pasta, sone peas, carrots and green beans, and some olive oil and mustard sauce. Cooked on the oven because I’ve had the fire on again tonight. The left-over wood from last night-s fire and a floorboard offcut and that was sufficient. It’s amazing what you can do with a good fire.

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Wednesday 18th September 2013 – ET IN ACADIA EGO

… but more about that in a bit.

My overnight spot was excellent and was a wonderful place to pick, and so up and about at an early hour I went for a walk along the Dune de Bouctouche – all 11 kms of it (the dune, that is, I walked … errr … somewhat less than that).

dune de bouctouche st édouard new brunswick
The morning was the best morning yet on my adventures and a brisk walk by the seaside blew away all of the cobwebs, and quite right too because the wind was a little bit frisky to say the least. The wind turbines on Prince Edward Island way across the Nothumberland Strait were going round like the clappers

Here, there wasn’t a cloud in the sky as you can see, and the sky was almost as deep-blue as the water. It really was a pleasure to be out and about.

wooden truss bridge rexton new brunswickFrom here I went off along the coast looking to see how many of the old wooden truss bridges are still left standing, having noticed that a few that I counted when I was here in 2003 have been replaced by modern concrete bridges.

The one near the First Nation settlement at Rexton is still here as you can see, but it’s really only just about standing

wooden truss bridge rexton new brunswickIt’s in a totally dreadful state of repair as you can see, thoroughly eaten away by rot and woodworm in several places. Some of the wooden trusses have been replaced and others have had some kind of Heath-Robinson repairs that have done little to fix the problem.

I don’t reckon that it will be much longer before this bridge ends up in the river underneath with a couple of car-loads of pasengers down there with it.

And there was another one equally as bad on the way out of St Louis de Kent and that’s on a main road with heavy traffic too.

acadian flag st louis de kent new brunswickTalking of St Louis de Kent, this town is said to be the birthplace of the Acadian flag and here flying on the bluff that overlooks the river and the valley below is probably the biggest Acadian Flag that the world has ever seen.

The guy that designed it, and did so much to foster the Acadian “identity” was Marcel-Francois Richard, a priest here round about the turn of the 20th Century and they celebrate his fame in something of a big way with statues and plaques and, of course, the flag. But not, so it seems, a chorus of Ave Stella Maris, the Acadian anthem (unless I’m going deaf).

rexton church new brunswick Bonar LawTalking of priests and the like, and going back to Rexton, here is the parish church of the aforementioned and the priest of it 150 years ago is by no means as famous as his son ever was.

Andrew Bonar Law was the only British Prime Minister ever to be born outside the UK and if you read his biography it says that he was born in Kingston New Brunswick. However, if you go to Kingston they know nothing about it. This is because there were formerly two Kingstons in New Brunswick and it all became confusing and so 100 years ago one of them, this one, changed its name to Rexton

Bonar law’s dad was vicar of this church and it was in the manse next door that Junior was born.

So with more bridges and beaches and yacht harbours and the like I’m now on the campsite of the Kouchibouguac National Park for tonight. It’s nice and peaceful at the moment but now that I’ve arrived, you watch that all change.

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