… usual these days, I managed to miss the third alarm again. Not by much, I have to say, but enough to disappoint me yet again.
Plenty of stuff on the dictaphone, which I’ll transcribe in due course, but first of all I had things to do; And by the time that I was ready to go out, I’d chosen all of the tracks for the next radio programme (well, the first ten of course) and combined them in pairs.
Due to issues about the program that I use to prepare my notes, I couldn’t go any further than than right now. By now it was time to go out.
This morning I was to meet Alison in the Kruidtuin – the Botanical Gardens – so I headed off up into town.
My route went through parts of the town where I don’t normally do, and found another bridge over the River Dijle that I hadn’t noticed before, this time in the Minderbroerstraat.
Alison and I went for a good walk around and stopped off for a take-away coffee. The town was pretty deserted and gave me the impression of one of those bad B-movie westerns where you walk round a corner to find a tumbleweed blowing across your path.
We retraced some ofmy steps from yesterday where I’d seen bits of the city that Alison hadn’t seen and then went back to her car.
She dropped me off at Castle Anthrax where I went for my Appointment with Doom. And the little student nurse that attended to me can soothe my fevered brown anytime she likes, even if the did have to have a couple of goes to couple me up to my perfusion under the supervision of an experienced nurse.
She’s only been here a week, poor thing, but she won’t improve unless she has plenty of practice, and she can practice on me again
Kaatje came to see me too and we had a long chat. What with her and this new student nurse, after all there have to be some consolations with being ill.
One of the things that Kaatje and I talked about was this virus. She’s of the same opinion as me, in that the low death rate right now compared to how it was at the beginning is the fact that with more tests being carried out these days, more people are being diagnosed with the disease even though they aren’t suffering from it.
Previously, people would only to go seek medical attention if they were really bad and for a mild attack, they would just shrug it off.
However, one thing that they are noticing now in the hospital is a dramatic rise in the number of people with breathing issues. It seems that people who were infected with the illness who didn’t seek treatment at the time have now developed further symptoms several months further on down the line.
As for me, the treatment that I had last time must have done some good because my blood count went up over the last 4 weeks to 9:0. It’s been a long time since it’s been that high.
When they threw me out I headed back down the hill for the town and home.
Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that over the last few months thet have been replacing the sewers in the Monseigneur van Waeyenberghlaan and they had a digger working here last time we came past.
That’s another one of those tasks that seems to have gone on for ever and it’s far from finished as you can see. But the pile of roadstone that’s been deposited here at the top of the road by the roundabout looks optimistic.
Further down the street, beyond the ring road, they seem to have made even more progress.
They are now beginning to put in the kerbs and what I imagine will be the cycle track. And it will look so much better when it’s finished with all of the nice trees growing here. It’s a shame that they can’t put more trees in other places where they have been relaying the roads.
And it doesn’t look as if they are going to be too long in dealing with this bit too – and about time too, I reckon.
Ever since at least the new year thay have been digging up the crossroads at the junction of the Sint Hubertusstraat and the Goudsbloemstraat to install some kind of lmportant storm drain connection;
And that work is still under way too and it’s far from being completed. It looks as if it’s going to be going on for ever. The work has extended all the way down the St Hubertusstraat by now, as far as the Kapucijnenvoer.
It makes me wonder just how far they are going to extend this work. They would presumably have to dig up the Kapucijnenvoer in order to make a connection for the drains at least.
One task that looks as if it’s almost finished has been the big hole that they made in the car park in the Sint Jacobsplein.
We’ve been watchng that for the last year or so and I’ve been looking forward to going for a walk over there. Over the passage of time the surface was very uneven and it needed a good levelling out.
But that’s something for another time unfortunately. They might have finished the work but it’s still fenced off. It looks as if they are using it now as a compound for the storage of the equipment and machinery and won’t be accessible until the rest of the work is finished.
my little perambulation led me on into the Brusselsestraat and down to where Sint Pieter’s hospital is, or should I say “was”.
Regular readers of this rubbish will rcall that this immense construction was intended to be part of the French-language institutions that sould have been in Leuven but in a fit of pique after the Federalisation of the country 25 or so years ago, the French institutions moved out to the new town of Louvain-la-Neuve
Sint Pieter’s Hospital remained empty even though it had only just been built. It only ever received some casual use, such as visitor accommodation where I stayed when I fist came here, and for palliative care.
But now with all of the changes that are planned for the city over the next ten years, they have been pulling down the building.
They are taking their time about it too. It’s another thing that seems to have been going on for ever.MY OLD NEIGHBOUR
Our water sprayer is working flat out too even if they don’t necessary need it right now.
From there I came straight home and switched on the laptop – only to find that it had now decided to perform yet another upgrade. Last time, it was 55 separate upgrades but today it’s a mere 76.
This upgrading – I don’t know what’s the matter with this. After all it was a clean installation less than a week ago and since then it’s been upgraded twice. I reckon that it was a mistake to bring this laptop with me, what with all of this.
Instead I went and had tea – more burgers and pasta in tomato sauce out of the fridge followed by tinned fruit salad and sorbet. Then I spent the rest of the evening making use of the internet on the mobile phone.
By the time that I went to bed, the upgrade had reached 46%. So this is going to be another long session that will drive me to distraction. I’m not even sure that it will be fnished for tomorrow.
