[PyGreSQL] UTF-8 Problem - how to resolve

[geoff]

I am getting this error on a field that I am loading into a db.

<msg>
ProgrammingError: ERROR:  invalid byte sequence for encoding "UTF8": 0x85
HINT:  This error can also happen if the byte sequence does not match
the encoding expected by the server, which is controlled by
"client_encoding".
</msg>

I checked an the the chr(85) is in the string - displays as the
elipses symbol (...) -

It would appear I need to set the client encoding, but it isn't
obvious to me how / where to do this.

i am using PyGreSQL 3.8.1 and the pg (not pgdb)

g.