Tag Archives: revivalists

Monday 26th June 2023 – IT LOOKS AS IF …

… I might have to be going off on my travels again.

How I’m going to manage it, I really have no idea, but it’s something that I’ll need to work out and plan. It’s not going to be easy.

Especially when I will have to navigate myself to the depths of darkest Michigan at the end of November.

My niece’s second daughter has announced today that she will be marrying her boyfriend and she would like me to be there. That’s really nice of her and I appreciate the invitation very much.

What I can do, if I make it, is to kill several birds with one stone. I could fly to Ottawa to see my cousin, and then drive from there to Michigan by going north.

That would mean crossing into the USA at Bob Seger’s MACKINAW CITY – especially the site of Michilimackinac, the border fort that saw endless conrontations between the French and the native Americans, then the French and British, then the British and the native Americans and finally the Anglo-Canadians and the Euro-Americans.

However all of this is theoretic because at the moment I can’t even walk to the front door of the apartment without hanging on to bits of furniture.

None of the foregoing prevented me from rising from my stinking pit before the alarm went off again this morning. I was wide awake by 06:30 despite not going to bed until somewhat later than usual.

Once I’d had my medication I went for a shower and had a good clean-up ready for the nurse. He came round on time and gave me my injection today. I’m not sure for how long they’ll be doing this because although I sent off the details of my blood test to the hospital at Leuven, they haven’t contacted me yet.

There was some stuff on the dictaphone from the night. I was in New Zealand at one point, which was a surprise because that’s one country that I haven’t ever visited. There was something about a young girl swimmer who was being intimidated by someone. In the end I told her to come and share my apartment so that I could keep an eye on her and protect her if necessary from what was going on. Again there was much more to it than this. We’d been exploring the interior at some point and found everywhere completely muddy and uncomfortable to move around but I can’t remember now what happened about this bit

And later on there was a girl on whom I was very keen who was at University. She was going to the University’s annual meeting which was at Taranto in Italy. I was having a look at the map. I worked out that I could be there by road on Tuesday. I thought to myself that it might be a good idea if I took some time out and we met up. She wasn’t as keen on me as I was on her which I thought was a huge shame. I went round to see her at her house in Crewe – a semi-detached around the Kingsway area. We had a chat and were discussing whether I could take the motorway through Serbia or or drive across it then I’d get to see Belgrade and one or two other places. It was only something like 250 miles so I could do it in an afternoon if I pushed myself. We were chatting away and as I was leaving she gave me a kiss. I thought this really surprising. I set off, thinking that if I joined the motorway, went north and come back down the other motorway is it going to be as quick as driving on the old roads down to the ferry. I was busy working this out in my head and suddenly realised that I didn’t have my cap. I had to run back to the house. She had found it and was coming out of the house to give it to me. She handed it to me. I said something and she replied “well you have to keep your eye on your boyfriend, haven’t you?”. That was the first intimation that I had that maybe her feelings were starting to change. It took me just alittle by surprise. I tok the cap and said “see you on Tuesday. You will take some time out for me, won’t you?”.

And that makes a big change doesn’t it – me ending up by getting the girl. Usually someone from my family wanders along and throws the hammer into the works right at the crucial moment.

Today, while I’ve been sorting through some more of the hard drive I’ve ended up deleting more than 15GB of duplicate files and by my reckoning there is still a ton more to go through. That will keep me out of mischief.

Another thing that I’ve done today is to work out the chords for that song from the other night, SOULFIGHT.

Not for the first time, I have to say. I worked it out a few years ago and wrote them down in my notebook that is in the pocket of my jacket that was hanging up on a hook in a hotel in Calgary the last time that I saw it

Tea tonight was a stuffed pepper cooked in the air fryer. A frozen one out of the freezer so I cooked it at 160°C instead of 190°C and for 15 minutes instead of 10 minutes, and it cooked it really well, although another 5 minutes wouldn’t have hurt.

So now I’m off to bed. I have the last Welsh lesson of the year so I want to be on top form. There’s a lot of revision to do so I need to work at it. A good night’s sleep will do me some good although the way things are going that’s not very likely.

Not that I’ll be complaining though if I go for another ramble like last night and I end up getting the girl again.

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Saturday 24th June 2023 – I’VE DONE SOMETHING …

… today that I haven’t done in an absolute age.

Or, more to the point, I haven’t done something, the first time for an age, that I would usually do.

And that is that I haven’t been to the shops today. In fact, I’ve not even et foot out of the apartment.

After I’d had my medication and checked my mails and messages I did a quick lap around the kitchen to see what I needed today. I came up with bananas, pears, and that was about that.

As regular readers of this rubbish will recall, I’m not feeling myself right now, which is just as well, so there’s no point exerting myself for no good reason. Consequently I decided that I would stay in.

What was strange about that though was that for the first time for a while I’d had a decent sleep. Not a great deal of stuff on the dictaphone so I transcribed it in no time at all. There was a famous actor on board a ship last night, someone like Long John Baldry or like that. He was recounting his adventures on board this ship in some rather graphic detail. There was a lesson to be given over the ship’s radio so he went off to gather together his things to prepare for this lesson in his cabin. I was preparing for it too because I was planning on taking it but I awoke before it actually started off.

One of my old bosses was living in a retirement home in Alsager somewhere later on. He’d ordered a huge supply of American TVs because you could still receive some of the pay-for-view programmes for free on them. They slung them in the back of my red Cortina estate and I had to take them. I didn’t know exactly where I was going but I knew that a woman with whom I used to work lived there so I went to see her. She was in the middle of entertaining some neighbours but she managed to get rid of them. In the end she pointed out the retirement community where the guy lived with his wife. I went round there and eventually managed to find my way in. Some young girl on crutches pointed me to a member of staff. They did all of the enquiries and came back out with a guy with whom I used to work. We had a good chat about everything, what we’d been doing in the past. Then we went to unload the car. The car was miles away from this Old People’s Home, I’ve no idea why it was so far away. He asked me all kinds of questions so I told him about the paperwork and the way that you can claim Income Tax relief on these purchases etc. It was anextremely complicated discussion. In the end we came to where my car was. He began to help me to unload it into a day-by-day set of equipment. He told me that he’d have them sent up and installed. It wasn’t until I was driving away that I was wondering whether these were actually on the American electricity system or the European one in which case they’ll all need resetting. I didn’t think about that, although I’m i’m impressed that I could think about it even in a dream, and by now it was far too late because the guy had taken away all the TVs and gone

There was no bread for my mid-morning cheese on toast, but that’s not a problem when I have some flour, some yeast and an air fryer. Just a simple bit of bread thrown together and it worked well enough, only I mustn’t cook the next one so long, and I must also remember to turn it over halfway through.

But that’s why we have an air fryer – it’s all trial and error and hit and miss and if you don’t make mistakes how are you supposed to learn from them?

The rest of the day has been spent wading through a pile of directories going through, sorting out duplicates, deleting or discarding half the stuff that I found and all that kind of thing. I’ve no idea how many GB of memory I’ve freed up today but it’s certainly ding its job.

All of the operating system and the program files are (or will be by the time that you read this) on the 1TB SSD and if you aren’t into solid state hard drive I recommend that you have a go. Loading up is lightning-fast and saving is instant instead of the usual couple of second pause.

All of the active data files are on a 4TB hard drive that’s in the casing and there’s room for another one, which I’ll be installing in early course and which I’ll use for images.

Then there’s the array of several hard drives that I use for all kinds of back-ups and that works quite well. So let’s have three cheers for that … “hip hip array!” – ed.

Tea tonight was a few nuggets of breadcrumbed soya that I bought weeks ago from Noz. A good buy that. I had some salad with it and the last of some very sorry-looking potatoes that I diced and cooked in the air fryer.

But I’ve had a bad attack of nostalgia again today. When I was photographing the music festival in Fredericton back in 2014 I came across a group that IMPRESSED ME VERY, VERY MUCH.

When Liz and I were running Radio Anglais back in the old days I used to receive press releases from the Festival and they would send me every year a CD with a track from each of the groups that would be playing there that year, so I’d know who to look out for.

Anyway, around on the playlist tonight came THIS SONG. It’s one of the most beautiful songs that I’ve heard for years and always comes round on the playlist when I’m feeling really depressed and all it does is just heave me deeper into the pit

I remember singing it to someone a few years ago when it really was “a cold one” that particular night at about 02:30 in Coronation Gulf. It just reminds me too much of Canada and the High Arctic and all of that that went with it.

It’s almost 4 years to the day that I set out to cross the Atlantic by sea The artist Samuel Gurney Cresswell said “a voyage to the High Arctic ought to make anyone a wiser and better man” but it didn’t work for me.

To quote from the songI TOTALLED MY LIFE
SO I’M GONNA FIND SOMETHING ELSE TO DO
‘CAUSE IF I EVER WAS SAY TO YOU
ALL OF THE THINGS THAT YOU WANTED ME TO
I’D HAVE TO FIND SOMETHING ELSE TO DO,

So Mother Mary won’t you come sing a song for me
And make it last all damn night
‘Cause you know I can’t hang on to see
When this noose pulls me so tight

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Saturday 13th September 2014 – DAY FOUR OF THE HARVEST JAZZ AND BLUES FESTIVAL

Little did I know it last night, with everything being so quiet and peaceful where I had parked last night, that the tents around me were packed full of infants.

When I’m in Canada, I’m usually up quite early – the alarm goes off at 06:30 and I’m usually awake long before that, but these kids beat me easily to the draw. It’s a good job that I wasn’t planning on a lie-in this morning.

I dashed through the photos and the texts and then set off for the Tim Hortons on the edge of Fredericton to upload everything to the web, stopping off at the petrol station at Keswick where fuel is just 122.9 cents per litre.

I wandered up to Value Village to see whether they had anything in the line of a new tote bag to replace the one where the zip has broken and sure enough, the place did me proud. There was a new $50 rucksack in there at just $12.99. Not quite the cavernous one that I was hoping to find but it’s certainly bigger than anything else that I might find at that price.

Parking at Fredericton was horrendous today. It took me ages to find somewhere that was near the city centre, and there was still a long walk into town. Still, needs must when the devil drives, I suppose.

mike peters busker harvest jazz and blues festival fredericton new brunswick canada september 2014First person whom I stumble upon is Mike Peters. He’s had a promotion this year, playing at the CBC busking spot in the centre of town. You may well recall that last year he was playing stuck around the back of everywhere by the footbridge over the by-pass.

I’m not quite sure where he will go from here, but it’s a shame, if not a tragedy, that he can’t be given a place as a support act at one of the more formal venues. He’s streets better than some of the performers we’ve seen on there.

double dutch hutch officers square harvest jazz and blues festival fredericton new brunswick canada september 2014Here at the Officers Square, this is Double Dutch Hutch whom we have seen before. I’m not sure when but it might have been 2011, I reckon. I just caught the tail-end of their show and saw them perform Londa Ronstadt’s "You’re No Good" and Bob Dylan’s "Mr Tambourine Man" and I wish that I had caught some more of them too because I really enjoyed their music.

And as for his team of go-go dancers, then good luck to them, and good luck to him too.

morgan davis rick fines harvest jazz and blues festival fredericton new brunswick canada september 2014Carrying on into the Mojo Tent, we have Morgan Davis on stage. He was at the Officers Square – was it yesterday? He had Rick Fines with him today and we met him too in 2011 – I remember speaking to him and the bassist whom he had with him at the time, a female bassist whose name I have also forgotten but who I remember was pretty good.

Bassist tonight is Alex Fraser, and we have of course the famous Jeff Arsenault on drums.

morgan davis rick fines harvest jazz and blues festival fredericton new brunswick canada september 2014With Morgan Davis and Rick Fines together on stage you don’t need to say too much about their performance do you? Traditional simple home-spun blues, and played to perfection too, especially when it’s backed by Alex and Jeff.

It’s a shame that many of the performers here can’t keep things simple and basic. There’s quite a place for this kind of simplicity here at the Festival

revivalists harvest jazz and blues festival fredericton new brunswick canada september 2014These are the Revivalists and it’s much easier sitting on top of the bleachers at the back of the marquee with the big telephoto lens. And another Gibson bass as well.

and all that I can say is that I’m really sorry that I missed most of their set because I was quite enjoying what I heard. They finished with the old Blues Brothers standard “Somebody to Love” and did quite a good job of it too.

chris robinson brotherhood harvest jazz and blues festival fredericton new brunswick canada september 2014The Chris Robinson Brotherhood is another Southern Rock band. The musicians are somewhat under-rehearsed but they have the crowd bouncing around as well and this is going to be a good concert if they can keep going like this

So as well as a very competent moog synthesizer player we had a duelling guitar solo right at the end just like most Southern bands and it was really good. The drummer is excellent too but I did notice that he was counting the bars as he was playing.

But the sad thing about all of this is that with not having been to bed until long after midnight, and waking up at 06:00 to do the photos and the notes, I’m crashing out here, even in the middle of a rock concert and so in the end it’s all too much and I head back to the car to crash out there.

harvest jazz and blues festival fredericton new brunswick government offices canada september 2014I’d parked the car near to the Government Offices in Fredericton and as I passed, I noticed a woman setting up a tripod to photograph the floodlit building. I fell in with her and we had quite a chat about all kinds of things.

I realised that I don’t actually have a decent night photograph of the building and so while I was talking, I added one to my collection.

And then I hit the road

And I’ve been spending more of my money today, more of which anon

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