Tag Archives: samuel fequet

Monday 19th June 2023 – I’M ABSOLUTELY CONVINCED …

… that when Rosemary came to stay here for a few days a few years ago she installed a camera somewhere in the apartment.

Just when I was sitting down after having my tea tonight she called me on the telephone. And we ended up having another one of our marathon chats putting the World to rights.

Not that whatever we say will make any difference.

Last night in bed didn’t make much of a difference either. Although I was in bed at some kind of realistic time it took me an age to go off to sleep.

Once I did though I was well away with the fairies because when the alarm went off I was a long way away. But would you believe – as soon as I sat upright it completely wiped away everything that had been going on.

After the medication I went and had a shower and a general clean-up because the nurse was coming. The usual one was away today so he sent his deputy.

She’s quite a nice woman and I like her very much. Not only was the injection quite painless, she had no difficulty whatsoever taking my blood sample. And that’s a real surprise judging how things usually go.

For much of the day, whenever I felt in the mood because it wasn’t all that often, I’ve been wandering around Cartwright in Labrador. I’m out of the cemetery and I went to inspect the site of George Cartwright’s house and Samuel Fequet’s trading post.

But I also spent a lot of time talking about “Pinetree” – the early warning radar station that the Americans built in 1951 to detect and intercept nuclear missiles coming over the North Pole towards the USA.

Many people wondered how thick the plain brown envelopes were that were passed underneath the table that convinced Canadian politicians to be prepared to sacrifice the lives of their own Inuit and Métis citizens to protect the lives of citizens of someone else’s country.

There was some stuff on the dictaphone from the night too. I was with 2 really old women who had lodged a complaint with a department about one of their acquaintances who had been defrauding the Government of thousands of pounds of money in respect of some kind of fraudulent claims. I went to meet them and they took me round all the joints that had been affected and how much this woman had claimed from here and how much from there. It was quite clear that these women were totally out of their tree quite happily pointing out places “this is where I came to grief when I claimed for something else” and the other one saying “yes I came to grief over there”. It’s obvious that they were just as crooked as the woman about whom they were complaining and had presumably been caught so were getting their own back. I was listening and making notes while they were rambling and we were walking around the town looking at these places. At one point we came to a big wide road and had to wait for ages to find a gap to cross. There were all kinds of vehicles going past including 6 Morris Minor Travellers driving to close to each other that I wondered how on earth they managed it. Eventually when there were some cyclists coming past I grabbed hold of them and we dashed across the road at that point. I told them that I had to go so I asked if they had their cameras ready we could take a photo of the place they wanted to photograph, I’d finish my notes and then go but I couldn’t hang around any longer. It was a really strange occurrence with these women.

Then I was at my German friend’s the other day. We’d been doing some work. I’d ended up with a pile of scrap paper, a huge mound of coins, loose change, all that sort of thing. It was late at night and everyone was quiet. He handed out some DVD Player things and we all sat and watched different DVDs. There was a football match on somewhere and I was hoping to be able to tune my DVD player into it so I could watch it but I couldn’t figure out how to do it. In the end we decided that I’d go home but try to pack away my stuff in the dark was quite impossible. I was getting the coins everywhere, the scrap paper everywhere etc. In the end I had to say to my friend “don’t worry if you find anything of mine lying around here. You can bring it to me tomorrow”. He said something about the coins so I said “that’s not important” and still tried to pack away everything in the dark and failing miserably.

At some point I’d been to Tubize in Belgium and saw some really nice houses there that were fairly cheap. I thought “why didn’t I buy one of these?”. We had to walk to the nearest town to do our shopping so I set off and followed a few other people who were doing this. We had to walk up a bank up some steps and across a railway line. That was extremely difficult for me with my knees. On the other side on the path a couple of girls were going that way so I began to talk to them. I asked if Tubize was in the Flemish zone because I wanted to learn Flemish. That would have been ideal had I moved there. In the distance was a big tower that looked at first like Blackpool Tower in the distance. It turned out to be a fire-watching post for the forest. I noticed that the distance from Tubize to this town was incredibly long, much longer than I was expecting. I thought that if I’d done all my shopping here how on earth would I carry it back? I should really have gone and covered this distance in Caliburn and I would have done had I known

Tea tonight was a stuffed pepper cooked in the air fryer. And as it was an unfrozen one that I’d bought on Friday I only set the timer for 12 minutes. The stuffing wasn’t quite cooked and the pepper was slightly singed so I should really have cooked it for longer on a lower heat.

But like anything else, using the air fryer is all trial and error and I’ll have it right one of these days.

But for pudding it was more ice cream and cinnamon roll. That was a good deal, I reckon, buying that.

Tomorrow I have a Welsh lesson but I’ll be going late because at 10:15 I have an appointment with the nerve specialist. I know what he’s going to tell me and it won’t be good news, but it won’t make much of a difference. Things are as they are and I have to make the best of it.

But in other news, while we’re on the subject of the Welsh lessons … “well, one of us is” – ed … the Summer School information was published on the internet this evening. I’ve wasted no time and signed up for a week in July.

A whole week’s Zoom lessons for £25:00 is good value in anyone’s currency and I should have to do it more often. It’s the only way that I can concentrate this days. I don’t seem to have the motivation when I’m on my own.

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Sunday 18th June 2023 – TONIGHT’S PIZZA …

… was another excellent one and I seem to have got the hang of it now. The batch of pizza dough that I made was exceptionally good and if it’ll turn out like that every time I shall be more than pleased.

Just like my night last night, in fact. That was a much better night. And although I didn’t go to bed until after midnight I was awake again at 09:30 and I actually did for once feel much better.

Not that i’ve done very much today though. I’ve found it hard to get going today for some reason.

Whatever work that I’ve done has been done on the Canada 2017 voyage. And I’m still stuck in the cemetery at Cartwright.

Apart from having to track down some details for a couple of the original traders on the coast, Like Samuel Fequet and George Bird, the latter who died in 1869 aged 91 years for example

But I also came across the grave of Elizabeth Learning, known as Lizzie to her friends. When the orphanage burnt down in 1928 she had been confined to bed with an illness and was lucky to escape with her life. She wasn’t so lucky when the boarding school caught fire in 1934 though, poor girl

Tomorrow though, if ever I get out of this blasted cemetery, I’ll be going to look at the remains of George Cartwright’s house. He founded the town in the 1770s but once he settled in, he was attacked by American pirates from Boston who stole £14,000 worth of his goods.

And to look for Samuel Fequet’s shop, which was still standing although it had long closed down.

We’ve actually met Fequet before when we were at AT OLD FORT IN QUEBEC a few years ago.

The other day I mentioned that there were people in Sandwich Bay who were dismayed by the arrival of the Hudsons Bay Company. The Fequets were already well-established further south down the coast and could come to Sandwich Bay and withstand the fierce competition with the support of the rebellious locals.

They ended up with stores at Paradise River and Pack’s Harbour as well as at Cartwright.

As well as making the pizza dough I transcribed the notes on the dictaphone too. I was with a group of pseudo-Irish people like the Pogues last night. I was round at their house hoping to leave quite quickly but they were the type of people who weren’t in a hurry. They made me a coffee and a few of us had had something to drink. I went to wash my cup trying to chivvy them along a little but they didn’t really want to go I suppose. One of them said that he had a cough. I told him that he’d better take some cough mixture. they said that they had some. I made a mistake saying that they didn’t want to take it much before midnight. They replied “no? We’d better wait then”. I thought to myself that at this rate we just aren’t going to get away from here. Whatever it is that I have to do won’t be done. That’s the story of my life at the moment isn’t it?

And then there was a young girl. She wasn’t all that young but a very small, petite girl, somewhat on the wild side. i’d been working with her at one time. We’d met up by accident in Crewe and ended up walking around together. She was certainly not my type of girl but we had a lot of things in common when it all came down to it. We started to see each other much more. It was another one of these extremely nice, comfortable dreams roaming around Crewe, the two of us, all through the town centre and down West Street and everywhere. On one occasion we were in a shop and met a girl with whom we’d worked. The way she was behaving and acting she didn’t recognise us which was probably a good thing. She had a few things to say and we had a few things to say. Then we carried on again with our walk. It was one of these very nice warm comfortable satisfying dreams.

There was a restructuring of properties in Edleston Road in Crewe reallocating families. Some families were too big for the houses that they’d been allocated. There were all kinds of problems and the rent commissioners had been involved. They examined the site and found that several houses had hanging basements – the houses were built above ground and there were basements hanging down underneath the floor. They found that in some of them they could install a kind of window to let light into the basements. That way it would be possible for people to use the rooms as living accommodation. They made a ruling that half a dozen families would benefit from this although none of them were very happy at all. It certainly looked to me to be a strange, dark, gloomy situation for anyone but the Commissioners agreed. They authorised the improvements, authorised funds available for the owners to improve their properties. It looked as if it was ready to proceed despite most people’s feeling that it was completely inappropriate.

Finally I was with my old drummer last night. We’d got together after a few months and were in a sauna somewhere. He had his drum kit set up and I had my bass and we were supposed to be practising but he didn’t feel in the mood bearing in mind how things had finished the last time we were together so we just sat and talked for ages about things. I decided that I’d go for a walk around the grounds. He said that he’d join me. I went off first and had a wander around. I saw someone with a cigar enter the property. A security guy grabbed hold of him and took his cigar from him. While I was sitting down in the café taking a rest my friend came up carrying a cigar. I asked him what he was doing with it knowing that he didn’t smoke. He replied that the guy at the reception had given it to him and told him to go and deal with it. He’d brought it into the restaurant to put in an ashtray. We had a little chat about things like that too. He told me that he’d joined Weightwatchers in an attempt to lose some weight. Not that he needed to but he’d lost 2 kilos over the last few weeks since he’s been with them studying whatever it is that you do.

Having finished my notes, I’m going to bed. I’ve had enough of today. It’s not been a very good one. I’ll start again tomorrow when I hope that I’ll have much luck. That burst of energy that I had 10 or so days ago seems to have evaporated again and I’m really dismayed by that.

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