Tag Archives: T746

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.

Tuesday 18th October 2016 – THIS IS LOOKING OMINOUS AND I DON’T LIKE IT AT ALL

Here in my little room at the head of the stairs, I was just dropping off to sleep round about midnight when a couple of people came in. They said goodnight to each other in a tone of voice that could have been heard all over the city, but just as I was about to go out and tell them to shut up, they went their separate ways.

But that wasn’t all.

About 15 minutes after the girl in 1204 had gone to bed, she was up and in the bathroom. In fact, she was in there twice. And now the whole toilet area in the first-floor bathroom is plastered in vomit and the smell is disgusting. Anyway, I’m not tolerating this for a moment and first thing this morning I was on the telephone to the owner to complain.

It’s not his fault of course and I went to great lengths to explain that to him. he can’t be held responsible for that, but he ought to know about it and to come round and apply his foot to the nether regions of the people responsible.

So much for my early night and my good sleep. I was tossing and turning for hours after that.

However, I must have gone off to sleep at some point because I went off on my travels. I was with a large group of people, refugees, heading somewhere or other. We camped for the night in a park, setting up our camps in little family groups. I of course was on my own but there was a small, young family quite close to me and I had to pass them to go down to the lake for water. There was something going on with three young cats too, but I’m not very sure as to where they all fitted in to this story.

And how nice it is to be back in my little room (disgusting neighbours notwithstanding). The alarm went off at 07:00, followed almost immediately by the morning cacophony from the church across the road. It’s good to be back. And so I managed an early breakfast.

Now, I don’t know if you have been paying much attention to what I’ve been writing here and there about the Muskrat Falls in Labrador – the new hydro-electric plant that they are building that I visited in 2014, and how it has been claimed that a German U-boat has been discovered at the foot of the falls.

It seems that there is some kind of progress being made in this direction, and someone has tentatively identified it as U-851, a U-boat that disappeared off Newfoundland on or after 27th March 1944. She was a long-range cruising U-boat and was on her way to join the Monsoon wolf-pack operating in the Indian Ocean when she vanished.

After breakfast I did some work on my website for a few hours and although I updated some of it, my heart wasn’t in it. I was too tired after last night, I reckon.

And so instead I went out to Caliburn to sort out a big IKEA shopping bag. With that, I went off to the Carrefour near the footy ground to do some shopping. I’d run out of hummus and the salad mix that I like. A nice, steady walk that will do me good.

Back at Caliburn, I picked up a couple of books (I’m running out of reading material here) and a couple of other bits and pieces that I need, and then I walked back here.

Having sorted myself out, next stop was to fill the IKEA bag (you knew that there had to be a reason, didn’t you?) with all of the dirty washing, including some stuff that I didn’t have time to wash in Canada, and nipped off to the launderette and did the lot. Now I have all clean clothes so I can have a good shower and a change of clothes tomorrow. And quite right too.

Meanwhile, I’ve had a minor disaster here. Being stranded from my camera on a few occasions in Canada, I’d taken some photos on my Canadian phone. This afternoon, having rescued he phone from my suitcase in Caliburn earlier, I extracted the memory card from the phone but … the photos aren’t on it. They seem to be on the phone’s internal memory.

And, you might remember from about two months ago, the data cable isn’t working so transferring them over isn’t an option that’s available to me.

I could transfer them onto another phone of course, but it’s my Canadian phone, tied to the Bell telephone network, so there’s no network access over here.

All in all, it’s a bit of a disaster right now. Amber is going to have to wait a good while for her tractor-pulling videos with Perdy in the Pink at Millinocket, Maine the other week..

But I couldn’t keep it up for long this afternoon. All of the difficulties of the night, plus my exertions of Sunday and my walk today have worn me out and I crashed out for three hours while a rainstorm raged outside.

Crashed out properly too, so much so that I was off on my travels. In Canada too, in Strider as it happens. I’d come down a steep bank to a junction with a main road which passed over a bow-girder bridge over a railway line. There were several trains about, so I make a complicated manoeuvre … "PERSONoeuvre" – ed … to park up right by the bridge to photograph them. There was something else interesting down there next to the railway line – something like a holiday camp or a park – so I went to look at it. I struggled to find a place to park and ended up parked with the rear end of Strider hanging over the steps down to the place. I walked down with the crowds of people to a gift shop which doubled as the kiosk for entry into the place, but when I saw that the entry fee was $7:50 I changed my mind and walked back.

So now I’m awake and I’ve just had a really good chat with my friend Liz. I’m not in the least bit tired now so I can see me having another bad night’s sleep.