2008 Another Crash ..............................

Yes we have a new addition to the list I wrote of, sometime back.

Tuesday, December 3oth, Vivian was backing into a parking space at 'Curves' and somehow backed into a "Same Day Courier" truck. ................

She brought our GM "Aveo" home with the entire back bumper assembly on the back seat!

Some small secondary damage and some too, to her pride of course.

So now we are in the complex throes of sorting it all out.

Not a blue car this time but an Eeyore Grey one.

The rental, temporary replacement? A GM 'Cobalt' ..... no wonder GM are in the process of going mammary glands up!

2008 Harry & Hermione, newly arrived ...........

We'd decided long ago,no more cats and had managed to resist the temptation. Then, on Dec.22 Amanda and Hayden arrived with a large cardboard box. For me, they said.

I opened it and was greeted by two small, grey, feline faces.

We've named them Harry and Hermione (after two of the main characters in the Harry Potter series).

Fiona, belonging to Amanda and Hayden was due to be neutered but a wandering tom beat the odds and, on Oct 9, six kittens arrived.

Now, we are cat people again. Sigh.

1976-1980s The River That Missed The Boat Part 1





The title, that of Barbara Grantmire's book and the river, the Shubenacadie. The name Shubenacadie is the Mic Mac Indian name, supposedly meaning "where the sweet potatoes grow."

My/our/the Hutton association with the river started in 1976 when we moved to Nova Scotia and lived, initially, on its bank, in "Back of the Moon" cottage in Enfield. The water flowed from right to left and no doubt we didn't even know it was a river at first. But I bought a 16' fibreglass canoe and Mitchell and Martin and I began to explore a little.

Shubenacadie River rises in Grand Lake and drains into the Bay of Fundy at South Maitland. Add to this the string of lakes that lead from Grand Lake to the Atlantic and you have the Shubenacadie Canal system.

Sixty miles (or maybe more, given the river's meandering) of connected waterway which, in time, I was driven to travel. In previous centuries for perhaps thousands of years the native population is said to have used this same route to cross the province back and forth. Mrs. Grantmire's book is well worth a careful read to get a grasp of the waterway's history .......... I leave that to you dear reader. (I have an autographed copy)


As for me (and with successive crews): I was to make the northward journey at least six times. Never southward against current and prevailing winds, that was just too daunting somehow!


Originally the canal ascended from Dartmouth Harbour by an inclined plane into Sullivan's Pond. From there into Lake Banook via a lock, thence into Lake MicMac. Next a lock and cut channel into Lake Charles.

Lake Charles is the watershed of the system and from here the water flows down into the Bay of Fundy, via Lakes Thomas, Fletcher and Grand and the Shubenacadie River itself (and numerous locks of course.)

Long abandoned/disused, the route is usable only by canoe really. Although I did bits of the system by home built kayak from time to time I don't think I ever kayaked the whole route. That was left to the 16' canoe.




So ...... after a bit of 'background' I try and descibe a typical trip from memory.


We'd arrive by car in Dartmouth with the canoe on its roof racks. It would be perhaps 9 a.m. Banook Lake was our usual starting point (I did once kayak across Sullivan's pond for the sake of completeness). We'd load paddles and life-jackets, food and drink etc and Mitch, Martin and I would set off roughly northwards. Glennys would drive off and hopefully collect us later.


I'd fitted the canoe with a small, square, orange sail made from a nylon poncho. The sail was secured to a 'yard' atop an aluminium mast made from tent pole sections: modelled essentially, if modestly, on the Viking long-ship sail. Despite its small size the sail pulled the canoe along at a nice pace with a good breeze, maybe as fast as we could paddle.

Given that there always seemed to be a south wind blowing along the lakes we usually did little paddling at least until the exit from Grand Lake came.

The lakes would pass slowly under us as the day progressed. I'd sit on the back steering with a paddle and the boys would control the sail. After Banook came MicMac, they were 'divided' by the highway close to the then MicMac Rotary.

Next we'd portage round the lock that raised the canal into the "cut" that led to Lake Charles.
Back "then" this area hadn't been restored/developed into the Shuby Park of today. Then the "Shuby Park Pond" was silted up and weed choked. The paddle through to Lake Charles was as pretty then as it is now.

Already memory lets me down - which portages at which lakes? This string of lakes was really a delight to travel. At each interlake connection there be assorted obstacles to the portage. Remnants were still to be found of the old canal system.

Eventually we'd reach Grand Lake with the afternoon well advanced. The wind always seemed to 'get up' then, and our progress along the lake would be relatively swift with waves threatening to spill over the canoe's side. It's a big lake and we had to travel over half the length.

Finally we'd turn the corner and head for the spot where the lake drains into the Shubenacadie River.

The journey down the river to Enfield was always gently exciting, with minor rapids and fairly fast flowing water. At the end of the 'fast' run we'd pass the lock in Horne Settlement and make the turn onto the long, slow, deep section. Next, the Highway 102 roadbridge, high above us and the railway bridge (its predecessor had effectively killed the Shuby Canal).

And so to that last stretch into Enfield, past where we'd first lived back in 1976. Under the road bridge and, hopefully, there would Glennys, waiting with the car to pick us up.

2008 Christmas Eve .............................................


Almost 4 a.m. So it is in fact just Christmas Eve. Feeling a little sad perhaps. Should be asleep but I'm not.

It's a small family "we" have. Spread thinly and barely in contact. The "Disney World" would have us gathered under one roof being all festive and effervescent but of course we're not. Spread around by geography, divorce, separation and choice we'll celebrate the season with whoever is at hand.

Each happy in our way because that's how it it is and has to be I guess.

Saddest case I suppose is my sister and I. She's in British Columbia, I think. I have no address and no phone number. We're out of contact, maybe forever, by her choice.

And the rest of you? Somewhere between a dozen and twenty, give or take, depending on what constitutes a "relative," I suppose .... I wish you all wonderful Christmas etc. etc.

There are 400+ people on my rendition of the Hutton family tree thus far. About 350 of those are dead and gone of course. I wonder how they got along in the 1700s and 1800s and 1900s.

Perhaps we have a family trait that keeps us all at arm's length. Perhaps all families are partially disfunctional despite the visions the various media seem to have.

We lost Sherri this year which gave me a jolt.

Oh well, next month is 2009 .................... I wonder what that will bring, peace and happiness mayhap. I hope so.

Now to bed at 4.30 a.m. Perchance to sleep ................................

"A Rose By Any Other Name," as Shakespeare is said to have said.




In my nearly 40 year aviation career I had a multitude of titles.


Airframe Mechanic, Airframe Fitter, Aircraft Inspector, Journeyman Aircraft Assembler, Junior Mechanic, Mechanic, Licensed Mechanic, Certified Mechanic, Certificated Aircraft Technician.


I started out as an aircraft mechanic ... I finished up as an aircraft mechanic. Didn't get far did I?
Didn't rise very high did I?


Well, it's an honourable calling. No mistakes permitted. One thing an aircraft can't do is pull over and wait until someone fixes it. They have to go up, go along and come down and they have to do all three correctly, very correctly.


An aircraft's complexity beggars belief.

The mechanic who signs the log book it stating that that aircraft is safe to go, safe to get the crew and maybe a couple of hundred people where they are planned to go.


I never killed a plane and I never killed a passenger. A little bit of luck there maybe.


I saw a huge slice of aviation history from about half a dozen viewpoints. Regrets? Yes, it was, most of the time, a miserable job, a very physically demanding job, a job that got precious little recognition.

Shift work and weather and a social life that simply wasn't.


Would I do it again? NO! At the end of my 25 years with Air Canada I couldn't get out of the parking lot fast enough.


But ................ it was a real job. A clever hands job. A job that called for right and honest decisions. At the end of the day you'd earned your money. The planes had come and gone.


An aircraft mechanic fixes planes. 'Tis indeed an honourable calling.

1948 - 2008 Why trains? ......................................




Why indeed. I often wonder. I've had an on-again, off-again love affair with trains for 60+ years. I chose 1948 because that may have been the year my grandfather first took me to Farnborough station to watch the trains. I suspect he was as happy to watch them as I was.

How do you explain the fascination that men, young and old, have with trains? Especially steam trains. If you don't have it, then you don't. All of us (well, most males I think) seem to have a passion for things mechanical; cars, ships, aircraft, trains.We are perhaps awed by power and speed.

I've had a thing for three of the four (cars seem merely to be a means of transport - my transport and anyway "anybody" can drive mere cars). But steam trains were my first love I think and may well be my last. Ships of the Nelson era and aircraft held my attention for a while now and then but I seem now to had got stuck with the iron horse and its environment.

My earliest memory of railways and trains actually dates back to wartime. 194something, perhaps returning with my grandmother from a train journey. As we emerged from the railway station in Sevenoaks, Kent, I must have been delighted by the scene - during shunting in the station's goods yard the locomotive had pushed some of its wagons through the buffers and into the station approach road. Just that one detail retained all these years.

Next, the above mentioned visits to Farnborough station with my grandfather. Just to watch the trains. 1948 was the year the government nationalised the railways and the big four, the GWR, the SR, the LMS and the LNER merged, to become British Railways. Farnborough was on the SR, the Southern Railway, but I remember nothing of the changeover ... just the big, noisy, rushing, hissing locomotives and their trains!

Over the rest of my childhood, well into my teens my big passion was "collecting engine numbers." I was a trainspotter! Terms now long gone and mostly a subject of ridicule over the years. The awesome facination with the steam locomotive that gripped so many of that generation. Harmless, healthy preoccupation which demanded nothing more than a pencil, a notebook and and Ian Allen Locospotter's Book.

Now that every "child" from three to nineteen has a computer, a playstation (whatever that is), an I-pod(whatever that is, an MP3(whatever that is), a cellphone and heaven knows what up and coming gadget welded to their person my childhood seems simple beyond belief.

Somewhere in my latter teens the world of the steam engine seems to have slipped away from me. Replaced by an interest in aviation and then, far too soon, with premature marriage.

In 1968 the last of British Railways' steam locomotive was withdrawn. Sadly I missed those last ten years simply by being "otherwise engaged."

In 1985 (I think) I was in London on a Sunday on a 'family tree research trip'. I was on Victoria station and a small ad' caught my eye. It invited the public to come to the Mid-Hants Railway and travel back in time etc. etc. Having nothing really to do, I heeded the call and travelled to Alton.

Is epiphany the word? There at the station stood a T9 waiting to carry me back into long lost way-back-when world.

I was hooked. Almost a quarter of a century later I'm still hooked. Modelling Farnborough, slowly, carefully, sometimes frustratedly. Locomotives, coaches, wagons, buildings, scenery, track. Cutting, filing, soldering, gluing, painting all the many skills, major and minor that make up this wonderful hobby.

I'm sure I'm a source of tolerant amusement to most but I'm happy. I once tried to explain to Andrea (who is always busy with really important stuff, like all grown-ups) that:

If I build a working, beautifully finished model locomotive in three months it's called playing.
If a clockmaker spends the same time building a clock it's called skilled work.

Why trains? 'Coz I love 'em.

1911 - Herbert Ralph Ward-Eversley...........................



Almost everything about the man is a mystery. His origins, his life, his end are a blur really.


He was, of course Glennys' (and Andrea's) father. Born in Wandsworth, London on October 14th., 1911, his birth certificate (Glennys has it) has no entry in the "father" column so I must assume he was illegitimate. His mother was Sarah Lazarus. I would guess that makes him 50% Jewish depending on who his father was - said father seems to have dropped out of sight shortly after inseminating Sarah!

Nothing known of him after that, until he appears in Blackpool as a 24 year-old. Why he travelled all that way north, I don't know. He seems to have been "in clothing" all his adult life.


He married Rena Horrocks on July 30th 1935. He was working then, I think, in a men's outfitters. After 'our' marriage we had a pack of cards, seemingly from HRWE, with "Burton's Tailors" on the back. Or was it Burton's?

The following year, September 26th 1936, Rena bore him a daughter.


Seven years, three months later, December 21st 1943, a second daughter followed; Andrea.


The fact that the marriage lasted at least eight years is surprising to me, given Rena's fiery temperament and HRWE's fussy, fastidious, almost feminine ways. But it was an ill-starred marriage. By Rena's account she kicked him out in 1944.

He was a great buyer of flowers, decorator of the dining table, buyer of clothes for Rena. At the same time money was tight, as they raised two daughters and worked at day to day life. Ever the practical woman, Rena seems to have decided that this wasn't the way to run a household.


There was never a divorce. Seemingly he failed to provide any support for the girls. This is Rena's and Glennys' version. Perhaps his side was different. Rena did march to the beat of her own drum!

Seemingly he then moved to Coventry - probably he found a job there. He certainly "sold mens' clothing" in that city for the rest of his life. I'm guessing he moved to Coventry quite soon after the terrible bombing of the city by the Germans.


He was to live in Coventry for the rest of his life. At Number 4 Tennyson Road to exact. As far as I know his landlady all that time was a Mrs. Richards. Given later discoveries I doubt there was any love affair.


His first appearance in my life was as father of the bride-soon-to-be. He was at my wedding at Norwich Registry Office on April 4th 1959. After the marriage we, HRWE + me + Glennys + a couple of guys from RAF Horsham St. Faiths where I was based, went to the nearby pub, "The Raven," for lunch. I think he gave us a 'dinner service' (plates and stuff) as a wedding present.


It was to be a long time before I saw him again.


I visited him in Coventry at least once from Canada. I remember touring the "new" Coventry cathedral with him. He was dapper, rather charming, little man. Embittered it seemed by the lack of communication from his daughters and lack of contact with his grandchildren. I made several attempts to open up written communication with him but he was never one to reply to my letters.

He and I met up once in London. I had Mitch with me I think and we all rowed on the lake in Hyde Park. Just a framentary memory. He's all fragmentary memories I'm afraid. Was Andrea there too?

I never saw him again. As far as his family is concerend, he died alone.


I think Andrea got a letter from a lawyer? This told of his death. She went to Coventry and did her usual best. It turned out he was gay!! As were many of the people at the funeral service. Year of death? late 1990s I think.


Hoping for input from Andrea sometime and perhaps photos ................. then I'll try and fill out the story a little more.

The only momento I have of the man is a tiny souvenir sewing kit from the Dart Valley Railway. How he came by it I don't know - not even sure how it reached me. So very typical somehow of this foggy figure.

1950s Not So Clean ................................................................





I read somewhere that the first Queen Elizabeth was thought eccentric because she bathed twice a year. The phrase 'personal freshness' pops into mind eh?

I can only speak for the English in the 1950s. No idea how the rest of the world handled its epidermis back then.

Today I can't bear to go to bed without a shower. Back in the days of my teens the choice wasn't there, nor, for the most part was the hot water.

Then, we bathed once a week. Usually one specific night was set aside for 'bath-night.' There was only one bathroom for the several flats.


If I may, I'll try and describe the scene I remember in 1955? I'd be living by then with my mother and stepfather in a 'flat' somewhere in south London.

The flat (apartment) was one of several in a large house. Our designated bath night was perhaps Thursday.

When my turn came, I suppose I set off, soap and towel in hand. I seem to remember the bathroom as a cold and cheerless place with a huge, cast iron, white-enamelled bathtub.

Perched at the end of the bath was a huge copper device. I remember the reddish, bare copper and the hints of green copper oxide. This was the water boiler. It was gas fired. (Coal gas in those days, piped to houses from the local gasworks).

Lighting said boiler was a mildly hazardous, rather exciting process. A lever had to be swung out, this was for the pilot light. Using matches this was lit and swung back in, turning on the gas with a loud hiss. After a long pause the main burner would ignite with a deep noted "Whooomph".
White powdery deposits would rain down into the bath. With ignition established the hot water was turned on and in due course hot water would issue forth.

Bearing in mind the admonition: "Don't use too much water, we have to pay for the gas!" I'd run my bath, turn off the roaring monster, add sufficient cold water and climb in.

There was little luxuriating in the hot water. It cooled too fast in that big tub and cold, cold bathroom. With loofah and flannel and Lifebouy soap I'd remove my dirt coating. A grey ring of soap and dirt and dead skin cells would form at water level around the tub and a coating too on the water's surface.

Then, reluctantly, I'd climb out, dry off and try to remember to clean out the tub with Vim.

And there I was, skinny, shivering and reasonably clean for another week.


Even in the 50s many people were still bathing in a tin tub in front of the fire, with water being supplied from pans of water boiled on the stove. In the generation before mine this was doubtless the rule, rather than the exception.

The good old days weren't always that good. But intimacy doubtless had more 'atmoshere' back then!

2008 - "Not Much Longer"


By that I mean it'll soon be 2009. I just came upstairs at 6.30 a.m. and made a cup of tea after lying awake for an hour and a half. An odd 90 minutes really - I found myself letting my mind roam free.
Some of it went thus:
1. What will happen to all the mess of family tree stuff I've accumulated?

2. The peoples of N. and S. America didn't know the Romans existed until long after said Romans were all dust. Ha! So much for ruling the world?

3. All the people of the world have ONE common mother and father. Now there's a family tree.
Like it or not, we're all cousins. All of us, Moslem, Christian, Atheist, Chinese, Black, White, Hungry, Rich, Ugly, Beautiful, Cliff ..... all cousins.

4. Is anybody running all this? As the world seems about to collapse into economic oblivion is there a group who really have any control?

5. Britain really did run the world - sort of - once upon a time. Just for that while we humans did almost have some sort of control of events - sort of.

6. I think America nearly did - they certainly thought they did. Now? Now we're at the beginning of a hairy ride which has no known, as yet, destination.

7. Given the universe's vastenss and our "tinyness," does anything really matter?

8. That universe? Is it as we see it? Are we alone? Surely not! We can't be that special. What would it be like to be interlectually a hundred times brighter than we are? Ooooh! Now there's a thought.

9. Alex, MarcAndre, Ian, Emily ..... where are you going? What will you do or not do?

10. Which of them, if any, will spark the next generation? There are 10 known generations of Huttons! 1700 to to 2008. That's three hundred years. 1700!!!!!!!! Doesn't that just knock your socks off? What were things like then? If we could go back! If they could come forward! I'm sure they'd suvive 'now' better than we'd survive 'then'.

11. Is there a god? Will I ever finish my railway? Was Meski the world's best cat? Is there life after death? ..................... Probably only Meski gets a "Yes"


This is the 74th entry in this blog.
Kim claims to look at it every day. Mitch says he reads it. Vivian does - but she'd very polite. Did Andrea ever take a look?

Communication's a funny thing
The flesh and blood thing that is me can be met at 249 etc.
The sound of me is at our telphone.
I can be written to now at an e-mail address.
A peep "inside" me is there on my blog.
And yet ......................... I can barely use a cell phone (mobile, Andrea)! I'm not even really sure how "texting" works. No doubt there are other communication devices coming (or already here!)

Fuck it! I'm on the brink of dinosaurhood!