Tag Archives: mobile phone charger

Tuesday 18th July 2017 – CRASH! BANG!

No, I’m not doing the washing-up.

There I was at lunchtime sitting on my wall at lunchtime eating my butties and admiring the view (and watching the Grima depart for Jersey with a full load of stuff on board) and thinking to myself “it’s going a bit dark across the bay round by Cancale”.

Back here at about 15:30 the most enormous hurricane sprang up – totally astonishing; I stuck my head out of the window and I could see the wild storm lashing the rocks.

About 5 minutes later it went as black as pitch and I thought “hey up – we’ll get the lot in a minute!” and I hadn’t even finished saying it when there was the most impressive flash of lightning followed by an incredible thunderclap.

And then we had the rain.

Sheets and sheets of it, with the orchestra and light show rumbling on and on.

It all cleared up after about half an hour and we were then back in the sunshine. But that was so impressive. I really enjoyed the show.

What else that was impressive was that I was out like a light last night and slept right though until the alarm went off.

I don’t remember too much abut my little voyage last night though. Except that it was in Luxembourg – or was it Liechtenstein – and a visit to the country’s tax office, only to find that because of the small size of the country there wasn’t enough room for the Government offices there so they were all in the next town in a neighbouring country.

Today, I’ve been pressing on with the blog. And most of the time has been spent on just one particular page. 2300 or so words on there, and it’s hard to believe that there wasn’t even a placeholder there before.

Not only that, I’ve probably done another 9 or 10 too and I’m in April 2011. And I would have done even more had I not … errr … had a little rest.

Won’t be so easy in a bit though because there’s a huge mess of pages to untangle from when I was in the UK. It’s hard to believe that I went from March 2009 to early summer 2011 without setting foot in the Perfidious Albion except for a day trip to pick up the tile cutter.

But then again, apart from a quick day trip for Terry’s slates, I’ve not been there since December 2012. And I can’t say that I miss it any. My future is well and truly here.

And those of you with long memories will remember me moaning a while back about a data cable for my Canadian mobile phone, and Rhys using the medium of the “comments” page to show me on that he had seen?

Well, it arrived in the post today.

So many grateful thanks from me, and you will be receiving a plain brown envelope in the post shortly after I set foot in Montreal.

The comments facility on this blog is a powerful thing. Why don’t you try it some time?

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Saturday 17th June 2017 – THIS VACUUM CLEANER …

… that I bought yesterday isn’t half the genoux de l’abeille as they might say around here.

It might be only small, and it might be only cheap but it has the kind of suction for which a Conservative MP would pay good money in a back street massage parlour in Soho.

Yes, I’ve been cleaning and tidying up – well, sort-of_ish anyway. Because I had a brainwave. Self-motivation is not my strongest point, as you all know, and seeing as how Liz is on her own right now, Terry having gone back to The Land That Time Forgot to sort out the health issues of his mother and his daughter, I’ve invited her round for lunch tomorrow.

That means that I shall have to have the place looking at least presentable by the time that she comes round, and that’s not a bad idea at all. And so I made a sort-of start.

If I do another hour or two tomorrow morning it won’t be too bad I suppose. But I do like this vacuum cleaner. In fact, you can say that I’m almost as impressed with it as I am with my galvanised steel dustbin.

The tidying up involved putting away a pile of papers too (and there’s still more to go) and also sorting out my Canadian travel bag. For those of you who are not regular readers of this rubbish, I have a small bag with all of my 120-volt equipment in it – such as an AA – AAA battery charger, a couple of leads for electrical appliances, and all of the ‘phone stuff.

And it’s a good job that I did too because the data/charging cable for the North American phone doesn’t work (I remember that I had this problem last year) and I broke the car charger. And so I am in difficulty here. I shall have to think of a cunning plan.

Another thing that Bane of Britain seems to have done is to mix up the clean clothes that he washed the other day with the dirty clothes that he’s been wearing ever since. And that’s fraught with danger, isn’t it?

We had another struggle to leave the stinking pit this morning, although I was early down at the magasin de presse for my baguette. And with the boss not being there, I ended up with a rather miserable baguette too.

Lunchtime saw me up on the cliff above the harbour with my butties and book. It was another beautiful afternoon. I was up there for quite a while too in the glorious weather, but was eventually burnt out of my position so I came back here instead.

Tea was more of the curry stuff, but I’ve also prepared a tofu marinade. Tofu is pretty tasteless so it needs to be soaked in stuff. Mine was cooked with garlic, onions, pepper and curry powder (I wish that I had remembered to buy some sage and rosemary) and it’ll sit in that until tomorrow evening. I’ll cook a handful of lentils in the slow cooker too tomorrow morning and that will be the filling for the pie that I’m going to make. I’ll be having the oven on for the pizza, and so I can bake the pie at the same time.

I hope that it will be nice.

Ohhh – and Rhys – talking of cunning plans, if you are on your trips around the Dollar Stores, keep your eyes open for a data cable and a car charger for a Samsung T746.

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Friday 9th September 2016 – THAT WAS A MUCH BETTER …

… night last night. Even though I had to make a few trips down the corridor I did manage to have something of a decent sleep – right through to when the alarm went off. And I was on my travels last night, although if you are probably eating your lunch right now you don’t want to hear about them.

I had breakfast with Rachel and once I had organised myself, I had a task to perform.

Did I mention that a mouse seems to have found its way into the back of Strider? It hibernated in there over the winter and you can imagine that the mess that it has made is quite considerable. And so I resolved to empty everything out of the back and give it a good clean.

Of course, these days, everything takes me ten times longer to do than it did before, and emptying Strider was no exception.

One of the storage boxes was broken and it was in there that the mouse had lodged, so the box and most of its contents were filed under CS. A pile of other stuff followed it too, and once Strider was empty I gave him a good brush out and all the mess was removed.

I’ve redesigned the bed slightly too so that works better (that aggressive rough-cut saw that I bought last year is an impressive tool) but I can’t finish it off as the batteries for the Ryobi plus One drill are flat (on charge even as we speak).

Once I’d had lunch, I crashed out for an hour or so (can’t stand the pace these days, can I?) and then I went downstairs to start to reassemble everything.

strider ford ranger rear box campîng centreville new brunswick canada september septembre 2016And here’s the finished product, such as I had been able to reach at that particular point. It’s comparatively tidy in there as you can see and we have the Canadian Tire fold-up chair in the background and the little Walmart folding table in the foreground. You’d be surprised at just how comfortable it can be in there.

But the condensation on the aluminium roof is the big issue as you know once the temperature cools down. If I do manage to make it back here another year I’ll have to attend to that issue.

While I was out there organising myself, Darren came back from work. He was stopping off on his way to Woodstock to do one or two things, and so I hitched a ride. By the time we got to Woodstock we were half a million strong, so it was pretty crowded in the truck, but there was enough room for a new tote box from Walmart – a nice colour-coded purple one to go with the light green one, the black one and the blue one.

Back here after tea I loaded up the new tote box with what was left from the damaged one and added a few bits and pieces that were lying around all over the place, and now the tidying is completed.

We have had a minor inconvenience though. I’d been charging up my Canadian mobile phone with the 12-volt car charger, but when I removed it from the socket I left half of it behind. I need to disconnect the battery and pull out the missing bits with a pair of long-nosed pliers, and hope that it will all reassemble. It’s the “good” lighter socket too.

All of this has worn me out considerably today but at least it’s a job well done. I didn’t feel at all guilty about having an early night. And so checking my mails, I found that I had finally received the proposal form for Strider’s insurance. I need to print it out, fill it in and fax it off (and pay for it of course) and as soon as I can do that, I’ll have the insurance card in the next post.

Strider needs his safety check (the equivalent of an MoT or a controle technique) and then his licence tags, and we will then be ready for the off.

I fancy a week or ten days by the seaside.

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Saturday 3rd September 2016 – ONE OF THE THINGS …

… that is pretty much guaranteed to get my goat is the general unco-operative spirit of people who seem to deliberately set out to obstruct and inconvenience every single one of their fellow human-beings. And I had one of those on the train today from Leuven to Brussels. Here I was, struggling with my mammoth suitcase and there was a family, with pushchairs and all kind of encombrances blocking the passageway, and they simply sat there and watched as I struggled my way down the aisle.

You can tell that I’m leaving Leuven and heading closer to Brussels, on the first leg of my voyage elsewhere.

Despite being thoroughly exhausted after my walk around the city yesterday – so much so that I had an early night, and despite two trips down the corridor, I was awake quite early – round about 06:20 or thereabouts. And I’d been on my travels during the night too – but then again you don’t want to know too much about this seeing as how you are probably eating your breakfast.

After breakfast I packed up and sorted everything out. By the time that I had done this, it was midday and so I went and fetched Caliburn. Strawberry Moose had quite a surprise as I stuffed him into his suitcase, and then I took that up to my room and took down everything that I don’t need. I then took Caliburn back to his little hidey-hole and walked back.

On the way back I bought two baguettes – two being necessary because there is no other way of my obtaining any food tomorrow during the next leg of my journey so I have to make butties. I had lunch and made the butties for tomorrow and then packed my suitcase and sorted out everything that I need.

And here I have had a disaster – I don’t have the charger for my other telephone. Well, I do, but there are two of them and one doesn’t work and it’s the one that doesn’t work that I have managed to bring with me. So this is going to cause a major problem tomorrow late afternoon.

I’d also forgotten the saucepan. I had to wash that and then walk back to Caliburn with it, otherwise I would only forget it. I know that it’s not much good, but it’s the only one that I have at the moment.

And another thing – I’ve solved the mystery of why I always seem to pick up an infection, a heavy cold or cough (or both) when I’m in my room, which goes almost as soon as I leave. The reason for this is that there is about 6 feet of dust and fluff underneath my bed. This cleaner-person just seems to clean where he can see and that’s your lot. No wonder it’s affected me so much.

But, as I have said before, I’m not complaining. I had an important reduction on the room rate due to the time that I was spending there and the price of less than €26 per night, breakfast included, was an excellent deal.

By 16:30 I was ready to leave and so I hit the streets. Dragging the monster suitcase behind me I made it to the bus stop and then on the bus to the station. And despite the difficulties I made it to Brussels all the same. And I got lost in Bruxelles-Midi – it’s all changed since I was last here and what with repairs and renovations and bits closed off, it took me an age to find my way around to the Thalys lounge.

It was 17:15 when I arrived and my train was due to depart at 19:15, and we could board it half an hour earlier, which seemed like a good idea to me. I sat around for a while and then went off in search of food because there won’t be any at all where I’m going tonight. I ended up with a veggie burger and chips and a bottle of pop, quite over-priced (which is only to be expected when you have a captive audience) but wasn’t as disgusting as I was fearing.

Just for a change, I was a mere third on the train and my suitcase, with His Nibs inside, was first on the luggage rack. That’s much more like it than the mad scramble that occurs at Lyon Part-Dieu (which is where this train is heading, incidentally).

Not that it made much difference though, because there was hardly anyone on it. I’ve never been on such an empty TGV – or have I? The one that I took from Lille to Charles de Gaulle a couple of years ago was quite empty, so I recall. It didn’t fill up much more at Lille and we shot off into the sunset from there still pretty-much empty.

At the airport (yes, I’m at the airport) we had the usual half-hour wait for the shuttle bus, and when I finally arrived at my hotel, the hotel had no trace of my booking, even though I had the agency’s confirmation. This led to a very interesting 30 minutes at the reception desk, but luckily the bridal suite hadn’t been booked and so I’m spending the night in 5-Star luxury in an emperor-sized bed. And you can’t say fairer than that, can you?

So an early start tomorrow, and we are off on our travels again. See you soon!

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Saturday 21st April 2012 – I’ve been slowly …

… organising myself today. And I mean “slowly” as well. But who knows? I might even manage to do it too.

First piece of good news came in the post. If you remember, I bought myself a really good mobile phone in Canada in September. But when I came to use it in February, it wouidn’t power up, no matter what I did to it. Anyway, to cut a long story short … “hooray” – ed … I noticed last Saturday that one of the guys at the football had exactly the same phone. So I accordingly took mine down on Sunday and we tried his battery in my phone – and it worked fine.

So thinking “battery”, I ordered a new charger off the internet. Anyway, the charger arrived this morning so I plugged it into the phone and sure enough, it powered itself up.

Putting some credit on the UK phone that Percy Penguim gave me in December – the one with the UK SIM card in it – that’s not proving to be so easy. I can top it up from overseas using a credit card, sure enough, but when it comes to “please enter the numbers of your postcode” it all goes off the rails. “You have made a mistake” says the recorded message. But ohhh no I haven’t. Well, Perhaps I have. But it’s not the mistake that they are thinking of – the mistake I made was using a SIM card from O2 – a poxy introspective xenophobic British company that totally fails to consider the possibility that someone with a foreign postcode might want to use its service.

No wonder Britain has come off the rails, when it can’t cope with “overseas”.

But astonishing news on the travel front. I had planned to go to the airport from Montlucon, meaning a change at Bourges, another at Vierzon, then trying to cross Paris on the Metro and then taking another train from another station in Paris. And how I hate that journey too. But for just €20 more, I can take a train from Riom to Lyon, and then the TGV direct from Lyon to the airport. No struggling across Paris, no lugging heavy suitcases about up and down stairs, no fighting with Paris commuters. And the TGV is soooooo much more comfortable as well. Even better – my return flight lands at 06:12 in the morning and there’s a return train journey following exactly the same route, at 08:52. That gives me time to find my baggage, find the station, have a coffee and breakfast and I’ll be home by 14:00 all nicely relaxed.

At my destination in Montreal though, there was a slight hitch. The hotel that I’ve been using has been under repair and refurbishment for years and so prices have been ridiculously low. And it’s also in the part of the city where I need to be, for all kinds of good reasons too. But when I went to book it just now, it’s clear that the extensive renovations are now finished as the prices have gone through the roof.

Anyway, there’s one of these chain hotels not too far from the airport, and they have a special offer on right now. Furthermore, three of my most favourite shops are only just round the corner, within walking distance in fact if I fancy walking. So that’s that sorted out too.

At the football, there are no matches at Pionsat this weekend and so I saw Marcillat play Ygrande. A totally astonishing 3-3 draw – astonishing because Ygrande scored one of their goals and from the kickoff Marcillat roared straight up the pitch and scored themselves. And blow me down if 10 minutes later we had exactly the same thing again – a carbon copy. BUt the highlight of the match was the referee. I’ve never ever seen a game so well-refereed as this one tonight. So much so that I went over to the ref after the match and told him so. Credit where credit is due.

Tomorrow I’m cutting my hair, and then I’m packing. Strawberry Moose is already packing his bags and is quite looking forward to the journey.

And so am I

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