(Albany, New York – Montreal, Quebec – Toronto, Ontario – Edinburgh, Scotland – Inverness, Scottish Highlands – Blackpool, Lancashire – Hereford, Herefordshire – Eurostar from London)
“The Lake Shore Limited” wanders out of Boston at lunchtime, rolling through snowy river valleys and forests for most of the way to Albany, the capital city of New York state. While waiting for 20 minutes at one of those "middle of nowhere" sidings to pass an oncoming freight train, two elderly passengers who'd never taken a train before. This is America: there are always virgin rail travellers... These two were very obvious from their imitation train whistling and "All Aboards" and fun-filled "clickety-clack" impressions (which were soooo appreciated by other passengers in Coach). They complained loudly to the conductor about being locked in; unable to walk out on the tracks for a quiet cigarette. By the end of the trip they'd calculated that, even with airport commutes and security checks, a fast flight was kinder to smokers (and the rest of us...).
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Lori was my American penfriend for a lot of years through high school uni and into teaching. We've crossed paths a couple of times over the years then kind of drifted apart as life kind of got in the way. It was scarily easy to find her on the web and make contact by mail and email before I left. Apart from the "pay us $2.50 and we'll provide you with her gun license and criminal records" websites, her landline number and previous addresses were helpfully available through the phone company. Her recent art exhibition of works based on the New York Yankees uniforms (reviewed in the SPORTS section of the local paper) found her very fast... along with photos of a petite and fashionably white-haired woman with the memorable broad smile.
After the initial: "So what have we been up to for the last 30+ years?" kind of conversation over a pub dinner it was very easy to pick up any stray threads and find so much still in common (and anyone who willingly teaches residential support classes of "ED" adolescent girls including art in a tiny room is not much short of a saint...). Husband Dave was working crazy computer techy-support-type hours so we did the early morning sights (NOT the famous Nelson Rockefeller Mall, which gutted much of the Albany downtown in the early 1970's) but the massive "Nipper" (the His Master’s Voice pup) still sitting atop of the former HMV factory, among various other repurposed industrial buildings and the still thriving US Army armoury and also the busy early 20th Century main street of Troy, at the end of which is the Uncle Sam Bus Stop' (because he is from "around here"... ). I was reminded that I'd already been taken to view his grave on my first American trip. He really is dead.
A quiet time in the cute and very carefully restored wooden two-storeys-with-attic-and-basement house (scarily tidy and spotless: I must hire a good cleaner if Lori and Dave ever decide to visit the Leura "Resort") in Watervleit was the perfect end to a short visit: you see so many similar houses from the outside, across America and on US family TV shows so it's a privilege to see how spacious and at the same time cosy they can be. Lori worries about how long the house will be on the market before they can move south to a beach retirement. Their newest addition to the house is a "Waltons: 'Goodnight John Boy” kind of generous front verandah. I hope the place sells well after after so much love and care.
The area looked so peaceful under its dusting of snow. Then Lori emailed some overnight news bulletins of local crime. All is not quite so peaceful after dark, it seems. (Now Read On!!)
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Man dead, another in custody after Watervliet standoff
By Bethany Bump
Updated 11:50 am, Saturday, January 9, 2016
WATERVLIET — The body of a man remained inside a 4th Avenue home late Saturday morning and another was in custody after a nearly five-hour standoff that began Friday night.
The Albany County coroner was at the scene Saturday morning awaiting the removal of the body as investigators probed the scene for forensic evidence.
Police have yet to identify the victim or the suspect, but say the incident unfolded at a two-family home on the 2300 block of 4th Avenue late Friday night and into the early morning hours of Saturday.
Acting Police Chief Lt. Mark Spain said police initially received a report of possible shots fired around 9:15 p.m., with the caller suggesting a domestic-type incident. When police arrived on the scene, a man had barricaded himself inside the home.
Officers spent several hours trying to coax the man out, and didn't take him into custody until 3 a.m., Spain said.
No charges had been filed as of 10 a.m., as the suspect was still being taken through booking.
Police will hold a press conference at 5 p.m. at Watervliet City Hall to release more details.
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Stabbing victim hospitalized in Troy
Updated 11:00 pm, Friday, January 8, 2016
TROY — A 20-year-old city man was stabbed in the back during a fight with another man late Friday afternoon and taken to the hospital, police said.
The stabbing occurred near the intersection of 4th Street and Ferry Street, close to Capitaland Taxi, police said.
The victim and the other combatant were involved in a fight just south of Ferry Street. The victim ran to the Hill Street Inn for help, while the suspect ran north on 4th Street.
The two know each other. The victim was taken to Albany Medical Center Hospital for treatment. Police said the wounds are not considered to be life-threatening. Detectives are currently investigating.
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Man charged with attempted murder in Schenectady shooting
Published 9:44 pm, Friday, January 8, 2016
SCHENECTADY — A 20-year-old Schenectady man was arrested Friday and charged with attempted murder in a Thursday shooting that seriously injured the victim, police said.
Malik L. Anderson, 20, faces five felony counts following the shooting of the victim, who was shot in the head and leg inside his two-family 1053 Delamont Ave. home, police said.
Anderson was charged with attempted murder, first-degree assault, second-degree criminal possession of a weapon, first-degree reckless endangerment and third-degree criminal possession of a weapon — all felonies.
The shooting was the result of a dispute over a debt, police said. The victim, believed to be in his late teens or early 20s, was taken to Albany Medical Center and his injuries were not considered life-threatening, police said.
The suspect fled, but detectives and patrol officers located Anderson after going door-to-door to interview witnesses.
(!).
I still hope their place sells well after so much restorative love and care, so they can enjoy retirement near a peaceful beach somewhere...
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"The Adirondack" was the final Amtrak experience, wandering the thickly snowy shores of rivers leading to Lake Champlain, then hugging the western coastline for several hours before approaching the Canadian border on a snowy prairie just north of Plattsburgh, New York, just past a huge Pfizer pharmaceutical factory.
Previous brushes with Canadian Customs and Immigration have been gruffly and inconveniently memorable. The French speaking officials had, by contrast, been to charm school. They were thorough, polite, and welcoming as they worked their way through the train. Outside was a diminishing "middle of nowhere" with one sad lit hut as the dusk crept over the plain. The rough, dark and slow journey into Montreal suggested that passenger trains and track upgrades weren't a big priority in this part of Canada. On the arrival into Montreal of the one international train of the day, the currency exchange was shut. This led to the vaguely humorous "dance of the ATMs" (3 cards!! 5 machines!! Watch the delight when Canadian dollars grudgingly appear...).
Schoolboy Franglais applies nicely if you are visiting Montreal. Waitresses delight in telling you how many other languages they also speak. They oh-so-Parisian rubber tyred metro bounces you around the place with Gallic efficiency and just a slight hint of worn rubbery aroma. Canadians were contemplating their dollar dropping to 70 cents US, meat prices had risen so fast that supermarket meat theft was big news (as was reselling unlabelled meat to Cafes on the black market), and local news was covering a man who was selling plastic frames for kids to build igloos in their back yards. Unlike the US cities I'd visited, Montreal was under serious, shovel-the-pathways-every-day, snow. Like Igloo-Frame-Man, snow shovels and removal appliances were advertised widely in the post-Christmas sales.
The Montreal History Museum had, along with some engaging presentations on the origin and growth of the place, a special exhibition of local organised crime figures. The growth of all sorts of interesting rackets was “unseen” by the gendarmes, especially during the Prohibition years in the USA when illegal liquor exports, and Montreal nightclubs with liquor and other "services" did very well. Which brings me to the topic of beavers.
The Musee des Beaux Arts seems rather more "musee" than "beaux arts" until you discover, hidden behind glass panels and the coat check queue, the escalators leading down to underground galleries which then elevate you upstairs into buildings across two adjacent streetscapes to the history of Canadian Art and education exhibitions... The special local "blockbuster" - and very crowded - exhibition was of the Beaver Hall Group of realist artists who documented Montreal's people and landscapes - especially the downtown industrial landscapes - in the 1930's. This was a great companion to the History Museum exhibition, giving a sense of pre-WWII life in Montreal well beyond crime and corruption.
Continuing the topic of beavers, gracing the wall opposite a lift well in the Canadian art section of the gallery was: "The King's Beavers". I can do no better than the following commentary:
http://inksnow.blogspot.ca/2014/09/castor-canadensis-kings-beavers.html
And the image can be found at:
http://www.virtualmuseum.ca/edu/ViewLoitDa.do;jsessionid=9D9B36F0EA7A904034DB2B104453C7EC?method=preview&lang=EN&id=26466
To any of us who have been brought up on the images of heroic colonial conquest art, or "the noble savage" or conversion of "natives" to fervent Christianity, or the plundering of colonial wildlife, this painting turns all of that imagery on its head in deeply satirical and satisfying ways...I returned to enjoy it several times, fending off the minus 8 degree temperature waiting outside.
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There are still remnants of the interminable Canadian election campaign around in Toronto: A red sticker, matching a traffic sign as put to good use:
STOP
"Harper"
And they did.
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Greater Ontario transport deserves to be tried and convicted for destruction of the English language:
"My name is Chris and I'll be your Customer Service Ambassador this morning, speaking to you from our Accessibility Car in the middle of the train. The next station stop will be..." (Translation: the guard is in the middle of the train and we're stopping at...). I hope they're paid well for mouthing such scripted rubbish. Pity the poor passengers who are numbed by this stuff every day.
Another interesting touch was, at the end of the platform, along with the 'No Trespassing' sign, a list of handy phone numbers if you happened to be contemplating self harm. Nice.
And on the QUEEN streetcar back into town was a large, colourfully unwashed woman Preaching God's Word to the sullen passengers, verbally harassing women in makeup after yelling "Excuse me, Sistah!", pushing past in her dirty woollens and singing LOUDLY about going down to the River Jordan to "wash my sins in the cool waters..." And no one was arguing with her over the need for that.
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Toronto Pearson Airport, among the most generous armchairs-with-Internet-access are donation containers to "HELP GIVE THE GIFT OF TRANSIT TO SYRIAN NEWCOMERS".
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Changing $25 (Canadian) into Euros will not provide you with enough to pay for a sit down breakfast at Frankfurt Airport: so lactose-free Maccas it is....
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Flying into Edinburgh, crossing The Borders, was a brilliant snow spectacular: the landscape appeared to be under thick and luminous fluorescent white icing, with an occasional thin pencil line of a river or hedge, or the dotty grid streets of a village. I gladly took photos for the surly Russians sitting next to me.
The usual bagpiping busker near the ramp to Edinburgh Waverley station has gone, replaced by a banjo player. I blame Billy Connolly.
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Greeted in my shambolic and jet-lagged state by Lizzie and Alan at Inverness station, I was taken immediately to "The Codfather" for a fish supper: wonderful! This was followed by a relaxing few days of leisurely Highland drives, ancient sites, oil rigs in picturesque bays, refreshing coastal walks, prehistoric cemeteries, monumental Victorian railway viaducts and grazing on Scottish fare in Dornoch and Cromarty and Cawdor and Nairne and Inverness and various country pubs and fragrantly warm bakeries. Relaxing for me: not so for Lizzie and her Laird, about to move out for a semi-demolition and rebuilding at "Sunnyside Gardens" in a Scottish mid-Winter.
Scottish nationalism seems more evident everywhere, from the flags, to the Gaelic translations of everything from station names to supermarket parking signs and political demands for the BBC to open their own Scottish office to be more independent from London. I struggled to understand the Hearts v Motherwell TV football commentary until I was drily informed I was watching the Gaelic channel.
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Virgin Trains lavatory sign:
"PLEASE DON'T FLUSH nappies, sanitary towels, paper towels, gum, old phones, unpaid bills, junk mail, your ex's sweater, hopes, dreams or goldfish DOWN THIS TOILET"
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Blackpool is possibly the tackiest town on earth, I know, but I keep going back. It’s not really at its best in mid winter, but the northern port town of Fleetwood has a kind of raffish-old-seaport English small-town-Main Street-charm. Where else would you be offered: "Doggie Furdoos" near the Fisherman's Friend factory? Lunch was fishandchipsandmushypeas in the "UK FISH & CHIP SHOP NORTHWEST TOP 5 SHOP" local chippy, before travelling back through Cleveleys passing scores of dangling spacemen (for "tha 'loominations"...) along with other sad daytime electrical junk dangling from poles along the seafront promenade. At least in Winter, they don't sell low-tide beach donkey rides, then swim in the donkey droppings at high tide. From the semi-derelict North Pier boomed Freddie Mercury's "Great Pretender", echoing out over the largely deserted seafront, appropriately for a town which is "all front", so don't look too closely at what lies beneath...
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Travelling to Manchester was through miles of red-brick Coronation Streets and church steeples and flat-fronted terraces and old mills with names like: "Horrocks" and snow-covered hills in the northern distance, to train announcements in a warm Gracie Fields Lancashire mellifluous twang.
A quick visit to Ms Fussy and Dr Teeth in nearly-but-not-quite-Wales followed, in another lovingly restored and rather grand two-storeyed river front house where I kept confusing the (working) servants' bell with the light switch. I'm informed that I was staying in Hereford, but it was far too foggy to be entirely sure...
The morning train to London Paddington, through the pink-foggy thatched-house Cotswolds and misty spires of Oxford in the the dawn distance, took me to one more 'border': Eurostar under the English Channel to Brussels, and back to wrangling schoolboy French in a Belgian kind of a way.
And "Not much of a view to be had in a tunnel", I was assured by the gruff train conductor who checked my ticket at a reserved ‘Eurostar Standard seat' next to a blank plastic wall.