Category Archives: grote markt

Friday 11th March 2022 – I’VE JUST HAD …

… a lovely meal with Alison at the Greenway restaurant.

She finished work today early so she came into Leuven on the bus and we went off for an evening out. A vegan burger followed by a nice coffee in the Grote Markt and then I walked her back to the bus station.

Now that I’m back in my little room I’m writing out my notes and then I’m off to bed for I have an early start in the morning. My train to Brussels is at 06:33.

And if my night was anything last night, I won’t be having much sleep anyway because it was another highly mobile night with tons of stuff on the dictaphone. I started off in the USA last night. I can’t remember whom I was with but it was a guy. We’d gone to this kind-of students’ bar and there had been some kind of incident between me, this guy and the guy who was running the place. It started out as a kind-of light-hearted thing to which no-one took any offence. There were some people getting up some teams for football and we went to join them. We sat around in this room for over an hour and a half waiting for this particular game to start. Just before it was due to start someone came over to us and said that they were sorry that they couldn’t fit us into a team and we’d have to go, which annoyed me intensely for I’d been sitting around here for an hour and a half as had the guy with me and seeing as there were 2 of us they could have fitted us into a team quite easily, one on each side but for some reason they didn’t want us. We went back into another bar and someone from the administration of this club came in and saw us, and made some kind of comment so I made a few comments back. The situation quickly escalated. Some other woman who had the air of being a manager came over to try to give us a lecture I gave her a lecture back instead. She really wasn’t impressed with what I had to say which was hardly a surprise. In the end my friend and I decided that we would leave as we weren’t going to hand around with this kind of people and this woman who was some kind of student said that she was worth $400,000 to which I replied “that’s pretty small beer alongside my $3,000,000, isn’t it?”. That didn’t go down very well. It all finished with her saying that she was going to be taking her A Levels here starting in the summer. I said “let me give you a word of advice. Don’t take them in this place”. We moved outside and the guy asked “what do you mean by your $3,000,000?” so I explained. We passed some kind of marina full of all of these abandoned and burnt-out boats that looked as if they had belonged to a fairground at one time and had all been laid up, derelict and so on

A young boy had been killed and a young girl had gone missing from her school in the USA. They were going to write some kind of letter to this boy’s family and it was an extremely complicated affair and they were having to hunt for envelopes and paper and so on to write this letter. It took an age to do this and before they had even finished it there was a fight between two small children who were something to do with this disappearance. That was broken up but then there was a third fight between two similar children. This was all getting completely out of hand. Then a hurricane came to the area and everyone had to shelter in some kind of hurricane shelter at the school This missing girl turned up, accompanied by a boy called Darcy, someone who had had some kind of issue with his motorbike earlier in the school year and another boy who was there who was the leader of the gang who supposedly this boy and girl were with. Everyone was saying things like “how brave she is to come out of hiding because she’s bound to be questioned about the death of this boy”. It carried on a bit like this, I suppose.

There had been a huge civil engineering disaster and this whole building site had collapsed. There were all kinds of people on this site, not rescuing because no-one had been killed or lost but investigating it. I was involved because I’d been on there doing some kind of work and I had to re-excavate a trench that had collapsed with a pipe in it. It turned out that the person in charge was a young girl whom I knew very well. Basically she’d been surrounded by lots of friends but most of them had been there to ee how much money they could make out of her and out of this particular contract and they had all almost exclusively let her down with this particular work. She was called up before this inquisition/tribunal to investigate what was the final straw on this site. I unfortunately had to give evidence about what I had been doing, which was basically trying to put right a lot of this stuff that had been going wrong. This girl was practically in tears about everyone who had let her down. I was having to tell her the bitter truth about what was going on and about how one or two other people and I had been covering up as best we could to make sure that this project went ahead And even as this tribunal was taking place a cement mixer on another site overturned and on the site somewhere else overturned There were all kinds of incidents like this. Basically all this girl’s friends had come along to offer help to get this building off the ground but they had all taken out of it as much as they could and disappeared one by one until she was on her own to carry the can for the consequences

I was with a few people from school last night but we were probably in our 20s, something like that. One was a girl whom I knew quite well and she had a sister. Her sister (although it wasn’t her sister in real life) was another girl whom I knew from school and whom I’d actually dated at one time and whom I liked very much but her parents hated me. We’d been a group of us doing something and we’d finished it. It had been an extremely emotional thing, something to do with the war and something to do with the military, all this kind of thing and civilians caught up with it and fighting it, very disjointed, and included this woman driving this really old ERF or Foden articulated tanker about. When it finished and it was all over and we were walking back, I caught up with her. She was on her own now. Slowly this group of people reassembled and I managed to get her on her own and told her “I’m going to write a book about all of this”. She asked me what it was going to be called. “Oh I’m carrying a heavy load” I replied, from the song by “Free”. As we walked back to the village where she lived I asked about her sister. I said that I felt like asking her if she wanted to come to the cinema”. The girl said “yes, why don’t you?”. We went into the office where she was working. She was on her own so I said “do you fancy coming to the cinem0 at some time over the weekend?”. She replied that she had to do something on some night but she was free and asked “what did you want to see?”. I mentioned this spy thriller but she pulled a face so I asked “is there anything that you want to see? We’ll go and see that. I’m not bothered”. Just then a crowd of people burst into the office. Her parents, and a couple of people who ran the office where she was working. She was trying to hold a conversation with me. She asked me where I was working but before I could reply she was swept up in all of this commotion. I ended up sitting here talking to a guy about football. He asked if I was watching the football that night. The World Cup was on. I said “no. They never came to see me when I was bad”. I mentioned that if my team were playing in it I would watch it but he couldn’t work out what I was trying to say. He asked “do you watch any football around here?”. I replied “no. I go over the border to Wales to watch it. I go over the border to watch it but he still didn’t twig In the meantime I was trying to work out which car I was going to take. Jackie had asked me what I was doing for work . I told her that I’d sold the taxis but she said that she knew. There was all this commotion going on that no sensible conversation could take place and I felt that this was going to be another one of those occasions where I was going to have victory snatched from my grasp at the last minute.

But the opening part was extremely emotional and powerful about this war thing and I don’t know why this song fitted in but it seemed to be so apt – so appropriate.

After breakfast I made a start on collecting together the music for the next batch of radio programmes.

You will recall from just now that I mentioned a song by “Free” that contained the lyrics “Oh I’m carrying a heavy load”. And GUESS WHICH SONG came round first on the playlist to be featured on my next series of radio programmes?

After lunch I finished off the music and then wandered off to the shops.

As usual, I walked across the Herbert Hooverplein. It’s where the big market is held every Friday morning but being somewhat later today, almost everyone had gone. There was just the one guy here folding up his stall “like the Arabs and as silently steal away”, as Longfellow would have said.

There was nothing of any interest whatever in FNAC yet again. I’m beginning to despair of ever finding anything useful in there these days.

For a change I didn’t go and look in the cheap shops. I headed across town to the Origin’O or whatever it’s called to see if the low stocks that they had yesterday had been replenished.

And the answer to that is “no” – so it looks as if that’s the end of that shop from my point of view too.

Something else that I need is a big bag of cumin. They don’t sell it in the size that I would like in Granville.

And so on my way down to the big “Exotic World” ethnic supermarket I nipped down the Zongang to have a look at the house that I mentioned yesterday.

It’s not actually as dark as I was thinking right now. But it’s mid-afternoon and I imagine that it’s a completely different proposition in the morning and evening when the sun is low in the sky.

Clutching my big bag of cumin (and also a small bag of cumin seeds) I headed back towards town.

Another place that I wanted to see today was the demolition site at the old Sint Pieter’s Hospital.

Although there seems to be a lot of traffic around there just now, nothing much seems to have changed. The old medieval tower is still standing, which is just as well, still sheathed in its protective coat of scaffolding and net.

They have some floodlights there, I notice, which seems to indicate that they work here after dark. I wonder what it is that they do because there isn’t anything evident, even if the pile of rubble on the left seems to be larger than last time.

But the old block of buildings on the right that they started to knock down a few months ago – that’s still standing too.

It looks as if they have demolished all that they intend to demolish of that right now and they are going to leave it at that.

And so, as I have said before … “and on many occasions too” – ed … if they are going to be building luxury apartments here, they are going to have to improve the view that the people will have from their windows. It’s not what I would call “very inspiring”.

The site at the back of the little velodrome looks quite clear now.

Last month, I mentioned that it’s possible to pass through now into the Oude Lievevrouwstraat and they seem to have done some more tidying up at the back of where they erect the marquee when they have a function here.

That’s progress of a sort anyway.

On the way back to my little room I popped into Delhaize. Now I have more banana drink, vegan garlic mayonnaise and also a few vegan sausages.

But no grated vegan cheese anywhere, so I hope that the cheese that I bought from LIDL the other day will melt over my pizza.

Back here I tidied up the place for a while ready to leave early tomorrow and then wandered off to meet Alison when she told me that she was on her way.

We met as usual at the “Tiger” although as she was early, she came some way in my direction to meet me. We went to the “Greenway” vegan restaurant for a burger, and then for a coffee and a good chat in the Grote Markt.

late in the evening the buses for Alison to return home are quite irregular so she stands more chance of catching a bus at a more convenient time at the bus station.

It’s “sort-of” on my way back home I suppose so I accompanied her. The Diestsestraat was for a change quite deserted but the lights of the shops gave some kind of weird, eerie effect as we walked back.

Only 10 minutes to wait for a bus at the bus station so I hung around with her until it came. And it was just as well that I waited because it was running late.

Had it not turned up, there would have been quite a long wait for the next one and a cold draughty bus station is not the place to be hanging around.

The other day I posted a photo of the shiny new Martelarenplein with most of its fencing removed.

It hasn’t taken long for it to be reoccupied, has it? It must be fairground time right now and all of the attractions have now moved in and occupied the square. That should keep the town busy for a while.

The walk back home was quiet and uneventful. I wrote my notes, finished off the tidying up and crawled into bed.

An early night and an early start tomorrow.

Friday 14th January 2022 – AFTER ALL OF YESTERDAY’S …

… efforts, I ended up in bed at some kind of early time of night. With no need for an alarm tomorrow no appointments, and also no phone either), I was going to make the most of it.

Unfortunately, it didn’t quite turn out like that. I don’t sleep as well in the bed here as I do in my bed at home, and then there was the fact that I’d been off on my travels.

There are several different sound files on the dictaphone, and that shows that I had a very disturbed night. At some point I’d just been to fill the kettle that was on the bedside table, put it on its stand and went to switch it on to make a cup of coffee in the middle of the night.

It’s amazing the kind of things that you can do when you are fast asleep, isn’t it?

There was something about submarines last night. It wasn’t a tube as you might expect but it was U-shaped passenger compartment where four people could lie down. It was the only way to be. Two of them were in the higher part in the centre and two were in the lower part, one at each end. The submarine was sent on active service like that. There was no way for any of these people to move once they were on board and it must have been the most uncomfortable and claustrophobic thing ever yet even I had been out in it on active service. On one occasion I was at school watching these kids and the tutor was talking about who’d done what, who’d dome something else, naming these kids. Then on eof the kids mentioned my name. It turned out that one of the kids wanted me to give a talk on these submarines so I gave them a little talk on it. As I say, it’s most surprising because you would never ever get me into a submarine like this, not in a million years. later on when I went to see if I was back again with this submarine there was something to do with lords and ladies, not their names, and some kind of operating manual about this submarine but I can’t remember what this was and what it related to, anything like that

Much as I hate submarines I found myself volunteering for the crew of this to go out and sail in it and that is most unlikely for me. But anyway it looks as if I’ve just stepped back into the story from which I had just stepped out.

There were some of us last night around the West Midlands. We’d been somewhere and had to return home so we were looking for a railway station. We were in a vehicle and had driven underneath a railway line. A little further ahead was another railway line so we imagined that there was a railway junction which might mean that there would be a station. There was a bus coming out of there with schoolkids. We saw a sign that said “Intercity” so we turned down this road underneath the railway bridge and followed the railway line. Instead it took us into a yard where there were all kinds of railway maintenance equipment etc. We thought “this can’t possibly be right” but we carried on. At the end of the yard was a kind of dirt track out so we followed this dirt track, still following the railway and ended up somehow in someone’s house. We thought “we’re in civilisation so we can get out here” but we ended up in some girl’s bedroom. There was no handle on the door on the inside. This guy and I had a look round but I could see that this wasn’t going to work so we’d be better clearing off quickly. I went back into the annexe where we’d appeared. The other two people were standing there. I told them that we had better make ourselves scarce because this isn’t it. The fourth person, the one who had come with me into the main room hadn’t put in an appearance. We thought “we can’t hang around because sooner or later we’ll be caught by someone being in this house.

Finally I was in Shavington last night and there was an Austin 1100 being worked on down the street. A young boy was going it. There was a little girl of about 3 or 4 helping him or watching him. He was talking to her and asked her where something was, like a nursery or a toy room or something. She took him down to where Caliburn was parked. He opened the door of Caliburn and took out a bottle of beer and started to drink it. I went down there and grabbed hold of him and asked him what he was doing. He wouldn’t answer so I asked him for his name. He gave me about 4 or 5 different names. In the end I asked him what was his name in his birth certificate. He replied “none of those. It’s extremely complicated”. I was becoming extremely short-tempered at this particular moment so maybe it was just as well that I awoke.

Being awake is one thing. Being out of bed is something else. It was round about 09:30 when I finally arose from the dead, and then after the medication I spent much of the day choosing the music for the next batch of 5 radio programmes.

All of that is done and dusted, although it took me longer than it might have done. Breakfast was a contributory factor and so was lunch, but there was more than just a small amount of indolence too

When I’d finished, I went off into town for my walk.

With it being Friday, it’s market day in the Herbert Hooverplein and the Monseigneur Ladeuzeplein although they have usually all cleared off by 14:00. I caught the very last one, who “shall fold their tents, like the Arabs and as silently steal away”, just like in Longfellow’s “The Day Is Done”.

First stop on my way into town was at the FNAC to check the data cables for my telephone. But if anyone thinks that I’m going to be paying the kind of price that they want for one, then they are mistaken.

So never mind. I have a cunning plan, so I headed off outside the front door into the Bondgenotenlaan.

There’s a “Match” supermarket just up the road from here but by the looks of things it isn’t going to be here all that long. Since I was here last, they have made a start on demolishing it.

That’s a shame because what we’ll have is a modern deluxe building with the kind of rent that a supermarket like Match could never pay and make a profit, and there’s another local amenity gone for good.

However it is quite amusing seeing the 18th Century building still standing after all these years and here they are ripping down something of the 1960s. It just goes to show.

In Kruidvat, as I expected, I struck it lucky. I picked up a 2-metre micro-USB cable for just €2:99. That’s much more like it.

That was a good move because I can use that with the ZOOM H8 and bring the smaller cable with me on my travels to use with the ‘phone and the NIKON 1 J5.

In my quest for a baking tin, I went down the Louis Melsensstraat towards the cheap shops. And here I noticed a wall plaque of a type that I don’t recall seeing before.

The story of the Sack of Leuven by the Germans in August 1914 has been told often enough and you’ll see many buildings in the town with a wall plaque like the one on the left, indicating that the building was a victim of the German atrocities.

The one on the right though is different. I’ve no idea to what the date of 1922 refers. It might possibly related to the date when the building was restored. I shall have to make certain enquiries when I find someone who might know the answer.

Neither Wibra, Zeeman nor Hema came up with a suitable baking tin so it looks as if I’ll have to buy one of the overpriced ones at LeClerc when I go home. Those there are 18cm ones there but that’s more than enough for me to make a cake for myself in the future. The pyrex dish that I used instead was rather too large for what I want.

There was better luck in Sports Direct, where I bought some new trousers and also in the health-food shop Origin’o where I picked up some more grated vegan cheese for my pizzas and some vegan sausages. I really enjoyed those that I bought last time I was here.

On the way to Delhaize (for some more banana soya drink) and Hema, I went for a little wander by the River Dijle to see what was happening there.

It’s changed quite a lot since we last stood on this spot. Back in 2016 when I was living here the river was overflowing after that very dramatic rainstorm that we had had, and a few months ago it was pretty full too after a lengthy bout of rain.

At Delhaize I picked up my drink and then went round to Hema. No baking tins here either, which was a surprise. Hema usually has almost everything that you need. What do people in Flanders (and France) use when they are baking cakes? And where do they go to buy it?

Back in the Grote Markt, it’s starting to go dark so they have illuminated the Christmas trees and the other decorations.

The crèche has gone so there isn’t all that much here to illuminate today so we have to do the best that we can with what we’ve got. Lighting up the real tree that’s here is … errr … interesting.

It’s still quite cold so I’m not going to hang around this afternoon. There are plenty of places that I would like to visit, but not in this weather. The possibility of a piping-hot coffee is summoning me home.

Back here I had the coffee that I had promised myself and then went through the photos that I’d taken over the last few days.

But now that I’ve had my tea, I’m off to bed. I have an 05:00 start in the morning ready for my train at 06:26.

Thursday 22nd April 2021 – THE BAD NEWS …

… is that my heart is showing the first signs of giving out.

One of the things that was mentioned to me all those years ago was that the thing that’s keeping me going is the fact that I have a very strong heart. And it needs to be, with having to pump around much faster than normal to keep the oxygen supply going. Once that stops going, that will be that.

And all of that will explain the tiredness and a few other symptoms too. Next time that I go I’ll be having an ECG – they are bringing my next scan forward, and then they are going to come up with a cunning plan. At least, I hope so.

But I’m never one to let it get me down. I sent a message to TOTGA asking her when she’ll be coming over to France. I told her that I might not last very long but I’ll go out with a smile on my face.

This morning I awoke at the first alarm. Not with a smile on my face unfortunately but you can’t win a coconut every time.

After the medication I sat down and went to choose the music for the next batch or radio programmes. And by the time that I knocked off at 11:00 I’d chosen the music for 4 of the programmes.

A mug of coffee and some toast later I went and had a shower, following which I made my sandwiches for lunch.

And what do you think about these glorious palm trees?

On the way out towards the hospital I passed through the Grote Markt in the centre of the town. And it was a case of dodging the workmen because there were all sorts of things going on here in the Grote Markt this afternoon.

And I don’t just mean the glorious potted palm trees either. They were erecting little booths here too with signs and noticeboards. A great many of the restrictions imposed upon the country because of the Corona virus are going to be lifted in the next few days and open-air life is due to resume.

There now seems to be a programme of smartening up the town ready for the summer season.

Further down the street in the Brusselsestraat is the Sint Pieters Hospital that they made a start on demolishing about a century a go.

Had I been in charge of the works I would have had it down in a matter of minutes by calling on MY OLD NEIGHBOUR from Crewe all those years ago. What would half a dozen broken windows have been compared to all of this disruption that has continued for all of this time?

They haven’t advanced a great deal over the last four weeks since I have been here last. Even with machines like this prowling around. What they have managed to make is a huge mound of rubble and several hundred tons of dust that were swirling around the place. It’s probably going to take them several more months to shift all of that rubble and I do wonder where they are going to put it all. I wouldn’t like to be here when those lorries are pulling in and out of the compound.

The most exciting machines on the demolition site are round at the other side of the building.

There’s one in the background that looks like a huge prehistoric dinosaur with huge hydraulic jaws that are nibbling away at the concrete beams of the building, dragging them out once it has snapped them off and dropping them at the foot of the building where the digger standing next to it can pick them up and move them round to where the breaker is. The breaker can then shatter them into smaller pieces.

It was quite exciting watching them working like this, but I couldn’t hang around for long because I have an appointment at the hospital and I can’t be late for it. There’s plenty of time to see more action at the demolition site because they aren’t going to finish this job any time soon. So I pushed off down the street on my way out of town.

At the back of the Sint Jacobs Church is the Sint Jacobsplein. That’s been a hotbed of work for the last few years too, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall and it still doesn’t look as if it’s finished.

They dug out a huge hole in there while I was in Canada one year and it seems to be for some kind of storm drain overflow. When they filled it in and resurfaced it they fenced it off with some of this temporary fencing.

Since then it’s being used as a storage depot for the workmen who have dug up all of the roads around here, installed the new drainage system and the last time that I saw them they were still a long way off finishing it. It makes me wonder where they’ve got to with that, but I’ll find that out in a moment.

A few days ago I was musing over the idea that they won’t have made very much progress in the work that they will have done in the Sint Hubertusstraat.

And it looks as if I was right too. There are several vehicles parked in the street but these are contractors’ vehicles by the looks of things. The road is still closed off to vehicular traffic and as you can see from the surface of the street, you can see that they still have one other level of surface at least to put on there before it was finished.

And I bet that the residents of the street are totally fed up of all of the dust and debris that’s been blowing all around here for all of this time that it’s taken to install this new drainage system.

Also in the Sint Hubertuslaan is an old drinking fountain that I’ve seen on all of these occasions that I’ve been walking past here.

From what I’ve seen in the past it’s been dirty and rusty and clearly out of use for a considerable period of time but it looks as if things are about to change.

One good thing that these renovations have brought about is that at long last there’s a team of people now cleaning it all up. And they are doing a very thorough job of it too. I wonder if they are going to restore it into actual working order where people can draw off water.

That would certainly be something novel for the town, although knowing just how many cholera outbreaks were traced to drinking fountains in the 19th Century, I’m not sure if restoring it for the general public to use would be a wise thing to do in the middle of a global pandemic.

Regular readers of this rubbish will have seen the mess that they’ve made in the past in the Monseigneur van Waeyenberghlaan, the street that leads to the hospital.

At least they seem to have got to grips with this a little more and if they aren’t careful, it might even be open within the next few months. But I’m not too optimistic though. The “no waiting” signs don’t have any “from” and “to” dates on it, so clearly there isn’t a target.

But what fills me with dismay here is the cycle path that they have laid. For the car parking places they have found some nice old-style cobbles – good old Belgian pavé and there are some nice paving stones for the footpath. But couldn’t they really have done any better than a slab of tarmac for the cycle track?

At the top of the hill is a big pond and there are always a few birds hanging around there.

This one was extremely interesting. I shan’t bore you with any of my birdwatching stories but I shall just say that I’ve no idea what it is. It might well be a heron, for all I know. I did ask it but I couldn’t hear the reply. I’m probably too hard of heron.

After a Covid test I was given a surgical face mask (they are taking this seriously) and then sent off for my medical treatment. And we all know the results of that. We shall have to see how things unfold after the next visit and the ECG.

They have given me some new medication and told me to up the dose for one or two. And I need to see my own doctor for another blood test in a couple of weeks time.

The top half of the Monseigneur van Waeyenberghlaan is now actually open to traffic, but you can’t go far as several vehicles have found out.

There were some driving down there too but when they realised that they couldn’t go down as far as they thought, they turned round and came back again. It’s going to be a good while before we have the buses driving back down here again.

But I left them to it and carried on down the street back towards town. And although it was a nice afternoon, I noticed that all of the workmen seemed to have knocked off for the day now. No wonder that they don’t seem to be getting too much done if these are the kinds of hours that they are keeping.

When we were looking at the Sint Jacobsplein earlier this afternoon, I’d forgotten to look at the Biezenstraat that runs between the Square and the Kapucijnenvoer.

That’s been dig up for what seems like a century too without there being much progress. It’s still a long way from being finished but there were at least a couple of workmen there brushing up the dust – something that seemed to me like a pretty forlorn occupation.

There was also a large cherry-picker down the street too. They are working on the apex of the roof of one of the Sint Rafael Hospital building in the Kapucijnenvoer. It’s probably something to do with the weatherproofing of a seal thee.

Part of the demolition programme of the Sint Pieters Hospital included the demolition of the building adjoining the Sint Rafael building, and I suspect that that is where the issue might be.

But on the demolition site itself they are progressing with this huge hole that they have dug and that’s turning into something quite enormous.

You can see all of the reinforcements that they are using at the side of the hole – all the concrete columns that are holding back the earth. It may well be that the hole will actually be a car park and the concrete columns will be used as piles on which they will build the actual building.

There are two enormous tower cranes on the site right now so it looks as if it’s going to be something fairly substantial that will be going up on that site. We might be seeing a very tall block of flats at some time in the future, whenever that might be.

Another thing that regular readers of this rubbish will recall seeing is that building there, either a new-build or a well-modernised old one.

It suddenly sprang into view about a year ago as what had been build on the Kapucijnenvoer in front of it must have been demolished. Today though, they had cleared the site of weeds, there were some concrete reinforcing mats piled up, and a surveyor busily measuring up.

It looks as if we are going to see yet more construction in the vicinity, and there was indeed some advertising on the fence suggesting a small apartment block going up on the site. It’s very much all change in the city these days.

From there I walked off back home, having an exchange of messages with TOTGA on the way back.

Later on, I went back out again to meet Alison for a walk around the city.

Down the street and across the Herbert Hooverlaan where the preparations for the reopening of the country are well under way.

The fountain has now burst back into life again and there were quite a few people gathered around it, and even one or two of them running through it. It was quite amusing to see how they responded when they were half-way through and the fountain suddenly erupted.

For a change I didn’t photograph it. It’s not really the done thing in these circumstances.

But there are loads of tables and chairs piled up outside the cafes on the square. Apparently outdoor cafe activities can restart in the near future and huge areas of the public space are being transformed.

While I was waiting for Alison I looked at the crowds of people hanging around in the Monseigneur Ladeuzeplein enjoying the evening sunshine.

Crowds and crowds of them too, and also a few electronic notices to say what is and isn’t permitted in the Square.

When Alison turned up we went off to the Greenway and she bought some fried sweet potatoes. And then we had the famous retort “these sweet potatoes are hard to eat in polite company. It’s a good job that I’m with you!”.

We came back here for a coffee and then Alison went off home. Having had some of her sweet potatoes, I just had a handful of pasta and vegetables before writing up my notes.
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Now I’m off to bed and with no alarm in the morning I’ll be having a lie-in. And quite right too. It always takes a lot out of me, my day at the hospital and with all of the walking that I’ve done today.

Thursday 25th March 2021 – WHAT A HORRIBLE …

… night that was!

… while you admire the photos of the roadworks and demolitions that we have been following over the last few years, I’ll tell you all about it.

And if you want to know more about the photos as you pass by them, click on the image aside and a new window will open up with an enlarged photo and a caption.

But I spent most if not all of the night battling with cramp. I’ve had some bad nights just recently with cramp, and some worse nights too, but none were as bad as last night’s attacks.

In fact, even when it started to grow light I was still awake in agony having already hopped around the rom to free everything off at least half a dozen times

When the alarm went off I was in no condition to leave the bed and in fact i totally ignored all of the alarms. Instead, I stayed in bed until about 08:20 and it’s been a while since I’ve done that in the week.

But at least I managed to drift off to sleep at some point and I even managed to go off on my travels. And that reminds me – if you missed last night’s voyages they are on-line now too

Greenock Morton were playing in a football match last night and were attacking the opponents’ goal. The team that they were playing had a couple of old Morton players in it like Gregor Buchanan. They were attacking the goal and they should have scored three or four in this one particular movement. They were trying to force the ball over the line. One of the Morton players even managed to lift it over the bar from standing on the goal line, there were that many bodies in the way and he had to get the ball over them. Interesting though was that all of the players were just like wraiths, something that made me wonder if the opponents were not in fact Wraith Rovers, just a ghostly outline rather than actual real players whom I could see. I remember shouting encouragement from the terraces but funnily enough I was the only person doing it and it sounded terribly embarrassing

Later on there was a roundabout that had been built by Crewe and on this roundabout heading towards the town was my former friend from Stoke on Trent on a motorbike carrying a 5-gallon container of diesel. I was going the other way on a motorbike. Behind him on my old Honda Melody was Zero. She was only about 10 but she was riding this Honda Melody. I pulled up alongside the guy and we started to have a bit of a chat. The girl said “look here!” and she went off on this motor bike, did a couple of sliding turns, came back and slid to a halt. The bike toppled over and she got off and came to sit in between the two of us, telling us all about riding her motor bike. I asked “have you been taking Strawberry Moose out for a ride?”. she replied “yes”. The guy was saying that she’d held him tight while driving. She replied “ohh no! He’s been for a ride with me properly on it”.

And that brought back many happy memories of when I was living with Laurence and 8 year-old Roxanne 20-odd years ago and I taught Roxanne to ride the Melody

Coming downstairs was something of a stagger.

My knee was certainly better but it wasn’t that good and I still couldn’t put too much weight on it and I needed to grip onto something to haul myself up into a standing position.

But I did eventually reach the ground floor and I attacked the dictaphone to see where I’d been during last night and the night before. And to my surprise, I had travelled quite far as you have probably noticed if you’ve read all of my notes.

Later on, I took my courage in both hands and limped off down to the supermarket.

The Delhaize rather than the Carrefour because it was closer and I wasn’t up to going the extra distance. But I did what shopping I needed to do and staggered back.

Despite my injury and despite the load that I was carrying I made it back without too much of a problem, and then made myself some toast for a rather late breakfast.

There was time for a shower and some clothes washing, and then I headed off to the hospital.

It was a depressing walk down to the town because I really wasn’t feeling like it but I did it all the same.

As I passed through the Grote Markt I stumbled upon a young photgrapher doing her stuff.

As regular readers of this rubbish will recall, another one of the regular features on these pages is photographers taking photos. There’s usually one or two appearing every now and again.

Having seen that, I carried on with my walk past all of the building work that has been going on over the last couple of years that is progressing rather too slowly for my liking.

Up at the hospital there was yet more excitement.

It was not easy to see what they were doing but they had a digger out there digging a trench along by the lagoon over there and they have a great long length of large-diameter rubber pipe that I imagine that they will drop into the trench when they have done it.

But as to its purpose, I’ve no idea. And the guys were too far away to ask.

At the hospital I had a Covid-test and then they could treat me for my illness. The wired me up and plugged me in and gave me my intravenous drip.

The doctor came to see me and I told her about my “incident” yesterday and all of the cramps that I’ve been having.

As for the fall, there is no damage and all of the muscles and ligaments are working fine. As for the cramps, she doesn’t think that they are cramps but what her translation from the Flemish was “wandering leg” – she didn’t know its precise English translation and I didn’t understand the Flemish.

Anyway, she’s prescribed me a pill that will ease the cramps and help me have a decent sleep. It takes a while to work so I won’t see the results for a couple of weeks.

Kaatje came to see me too and we had quite a chat. She told me about her holiday plans for a cycling tour with her friends. When she came into my room I was listening to COLOSSEUM LIVE – one of the top five live albums ever and which always brings back memories of the High Arctic and THE GOOD SHIP VE … errr … OCEAN ENDEAVOUR

She asked me about it and I told her that it dated from 1973. “I wasn’t even born then” she replied. I keep on forgetting how old I am, although the events of yesterday and today have aged me by 20 years.

The doctor came back with my test results – blood count down to 8.9 which is no great surprise is it? And then I cleared off to pick up my medication.

Outside the hospital there was a bright blue sky but some really filthy dark black clouds.

This was creating some really strange lighting effects so I took a photo of it. Unfortunately the camera was not able to reproduce the effect which is rather a disappointment so you’ll just have to imagine it.

But at least, the photo from this angle gives you an idea of how far out of town the hospital is and how far I have to walk to come here. As an aside, having gone to the shops this morning as well I’m now on 191% of my daily total according to my fitbit and that’s impressive for someone with a damaged knee.

Over the last couple of years we’ve been watching the slow rebuilding of the Monseignur Van Waeyenberghlaan and you have already seen the work that they have been doing.

The upper end of the avenue is now complete and the traffic is now able to circulate around there too part of the way down.

People on foot are able to circulate down there too so I continued on my way down the avenue and back towards town. In an hour’s time I would be meeting Alison for a chat and a coffee.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall having seen the demolition of St Pieter’s Hospital, and I posted two new photos earlier.

The demolition work has also been taking place around the back so I went to see how they were doing with that little lot.

Whatever it is that they were demolishing, they have now demolished it and the rebuilding has started. That looks as if it might be a subterranean car park down there and to the left there’s a piledriver that will be sinking the foundations of whatever will be going on top.

Alison and I had a good chat and a little wander around and then we went back to the car park underneath the Ladeuzeplein.

Belgium temporarily relaxed its Covid restrictions a couple of days ago but now they are retightening them again.

There were plenty of people out and about making most of the warm weather and the end of the relaxed restrictions and they were having a little party on the Ladeuzeplein.

Just for a change, it seemed that social distancing was being respected. In fact we saw several stewards who were presumably enforcing them. And as we watched, a police car pulled onto the square and drove around to make its presence felt.

There was a really fine night tonight and I’m not surprised that so many people were out there.

The moon that was shining up above the University Library was particularly splendid. It was just the kind of thing that was crying out for a photograph so I obliged, even if the NIKON 1 J5 is not the most ideal camera for this kind of thing.

We picked up Alison’s car and she drove us back here to my little place. With not having had a coffee while we were out, I made one here and we had a nice long chat. And then I accompanied her to her car.

After she left I wrote up my notes of the day’s activities and now I’m off to bed. I’ll try one of these new pills to see where they gat me. No alarm in the morning – I’m going to have a nice lie-in. I always feel a little groggy after my treatment and the rest does me good.

Wednesday 8th July 2020 – I’VE BEEN …

… back to the hospital this morning.

They called me on the phone this morning at about 09:15 to tell me that they had arranged an X-Ray and an echograph for me – at 10:55. Now just imagine that in the UK. Never mind 100 minutes – it would be more like 100 weeks.

Just as well that I was feeling on form, having had an early night last night and a decent lie-in all the way through to about 07:45.

Plenty of time to go off on my travels during the night. There was a group of us out walking last night and we walked past a couple of football grounds. There was Chelsea on one side and Manchester United on the other. I made some comment about some of the Manchester United fans chanting about Chelsea from their ground. Some Chelsea supporters heard it and thought that I was chanting about them so they decided that they were going to follow us. We walked quite a good way but they were still behind us and I wondered what was going to happen next about all of this but that was when I awoke.
At some point during the night I was in the North East of England. They were building a by-pass and I don’t know if they were using dynamite but there was dust and rocks everywhere all over the by-pass. I was asked to clean it so I had to go and loom for a brush, a nice big long-handled one with stiff bristles. In the end someone gave me one and I took it back up there and started to brush up the highway. I was talking to some people but I abruptly cut off my talk and walked away. They were wondering why I was being so rude and ignorant but what had happened was that some large combine harvester in the distance had been working in a field and suddenly burst through the hedge and was hanging over the hedge in some kind of dangerous predicament and that would have been enough to stop anyone’s conversation if they had actually seen it. I was in a different place to them which was why I had a much better view of what was happening
At some point in the evening we were all in zodiacs sailing around and we had to meet up with a coach. Our zodiacs took to the air and were flying around the coastline looking for this coach. I pointed out where the main road was and I imagined that it would be on the main road somewhere so we shot off there and flew past all of these vehicles parked in this lay-by. There were a few Shearings coaches and a few coaches from other people out on tour so we waved at everyone as we went past but we couldn’t find our coach at all. We ended up back on the ship qt one point – this might even have been before. We were due to dock and I wanted to go ashore and get a pile of stuff because we were going to be a long way out. I needed a blanket to sit on but my blanket was on the bed and there was a white sheet placed all over the bed. There were a few people around there talking. One of them was a friend of mine making her debut on a nocturnal voyage. She said that she was off – had to go to bed because she was feeling really tired. She wanted to go on this moonlight excursion at midnight. I said that we would be gone by midnight but at least you told me so I could tell the captain. There was this other girl around there and she’d remember that they would come and fetch you and had she said anything to the captain of her zodiac?
There was another interchange with some people about a theatre. Someone asked me “you know about the theatre. have you ever heard of a situation where something has been done on the stage where they have used rushes from the filming of it in order to make a film and not bother to use the actual stage in the cinema?” I said “the only time that I can ever think of that happening is when there has been a strike of scene shifters and stage hands and they had broadcast instead the rushes – the temporary shots that they take to remind them where all the scenery would be, that kind of thing. That’s the only time that I can remember that happening.

After the medication I made a start on the dictaphone but the phone call interrupted me and I had to get weaving. The pouring rain put rather a dampener on the proceedings but never mind.

There were very few people out there on the streets today, which surprised me rather, despite the rain.

There was plenty of activity though in the Grote Markt. Three saloon cars which, by the looks of the registration numbers displayed thereupon looked as if they might be vehicles belonging to the Belgian Army.

So what was all that about? It’s one of those questions where it’s not always a good idea to go and make further enquiries. Instead, I pushed on down the hill through the town.

There was one thing about the rain though. It was at least keeping all of the dust down.

That was particularly important round by the old Sint Pieters hospital where they were going qt it hammer and tongues. It looked somewhat different from how it looked yesterday evening, that’s for sure.

As I stood there watching for five minutes or so I thought that it might be a good idea to make a video of the demolition. Luckily I was armed with my mobile phone which doesn’t do too bad a job of things like this and THE RESULTING VIDEO CAME OUT RATHER WELL.

It’s a good video record of what was happening there. It looks rather like something out of Jurassic Park

All the way up the hill to the hospital I strolled in the rain.

And I was impressed by what’s going on with regard to the virus in the country that seems to have one of the greatest rates of infections in Europe with its 843 deaths per million of the population.

They really seem to be taking things quite seriously, even down to the drive-in virus testing station here.

At the hospital my appointment was for 10:55. However I was there early and by 10:55 I’d had both of my examinations and was on my way home. Imagine that in the UK!

Back here I carried on with the dictaphone notes and updated the notes for yesterday to include the details of my voyage that morning.

This afternoon I’ve been out for a good four hours. Firstly to the Bank to find out why one of my bank cards wasn’t working. According to them there is no reason why it shouldn’t be working so the girl helped me set up the banking on my phone so that I could contact the helpline.

But imagine this! Before I could go into the bank I had to put on a face mask. Could you believe it? I wonder what would have happened had I put on a mask to go into the bank 6 months ago!

Despite the rain I had a nice walk around and ended up at the Delhaize by the football ground where I bought some stuff for tea. Pasta, a falafel burger and some vegetables

Later on this evening I’m going out for a walk again. The reason for that is that I’m at 188% of my daily activity and I’m going to see if I can push it over the 200%. It’s been a good while since I’ve done that.

Over 20,000 steps already is an impressive total.

Tomorrow I have to be up at 05:30. I’ve a very early train tomorrow in order to take advantage of the cheap rail ticket that I was offered.

For a saving of €60 I’ll get up half an hour earlier.

Saturday 14th December 2019 – I’VE HAD A …

… very quiet day today – hardly a surprise bearing in mind my medical treatment yesterday. It does actually take it out of me.

And so I was in bed quite early and I relied on my usual fall-back – watching a film on the laptop – and that sent me off to sleep within minutes.

Plenty of time to go off on my travels too. We started off with this musician giving a concert. It was all about him singing a song. One minute he was on the stage and next minute he wasn’t. It wasn’t until we analysed some kind of sound analysis kind of thing that we realised that he was actually underneath the stage and he’d been digging an escape tunnel out. And it could follow because of the sound the way the escape tunnel bent down towards the centre of the earth to give him a little extra height over his head to get further away and how there had been microphones in there that broadcast the sound to give everyone a false sense of something or other and allowed him to be able to sing his songs while he was busy burrowing his way through. But there were a few joins in what he was doing quite obviously like getting into the hole, all this kind of thing and I couldn’t work out exactly where these joins had taken place. Obviously the tape had been cut to allow him to get into this tunnelway and even though all the microphones were still there he couldn’t actually work out at what point he’d actually got into the tunnel and where he was when he’d said or done certain things and it was all so confusing. I remember waking up in a cold clammy sweat because of course the whole idea of me going into a tunnel like that would be impossible, claustrophobia and all of that.
Some time later on there was something about some small children. I’d been doing something that involved having to look after them and take them somewhere. I remember saying to someone that she was right about them in the car because they were travelling in the car having to go to somewhere. Of course it was a special treat so they never said anything to anyone, to keep it secret so they wouldn’t get told off about it. I’d been doing something around Crewe so someone asked “which pub did you go to?”. I said that I didn’t go to any pub. I had the kids with me. They said “you should always go to a pub”. I said “no, not with the kids with me” and we had a discussion about that.

At that point the alarm went off as usual and I was up and about long before the third alarm went off. There was the medication and breakfast of course, and then for a few hours I didn’t do all that much at all.

Round about 10:30 I went out for a walk and ended up going right the way around town.

But before I’d gone too far, I took a little diversion. At the end of the Tiensestraat near the junction with Muntstraat is the College de Valk. I’ve walked past there on dozens of occasions but somehow I’ve never gone into the grounds for a nosy around.

That kind of thing is something that I ought to be doing, so I took myself in there today.

There’s a path around the side of the building that seems to lead onto the back of the Monseigneur Ladeuzeplein and so I went for a look to see what I could see.

What actually came to my attention however were these four busts of who I imagine were at one tim quite important people. And important people of recent date too judging by the clothes that they were wearing.

The names didn’t hold a great deal of significance for me. In fact, although I did look at the notices, I can’t even remember their names now. That’s how much notice I took of them.

Instead of continuing on down the path I turned round and headed for the direction of the Grote Markt.

That’s where everything happens in Leuven, especially at weekends and especially at Christmas too. They set up a creche here and all kinds of christmassy objects and people come from miles around to admire the handiwork of the people who prepare it all.

Even I was there admiring it for a while and then I went off to Flying Tiger and Delhaize for a little shopping

In fact I went on quite an exploration this morning.

Yesterday I was in the Vismarkt doing some shopping in Origin’O – the Health Food and vegan shop – but I hadn’t ever been for a good walk around the square to see what goes on there. The answer is “not a lot” but at least I can now say that with confidence

And you can see the Origin’O in this photo. It’s down in the bottom right of this photo.

There are several little streets that lead off the Vismarkt and while I may have been down one or two of them I certainly hadn’t been down all of them.

This is the Schrijnmakersstraat – the Street of the Carpenters – and if there had been carpenters living in some of these houses in the 16th and 17th Century then carpenters must have been on a good salary, that’s all I can say. I thought that this little photograph take through an archway came out quite well and shows off some of the character of the street.

Mind you, it’s enough to make me wonder how much a room in a place like this might cost to rent.

At least the carpenters who lived in the street wouldn’t have too far to go to wet their whistles.

Around the corner, on the corner of the Augustijnenstraat and the Vaartstraat is the local public house, the “In Den Boule”. It looks very typically Flemish is style and character and I might have eveb neeb tempted to stick my head in the door for a butcher’s had it been open.

That will have to be something for another time I reckon. I’ll be back in four weeks’ time I imagine.

After a while I ended up back in the Diestsestraat, the pedestrianised shopping street.

One thing of which I haven’t done very much is to talk about the linguistic battles in Belgium. That’s a whole exciting topic that I could spin out for weeks … “not with a bayonet through your neck you couldn’t” – ed … but basically after the expulsion of the Dutch in 1830, the French language and culture took the ascendency for quite some considerable time in Flanders.

You can still see signs of this if you look. A jeweller’s shop would be expecting to have as its patrons the upper-class, wealthy citizens rather than the peasants. And so the old carving on the wall above the window of this shop advertising its former occupants is written in French.

But after World War II the writing was on the wall for the French language in Flanders. In fact, given a choice between speaking English or French as a second choice, the Flemish will almost always opt for the English language today.

All in all, I was out for a couple of hours on my little perambulation. I’m quite a big fan of Leuven.

Round about 12:45 I made my way back to my little room, calling in at the Spar supermarket for some bread seeing as I had forgotten. And back here I made myself some butties for lunch.

During the morning I’d had a little shut-eye and this afternoon I was away with the fairies yet again. And I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s inactivity that’s causing me to crash out like this. It doesn’t seem to bother me when I’m being busy.

Once it went dark I went outside again for another walk.

All of the Christmas lights were illuminated and the Christmas market in the Herbert Hooverplein and the Monseigneur Ladeuzeplein looked quite good too. There were an enormous number of stalls and an even greater number of people milling around admiring what was going on.

The University library was looking a little bit sad though. I thought that they might have made a greater effort to do something to show it off.

There was plenty of time for me to have a good walk round the town this evening to inspect the Christmas lights and I made the most of it.

The Oud Markt was looking particularly beautiful this evening. One thing that it shows us here is that there’s no need to go to extravagant lengths with lights in order to make a place look magnificent. This is exactly how a place should be, in my opinion.

My little walk around took me up to about 19:00 when I came back for tea. What with one thing and another, I have walked miles today into almost every crook and nanny of the town and the fitbit is showing over 10 kms and 136% of my daily activity.

My burger, pasta and veg with tomato sauce for tea went down a treat after that little lot.

But talking about walking, up to now there’s a train for Granville going out in the afternoon (although the situation might change at any moment of course), about three hours after my train from Brussels arrives (if it runs and is on time, of course – anything might happen tomorrow!)

Now, if there is no Metro, I was looking for other alternative ways of crossing Paris. With about two and a half hours to play with, I’ve been thinking about walking.

It’s 7kms in pretty much a straight line so seeing as I have the time I’m going to try it on foot. The route is quite level with no climbs and goes past some interesting places so it should be quite exciting if it comes off.

But as I’ve said, anything can happen about the public transport in France while this strike is on, so nothing is taken for granted. You’ll probably find me sleeping underneath the arch of a bridge over the River Seine at this rate.

So on that point, I’m going to bed. I’ll watch a film until I fall asleep, all ready for my exertions tomorrow. And exertions there will be.

And one final word. While I was out on my travels I took about 50 photos of Leuven and its Christmas lights, and I didn’t have much of a clue how to fit them all onto the blog. In the end I created a web page to display them and you’re quite welcome to go and have a look.

december creche grote markt leuven louvain belgium

december rijksarchief vaartstraat leuven louvain belgium

Sunday 17th November 2019 – REMEMBER LAST NIGHT …

… when I said that I had planned to go out and take a photo of the Grote Markt and all of the buildings lit up for Christmas, and how I forgot to take my camera with me when I went out?

Tonight, I didn’t forget. And in fact I made a special journey to go out and look at the town hall in the dark and show you how it was looking.

And unfortunately it’s not as spectacular as it has been in previous years. There’s no creche and the lights that illuminate the windows are not changing colour.

The Fourth Hotel or Restaurant or whatever it is, while always looking spectacular at night, hasn’t been dressed up at all for Christmas.

Still, I suppose that it it early days as yet and there’s plenty of time to organise things ready for Christmas.

And in any case I would only be complaining if it were done too early so I can’t have everything my way. I’ll see what has happened by the time I come back here in four weeks time.

A late night last night but I wasn’t unduly worried. I set the alarm for 0:00 and beat it easily, being up and about by 07:30. Plenty of time to go for a ramble too during the night and when I’ve transcribed the dictaphone notes I’ll tell you all about it – where I went and with whom I was.

Seeing as I had plenty of time I had a quick shower and organised things ready for when jackie came down for brekfast. I’d explained her the Belgian tradition about couques on Sunday morning, so she had been to the boulangerie around the corner and come back armed with a pain au chocolat and a chocolate eclair.

“Well, I am on holiday” she explained.

We breakfasted together and had a good chat, mainly about her job, and then went round the corner to meet Alison. She took us to the mini-Carrefour where the girls stocked up with more chocolate and then into Tervueren.

Our destination was to meet her friend Theresa and go for a walk around the park, but we were somewhat waylaid by the sight of this couple here and their dog.

Sitting around at the bottom of the bicycle ramp with a lit brazier to keep them warm in the winter wind.

It was certainly novel, and quite ironic seeing as we had just been explaining to Jackie not two minutes beforehand about the somewhat strange behaviour of some of the Belgians and their profound sense of the absurd.

Waiting for Theresa, we sat on a park bench and the girls opened one of the bars of chocolate that they had bought.

Of course, that brought the crowds rushing in towards us. Not humans, although of course there were plenty of them about, but also the wildlife, to see what titbits were on offer.

We had nothing for them, as you might expect, but it didn’t stop them coming over to investigate us.

“Crowds of people” I said. And I wasn’t wrong either.

As well as the civilians, of which there were more than enough, there were whole troops and packs of Hitler Yout … errrr … Boy Scouts and Girl Guides out there – presumably rubbing each other together to try to start a fire or something.

It’s the usual thing, Scouts on Sunday morning all over Belgium, tying each other in knots and playing with each other’s woggles.

And who can blame the crowds for being out there today?

Despite being windy and cold, it really was a glorious morning out there in the sunshine.

And the autumn colours were glorious too. Not a patch on the colours that you see in Canada of course – nothing whatever can equal that – but nevertheless for Europe it was pretty spectacular.

The Tervuerense Park is actually the gardens of the Koninklijk Museum voor Midden-Afrika – The Royal Museum for Central Africa.

Formerly the symbol of Belgian colonialism and exploitation of the natives of the Congo, it had been closed for a good number of years while it underwent a make-over.

It’s supposed now to “have a different focus” but whatever that might be remains to be seen. One day I might be lucky and find it open when I’m at a loose end.

There is an old mill on the far side of the Vossemvijfer, the lake at the far end of the park.

That’s now been turned into a cafe so now that Theresa had caught us up we headed that way for a coffee.

There was a handy table free in a quiet corner of the upstairs room so we grabbed that and had a chat and drank our coffee while the girls finished off the chocolate.

All very convivial.

But soon enough we had to leave so that Jackie could catch her train back to Cologne.

On the way back to Leuven we drove down the side of the flight path for planes coming in to land at Brussels National Airport at Zaventem, and I was rewarded by the sight of this Qatar Airlines plane disappearing into the trees.

Jackie organised herself a sandwich and boarded her train back, and Alison brought me back here where we had a really good chat for an hour or so about different things.

It suddenly occurred to me that I hadn’t had lunch so I headed off to find a bakery.

My route took me past the Pope Leo XIII Seminary Chapel, and I noticed the Flemish lion on the roof – something that had escaped my attention befofe.

So equipping myself with a demi-baguette and a tomato I came back here and made myself a tomato and vegan cheese butty.

Shame as it is to admit it, I had a little crash out and then caught up with a few other things.

For tea, even though it’s Sunday and I had some vegan cheese, I eschewed my pizza and finished off the burger and potatoes with some of the frozen vegetables, followed by the last of the fruit salad and raspberry sorbet.

That was my cue for my evening’s perambulation, and I’m being a bit of a wuss today. Having managed 194% of my daily activity and 16.8 kilometres yesterday, today I’ve done a mere 137% – or 11.1 kms. Clerly slipping, aren’t I?

An early night now because I’m up early tomorrow and going home. I wonder what delights are awaiting me there.

house parc de tervuerense park tervueren belgium

view from house vossemvijfer parc de tervuerense park tervueren belgium

vossemvijfer parc de tervuerense park tervueren belgium

Saturday 16th November 2019 – I’VE HAD A …

… nice day today in the company of some very pleasant people. As I have said before … “and on many occasions too” – ed … I don’t have too many friends, but those I have are the best in the world.

Last night was something of a late night. But with having set the alarm to a much more realistic 08:30 I wasn’t all that concerned.

Plenty of time to go on a little voyage or two and having been joined on a few nocturnal rambles over the past few nights by some pretty bizarre characters from my distant past, last night was probably the most bizarre of all to date. Mandy Crane was there last night, and that was a surprise wasn’t it, after something like 45 years since I last wasted a moment thinking about her, and we were talking about something – I dunno. It occurred to me that she had been round to see me quite a lot and I was wondering whether she was waiting for me to make some kind of advances to her. But on one occasion when I turned my back to her she put her arms around me and we started to chat. But it became pretty weird and even in my dream I was thinking that I couldn’t imagine why she would come around at this stage
And later on I was back in my pawn shop last night. There were three people, two brothers and a woman, who ran it. Each had their own special area of management control of the situation and I was going through who did what (the woman was the admin person and I can’t now remember what the speciality of each brother was) and all the files of the people had different coloured tags (like Government “BF tags”) to tell them what the arrangements were, about people, why people were involved in this particular pawn shop – one colour of tag for this, one colour of tag for that – but before I got too far into this dream I awoke.

That was at about 06:09 but no danger of my leaving my stinking pit at that time. I turned over and went back to sleep until about 0:30. That’s more like it so I left the bed just in time to beat the alarm.

After medication I had a few things to do to keep me out of mischief so just for a change I applied myself to them.

At about 11:15 I left my room and headed up to the railway station, thinking to myself that I remembered that I had somehow managed to forget to have breakfast this morning.

So engrossed was I in this thought that I was nearly squidged by the town’s little tourist train as I crossed the road. And I do have to say that I don’t remember having seen this before.

That’s another job for me then – to sift through my photos to see whether it’s featured before.

Jackie’s train was bang on time and it was nice to see her after all this time. Alison hadn’t made it to the station so I sent here a message to say where we were and we went to the cafe over the road to wait.

With no reply from her, I rang her up, to find that she hadn’t received it (she received it about an hour later) so we headed off into town to meet up.

First stop was the wool shop. Alison is a knitter and so is Jackie, so they spent a good while browsing through the products on offer there. Nerina was a knitter to so I’m quite used to this sort of behaviour. It’s nothing new to me at all.

Lunch was next and, seeing as we are in Belgium, a fritkot was an obvious choice. We headed to the Ali Baba around the corner and while they tucked into a meal I had a plate of fritjes with looksaus.

We were in there for hours chatting about all sorts of things and then we headed off for some fresh air.

It was for about a year or so that I lived in Leuven and I’d walked for miles around the city, so I thought that I knew it pretty well.

But that’s not the case at all because Alison took us around some areas that I didn’t know at all, like past the Father Damiaanplein (he of the lepers whom we have encountered before) with the Hollands College down at the bottom.

That’s an interesting building, dating from the 17th Century for theology students from the diocese of Haarlem in the Netherlands.

Long-since abandoned, the University took it over in 2008 and since 2011 there has been some kind of project of restoration with the aim of returning the building to its former glory.

There’s a little park – the Diljepark – just past there. Something else that I didn’t know.

It follows, as you might expect with a name like that, the River Dilje out of town. And one of the attractions was this little Japanese-style bridge over the river just here.

Unfortunately it didn’t look as if it’s in use. Or maybe fortunately because as far as anger management issues go, they have the same effect on me as do ferries. Whenever I see one it always makes me cross.

One thing for which Leuven is very well-known is its Begijnhof – the Beguinage.

The great issue with Medieval life was the number of widows and single women. While childbirth affected quite dramatically the number of women, the incessant warfare of the period and industrial accidents had an even greater effect on the male population.

A great many women were thus left for one reason or another without a protector and the church was mainly responsible for this role.

In Medieval Flanders I can’t thing of a single important religious city that didn’t have its Beguinage and Leuven is certainly no exception.

And so magnificent is the Begijnhof here in the city
that in 1998 it was recognised by UNESCO as a World Heritage site.

Mind you, it wasn’t always like this. For a long while it was occupied as a sort-of social housing complex and there was never the money available to do anything with it.

By the 1960s it was in a deplorable condition and so it was sold off.

The University bought it and spent a great deal of time, effort and money restoring it to its present glory. It’s now occupied as student and academic staff accommodation which is a waste because I’m certain that I wouldn’t mind a little apartment there.

It’s another place that I had never visited during my stay here.

We walked back into town and to another modern square that I had never visited. There’s a second-hand clothes shop there that the girls visited (nd Jackie bought a handbag) and a decent cafe where we went for a drink.

Later on we walked back across the centre of town so that Jackie could catch her bus.

As we were passing by the end of the Mechelsestraat where I was yesterday, I happened to notice in the dark that they now seem to have switched on the Christmas lights.

“Surely it’s a bit early for that” I mused to myself. Christmas is still about 6 weeks away.

But apparently not because in the Grote Markt we had a brass band going on, playing all kinds of Christmas music.

And the Town Hall was all lit up too. I would have taken a photo of that but the night wasn’t yet as dark as I would like it to be.

I made a mental note that when I come back later I will bring the big Nikon back with me. After all, I’d bought it with the express purpose of using it for night photography.

Back at the apartment building Jackie checked herself into her room and then we had a coffee and a chat. At 19:15 we headed back into town to meet up again with Alison.

And it was then that I realised that I had forgotten the camera.

The girls fancied an ice-cream, but all of the ice-cream parlours were closed.

Never mind. Seeing as we are in Belgium, a Belgian waffle would do them just as well. But as we got to the Belgian waffle stall, he closed up his equipment.

In the end we found a cafe that did crepes and waffles and they contented themselves with that. I had yet another portion of fritjes. Extravagant, you might think, but those two portions of chips are all that I have eaten today.

The coffee bar at Kloosters Hotel was next, but someone had pinched our usual spec by the fire so we had to sit elsewhere. We set out to solve all of the problems of the world as we normally do, but suddenly Alison noticed that it was gone 23:00 and she was in danger of turning into a pumpkin.

That was the cue for us to head back to our various destinations. Alison walked off to her car and Jackie and I came back here. Not an early night – not by any means – but quite an enjoyable one in good company.

I hope we have such a good time tomorrow.

EPIC HALL

The Poisoned Pen (or Poisoned Chalice, more like) – or my relentless struggle against reality

Category Archives: grote markt

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