… far too small for my liking.
There I was, struggling through the railway station at Paris Montparnasse making my way towards the exit when who should I fall in with but a friend of mine, Xavier, who works for Eurosport and who just happened to be in the station.
He comes to Granville occasionally and submits to the radio reports of his visits to various restaurants in the area.
Anyway, we’ve made an arrangement to meet up for a coffee and a chat next time he comes to the seaside.
As you can gather from the above, I’ve been on the move today and I’m currently sitting in a little room in the “Ibis Budget” at the back of Leuven station waiting for things to happen tomorrow.
Quite a lot has happened today already, including me being wide-wake at 06:15 this morning and up and out of bed at 06:30, a good half-hour before the alarm went off.
One thing that didn’t happen was yesterday, when I forgot to switch off the immersion heater.
So after having got everything ready Caliburn and I headed for the railway station. The car-park there was full so I had to park on the car park of the office down the hill and hope that they don’t become too upset.
At 08:20 I walked onto the station to find that the train was just on the point of pulling in. That meant that I had somewhere warm and comfortable to sit until departure at 09:00.
The train was crowded too and I had a nice, friendly companion but I didn’t speak too much to her because I … errr … relaxed somewhat.
Bang on time we arrived in Paris and after my chat with Xavier I went outside and begun the long and weary walk to the Metro. As regular readers of this rubbish will recall, Gare Montparnasse was moved to a new location but they didn’t move the metro so it’s a long walk down the street, especially in the rain.
Down all the steps is somewhat difficult, but another difficulty that I’ve encountered is that with the seats being deliberately designed to be uncomfortable, I can’t haul myself out of them. It was a real struggle.
Luckily the escalator at Gare du Nord was working so I didn’t have that awful, desperate climb. And one big advantage of being on crutches is that I can have a comfortable seat in the special “disabled person’s waiting room”. I have to have some advantage out of all of this.
Everyone on the SNCF has been very helpful, but that’s more than you can say about the people on the TGV who don’t seem to appreciate just how difficult the smallest amount of disability might be.
And the TGVs aren’t designed for people on crutches, so my deepest regrets to the person sitting in the seat in front of me when my water bottle fell on her head.
It took a while to find my crutches at Brussels, which for some reason had gone out of my reach. Some young lady came to my rescue.
The lifts at Gare du Midi are quite useful once I found out where they were, and I only had to wait 10 minutes for my train to Leuven. It was another push-me-pull-you going to Liège and I have a great deal of difficulty climbing into these double-decker carriages.
Getting out at Leuven wasn’t easy either, and the steps down to the underground passage took some negotiating. I stopped at the supermarket for supplies on the way to the hotel and here I am.
On the dictaphone was some stuff from the night so I transcribed that. I was on a sailing yacht last night. We were coming in to moor at some kind of marina. I needed to do some work on the boat but I couldn’t get it to keep still. I had a rope but it wasn’t long enough to tie it to the jetty. Someone in a neighbouring boat gave me some kind of lecture about being unprepared etc. He threw me a rope so I went to tie my boat to it but it wasn’t long enough. I said “no problem. I have some here”. That involved shinning up the mast, tying together the two bits of rope, hooking them over a mooring column or whatever you call it. I had a load of other stuff in my hands. The other person in the boat asked me how I was doing. I replied “this is just crazy. I need three hands here. I can’t do anything”. I thought that if I drop something that will leave me with one hand free. Instead, I dropped everything including the keys. They bounced down onto the jetty and as luck would have it, they didn’t roll over the edge into the water otherwise I’d have had it. I thought to myself “I won’t ever do that again and be so lucky”. Everything that I was trying to do to maul this boat was going completely wrong and taking three times as long as it ought to have done.
And later I was at work, and on my way back to the office on a bus. It was a Sunday lunchtime. Someone was giving some kind of running commentary on what was happening in the street. He talked about a queue outside a fish and chip shop that Sunday lunchtime. As the bus pulled in to the stop next to where we were working I noticed that at the fish and chip shop there, there was no-one there at all. I fancied some chips and beans at that moment so I went back to my desk and wrote a message to the 3 people on my team and to 1 or 2 others whom I knew to see what their thoughts were about having some now or having some at 17:00 for the evening meal. But writing this letter, addressing it and sending it turned out to be much more complicated and time-consuming than it actually was. It should have been something simple and straightforward but I seemed to be making a mountain out of it.
The strain of everything caused me to have yet another … errr … relax and when I returned to the Land of the Living I found that Liz had been trying to speak to me, so we had a little chat.
There is no microwave here – I must have imagined it – but my cold curry was quite delicious all the same and it was a really good plan to bring it. But having eaten that now, I’m off to bed, early though it might be.
And so, how was the journey?
Tiring. Really tiring. And I have a pain in my right leg. But it wasn’t difficult – or, at least, as difficult as I was expecting it to be. If the return trip is like this, I won’t be too worried about doing it again but it would be nice if I could do it better.
