Tag Archives: TS McPhee

Friday 1st December 2023 – THE BAD NEWS …

… is that my carcinogenic protein has now been found in my nervous system

The good news is that the doctor whom I saw in Paris at lunchtime is keen to have a go at tackling it. And who am I to object to that? What do I have to lose? My marbles – I lost them a long time ago. In fact, I doubt if I ever found them.

But it’s nice to have some good news. It’s been a long time since I’ve had any, and that’s not a cue to talk about those three days that are missing from my blog at the end of August 2019 aboard THE GOOD SHIP VE … errr … OCEAN ENDEAVOUR either.

But while we’re on the subject of good news … "well, one of us is" – ed … I had a really good session on the acoustic guitar working my way through part of my playlist. I reckoned that if I was going to spend 4 hours sitting in a car going to Paris, that would be as good a time as any to catch up on my beauty sleep so I may as well make the most of my own personal time.

The trouble is that most of my playlist is nostalgia-based and I have a lot of stories to tell about the songs on it. For example, in REAL LIFE my heroine comes from the Outaouais with black curly hair and, quite probably, regular readers of this rubbish will recall the name by which she might be known.

Then there’s MARY JANE’S LAST DANCE. "I’m tired of screwing up, tired of going down, tired of myself, tired of this town". I remember singing this to myself driving down from Crewe to Dover Docks through the night with all of my life that remained packed into the back of an old Cortina Estate

And I could go on … "not with a pickaxe through your neck, you couldn’t" – ed …

So abandoning yet another good rant for a while, I hauled myself off to bed.

As usual, being a very light sleeper and having to make sure that I’m out of bed promptly, I had an enormous amount of trouble going to sleep.

But in between the spells of wakefulness I must have gone off to sleep because the alarm awoke me.

First things first – I had a good wash and put on some clean clothes. If I’m going to be poked and prodded about I might as well make an effort.

Second thing was to check the papers in my backpack to make sure that I had them all. My sandwiches were in there too – I’d made them up the night before. It’s always a good plan to have a few bits of bread in the freezer.

Finally, there were the dictaphone notes. Something had gone wrong and we’d had a calamity. As a result everyone in our house had to go out on some kind of visit to someone important at some ridiculous hour of night in the middle of winter. There was a big storm raging. This meeting went on apparently much longer that it was supposed to and it was gone midnight when we all finally struggled back. I was in front having to feel my way along the wall and along the clothes line etc in order to arrive at the building. I eventually ended up in the outhouse to the house. I eventually managed to put the key into the door and open it. I threw on the light switch but there was very little power in the batteries so there was barely a glimmer of light illuminating anything. I could see that this was just going from bad to worse to worse.

Later I was at the University of Duluth in Minnesota last night watching a strange kind of game, something of a cross between basketball and ice hockey. Each team consists of both males and females. The aim was as in basketball or ice hockey to work the ball down towards the goal area where you could lob the ball over the crossbar. If it hit the ground you’d have a free shot at scoring a point, similar to basketball. The net was a kind-of thick arrangement where it was quite easy for the ball to be lost inside. Then it would vibrate and shake around, then dart out in all kinds of strange directions and everyone would run after it. I was watching from behind one of the goals because I knew someone from Duluth who was taking part. Duluth was leading up until the final minute when the opposition managed to get the ball over the bar and bounce on the ground behind which meant that they could have a free shot. However their free shot was held up in the net and the whistle blew before it was ejected. I went to have a chat to my friend afterwards but he couldn’t stay around because he’d only turned up to play the game. He was busy with his harvest back on his own farm.

Strangely enough, I’ve never been to Duluth. I did actually have a passage booked on a freighter going from Ijmuijen to Chicago and Duluth once but at the outbreak of Covid all ad-hoc passengers were excluded from freight sailings and as far as I’m aware they haven’t restarted.

Finally I went into work on Monday but half the cars wouldn’t start and there was a big meeting taking place. The boss asked me to go to the Centre des Urgences to explain and arrange for some assistance. All of a sudden I had a mental blank and couldn’t remember where it was. For about 10 minutes I was wandering aimlessly about the building even ending up down in the basement again in the stores with Henri. Eventually someone explained to me where it was and I found it but it seemed to be for people who were having to travel at last-minute rather than anything else Nevertheless I went over and began to explain the problem but a girl sitting behind one of the desks shouted at me “can’t you see that I’m busy? Can’t you see that I have plenty of other things to do?”. I stormed right over to her and gave her a complete and utter mouthful of exactly what I thought of her interruption and then went over to find someone else with whom I could speak at another desk.

The car came for me bang on time and as I was struggling downstairs the visiting nurse was running up on his way to attend to my neighbour.
"Do you want a Covid injection?" he asked. "I have one left over"
Do bears have picnics in the woods?

So there I was, a taxi driver at the bottom of the stairs, the nurse and I halfway up, me with no clothes on my upper body receiving an injection. It must have made a wonderful sight, but I wasn’t going to turn down the opportunity.

The drive to Paris was uneventful apart from the traffic around the Péripherique of course. And finding the correct building in the hospital complex (because it really is a maze) was quite straightforward.

Finding the entrance however was another thing, and once we found it, finding the reception was even more complicated.

And then I had the doctor, and we had quite an interesting discussion.
"Do you know why the hospital at Montlucon took out your spleen?" he asked.
"To be honest" I replied "I don’t think that even they knew why they did it"

And then I recounted my tale of woe about the events that took place between November 2015 and March 2016 with which regular readers of this rubbish will recall being regaled at the time.

But retournons à nos moutons as they say around here, and he told me that the last lumbar puncture revealed traces of the carcinogenic protein in the liquid that flows around my nervous system

So that, dear reader, is that.

But I’ve had to fight all my life and even if I were ready to stop, I wouldn’t know how to.

Over 30 years ago I met the old blues singer TS McPhee in a snooker club in Crewe and we had a good chat. He wrote A SONG ABOUT DYING "I’m like a ship on the ocean that’s rolling from side to side".

He goes on to say "I’ve done everything that I ever set out to do". Well, he might, but I’m a long way short of that and so I’m going to keep on keeping on, as BOB DYLAN WOULD SAY

He’s keen to get in there and fight too, which is good news. It’s always nice to have allies and I don’t have many of them.

His plan is to call me in after the New Year and have me stay for a few days. He plans another one of these really agonising lumbar punctures to check the results, and then he’s going to spend some time examining my heart.

What he reckons is that following the disastrous sessions of chemotherapy that I had and which were rapidly abandoned, there might be some kind of tablet that might stimulate the nerve cells to fight back in the same way that Aranesp stimulates the red blood cells.

However it’s not for the faint-hearted – and he means that in the literal sense. He needs to know if my heart will withstand the strain. If not, he’ll have to think of a Plan B.

He told me about the side effect too, one of which is “bad attacks of cramp” however I don’t really know whether I have any vacant spaces in which to fit any more attacks of cramp.

At one time I started recording the attacks of cramp that I was having but for quite a while now, the only recording of attacks of cramp that takes place is when I go for a day without any, and I bet that you’ve not noticed too many instances of that.

After he threw me out I thought that I’d find a quiet place to eat my butties undisturbed and then phone the driver to say that I was ready but I’d hardly taken the first bite out of my bread before I was caught in flagrante delicto

Apart from the traffic leaving Paris and on the péripherique de Caen we had a straightforward drive home and I drifted away with the fairies now and again.

We were back here at 17:50 and the first thing that I did was to have an energy drink and then make a massive mug of hot chocolate. I’d had nothing whatever to drink all day.

After a rest I had another helping of sausage beans and chips. Something quick and easy.

But after my exertions today I’m off to bed. I’m not going shopping tomorrow. I really can’t haul myself off outside after today.

Instead I’ll send off my supermarket order and add onto it the things that I’d usually buy at the Carrefour.

Discretion is the better part of valour after the events of today.

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Monday 26th October 2020 – WHAT A SURPRISE!

As the legendary TS McPhee once sang –
“I’ve done everything that I’ve ever set out to do”.

That is to say, what I had planned to do today, I did. Two radio programmes, all finished done and dusted, and all by 14:30 too. And I would have finished half an hour earlier had I not under-run the main one by 4 seconds and had to track down some filler.

Mind you, I cheated. After I’d finished yesterday’s notes, I wasn’t tired in the least and so I sat down to choose the music for today. And not only did I do that, I mixed the sound to equalise all of them, combined them in pairs and even added the intro to the first pair.

It’s amazing what you can do when you are motivated and aren’t tired. But where did this motivation come from? That’s what I want to know. It’s not like me just recently.

And if that isn’t enough to be going on with, despite the late-ish finish I actually beat the third alarm to my feet and I haven’t done that for a while either.

There was still time for me to have been off on my travels. We were in a hostel last night discussing some kind of bilateral union. The first thing that we noticed was that someone had rigged up some kind of cable for a microphone but had used about 5 miles of cable. Instead of going directly, they had gone and followed every kind of nook and cranny possible and used far too much wire. Then the question of “bilateral” came up. “What if one party doesn’t want to agree?”. “Well, we have a unilateral one”. They asked “how do you make that out?”. I replied “that involves the army of course”. I’m not quite sure where we went or what we discussed after this but we were certainly discussing for quite some time but I seem to have forgotten it all. But part of it involved something to do with salaries. They were one of the subjects discussed. It turned out that people believed that someone was paying someone else’s salary so that they could come into work, purely for “nefarious” reasons.

And I’m sure that there was much more to it than this but there was nothing else on the dictaphone and I can’t remember anything else.

By about 12:15 I’d finished the first radio programme. All 11 tracks, all of the text dictated and merged and all tied together to make an hour-long programme.

Then I started on the live concert. That involved the 7 tracks that I had, finding out that one of them was wrong so looking around for the correct version, combining all of the tracks and editing out the joins, and looking for an extra 30 seconds of speech that I knew existed but wasn’t on what I had, so I had to search for that and find it too and then add it in.

By the time I knocked off (and I had had my lunch break too) I’d written some of the text. Not all of it because this is something extremely private and the information isn’t in the public domain. It’s having to be sent to me by the people concerned and it will be here when it gets here.

But one thing is certain – and that is that when it finally is broadcast, it’ll be something really special. Something of which part has only ever been broadcast once and the other part has never been broadcast at all. I’ll be making radio history with this.

For the rest of the day I didn’t do very much. I considered that I’d worked hard enough. I did a few housekeeping bits and pieces while I waited for the horrendous rainstorm raging outside to calm down.

roofing rue st jean Granville Manche Normandy France Eric HallWhen the right moment arrived, I buttoned up my raincoat and headed out for my afternoon walk.

And straight away I noticed that the roofers were up there at work again fixing the slates on the building in the Rue St Jean. Their machine was out there lifting the material up to the top, blocking the road to the Mercedes taxi behind it.

Other vehicles had passed through at the side of the machine without too much difficulty and without sounding their horns, and eventually the Mercedes did too. It makes a change for a Mercedes to be the victim of some selfish motorist – not that this is selfish at all of course.

rainstorm medieval city walls Granville Manche Normandy France Eric HallThe rainstorm that I had seen in the distance now caught me good and proper as I was wandering down the Rue du Nord.

By the time I’d gone down onto the footpath where I run, we were having a hailstorm. You can see the size of the raindrops and hailstones in this photos and within minutes the bits of me were soaked right through to the skin – and I really do mean that.

No chance of running down there. You’ve seen the size of the puddles. And you’ll see the temporary fencing down at the end of the path to fence off yet another part of the walls that are slowly falling down. This leg of the run goes on about 50 metres or so past the end of the temporary fence.

water gushing up from foot of medieval city walls Granville Manche Normandy France Eric Hallpicking my way gingerly around the puddles I made my way down the path, but came to a stop at a certain point along the path.

There was all this water bubbling up from the ground just here. I imagine that there must be some kind of drain from the street up above that goes down here, and the force and volume of the water has overwhelmed the outlet down at this level.

That’s not something that I’ve noticed before, usually because I don’t very often come this way in the daylight and certainly not in weather quite like this.

plat gousset Granville Manche Normandy France Eric HallThe rainstorm had passed by the time that I reached the viewpoint looking over the Plat Gousset and the Place Marechal Foch.

People had now started to come out of hiding and were wandering up and down the promenade. Further along the coast towards Donville les Bains you can still the rain beating down on the beach along there and it was very likely that we’ll be getting another helping of rain pretty soon.

The tide is well in too. No room for anyone to sit on the beach – not that you would find any willing takers in weather like this either.

steps up to eglise st paul Granville Manche Normandy France Eric HallThe other evening I posted a photo of the concrete Eglise St Paul on the end of the hill across the valley where the town is situated.

To get to the church by road, it’s a long, tortuous, circular route but if you are on foot, there’s a staircase from one of the little roads that leads off the Rue Couraye. I’ve never counted the number of steps, but there’s far more than enough for my liking wit my state of health.

The statue there at the head of the steps is a monument to the soldiers of France and interestingly, dates from 1904, before the carnage of 1914-18. Quite rarely, it’s a memorial to the dead of the Franco-Prussian War and hasn’t been overwritten with the names of the Dead from 1914-18 and 1940-45.

One of these days when I’ve been shopping at LIDL I’ll come back that way and have a closer look at it

So like a drowned rat, I ran across the Square Maurice Marland seeing as there was no-one else about, and made my way home, just about beating the next downpour that was following the previous one.

My session on the guitar was also much better. A few more Jimi Hendrix ones followed by a couple of Jethro Tull numbers on the bass and to my surprise I could sing along to all of them even while I was playing. As for the 6-string, I spent much of the time working out the chords to Tull’s “Wind Up” and then playing a couple of other sing-along numbers.

Tea tonight was one of the end-of-range burgers that I had bought 10 days ago. And decided that I didn’t like them all that much. Mind you, my apple pie for pudding was delicious yet again. And I forgot to mention – the fruit bread that I made yesterday is magnificent.

rainstorm boulevard vaufleury Granville Manche Normandy France Eric HallLater on this evening the rain had died down so I ventured outside for my evening walk.

But it was too good to be true, and certainly didn’t last. I hadn’t gone five yards before the rain came drenching down and I was soaked to the skin. However I pushed on to do at least something tonight. Here’s the Boulevard Vaufleury down which I usually run (except for tonight of course) and you can see just how heavily the rain was coming down.

Even though I have to keep up my fitness as much as I can, there are limits. I wasn’t going to stay out in all of this.

moonlight baie de mont st michel Granville Manche Normandy France Eric HallThe moonlight was shining brightly over the Baie de Mont St Michel tonight despite the rain fall so I went to take a photo of it.

Unfortunately it didn’t turn out as well as I was hoping. I couldn’t get myself into a good position, I was being buffeted about by the wind and drenched by the rain. No chance of getting myself set up properly in all of this.

However, not to have a completely wasted day today, I ran all the way home from here back to the apartment and the dry, shaking myself to disperse all of the rain before I dragged it all inside with me

So having finished all of that, I’m going to have a quiet early night. Tomorrow I have to be out early, taking Caliburn for his makeover. And on the way back I have to pick up my travel tickets for Saturday from the railway station.

It’s all go here these days, isn’t it?

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Thursday 4th October 2018 – I CAN TELL …

… that things are going downhill as far as my health is concerned. I’ve had a very bad day today.

So having crashed out last night definitively at about 22:00 (and no surprise there) I was wide-awake again at 02:15 on the dot and up working at 02:40. Which meant that I wasn’t disturbed in the least by the internet connection dropping and restarting at 02:30 onwards, and pinging the telephone each time that it did so.

There was time to go on my travels too – up to the High Arctic once again where I was disguised or pretending to be an Inuit, saying goodbye to everyone. And it was one of those protracted, long emotional goodbyes that somehow managed to take several days as I visited many of the places where I had recently been (and several other places that I didn’t recognise either).

By the time 06:00 came around I was ready for my medication. And this was followed by breakfast. Muesli, apple puree grape juice and coffee. Back to our usual habits. and then back to work.

But I couldn’t keep going, which was hardly surprising. I curled up on the bed and that was that until 13:00. Out like a light.

When I awoke the coffee that remained in the percolator had burnt. That wasn’t much good. I had a bit of a stagger around to regain my composure, and at about 14:30 I decided to go out.

LIDL and LeClerc were the destinations today. Caliburn started perfectly after 5 weeks of pause and that was good news.

We didn’t buy anything special apart from a twin-USB plug for Caliburn but the bill still came to about €50:00. Supplies were pretty low with having had a clear-out before I came away.

But I saw my first “F” plate while I was out. That was hardly a surprise. I reckoned that they were due to come out at the beginning of September.

Back here I had a struggle to fit the frozen food into the fridge. I’d forgotten that I’d made a ton of frozen meals before going away. And having bought a pile of fresh mushrooms (they were on special offer) I’ll be making some more too.

By the time that I had done that and made my sandwiches it was 17:00 so I went to sit on the wall in the late-afternoon sun. One of the lizards came to visit me too which was quite nice. Clearly haven’t forgotten the pear droppings.

But back here, I couldn’t keep going and by 18:00 I was back in bed.

21:00 I awoke and found to coffee gone cold on the chest of drawers by the bed. There’s no doubt that I’m going downhill.

And the raging thirst is back. And as I have said before, that’s always a very bad sign. It usually heralds the start of a bout of ill-health and after all that I’ve been through just recently, that’s hardly a surprise.

But I shall keep on going. Still some life left in the old dog yet and I intend to make the most of it. But as TS McPhee once famously wrote
I’m like a ship on the ocean that’s rolling from side to side
But I’m not drunk I’m just dissatisfied
It’s not my body but my mind I can’t control
I have everything I need but still…..I want more

I’ve done everything that I’ve ever set out to do
I become so well known that they’ve put me in who’s who
But I’ve reached the limit and I don’t know what to do
If I can’t go no further I’ll have to go back…..to being poor

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Wednesday 15th January 2014 – I TURNED DOWN …

… a trip to Brico Depot this morning. You can see that I’m not feeling myself at all right now, which is just as well etc. etc.

Anyway last night I was playing bass with The Groundhogs on a revitalisation tour. Of course TS McPhee didn’t make it, and if that was me on bass, that only left the drummer as an original member.

A little later on, I was sent to work in Stockport and that cheered mr up because I could leave a whole pile of difficult post tobe dealt with by my successor, but on the other hand I was worried as I was bound to meet up with Nerina again.

Like I have said before … "and you’ll say again" – ed … I only with that my real life was half as exciting as my dreams

Meanwhile, back in the land of the living, by lunchtime absolutely everything that has no business being in the living room was elsewhere, and I had moved the old table to righht underneath the window.

This afternoon, I moved most of the tools downstairs and dismantled the temporary work bench. I also built a quick toilet room out of a piece of OSB and a piece of furniture out of an old caravan that I scrapped in 2007. There’s even light in there – of a sort.

I had Marianne on the phone too, but it’s soooo difficult trying to talk when I’m in this condition.

For tea I made a mega-lentil and mushroom curry – all cooked on the woodstove. It wasn’t half impressive

And there’s some left for tomorrow and Friday too.

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Thursday 15th September 2011 – I HAD …

… an absolutely excellent nights sleep last night. Out like a light although I did have to get up to go for a gypsy’s in the middle of the night

This morning however it’s not as gorgeous as all that as far as the weather goes because there’s a low hanging cloud or mist all over the place. Its all grey and overcast and misty damp and clammy not very nice at all.

Nevertheless I managed to make my way to Home Depot where I managed to purchase my weed control blanket, but not a brush-cutter. There was nothing suitable so I’m going to have to see about getting a second hand one. I managed to organise a few other exciting bits and pieces while I was there, including some cheap metal shelving clips that will make nice and ideal straps for holding solar panels on the roof of the car.

I had an interesting chat with one of the sales staff there. He’s called Danny and comes from Croatia. And so we had a good chat about Slovenia, Hungary and Croatia and places like that, reliving old journeys that we had made.

And then down to the University of New Brunswick where to find my way around campus I stopped a girl but she didn’t understand any English. So when I asked in French she didn’t understand any of that either so I asked her what language she did exactly speak thinking that I might summon up something and she said Persian. So how she is going to study in New Brunswick at the English-and-French-speaking University is anyone’s guess.

Its Doctor Chang with whom I need to speak about my wind turbines and he’s not in, as you might expect and so I’m going to have to come back here again. I hope that he will talk to me because judging by the leaflets that I saw about what he has been doing he could be an extremely useful person to know.

And I heard that lorry that sounds like an old Foden 2-stroke diesel when it’s slowing down so I dashed out to see, and it’s a Western Star. Thats not too much of a surprise as at one time Western Star had a major interest in Foden junior’s ERF lorry manufacturing business down the road in Sandbach.

But what has just come around this corner here at these traffic lights is something that I haven’t seen for I haven’t a clue how many years and that is a Honda 6 When was the last time I saw a 6-cylinder Honda. Of course we are talking motor cycles here, in case you are wondering.

legislative Office of Conflicts of Interest Commissioner fredericton new brunswick canadaSo with a couple of hours to kill, I can go for a wander around Fredericton.

This white building is the legislative Office of Conflicts of Interest Commissioner, and that’s an enigmatic organisation if ever I heard of one. I wonder what he does and what cases he’s considered during his tenure of office.

But it is a nice building, isn’t it? I could live in a place like this with its nice round turret

maison jewett house fredericton new brunswick canadaHere’s another nice building almost next door on the corner of King Street and Secretary Lane. And it also has a nice round turret of the type that would appeal to me.

It’s the Maison Jewett House, whoever Jewett was when he was at home if he ever was. Ahhh – yes, he was a local doctor and, strangely enough, he wasn’t the first owner of the house. It’s now being used as government offices

war memorial fredericton new brunswick canadaI always like to have a look at war memorials and Canadian ones are quite surprising to a European such as myself.

In Europe, there are usually at least 5 times more victims recorded for World War I than there are for World War II but here in Canada, the numbers are about equal. However, that’s rather misleading. The population in Canada was much smaller in 1914 than it was in 1939

anglican christ church cathedral fredericton new brunswick canadaThis is the Christ Church Cathedral and while I’ve seen many bigger cathedrals than this, I’ve also seen one or two smaller ones.

If you think that it’s small and that you might have seen it before, it’s said to be a copy of St Mary’s church in Snettisham, Norfolk and having seen the church when I visited my friend Lorna who lived nearby, I can see the resemblance.

The cathedral was built between 1845 and 1853, and its claim to fame was that it was struck by lightning on 3rd July 1911. it did make me wonder what they had done in the cathedral to have incurred this sort of divine wrath.

railway bridge across saint john river fredericton new brunswick canadaThere used to be a railway line or two here in Fredericton but today it’s one of two provincial capitals (the other one being Charlottetown on Prince Edward Isle) to have had its railway lines ripped away.

The track bed is now a riverside walk and the bridge across the Saint John River is a walkway and cycle path.

It was on here that someone wished me a “good evening young fellow” so there’s clearly a vacancy for a good optician in the city.

legislative assembly building fredericton new brunswick canadaDown along Queen Street is the Legislative Assembly Building for the Government of New Brunswick.

It dates from 1882 and replaced a previous building which, for the benefit of those of you who have not yet come to terms with life in Eastern Canada, was destroyed in a fire in 1877. The dome, by the way, is over 40 metres high.

To the left is the old Education Building dating from 1816.

york county building fredericton new brunswick canadaFredericton is actually situated in York County, New Brunswick, and over there is the old York County Building of 1855

It also served as the County Court back in the old days, and what was unusual about it was that back in the early days it had a market underneath with the Court buildings on top. I suppose that if they set up the stocks outside, the spectators wouldn’t have too far to go to find the rotten fruit and vegetables.

fredericton new brunswick canadaDespite what you might think, this really is a lighthouse. The Saint John River used to be navigable to paddle-wheelers as far upriver as Perth-Andover. There were 21 lighthouses along the river, and this one at Fredericton was the farthest north.

12 of them remain today, of which 7 still serve their original purpose, such is the volume of pleasure traffic that might be found on the river

st dunstans church tow away zone fredericton new brunswick canadaThis is something that really gets on my wick.I always understood that Christians were supposed to turn the other cheek, forgive people their sins, and pardon the wrong-doer. I read nothing in the Bible that states that sinners and wrong-doers would be towed away.

It’s this kind of hypocrisy that brings the church, Christians and Christianity into disrepute. Didn’t St Paul say something about “be not afraid to entertain strangers, for thereby, some have entertained angels unawares”?

museum officers square fredericton new brunswick canadaThis is Officers Square where there is a museum that preserves relics of life in the area in bygone days.

It has a considerable military significance and every day tourists can witness the Changing of the Guard, followed by, at the Royal Canadian Bank down the road, the Guarding of the Change.

There’s also going to be a stage here for the Festival tomorrow.

As far as the festival went, I was at the Hoodoo House tonight.

First on stage tonight was a guitarist called Morgan Davis, and he started off by giving a pro-active demonstration of playing on a cigar box guitar.

Next up was Geoff Bartley, who plays like an early T S McPhee when he lets go and ups the tempo, which is unfortunately something that he didn’t do all that often. But he did let rip with a superb version of Chuck Berry’s “Nadine is that you”.

Rambling Dan Stevens certainly lived up to his name. He a real rambling blues singer who sings just like an old blues singer should. His version of “My Baby Don’t Need No Loving” was excellent and the jam that he did at the end with Geoff Bartley was magnificent.

The main group tonight is Joe Murphy, Garrett Mason and the Water Street band, with a keyboard player who looks just like Mini-Me
. Murphy did a lead-guitar type of thing with bottle neck slider and his guitar fell to bits in the middle of it.

They are pretty good and they really rock when the mouth organ player pi … errr … leaves the stage. He spoils it after a while. You can have far too much of a mouth organ. If he’s not there they are really tight and they really rock. I quite enjoyed them.

And now we have torrential rain storming down outside and one of the venues has been flooded out. I won’t be going for a late-night photography walk-around tonight I’ll tell you that.

And thanks to Dave and his wife from Nottingham and now New Brunswick who looked after me so well here this evening. They have given me quite a few hints to follow up.

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