Category Archives: Belgium

Saturday 27th February 2021 – THAT WAS A …

… long, long day!

And to give you some kind of clue about it, if you have a look at this image here you’ll see the time that this train is leaving the railway station at Leuven to make its way out to Halle.

It wasn’t even my train either. It was advertised as “Brussels” but it went along the city-centre avoiding lines past Merode, Schuman and that way. I had to wait another 20 minutes for my train to pull into the station.

Having gone to bed at some kind of relatively early hour (like 23:10) I staggered out of bed a couple of minutes after the alarm went off at 05:00. There were my sandwiches to make for lunch (and I’m glad that I did – read on), the packing, some tidying up, and then I could head off to the railway station.

It was at 06:16 when a train to Brussels Midi came into the station. With it being Saturday morning, a lot of the early commuter trains aren’t running.

It’s one of the AM 96 multiple units, te ones with the doughnut ring around the front that make them airtight when two or more are coupled together. And an added novelty, when they are joined in tandem, the driving cabs at the join pivot out of the way so that passengers can pass from one unit to the next.

They are actually quite comfortable for multiple-units and they are quite often used on long-distance routes where passenger numbers don’t warrant a locomotive with carriages.

We pulled into Brussels bang on time and I noticed that my train, the 07:17 to Strasbourg, was already in the station. It’s one of the TGV Reseau 38000 units that we travel on quite regularly.

Strangely, and rather uneasily, there were several other TGVs there too. The 06:06 to Marseilles hadn’t left yet and the one after that to Bordeaux was still at the platform. That didn’t seem at all normal to me and I suspected that there was something afoot.

As we waited for them to open the doors so that we could climb in, a hostess came by. She told us that someone had trespassed onto the railway at Ruisbroek and been struck by a passing train. Nothing was heading south towards Lille until the mess had been cleared up.

With nothing else to do, we boarded the train – and waited. And waited.

After about an hour or so they announced that the 06:06 TGV would be leaving “imminently” so we all piled out of our train onto that one. I’d probably missed my train from Paris to Granville by now so it really didn’t make much difference but moving anywhere was better than not moving at all.

We’d been on that one for about an hour or so when they announced that this one wasn’t going to go out either. They would be laying on a fleet of buses to take us to Lille.

But no chance of that. We’ll be there for ever. One thing about train apps on mobile phones is that you can check for other alternatives. And in 5 minutes time there would be a train leaving Brussels for De Panne (coincidentally, the same train that I’d come into Brussels on, but 2 hours later) and 5 minutes after that train were to pull into Gent St Pieters, there’s a local stopping train via Kortrijk to Lille-Flandres.

And then 10 minutes later, there’s an express train from Lille-Flandres to Paris Gare du Nord.

That was enough information for me. I grabbed my things and ran.

And here’s my train from Gent to Lille, here in a platform at the Lille-Flanders railway station.

It was one of those mornings when I was fated to travel on a whole fleet of AM96 multiple units. The one that took me to Gent was an AM96 but I wasn’t able to take a photo of that because it was already on the platform when I arrived there and it pulled out almost as soon as I climbed aboard.

And then this one is an AM96 too, but a rather special one, for a few of the fleet are dual-voltage machines designed to run on the French and on the Luxembourg railway networks as well as the Belgian network so that they can operate some cross-border services like this one.

No-one controlled the passengers on either of these two trains – no ticket inspector or anything so I didn’t need to argue or negotiate, which is always good news.

There were ticket inspectors on the turnstiles to the platform where the train to Paris was waiting but they didn’t need much persuading to let me on board.

The train was one of the Reseau Duplex double-decker trains, nice, fast and comfortable. Up on the top deck there’s a kind of small sofa at the top of the steps intended for people to make and receive phone calls instead of doing so in the main seating area disturbing everyone.

They aren’t booked out to passengers so I made a beeline for the sofa and that was where I stayed for the entire journey in relative comfort. A ticket collector came by so I told her my story and she didn’t seem to be bothered at all.

All in all it was quite a painless journey from that point of view.

From Paris Gare du Nord I took the metro to Paris Montparnasse and then went to the station offices to tell them my tale of woe. They weren’t too bothered either particularly. It goes without saying that I’d missed my train but they gave me a ticket for the next one. It meant a wait of about 1 hour and 50 minutes but there wasn’t really any alternative.

This train was pretty busy. Luckily they had given me a seat so I was fairly comfortable on the way home.

While I’d been waiting I’d eaten my sandwiches so I spent most of the journey home editing my Greenland photos. It’s nice to have a laptop that is powerful enough to do all of that kind of thing. I managed to shift quite a few by the time that we pulled into the railway station at Granville.

It was 17:45 when I returned home – 3.5 hours later than I was intending. And more than 12 hours after I’d set out from my digs in Leuven. No wonder that I was pretty fed up. It meant that I hadn’t had my couple of hours chilling out before I had to start to do things.

Tea was out of a tin and then I listened to a repeat of my “Strife” concert. If you missed it, it’s available AS A PODCAST.

And now I’m off to bed. I’ve had a very long day and I’m exhausted. And no day off tomorrow as I’m having visitors.

Friday 26th February 2021 – IT SEEMS TO BE …

… quite the thing for me to feature on my pages photos of people taking photos, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall.

We’ve had people taking photos too many times to count, people taking photos of people taking photos of people and even, on one occasion if I remember correctly, people taking photos of people taking photoe of people taking photos of people. We’ve also had FILM CREWS while we’ve been out and about on our travels.

Today, it’s the turn of a TV cameraman to feature on these pages. Here he was, quite happily setting up his camera to do some filming down the Brusselsestraat in Leuven.

There wasn’t a van about, or anyone waving a microphone around so I couldn’t see where he’d come from or what the purpose of his filming would be, but as the Belgian Government was about to make an important public announcement, I imagine that it’s going to be something to do about people’s reactions to whatever news there might be.

And I’m not sure what your reaction might be when I tell you that I was up and about, wandering around my digs before the alarm went off, but I bet that it would be worth filming too.

Mind you, it was something of a cheat because the alarm wasn’t actually set for … errr … 06:00 or thereabouts this morning. Having my medication takes a lot out of me so this morning it was set for 08:00.

Even so, wandering around the place at 07:33 is something that I can’t always do even when the alarm is set for 06:00. It reminds me of the time when I used to arive late at school and the teacher used to ask me why. I used to reply that there were eight people in our house but the alarm was only set for seven.

After the medication I had a listen to the dictaphone to see where I’d been. I started off last night with a guy and girl, going round a back trail at the back end of Crewe. It was a muddy track, very steep and up and down with hairpin beds, everything like that. I was havng to coach them their way round. This woman was nervous. I was trying hard not to frighten her but make her aware of all of the dangers. At one point we had to ski up and down and back up a slope. I had to get my skis ready – this guy got his, the woman got hers. Mine were somewhere along the road. This incidentally evolved during this voyage into a place that we have visited several times on various nocturnal rambles, that high, narrow mountain pass where we’ve been skiing and walking a few times in the past.

And somewhere in this I was having some work do to. I wasn’t in the office and I was planning on doing it at home but everything was making me run late and my ‘phone was einging more often. At one stage it was a guy from the office asking me when I was intending to do this thing. I replied that I’d be back by 15:15 and I’ll get on with it then. He asked “what about … (and mentioned the name of another case I had to deal with)?”. I replied “don’t worry. That’s not quite so urgent. I’ll deal with that as well while I’m at it”.

Later on, we had an old Ford E83W van (actually when we were kids my father had two, KLG93 and XVT772 but that’s another story) in our drive and my father and brother were talking about breaking it for spares. I thought that it was far too good to break. We were all underneath it and getting all of the mud off from underneath but keeping it in shape as it came off so that it could be used as a profile to make repair panels for other vans. This involved picking these lumps of mud out from underneath and posting them off to him. In the meantime there was a very informal game of cricket taking place between some American kids so they didn’t really have a great idea about what they were doing and this was going on all around ths van. I’d been watching for a while and decided that I’d join in. I fielded somewhere and of course having played a lot of cricket I took up a rather professional stance. Someone said something and someone mentioned wicket-keeping. I said that I had my old wicket-keeper’s gloves somewhere (and I do too, but these days I couldn’t even begin to think where they might be) and then went on to say things like “I’m thnking of taking up cricket again and keeping wicket”. The girl who was in charge of this game told us to hush as we were disturbing everyone’s concentration. But the important thing was this van. I had a good look underneath it and thought that there was nothing much wrong with this yet they were all talking about breaking it for spares.

It took quite a while to type out all of that as you can imagine, and then I attacked last night’s notes. I’d fallen asleep in the middle of writing it and when I awoke I was too tired to finish them so I went straight to bed. Anyway, they are now all done and dusted. But I think that I’ll probably have to end up rewriting them at some point. They aren’t what I would actually call coherent.

From then on, it was the turn of the radio programme to receive my attention. Yesterday I’d chosen the music for the next three “studio” programmes in the sequence (the “live” ones are done separately). Today I combined them into pairs and added into the first pair for each programme the introductory notes. These are pre-recorded and I either fit them in over the top of a suitable quiet passage near the beginning or else prefix the music with it.

Combining the music in pairs isn’t as easy as it sounds either because you need to choose music that is roughly similar in beat and speed and merge then so that there seems to be a seamless joint. But sometimes it’s much more exciting and challenging, not to mention satisfying, to pair up two completely different tracks and try to make it sound good.

There was the usual pause for lunch, and round about 15:30 when I’d finished the music I went for a walk around the town.

This is the first time, by the way, for I don’t know how long, when I haven’t been seriously looking at computers in FNAC. With its 8GB of RAM and its new 1TB solid-state drive, at long last I have a travelling laptop fast enough to do the kind of work that I want when I’m out and about.

The processor isn’t very quick so it won’t do some things, but to replace it with anything much better, we’re looking at prices in the region of €1200. So that’s a non-starter.

At the Sports Shop I finally found a decent woolly hat to go on my woolly head. A proper insulated hat that will keep my head warm if ever I make it back to the High Arctic, which, at the rate that things are going, is highly unlikely.

In the Dienstestraat I noticed a huge queue of people outside a shop. It reminded me very much of Poland and the Soviet Union in the late 70s and early 80s when I used to travel around there.

However what was happening was that it’s the last week of this particular shop. It’s closing down at the weekend and everything in there is on sale at just €1:00, so people were queueing up there in the hope of finding a bargain.

It wasn’t the kind of thing that would have tempted me to go over and see if there were any. I’m not standing in a queue for ages like that. I had one or two things that I needed to do, like go to Delhaize and buy something to eat for tea otherwise I’m going to be disappointed.

Coming out of Delhaize, I noticed this bistro in the side street. We’ll have to go and visit it once everywhere reopens. It sounds to me like a pretty exciting place.

Back here I had an hour or so editing photos from Greenland 2019. We’re now at Hvalsey inspecting the remains of the Norse church that was the site of the last written record of the Norse in Greenland before the colony disappeared.

Now that I’ve had my tea, and done the washing-up, I listened to my live concert on THE RADIO.

Many years ago I had a sort-of girlfriend whose elder brother had a friend who was a drummer. His group had had a couple of albums but they weren’t ever really successful, but they were a phenomenal live act. I came across the drummer on the internet a few months ago and we started to chat. He sent me some tapes of his group playing live and I made up a live concert out of it.

Even though I say it myself, it came out really well and I was very proud of it. And you can hear it ON SATURDAY EVENING at 21:00 European time, 20:00 UK time, 15:00.

So I’m going to have a quick tidy up and then I’m off to bed. I have an early start tomorrow as I have to be in Brussels by 07:10

Thursday 25th February 2021 – YESTERDAY I MENTIONED …

… the slow pace of work at which they bare rebuilding that house in the Dekentraat.

And you won’t be surprised to learn that it’s not just in the Dekenstraat that they are taking their time. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that over the last 18 months or so we’ve been following the trail of several other renovations and repairs that have been undertaken in the town, such as the laying of the new sewer in the Monseigneur Van Waeyeberglaan.

Here, they have been dragging their heels over this work for all this time without the slightest hint of urgency and they are still miles away from finishing it off.

Even before they started over there, they had dug a huge hole in the car park in the Sint Jacobsplein.

That looked as if it was having a storm overflow tank installed there and while they might have installed it and surfaced it over, it’s still fenced off and being used as a builders’ store for all of the materials and machinery for the site.

It’ll remain like that, I reckon, until everything else is done, whenever that might be. I don’t know about you but I’m not holding my breath.

This morning it was rather difficult for me to haul myself out of bed. But then that’s always the case after my journey here. It takes rather a lot out of me, all of this travelling.

After the medicine, I had a listen to the dictaphone to see where I’d been during the night.

Last night I had been out in VBH, my yellow Cortina, and I was following someone who might have been in a Volvo. They were doing all kinds of tricks. We came to a junction where a road came in from the left hand side and there was a police car, a Rover SD1 there waiting to pull out. He was going to turn to the right so we were going to go past him. I didn’t realise that I didn’t have my seat belt on and there wasn’t much that I could do about that. As we went past I saw him change his indicator over from the right to the left and he pulled out behind us to follow us so I slid into my seat belt with the idea of clipping it on at a certain moment. While I was distracted the car in front slammed on his brakes for no good purpose whatsoever. I didn’t realise and VBH went straight into the back of this Volvo whatever it was with an almighty thud. Of course the police were there so I told them basically what happened. They had a look and they were certain that VBH was going to be scrapped. They pointed to the left hand side and the sill. The whole sill and inner sill had broken away from the rest of the body and was waving around. i said “I can weld that” but they were quite insistent that this was scrap.

Later on we were doing some building work in an attic somewhere. We were demolishing part of the wall and going to enlarge it because there were two rooms in the attic. I didn’t know where it was going because the alarm went off in the middle and awoke me. There was rotten wood that we were ripping out and someone had built a beam out of bricks would you believe and you could see that that was sagging away from what it was supposed to be supporting. There was about a 3 inch gap and I was convinced that there hadn’t been a gap until we started moving around in the attic. I was wondering if this meant that the attic was unstable and that the work that we were going to be doing was wasted.

This morning I was a very busy boy. What I did was to choose the music for three radio programmes that I’ll be preparing in the future. I might have completed them even quicker except that, once more, one of the plug-ins that I need for certain files isn’t uploaded onto this machine.

That was the case with one of the other laptops but seeing as I shall be keeping this one going for a while, I tracked down the missing plug-in, downloaded it and configured it. And all of that took longer than it might otherwise have done too.

Round about 11:30 I knocked off for a shower and a clothes-washing session and then made my sandwiches. And then off to Castle Anthrax.

On the way through the town passed by the site of the old Sint Pieters Hospital that never was.

In the past, I’ve talked … “at great length” – ed … about this building and its history, in particular how it became surplus to requirements before it was even properly commissioned And after many years of standing almost empty, they are now finally demolishing it

They have bulldozers and cranes all over the building dismantling it, but they are really taking their time bringing it down. As regular readers of this rubbish will recall, I’d have used dynamite and brought it down accordingly. Just a couple of days’ work and maybe a month of cleaning up the debris rather than spending a couple of years at it and still not getting very far.

Sint Jacobs Kerk was locked up so I couldn’t see inside today so I wandered off to check on the laying of the main sewer.

There has been some little progress on the end of the sewer at the Biezenstraat. They’ve battered down the road surface and put in the kerb stones that go down to the Kapicijnenvoer. And you can actually react the Frittoerist now without going through any complicated manoeuvres too. A fritkot in Belgium with restricted access is a Belgian person’s idea of purgatory.

The next stage for the road will be the tipping of gravel, but as to when that may be, that could be anyone’s guess.

From here I have to walk along the Sint Hubertusstraat and then up the hill in the Monseigneur van Waeyenberglaan to the hospital.

The St Hubertuslaan hasn’t changed all that much in the last four weeks either. There was no-one working down at this end either but if we look in the distance halfway up the Monseigneur van Waeyenberglaan we can see a pile of diggers and other machinery working away.

And as I went past, I counted a grand total of 8 workmen doing all of this. No wonder it seems to be taking them all so long to make much progress.

At the hospital, I had a stroke of luck. When I first came here 5 years ago, they gave me a car park pass, for which I had to pay a €50:00 deposit. At various times I’d found the card but not the receipt or else the receipt but not the card. But while I was sorting out a few things back at home I’d managed to lay my hands on them both.

So seeing as I arrived early at the hospital I went to the Cashier’s office and handed them back – and recovered my €50:00 deposit. Spend, spend, spend, hey?

Everything ended up running terribly late in the hospital. They wouldn’t treat me until I’d had a Covid test so I ended up having another Q-tip shoved up my nose (which is one of the most horrible things that I could imagine) and then I had to sit around and wait for half an hour while they examined it.

So on finding out that I’m not Covid-positive (and that I’m no pregnant too – it’s amazing what they can find out with a Covid test) they could actually treat me. And eat my lunch too – at 15:00 now that I was plugged in and switched on.

When they threw me out I nipped round to the Chemists and stocked up with medication. Owing to some kind of confusion I’d been given two prescriptions for my monthly supply, and knowing the confusion that arrives when I try to obtain a large supply to take with me on a North American voyage, I took full advantage.

On the way back down into town I could take a photo of the roadworks at the top end of the Monseigneur van Waeyenberglaan.

On the way up, it had been a glorious, hot, sunny day and I had been sweltering as I walked to the hospital. I’d felt rather silly walking up there in my large jacket while some folk were wandering around in shorts and tee-shirts.

But by the time that had thrown me out of the hospital it had clouded over quite dramatically, tte temperature had dropped considerably and the sun was no longer in my eyes at this viewpoint.

We’ve seen them knocking down the front end of the Sint Pieter’s Hospital. Down in the Kapicijnenvoer we can see the work that’s going on at the rear of the premises.

The site has been cleared and they’ve now erected a couple of tower cranes in position so it seems that redevelopment of the site is under way. It will be interesting to see what they are going to be building there, with cranes like that. I suppose that in another 100 years we shall find out.

Alison was waiting for me in the town centre so I hurried along there. It’s good to see her again and hear all of her exciting news. There’s quite a lot going on.

With it being a beautiful evening for being out and about, especially for a February night, we went for a nce long walk around the town.

There were crowds of people out there tonight too, taking the air. I’ve no idea what was happening but the Sint Donatus Park just outside the city centre was bursting to the seams with people out there picnicking.

The Sint Donatus park is one that we have visited on several occasions. Apart from all of the water features, it also contains vestiges of the old medieval city walls, but we aren’t going to see them tonight, not in the dark anyway.

In the centre of the park is a kind of bowl or amphitheatre and this was crowded with people. You could hear the noise from a couple of hundred metres away.

There were several policemen patrolling this part of the park and I have to say that they were taking absolutely no notice whatever of the social distancing, or lack thereof, of the people congregating here.

There is one thing that I can say about this is that as long as I can hold out until early April when I (hopefully) will have had my second anti-virus injection, then these people can congregate as much as they like. Darwin will take care of them and we’ll have a much wiser, healthier population remaining when the pandemic has passed, if it ever does.

Alison and I continued our wander around. Down the steep hill in the Ramberg to where it joins up to the Naamsestraat and walked back to her car.

We both came back here and had a coffee (seeing as all of the cafes are closed) and another long chat.

After she went home I sat down to type out today’s notes but I fell asleep halfway through. It’s always pretty exhausting having my medical treatment and walking around doing … errr … 136% of my daily target of exercise contributes quite a lot to that. So when I awoke I simply hauled myself off to bed and I’ll finish the rest in the morning.

Wednesday 24th February 2021 – HAVE YOU EVER …

… seen the Gare du Nord looking as empty as this in the middle of the working day when there has been no rail strike?

It’s absolutely unimaginable, isn’t it? Normally it would be heaving with people and it would be difficult to move about but at least in France, even though they don’t seem to have quite got to grips with this virus, people are coping with all of this “working from home” stuff.

While Paris-Montparnasse wasn’t quite so quiet, mainly because three trains all arrived at once, the Metro was quiet too. Plenty of room on my train across Paris too.

It’s all boding well for the future if people can adapt as quickly as this o the new way of doing things.

It’s my birthday today of course (so happy birthday to me) and the last thing that I wanted to be doing today was to have to travel by train to Leuven.

In fact there’s only one thing that I would rather do less than that, and that is to actually be having my treatment. And had I not changed my day of treatment from Wednesday to Thursday that is exactly what I would have been doing.

Mind you, I was lucky to actually make the station today. I had a wicked attack of cramp in the middle of the night that had me hopping around the bedroom in agony. And as a result I wasn’t in much of a mood to haul myself out of bed this morning. I’ve had days when I’ve been much more lively than this.

First thing to do was to make my flask of coffee and the second thing to do was to make my sandwiches and sort out the stuff that I need to take with me. The rubbish went out as well and I even managed to have a shower.

Finally, there was about 30 minutes spare so I had a whizz around the apartment tidying up the place and it actually looks respectable now.

It’s late February so I went out prepared for the Arctic weather, and so as you can imagine, we were having a heatwave and I was sweltering.

Yesterday when we were out on our afternoon walk we saw Thora, one of the little Channel Island freighters, anchored in the port.

When I went out this morning, she was still in there tied up in the loading bay at the quayside in front of Marité. It’s quite surprising to see her still here. These days, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, there has been quite a rapid turn-round in the port. They’ve been having the freighters in and out on the same tide at times and that’s good going.

But I can’t stand here musing. I’m running a little later than usual and I have a train to catch.

Further on down the Rue des Juifs, I went past Winnibelle’s, the little bar there.

All of the bars and restaurants are closed right now, something that is hitting the local commerce quite hard but it’s a necessity given the way that things are right now. But there’s some kind of campaign going on and I’m not sure what it is, but many places, bars and restaurants, have some weird stickers in the window, all of which seem to have been doe by the same hand

This has been intriguing me for a while, having seen so many of them over the last few weeks

The town was pretty quiet this morning. There weren’t too many people around at all. I suppose with it being School holidays, everyone was having a lie in.

As I was walking up the hill to the station, I saw my train pull in to the platform. Another one of the GEC Alstom Regiolis units that work the line.

It’s the usual train that I catch, the 09:00 to Paris. They’ve reinstated most of the trains but only to a certain degree. Instead of a double-unit, it’s just a single unit of 6 cars and although it was busy, it wasn’t packed and I didn’t have a neighbour. I spent all of the journey updating the directories on the laptop that I brought with me, the one that I repaired over the weekend.

And to my surprise, I was so busy that I forgot to crash out. That’s a new experience on a train to Paris for me.

A deserted metro and a train pulling up just as I stepped on the platform whizzed me off from Paris Montparnasse to Paris Gare du Nord and I was there in no time.

When the train pulled in we all queued up to go aboard but unfortunately there were “issues”. It seemed that someone had left behind their luggage and that involved a visit from the Security Services. They are quite strict on this kind of thing on the French Railways. Any abandoned lucggage results in the Army being called in.

After about 10 minutes, the barrier was opened and we were allowed on. It seems that whoever it was who had left behind his luggage had gone back to claim it just before the Bomb Squad blew it into smithereens.

This was a double unit and I was going to be in the front half of the train.

Both units were of the nice and comfortable TGV Duplex Reseau types, double-decker trains. I was in the upstairs part. This one wasn’t all that full either adnd once again I had no neighbour.

But I did have a visitor though. Some girl was walking down the corridor when the train lurched about on a set of points. She ended up sitting on my lap. It must have been my lucky day, that’s all I can say.

The train pulled into Lille Flanders on time and then I had a nice little stroll in the sun through the town to Lille Europe to catch the train that comes from the South of France to Brussels.

When I arrived at Lille Europe I had about 15 minutes to wait before my train to Brussels put in an appearance.

And this was a surprise today. The train that pulled in was one that I haven’t seen before. It’s one of the TGV POS units – and the inittials do not stand for what you think they might. They are actually the Paris-Ostfrankreich-Süddeutschland – “Paris-Eastern France-South Germany” units that were built to run through from Paris on the Eastern lines into Central Europe.

One of these units, 4402, set a new maximum speed record of 574.8 km/h on 3rd April 2007.

They are now being withdrawn from that service and they are now popping up all over the place.

Interestingly, it wasn’t coupled up to another unit of the same type. And it’s very rare to see different types of TGV coupled together

The one that was being pulled along behind was one of the tri-volt Reseau 38000 units that we usually seem to have. They are rather old and tired and of course this was my unit. Despite everything, they are quite comfortable and there’s room for me to spread out and do some work on the laptop again, especially as once again I didn’t have a neighbour.

After I’d alighted from the train at Brussels-Midi, I had an errand to perform. Last time I was here, I’d handed in a form to the Belgian Pensions Service just across the road but they sent it back as it wasn’t completed correctly. I’d completed it and now I had to take it back.

Here’s hoping that it’s complete correctly this time.

One thing about the line from Brussels to Leuven is that there are 4 express trains every hour as well as plenty of local stopping trains.

There are expresses to Hasselt or Genk or Welkenraedt but the one that I caught was the 15:52 to Eupen. It was one of the push-me-pull-you units with the driver in a cabin at the front but with the locomotive pushing it from behind. I’m not sure how stable that kind of configuration would be at high speed and I’m surprised that they allow it on Intercity trains.

This train was quite empty too and never mind a seat to myself, I almost had a whole carriage to myself. This “working from home” is definitely having an effect on the number of people travelling on the trains.

When the train pulled into the station at Leuven, we were treated to a little bit of excitement.

On the platform was a porter with a wheelchair ramp and when the train came to a stop the porter used the ramp to allow a woman on a mobility scooter to descend.

But I was more intrigued to see the porter’s little magic wand. He had something like a Darth Vader light stick only it was flashing an orange light. He stuck it on the side of the carriage over his head where the guard at the rear could see it.

It seems to me that it’s some kind of warning signal to indicate that there’s an important operation going on and that the guard shouldn’t give the “right away” signal to the drier until the operation is complete.

Once the porter had finished, the train pulled away from the station.

It was being pushed by one of the Class 18 electric locomotives, the mainstream motive power these days of the Belgian passenger service.

When it had gone I walked from the railway station to my lodgings in the Dekenstraat. I’m in my “old faithful” room C7, one of the big duplex apartments. That’s one thig about being a regular customer here – I book the cheapest room possible and they give me an upgrade if there’s one available.

But then, even one of the very basic rooms is comfortable enough from my point of view.

Having recovered from my journey I set out to go to the shops for supplies.

For the last few months we’ve been looking at the rebuilding of this house on the corner of the Dekenstraat just down the road.

And if they carry on working at this rate, they might actually finish it by the end of the Century. As I have said before … “and on many occasions too” – ed … it’s pretty dismal, the speed at which people seem to work these days.

Belgium changed its car registration system 10 years ago and began to issue 7-character plates instead of 6-character. They put a “1” in front of the numbers and today, I saw the first “2” Plate. They’d gone through a complete range in 10 years.

At Carrefour I stocked up with food for the next few days, and found later that I’d forgotten my vegan mayonnaise and strawberry jam. That’s not very good. But they had some nice vegan burgers. I had one with my pasta and it was delicious.

So now it’s bedtime, and I’m ready for it too. But I can’t go off without mentioning that I had a “Happy Birthday” message from my Customer Service Agent at the Bank. What’s that all about? Do I owe them some money or something?

Friday 29th January 2021 – HERE I AM …

… back home again after my marathon voyage.

The journey always takes a lot out of me but usually I’m back by 14:30 so I have a few hours to recover before I can deal with whatever needs dealing with. Today though was rather different.

This morning not only did I beat the third alarm, I beat the second one too. I had a quick whizz around the pad and tidied everything up, washed up, made my sandwiches for the journey and then packed my stuff for the road.

The rain wasn’t all that heavy which was very good, and a quick walk brought me to the station in time for my train – the 07:22 which was the first one on my list.

It was another one of the expresses from Welkenraedt to Oostende – a rake of modern double-deck coaches pulled by one of the SNCB class 18 electric locomotives. Nice and comfortable and quite rapid and much better than one of the elderly multiple units that sometimes travel on the line.

It arrived at Brussels-Midi with 90 minutes before my train was due to depart but after an hour or so the platform for the train came up on the display screen so we could go up to the train.

Our train to Paris this morning is one of the PBKA (Paris-Brussels-Cologne-Amsterdam) units and either it was a short train or else (more likely) a unit is to come in from either Amsterdam or Cologne and couple up behind it.

And wasn’t I disappointed? Having read all the Official Notices for travelling, had a Covid test, filled in piles of paperwork, had all my documents to hand, there wasn’t a single policeman about to check my right to travel.

Our train left on time and, even more surprisingly, arrived in Paris Gare du Nord on time. During the trip I had dozed off for a couple of minutes and they had to wake me up to see my ticket. There wasn’t even a wait at the Metro because I arrived on the platform at the same time as a train.

At Montparnasse there was an hour to wait before we could all pile on board our TGV. This is one of the “TGV Atlantique” Series 24000 units.

Some of these are over 30 years old but you wouldn’t think so by looking at the interiors because they are quite clean, tidy and comfortable. And even more interestingly, between 1990 and 2007, it was one of these train sets (admittedly a shortened unit) that held the world railway speed record of 515.3 km/h.

This one unfortunately took two hours to travel all the way to Rennes, which is not really surprising as it also stopped at Le Mans and Laval. But two TGVs in a day – I’m really living it up, aren’t I? T

We pulled into the railway station at Rennes at about 14:00 – – only the second time that I’ve been to the railway station there. Plenty of time to go for a wander around and photograph the town from the overbridge.

Despite the time available, I didn’t go far and for a couple of good reasons too. Firstly I had a rather heavy load to carry around with me and secondly, the railway station is such a maze that to find out where I would find my connection took me a good bit longer than it ought to have done.

By the time that I had reached where I needed to be it I was glad to sit down.

There was no train back home this time. There was a coach connection to Granville and I had to wait for 75 minutes for it.

To wait for the bus I had to go to the Gare Routier or “bus station” which is presumably built in what might have been the old goods yard sidings a five-minute walk away from the station.

We had to wait outside in the open air for it to turn up but by now it was sunny and reasonably warm for the time of the year. And although the journey home on the coach was comfortably, it still took about two hours to reach Granville railway station.

There’s no carnival this year in Granville dur to the virus but that hasn’t stopped the town from decorating the place.

A brisk walk from the station and through the back of the town brought me to the viewpoint from the Rue des Juifs where, looking over to the roundabout at the Place Pleville I could see a cow and several penguins loitering around there watching the traffic.

It’s certainly something different to liven up the time a little and bring a smile to the faces of the general public. It’s making me wonder what the theme of this year’s Carnival would have been had it gone ahead.

A little further on along the Rue des Juifs I came to where they had been doing the pointing at the Rampe du Monte Regret.

During the whole week in which I’ve been away, they haven’t made as much progress as I might have expected . No-one engaged in the building work that I have seen over the last week seems to be in an awful hurry to complete their tasks.

My brisk walk brought me back home at just about 18:00, having been on the road for just about 11 hours and I knew all about every minute of it. For a couple of hours I vegetated in the chair and then grabbed a frozen meal out of the freezer.

Later on I had a listen to my dictaphone to see if I’d been on my travels during the night. I was at home and there was a sports match about to come on the TV. Terry and Liz – Liz had asked me if I could buy her some special cheese from LIDL. She had given me the packet and I’d managed to get one or two bits for her which I’d left on the kitchen table in my house but my brother was coming round so I went outside and hid, with the idea that he would go past, find my house with everything all laid out in there and so on and the sports match ready. He’d be wondering where I was and I could creep up and surprise him. He walked past, it was about 19:10 and just then the bus came past, a Crosville bus. So I hopped on board and went to sit upstairs. It started to drop a few people off but instead of going into the village of Shavington it shot off down a back lane somewhere and ended up on the road between Crewe and Nantwich via Willaston. All the roads had been realigned – it wasn’t the same road alignment. Everyone was wondering why he hadn’t gone to Shavington. He said that he was going to Shavington but he was just going to drop someone off in the country lanes first. We thought that this was going to be a hell of a long way round to get home if he’s going to be doing things like this

Bed-time now and I have to be up early in the morning as I need to go shopping. But i’m not going to be fit for much for the ret of the weekend. At least, if I can change my appointment to Thursday, come home on Saturday, I can have a complete lie-in on Sunday and I won’t have so much stuff to carry around with me.

And I’ll look forward to that.

Thursday 28th January 2021 – HAD I PUT …

… my mind to it, I could have beaten the third alarm quite comfortably today. But when I heard the torrential rain cascading down onto the skylight in the roof, I decided that having a lie-in was probably a much better idea.

Even so, I was still up and about before 07:00 too. No point in hanging around in bed – and that’s not like me at all these days, is it?

And it was a good job that I was up early too. Alison had to take a friend to hospital early this morning but found out that she couldn’t stay with her. So she messaged me to see if I fancied a coffee.

Despite the rain, we met up at the car park at the Monseigneur Ladeuzeplein. There wasn’t much choice about where to go for our coffee. But as it was a good idea for me to go and check on the times of trains for tomorrow morning, we headed to the station and had a take-away coffee sitting on one of the benches there while I noted down the train times.

We had a good wander around the town in the rain and then Alison drove me back home where I … errr … had a little rest for a while. In view of the miserable weather there were no photos.

After lunch I had things to do.

While I was at the hospital yesterday I transcribed a ton of notes that had accumulated on the dictaphone from earlier in the week. And so the first task was to amend the entries for MONDAY, TUESDAY and YESTERDAY. And when you read the notes of everywhere where I’ve been, you’ll be just as surprised as I am that I even had time to sleep.

Then of course there were the notes from last night. I’d been out with my family and met up again with a girl who, back in the olden days almost 50 years ago, had been a girlfriend of mine when we were at school. I was trying to persuade her to come home over Christmas and she finally agreed to come back to my house and there was all talk about where she was going to sleep. I had to remind everyone that I was the one who had the bed. The discussion still went on and no-one was getting the message that if she came back, it was me who was going to be interested. One of my younger siblings asked if she had a Father Christmas. She said “no” so they replied “we have a chocolate Father Christmas you can have” and one or two other things. I definitely intended to get her into bed last night but I was a little disappointed that my brother kept on trying to argue his own point of view rather than mine.

The rest of the afternoon was spent choosing the music for the next few radio programmes. I almost finished choosing the music for three programmes but I ran aground on the last one because I need a plug-in for the music-editing program that I have on the laptop but I can’t remember which one it is.

While I was doing all of this, I had a message from the Covid-testing service. Apparently I’m negative, which is what I suspected anyway but I had to go through the process.

For tea I finished off most of the food that was here – there isn’t going to be all that much to take home for a change. And hopefully, if I do have my appointments on Thursday from now on, there will be even less.

Tonight I’m going to have an early night. I need to be up early for my journey back home. It’s going to be a long and tortuous journey home tomorrow, with all kinds of complications.

Wednesday 27th January 2021 – MEANWHILE AT CASTLE ANTHRAX …

… my blood count is down yet again. To 9.6 this time – not a dramatic drop so I’m still holding my own (although I’m glad that I’m not holding anyone else’s too).

They aren’t able to help me with the Corona Virus vaccination though – but there again that was something of a forlorn hope. They still haven’t finished injecting all of the staff, and the in-patients are next in the queue. I shall have to continue to persevere with whatever I can find in France.

As well as that, I’ve changed my date of visit to Thursday with effect from the next time. With it being on a Wednesday, I can’t travel up on the Tuesday because that’s my Welsh class. So I have to come up on the train on Monday, missing my radio work and lugging all of my Welsh paperwork with me too.

With the appointment on Wednesday, I can do my radio stuff on Monday and have my Welsh class on Tuesday morning, all in the comfort and privacy of my own home, travel up on the Wednesday and go home on the Saturday, saving the cost of a day’s accommodation and benefiting from a cheap weekend fare on the train on the way home.

That makes much more sense to me.

This morning I was in no rush to leave the bed. 09:30 was good enough for me today.

And having had my medication and then my breakfast (more toast on the hob element) I had a shower and then washed my clothes.

Later on I headed out to the hospital in the rain, rather intrepidly in view of the issues about my virus test for which I hadn’t had the results.

My route, as usual, took me through the city centre and out down the Brusselsestraat past the old Sint Pieter’s Hospital.

The demolition there doesn’t look all that different from when I was here 4 weeks ago. They hardly seem to have advanced at all. At this rate it’s going to take them for ever to bring the building to the ground.

But it is a shame to see it like this. Built for the French community in Flanders, it was barely completed when the French community moved out to Louvain-le-Neuve and never had anything like the occupancy that was intended.

An important casualty of the Guerre Linguistic that has raged in the country between the Walloons and the Flemish for well over 100 years.

From the old hospital I continued on down the Brusselsestraat towards the Sint Jakobs Kerk – Saint Jacob’s Church and stuck my head inside the door.

For 6 months I lived in a room in a building just across the road and I never ever had the opportunity to go in to see it. A couple of times I saw people going to the door and on one occasion I was quick enough to join them, but the door would never open. It had been abandoned for years as it was falling down.

But over this last year or so they’ve started to renovate it and as I went past, I noticed that someone had left the door open. That was an opportunity not to be missed but I couldn’t go too far in, for fear of being observed by the workmen.

The roadworks in the Monseigneur van Waeyenberghlaan are still far deom being completed.

My route led me down there so that I could see the carnage. They have been working on relaying the drains for about 18 months at least, as far as I remember, and while they seem to have filled in all of the holes now, they are still nowhere near putting down the final road surface.

This is inconveniencing everyone in the neighbourhood. Higher up the street is the building that they renovated. And parked there as best as they can is a furniture remover and a furniture lift. And they can’t position themselves close enough to the building to pass the furniture upwards.

And if you think that the Monseigneur van Waeyenberghlaan is in a mess, you should see the other direction, looking towards town.

This is the Sint Hubertusstraat and that’s even more messed up and muddy. It does make me wonder whether they are being paid by the hour or by the contract because there seems to be no incentive to hurry.

But turning my back on this end of town, I headed up the Monseigneur van Waeyenberghlaan, past the furniture guys struggling with their equipment.

Along the Monseigneur van Waeyenberghlaan there are several small side streets, like this on to the right, which I think is the Ploengang.

They seem to be realigning the road junction here and that’s going to be interesting to see how that turns out, because straight ion down the hill is a service bus route when the road is in good condition. That road is going to make it difficult for the buses to negotiate.

Luckily I had my Covid test serial number with me, because the hospital receptionist presumably checked the national database and my number isn’t on it, which seems to indicate that I’m not a person of interest (at least, from that point of view) and I could have my treatment.

It was a rather indiscreet male nurse who saw me today to connect me up to my treatment. he told me, as I suspected, that there are a few of us undergoing this research as guinea pigs and we’ve all been here for a while. It seems that I applied to the University for treatment just at the right time when they were looking for guinea pigs, although he didn’t say that directly.

While I was at the hospital having the treatment, I attacked the pile of outstanding notes on the dictaphone.

There was an opera being broadcast or filmed or something and being overdubbed in English. We were doing the overdubbing and as it started under way we were still some way ahead but we hadn’t finished. At one point my brother brought me a huge mug of tea while I did some editing on the computer but he dropped the tea or the tea fell and it absolutely soaked that corner of the room in tea. He just stood there looking at this so I had to scuttle off and fetch a flannel and stuff like that to mop up the tea and clean that corner which was in a terrible state. He was still there looking at me and looking stupid so I asked him where was the recording of this certain aria. He didn’t know so I started to prepare to sing it myself in English to do the over-dubbing but I could see that he was in no mood to play the piano and I couldn’t play the piano but I could see that I was going to have to end up playing the piano and singing at the same time because I seemed to be the only person who was doing anything at that point.

Later on, I was on a bike, an old single-speed upright kind of thing. I would cycle everywhere on that but one day I decided that enough was enough and I decided that I would get myself a modern bike with derailleur gears and I could get about 10 times quicker than that. I ended up in Nantwich, out the other side in Henhull Lane (actually Welshman’s Lane) by the old Cottage Hospital there. As I turned into the yard there first of all came a boy whom I knew at school (what was he doing there, seeing as he is someone about whom I haven’t given a moment’s thought for over 50 years?) and another boy from school out jogging and he ran past. I had a good chat to the first boy about a few things and then I foolishly went in and told the guys in this bike shop that was looking for another bike. They only had a choice of about 4 or 5 and there was only 1 that was really my size. I apologised and said that there wasn’t really what I wanted here. He started on a rant about costs and so on. he showed me all of the wholesale prices and everything like that, how he wasn’t making much money on bikes and how he wasn’t here normally because he was off working elsewhere That wasn’t what I wanted to hear from a shopkeeper.

James Bond was on the loose later on driving down an Italian motorway on a motorbike and sidecar and there was someone on a motorbike pursuing him or at least keeping behind him, observing him. We were watching this from another car further behind. They were stuck in traffic working their way through this traffic queue. All of a sudden Bond seizes the opportunity, swerved his motorcycle around and brought it crashing down on the head of this guy who was following him. This guy picked himself up and ran off. Bond ran after him and we could hear sounds of fighting. Bond came back to our car and said “I killed the wrong man there. That was one of Blofeld’s men”. Not the enemy that he was expecting. We thought that if Blofeld’s men are now angry with us and if someone else is still behind us, the real villains, we’re pretty much blocked in here in this street in the mountains. There’s no way out from here. This road just leads to a town in the mountains. We can’t turn round and if we go on, we are going to be stuck. We really have no choice but to go on so off we set. Our car by this time was a dark blue Hillman Hunter.

Finally last night, I was with Liz Ayers. We had a car and caravan. We pulled into Hankelow Hall, or what I thought was Hankelow Hall in the dream. Who should be there but Marianne and a workman. They were going through the house looking at things. There was a huge fire burning with all kinds of stuff going on, stuff all over the place, loaves of bread, all that kind of thing. I was wondering what on earth was going on here. When I went in the builder came over to me and told me about a pile of work that needed doing on the house. he would give me a bill for it, all this kind of thing. In the end I said “no”. I told him to clear off. Marianne had ordered him and made the arrangements so he can clear off. I thought that when Marianne comes back I’ll have something to say about this. I started to tidy up a few things, put things away in rubbish bags. There were a couple of loaves on there, quite green. They had been there for a while. There was a pile of election leaflets from Guy Verhofstadt the MEP, tons of stuff like that. I was trying to sort it out. Liz came over with someone for there were crowds of people there too. She said that they were going to have a sleep on the beach. I said “what? Through the night? We have a caravan on the back of the car”. She said “no, we’ll watch a film about a Maternity Hospital attached to a University and the students took it over to run it”. She described the film and I said “oh I’ve seen that”. Anyway she went off. I kept on having to go back and to between rooms in this place. The quickest way was to go through the fire although the fire was roaring hot and there was tons of ash so the final time I decided that I won’t go that way, I’ll walk round which I did but there were all of these people hanging around there not doing very much at all. It made me wonder what was going on.

The treatment didn’t take long. The longest part was waiting for the doctor afterwards to come to see me. It was quite late when I was let out.

Back into town and back down the Brusselsestraat when I was interrupted by this office place here that I hadn’t noticed before.

It seems that while many countries are actively closing their Post Offices, Belgium is reopening them. This seems to be a parcels pick-up point – Belgium is having a lot of issues with handling the volume of mail order parcels at the moment with all of this internet shopping with the Covid issues.

Stopping off at Delhaize for more bread, I nipped home to dump my stuff and then went back out to meet Alison in the town.

We had a walk around and a chat and then she came back for a quick coffee.

Later on I had tea and now having written my notes, I’m off to bed. A leisurely day tomorrow and then on friday I’m off on my marathon journey back home.

Tuesday 26th January 2021 – HAVING CROWED …

… yesterday about how well I did in getting up at 04:22 before any of the alarms went off, it goes without saying that this morning I slept through all three of the alarm calls and didn’t awaken until about 08:30.

So while you admire a couple of photos of the Diestsestraat in the early evening dark, I went off and had my medication.

First task today after the medication was to prepare for my Welsh class. And I forgot what I was going (or supposed to be doing), did the wrong homework and generally didn’t do very well at all.

With no fruit bread or anything like that, I had to make do with toast and jam. But with no toaster, that was likely to be a challenging proposition but I’m nothing if I’m not inventive, as regular readers of this rubbish might recall.

In this apartment it has the old-type resistance heater elements on the hob – the ancient type of solid element.

So simply switching on the larger one and putting the bread on top, and turning it over at the appropriate moment I ended up with a very reasonable approximation of toast. And so armed with toast and jam and coffee I could attend my lesson.

Why the lesson was under way I had a ‘phone call from Belgium’s Corona Virus Centre. But when I called them back at half-time, they couldn’t find any information as to why they called me. So I’ve no idea what they was all about.

While you are looking at an image of the Mechelsestraat, I went off for lunch. Yesterday at the Carrefour I’d bought some bread and some stuff to go on it, and of course it was followed by some fruit.

After lunch, I didn’t do very much at all for a couple of hours. As regular readers of this rubbish will recall, the trip up to here (and the one back again) takes a lot out of me and I need a pause to recover my strength.

But as it started to go dark outside round about 17:00 I went out for my evening walk around the town to see what was going on.

The University Library always looks nice in the dark when it’s all illuminated so of course I would go out that way past the Monseigneur Ladeuzeplein – although I do have to admit that I took this photo on the way home when it was even darker than it was on the way out.

Down the Tiensestraat I went, round past the University Library and into the FNAC to see if they had anything going on in the Sales. There were plenty of reductions of course but there was nothing in there that interested me.

While I was out I went into the shops down the Diestsestraat, the photographs which you have already seen, and then down past the Mechelsestraat ditto.

We’d seen the Mathieu de Layensplein the last time I was here, but I’d taken a photo of it from a completely different angle so I reckoned that I’d take a photo from this point of view.

One of the things that I was doing – I had to admit – was to have a look in the windows of the Travel Agents to see if there were any special offers going on – regular readers of this rubbish will recall that I’d found myself AN IMPROMPTU TRIP TO NORTH AFRICA a couple of years ago by doing just that – but they are all closed for the Duration.

Not that I was planning on going anywhere though even if they had been open. I think that this year is going to be cancelled too as far as voyages go. With today’s casualty list figures, anyone with a British passport is going to be treated like a pariah from now on, I reckon.

And on the way back I went through the Grote Markt to have a look at the Stadhuis – the Town Hall.

Although it’s quite beautiful light up like this, it’s not a patch on how it has been in the past when it was lit up with all different colours of lights. But as I have said before … “and on many occasions too” – ed … Austerity seems to have been the order of the day with Christmas decorations this year.

Passing through the Monseigneur Ladeuzeplein to see the Library, I headed home to warm myself up. It was freezing cold outside.

Tea was a lovely spicy burger in breadcrumbs with pasta and veg followed by peach laves and strawberry soya dessert.

At some point I managed to find the time to listen to the pile of stuff that was on the dictaphone.

I was in my hotel somewhere when all of a sudden someone burst in, like Robert Vaughan of The Man From Uncle. He said come on, so-and-so (and mentioned a Christian name) we need to sort this out” or something like that. I replied “I’m not (so-and-so)”. He looked at me strangely, basically “don’t be silly” so I showed him some photo ID that I had. Then I went to show him my passport but somehow my passport had become damp in my neck thing that I wear and it came out in about 3 or 4 different parts. But he could see it and look at it and he said something like “trust it to be a Canadian” or “trust it to be one of you Canadians”. Then he picked up the telephone as if to dial someone The phone rang and all of a sudden I looked up and he wasn’t there – he’d gone But the receiver was hanging off a hook and there was a conversation going on, but I couldn’t understand all that much of it. Suddenly the door opened again and 3 people walked in. They were having a look around my room as if it had just been decorated. One of them was a woman whom I knew from the trip around the High Arctic in 2018. They were having a look at my room and in particular the huge mural of the desert that was on one wall which actually looked so life-like. She lay down on the bed, looked at me and said “do you know – one night when we were in a hotel somewhere I was in one room and when there was nothing particular going on in that room I went into the other room and do you know what i saw?”. She looked at me as if she was expecting me to answer but I couldn’t think of what it was she was talking about because I didn’t recall that I was doing anything that I shouldn’t have been doing in one of these rooms in this hotel that we were in, but she was looking at me with that look on her face as if she was expecting some kind of admission or some kind of answer

There were two girls aged about 7 and 9. They had been out somewhere so I’d made tea, a kind-of macaroni cheese thing with meatballs. When they came back I gave them their tea and made a bit of a play about it with the younger one. For dessert I went to fetch some of my special cake but found that it was all gone. In the box instead was some chocolate cake belonging to one of the little girls, a different one so I asked her if the two other girls could have some cake. She told me which ones to get but I couldn’t get them out. She asked me to pass her the box which I did and she worked the correct combination but a pile of little figurine things fell out so she said “you can have those and take them” which was OK but it wasn’t the cakes so I was wondering what I was going to do about the cake that I had promised this girl that she could have and where was I going to get that from.

I was living in France in a village where there was a lot of demolition going on. It was a village around which I’d walked years ago but since I’d been there I’d only visited a bit of it and hadn’t visited the rest so I was surprised when I went to visit the rest and so much of it had been knocked down I was doing some work for the Government that involved rounding up a group of people and a couple of others and we all piled into this big 9-seater huge car type of 1950s American saloon, a red one with a cream top. I made sure all of these people got in and then I had to get into the front. There were already 3 people sitting at the front so I told them to squidge up so I could get in. They grumbled but the fourth person in here was nothing to do with me. We set off and I drove back with these prisoners. When we nearly reached our destination I had to get out check round underneath the car and everything like that. I had a piece of emery cloth and was busy rubbing down the sills and so on to see what it was like and chatting to another one of the guys who was doing something. He was telling me about some new Hurricane cars that had been brought out and was apparently blowing everyone off the streets including him in whatever car he had – yes, he had the same one as this but had talen out the old V8 motor and put in a 9-litre BMW engine in it and this Hurricane had blown him off. I got back into the car but by this time I was the only one sitting in the front and I’d made my report that this was a good solid car and runs quietly but would benefit from a really good rub down of the bodywork and a respray

Some time later I was around with a group of people and there was an old woman who had a collection of vehicles that we had been admiring. We all went back to her house and she had this beautiful old 1930s car parked in her kitchen. I was having a good look around at this. It turned out that she was running some kind of private museum. I asked her if she had had this car valued. She replied that it had been valued in May at $30,000. I said “God it’s worth much more than this”. This woman was a teacher and had a class at a local High School. I was talking to one of the girls who studied there. They’d all done some homework, 6 pages, that was being handed out and this girl had only 5 pages back. I asked her about it and she replied that she had only done 5 but “I hadn’t done them anyway. One of the boys had done them for me”. She added “it was a weak class and I had 30%, that’s what I usually get and the class is pretty weak anyway so it doesn’t make much difference”. There were some boys there fooling around and they were in quite a bit of trouble with different things. This woman was having some kind of party and loads of people had been invited. I overheard these to boys talking about this addiction to painkillers was really hurting them and they were going to have to get some more from somewhere. They thought “this woman is a nurse too so we could raid her medicine cabinet”. I waited to try to get this woman on her own but she was too busy showing the scars of her operation to everyone so in the end I managed to get her to one side and said “by the way let me give you a piece of advice. Keep an eye on your medicine cabinet”. She asked “what do you mean?” and said it out loud so everyone turned round and looked. I said it again quietly and everyone in the crowd basically said “oh no, not them!”. She sailed off inside her house and we could hear a lot of noise and she was yelling at these two boys. She had obviously caught them trying to burgle her medicine cabinet. She sent them home from this party and made them write out an essay for homework as to why this was really a bad thing.

But now I’m off for an early night. I can really have a lie-in tomorrow as my appointment isn’t until 13:30. But I might not even be having that if I don’t have a negative report from the Covid test that I took on Monday.

It would be nice if they would hurry up and let me know.

Monday 25th January 2021 – ONE TRAIN …

… per day to Paris in a pandemic, that I can understand. But just WHY does it have to be at 05:55?.

And in news that will come as something of a shock to regular readers of this rubbish (because it cane as quite a shock to me), not only did I beat the third alarm this morning, I was actually out of bed and leaping up and down (but not actually waving St Cecilia’s knickers in the air) even before the FIRST alarm went off.

During what there was of the night, I’d even managed to go off on a voyage too.

I hadn’t seen Caliburn for ages and then I realised that he was in the garage being serviced and I hadn’t been to pick him up since I’d been back from holiday so I was debating whether or not to go round – and suddenly I was there as if fate had already decided for me. I backed him out of the garage where he was being serviced and went to pay the bill but they hadn’t finished putting the wheels on. A brake hub had been stuck inside a wheel and they had to prize it out. That meant doing some grinding down and filing. They showed me what they had done. They went to fit the wheel back on but one of the wheel nuts was cross-threaded so they had to go off and find another one and I had to wait. In the meantime it was lunchtime and I’d gone into the waiting room with them. There was a big bag of chips that they were handing out between themselves. Someone opened a packet of pasta but it was so full that he went outside to tip some away into a bin which I thought was a strange thing to do. They were all organising themselves like this while I was waiting for Caliburn to be ready.

What this goes to prove is that many of my usual difficulties in rising from my bed in the morning are not actually connected with anything physical, and this is quite bewildering.

But there I was, up and about and starting on my household chores as the first alarm went off.

:, didn’t take me long to do what I had to do, and to make a flask of coffee in the Adventure Canada water bottle that I was given on The Good Ship Ve … errr … Ocean Endeavour.

Having done the necessary, I hit the streets and headed for town, fighting the howling gale all the way.

As it happened, I wasn’t the only one who was up and about that early either.

The harbour gates must have only just opened because there was a whole stream of fishing vessels heading out to sea.

And while I’m on the subject, regular readers of this rubbish will recall that I mentioned on Friday that I was surprised to see all of the fishing boats in port and not out at sea.

There was a very good reason for that, as I subsequently found out and forgot to mention. It seems that on Friday all of the fishermen had a meeting in town to discuss the next steps in the escalation of the fishing dispute with the Channel Islands.

If it comes to a showdown with the British Government and the British Government decides to employ its fleet of … errr … four gunboats to protect its territorial waters, then knowing French fishermen as I do (after all I live in a town full of them), my money will be firmly on the fishermen.

It wasn’t easy to make my way to the station because most of the street lights had been switched off and we were in the pitch-black. I just encountered a couple of council workmen on my way out there.

The train wasn’t in – mainly because I was there by 05:30, but it soon pulled in and we could board it. It was a full-length train of two units coupled together, but we didn’t have reserved seats. I chose a place right at the front – less distance to travel at the other end.

The weather had been very mild in Granville and has been for the last while. But once we headed inland towards Paris it changed quite rapidly.

We started to pick up the snow round about Villedieu-les-Poeles and the further along the route, like here for example, at Flers, the snow was quite heavy and had stuck to the ground.

Much to my surprise, despite the ridiculously early start, I didn’t crash out for a minute but managed to stay awake for the whole of the journey to Paris, reading a report of the discovery of a mass grave on the outskirts of Weymouth containing 52 decapitated Norsemen from the late 10th Century.

And as for my coffee – I tried some at about 07:30, just about three hours after I had made it. And it was far, far too hot to drink. That was quite unexpected.

Bang on time – 09:14 – we pulled into the Gare Montparnasse and I could take a photo of the unit on which I travelled – the one on the left. The photo that I had taken earlier was of the unit at the other end of the train.

Even though the rush hour wasn’t quite over, the Paris Metro was comparatively quiet. It was a quite rapid trip to Paris Gare du Nord and I was surprised about how empty the place was. I could even find a seat.

The effects of the virus and the amount of working from home has calmed down the amount of commuters quite considerably.

There wasn’t a great deal of time for my connection to Lille As I walked into the station they were just allowing the passengers to board. I didn’t even have time to photograph it – that had to wait until we arrived at Lille Flandres Railway Station.

The train was another double-decker TGV Reseau Duplex – two units again (ours was the left-hand one) and it wasn’t all that busy either. I could spread out a little and sample my coffee yet again. And after 6 hours in the flask it was still too hot.

Plenty of time for a change in Lille so having had a good clamber about on an overhead walkway to take my photograph, I could have a pleasant if cold walk down the road to Lille Europe Railway Station.

The train was actually in the station when I arrived so I had to wait until I arrived at Brussels-Midi until i could photograph it.

But it was a pretty busy train without many spare seats. Luckily I had no neighbour so I could spread out and I even managed to doze off for 10 minutes or so. And the coffee had cooled down enough for me to be able to sip it. Not gulp it – just sip it.

And now I can call myself one of the statistics on the Belgian Government’s list of Covid-testees.

When we arrived at Bruxelles-Midi we had to pass through a checkpoint and show our papers. It’s a good job that I had prepared my Travel request. And I was directed to the Covid-testing point outside the station.

And having a Q-tip shoved up my nose is not a very pleasant sensation at all.

Another task I had to perform was to post off the Certificat de Vie that I had signed by the French police the other day to prove that I’m still alive. The Tour de Midi – the headquarters of the Belgian pension service is just across the road from the station.

Back in the station again I had to run (as best as I could) for my train as it was just coming into the station.

It’s one of the Oostende-Welkenraedt trains and these are quite comfortable so I didn’t want to miss it if I could help it.

By now the coffee was cool enough so I could actually drink it so I had a nice comfortable ride to Leuven and a pleasant walk down to my hotel room.

Here, I sorted myself out and had a little sit down for a while to recover my strength. And having done that, I headed out for the shops.

Down at the end of the road here I went past the house renovation that we have seen before.

It’s now been about three months since they’ve been doing the facade of the building, to my certain knowledge and I really don’t understand why this sort of thing takes so long.

The bill at the Carrefour was quite expensive, but then again food is much more expensive in Belgium than it is in France. And I was glad to be back in my room with my food. I was ready for something to eat

Writing out my notes took longer than it might have done, due to the fact that I … errr … had a little repose. But now I’m off to bed. Welsh lessons in the morning so I need to be my best.

And after the very long day that I’ve had, I’m ready for bed too.

Sunday 3rd January 2021 – THERE ARE NO …

… dictaphone notes tonight.

And that’s for the simple reason that not only did I not go on a nocturnal voyage, I actually didn’t go to sleep. I had what they call around here a nuit blanche.

It was just after midnight when I finally went to bed, having packed away everything, and with having to get up at 05:00 I didn’t even undress. I just lay on the bed in the hope that I would drift off to sleep.

However it wasn’t to be and when the first alarm did go off at 05:00 I was actually up and about making my sandwiches.

It didn’t take me long to leave the apartment and having deposed my key in the key box, I headed off to the station carrying my rather heavy load.

And just look at the time on the noticeboard over the top of the head of the passenger to the right of the train. This is my train coming into the station and it’s just 05:33. And it’s been a long time since I’ve been out and about at that time. Our train by the way is one of the SNCB workhorse locomotives, a Class 18 electric locomotive taking a train to Oostende.

The train didn’t hang about for very long in the station. It soon cleared off to Brussels and for the first time since I don’t know when, my ticket was checked by a guard.

In the Gare du Midi in Bruseels my train to Lille (actually, to Strasbourg but I was getting out at Lille) was already at the platform.

It’s one of the Reseau 38000 TGV trainsets on which we travel quite frequently and while there was an hour to go before it was due to depart, the doors were locked so we had to loiter around for ages in the freezing cold.

And freezing cold it was too. 2°C it was yesterday evening and I imagine that it’s colder than that right now. And just look at the time here too.

We left on time and arrived in Lille on time too because I had just 20 minutes to cross the town from Lille Europe railway station to Lille Flandres. I’ve no idea why they do this at all because there is no margin for error. And there were hordes of people flooding off my train up the road into town and the Paris train.

What would they do if the brussels train would ever be late? Would they leave everyone stranded in Lille or would they hold the Paris train? I can’t see why they can’t set the Paris train to depart from Lille Europe.

The train in Lille Flandres is one of the TGV Reseau Duplexes, the “double deckers.

We all piled into the train and bang on schedule it set off like a rocket. And for the first time so far today, my eyes started to sag and I drifted away for a minute or two (and really, only a minute or two too).

Our train made it to Paris Nord a couple of minutes early, and that’s a rare event too. And so I took a phot of it and then headed off for metro line 4, carrying my heavy load. There was plenty of food left over from my stay in Leuven and I wasn’t going to leave any of it behind.

The metro wasn’t all that busy and there were no delays or anything like that. One thing that I like, and one of the (many) reasons why I chose Granville as a place to which to retire is that the trains from Paris to Granville depart from the Gare Montparnasse which is on the direct line from Paris Gare du Nord and there’s no need to change trains in the bowels of the city.

There was about 50 minutes to wait at the Gare Montparnasse and once more we weren’t allowed to board the train to wait in the warmth. These big railway stations in Paris are open and really draughty. There’s no-where to go that’s out of the cold.

When the train set off I settled down comfortably and even dozed off for a few minutes, only to be awoken by the ticket collector. And then I couldn’t go back to sleep again, although I was in no state to do any work or anything. I did manage to eat my sandwiches though.

Keeping up what seems to be becoming a habit, we were early into Granville and our train, the one on the left, found a berth next to one of its brothers in an adjacent bay.

Struggling under the weight of my load I headed for home and arrived here bang on 14:30. I’d left one of the radiators working but even so it wasn’t all that warm in here and I had to wind up the heating. With a coffee I came and sat down on my chair but although I didn’t go to sleep, I didn’t do very much.

Later on when I recovered my strength, I went into the kitchen.

First off, I fried a couple of large onion and plenty of garlic in a saucepan (not a frying pan).

When they were brown, I tipped in all of the rest of the mixed frozen veg from Leuven and all of the frozen broccoli except for four stalks, and stirred it all in, along with a mixture of herbs and spices.

When it was all nice and browning, I tipped in the rest of the soya cream that I’d been using for my mince pies before I went away and added some water too, and left it to simmer for half an hour while I took out a pile of rubbish to the bins outside.

Having left it for a half-hour or so, I whizzed it all up with the whizzer and it made one of the most delicious cream of vegetable soups that I’ve ever tasted. I treated myself to a bowl as a snack.

For tea, I had a roast dinner with the seitan slices that were left over from Christmas with roast potatoes and a pile of Christmas vegetables that I’d frozen before I went away along with the broccoli that I’d set aside earlier. And I deserved it too. My New Year’s Eve meal was nothing much to write home about at all.

So now I’m caught up with my notes from this trip I’m off to bed. There’s an alarm tomorrow and I’m back at work. My Christmas break didn’t last long, did it?

Saturday 2nd January – I MANAGED TO …

… beat the third alarm out of bed this morning.

Mind you, I have to admit that I cheated somewhat. Not having gone to bed until late and needing to be on form, I reset the alarms to start at 08:00 instead of 06:00. I reckoned that that was a reasonable compromise, what with one thing and another.

First thing that I did was to have a listen to the dictaphone to see if I’d been anywhere during the night. In fact I’d been in Shavington but it quickly transformed itself into Crewe. There was a fire in the outskirts and it was slowly heading into town. We had things to do, we had to sit down there and I wanted to watch a football match or listen to one on the radio. We were making our way into this big building but it was clear that the flames were starting to get worse and I noticed in the end that I was the only one in there. Then someone else came round, a woman with a few things . I had a feeling that if I stopped she would stop too and that was going to be a bit silly so I explained to her about how dangerous the fire was going to be. In the end we went outside and there were a few people outside co-ordinating rescue efforts. One of the guys from the radio was in charge. We stood and watched for a couple of minutes then slowly picked up our things and moved away as we heard that the fire had now reached the outskirts of Crewe round Davenport Avenue and Nantwich Road. We moved away and I had the satisfaction in seeing that I was the last one to gather up my stuff and move away and I checked to make sure that everything was clear before we did so. It reminded me of a General and his troops retreating and how the General ought to be the last and making sure that the way was clear in order to do so just like in the Army.

In connection with the fire, later on in the night 3 objects came up for auction. There was a soldier’s compass, a soldier’s badge and a 3rd thing that I can’t remember what it was. I remember thinking that these would have come in handy if we had been in the fire and these were available. This was where the fire dream came in at this point just here and now and we found ourselves back in Shavington on the corner between Edwards Avenue and Edwards Close with this burnt and blackened paper shredded and flying around.

The next task was the Welsh homework. No matter what, I have to keep up to date with that. It didn’t take me all that long although it’s bcoming more and more complicated and took quite some research. Interestingly, we aren’t now being asked to asnwer questions, we are being asked to come up with questions to ask.

Afer a shower, I made some sandwiches and then, gathering them up, I headed off to the Railway Station.

While I was waiting for my train to Brussels I was eating my sandwiches on the platform. And hence I was taken completely by surprise when the train came in early.

Our train today is one of the strange AM96 multiple units. When one trainset is coupled to another the rubber bellows make a perfect seal, and the drivers’ cabs at the join tilt round 90° so that passengers can walk from one trainset to another.

Our train pulled into Brussels Central Station bang on time, and walking up the steps I met my friend Esi.

Esi and I studied together and University when we both lived in Brussels years ago but she went back to Wales and I went on to France after we graduated. We’ve met up a couple of times since then when our paths have crossed in Brussels but earlier last year when Brexit became a reality she moved back to Belgium to cement her European rights.

The two of us went for a walk around the park opposite the Royal Palace where we chatted about our different adventures since we last met, and then went off to the Belvue Museum in the Place du Palais to meet one of her friends and then for a walk around the museum.

The museum is a fascinating place to visit. It’s all about the history of the country of Belgium since it won its independence in 1830.

There was plenty to see in there and I could have spent a lot longer in there than our alloted time slot. But for me, the pride of the place was this gorgeous FN 4. It’s the world’s first 4-cylinder in-line motorbike – block 4s and V4s had been made previously – and was made between 1905 and 1914.

This is a later one rather than an earlier one – you can tell that by the rear brake. This is a drum brake whereas the earlier ones had rim brakes rather like a pushbike.

Interestingly, to start it up, you had to pedal it until the engine fired up. No kickstart.

One of the more interesting things to see is the view from out of one of the windows.

This view is right up the Rue Royale, past the park where we walked just now, all the way past the old Jardin Botanique and all the way down to the Église Royale Sainte-Marie de Schaerbeek, one of the most beautiful buildings in the city but now sadly delapidated and more-or-less abandoned despite the fact that it was renovated 30 years ago.

After the museum, Esi had a few things to do so the three of us walked around the city running errands. We stopped for a coffee in the Central Station and then like the Knights of the Round Table, we went our separate ways.

As regular readers of this rubbish will recall, there are 4 expresses every hour from Brussels to Leuven. However they are all bunched pretty much together and then there’s a long gap.

There is however a semi-urban stopping train that runs across the Metropolitan area and terminates at Leuven. We’ve caught it a few times when we went to watch the football at Tubize and one of them pulled into Central Station just at the right moment. It’s one of the modern class AM08 multiple units that was just coming into service as I left the city.

When it pulled up in the station we all piled out and I headed off back home to my digs, having first stopped to take a photo of the train

Well, in actual fact, I didn’t head off hiome. I had a few things to do first.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that the other evening when I was wandering around the city in the dark, I took a photo of the Bondgenotenlaan from the Rector de Somerplein looking down to the railway station. Tonight, seeing as I was standing outside the railway station in the Martelarenplein, I could take a photo of the Bondgenotenlaan looking back down to where I was the other night.

Right down the far end of the street we can see the lights of the Stadhuis – the Town Hall – in the Grote Markt.

While I was here in the Martelarenplein I had a good look around the neighbourhood to see what else I could see.

Where I’m standing now is on an overbridge that crosses the ring road – the Tiensevest – that is emerging from a tunnel underground. It’s one of the main throroughfares of the city with the railway station to my left and so just the kind fo place that you would expect to be brightly illuminated to welcome visitors to the city, but once again, it’s quite depressingly banal.

All in all, I’m rather disappointed with the Christmas decorations this year, not just in leuven but in just about everywhere that I have visited.

Turning round further to my left there was a view between the buildings to the eastern end of the train shed of the station.

Behind it, there’s one of the hotels in the vicinity of the station and then a couple of office blocks. This is the area where it all happens.

Back at my little room it was teatime so I made a plate of pasta and vegetables and chick peas with tomato sauce. But just as I was sitting down to start my notes, Rosemary rang me up for a chat and we ended up being on the phone together for 1 hour and 38 minutes.

There was now some packing to do and then I have to go to bed as son as I can because I have to get up at 05:00 and you know how I feel about that these days.

As for my notes, they’ll have to wait until tomorrow.

Friday 1st January 2021 – I’M GLAD …

… that 2020 had finished. That was one difficult year and the first time that I haven’t been to North America for I don’t know how long.

And in case you are wondering, which I’m sure that you aren’t, I’m not convinced that 2021 is going to be much better.

At least we started off on the right foot because despite not going to bed until about 02:00 this morning, I was up and about, with no alarm, at 09:30. A few more days like that will suit me fine but I shan’t be having them.

After the medication I came back here to listen to the dictaphone to see where I’d been during the night.

My friend from the Saone valley and his friends came to visit me during the night. I was in Virlet – or what passes for Virlet and I was very embarrassed when they saw the kind of state in which I was living. I was trying to interest them in things like the radio telescope in the valley down below. The he asked where all of my CDs were even though they were in plain evidence all over the walls. It was a very strange meeting and wasn’t exactly how I intended it to be or thought that it would be. They stayed for a while and all cleared off again. I shook my head and couldn’t see the point of that and what was going to happen next.
But next I had to leave the house and I was in the van. Part of this area was a building site round by Joey the Swan in Crewe. One of the ways to get up where I was was to reverse back up the hill past these half-built houses and reach the main road that way, or the 2nd thing to do was to cut through one of the driveways and onto the main road through the back of one of the drives. I must have driven and reversed up and down that road 3 or 4 times trying to work out which would be the best drive to go up. There was one but for some reason I kept on overshooting it and ending up in one that was more unsuitable.

Apart from that, I had a half-hearted go at doing my Welsh homework and at least that’s now up to date. Apart from that I’ve done nothing at all. Even for lunch I just had a slice of toast.

Yesterday I remember saying that I would go out this evening to inspect the Christmas lights that I hadn’t seen yesterday when I walked though the city on my way home.

At least, later on after it had gone dark I managed to tear myself away from whatever I wasn’t doing and headed off into the freezing cold . I ended up in the Naamsestraat to see what the decorations were like, and as you can see for yourself, they are pretty depressing.

At least the lights wrapped around one of the towers of the town hall provide some kind of relief to the start environment.

From the Naamsestraat there are several little alleyways that lead on down to the Oude Markt.

The Oude Markt is, in more normal times, the centre of café life in the city, crowded with people even in the middle of winter and in the past there have been some really beautiful and impressive Christmas lights here. But while these look quite nice, they aren’t a patch on what we’ve seen in the past.

A real sign of the times right here and now is that there isn’t another soul in the image this evening apart from someone on a bicycle heading my way.

The far end of the Oude Markt is a small street called the Kortestraat, or “short street” that leads into the Grote Markt.

This is the street where almost every commercial ground-floor premises is a fast-food takeaway and I’ve had a couple of good meals in one of the fritkots here. But these days they are all closed to customers except for takeway and delivery, and one of the very few benefits of the current situation is the explosion in the number of food delivery cyclists in the city.

There’s a couple of dozen loitering here waiting to be beckoned by one of the food outlets.

Yesterday I took a photo of the Town Hall – the Stadhuis – with all of its illuminations.

In previous years there have been all kinds of other decorations, such as creches and stables and the like in the Square but this year there is nothing at all like that. There’s a Christmas tree and natural tree that is illuminated and in between them is a small creche but that’s just about your lot.

Mind you, the buses are driving around the usual Christmas route deviation instead of driving through the Square

One thing that you have probably noticed is the absence of pedestrians in the city this evening.

From the Grote Markt I walked around the back of St Pieters Church and down the hill into the Mechelsestraat and here I struck it lucky. In this photograph you can actually see five other people, four on foot and one on a bicycle.

What I don’t see though are any really exotic Christmas decorations. A few lights strung up across the street and a few draped over a shop display by a private individual and that’s it.

having inspected the Mechelsestraat I continued on my lap around the church without noticing anything special, and found myself at the bus stop in the Rector de Somerplein.

From there, there is a good view all the way down the Bondgenotenlaan to the Martyrs’ Column in the Martelarenplein and the Railway Station in the background. Every year the trees in the avenue are illuminated with lights draped in the branches and while this has never been anything startling, at least they have maintained the decorations this year.

And before I could regain the pavement I was almost squidged by a family on pushbikes weaving around in the street

Back on the pavement I walked on along the street and then cut down a side street into the Monseigneur Ladeuzeplein.

Once again, the lights here in the Square are pretty disappointing. In front of us is the famous University Library, burnt to the ground along with all of its priceless possessions and collection of ancient books by the Germans in 1914 during the Sack of Leuven. And the lights here on this building aren’t anything like they have been.

Even so it looks extremely impressive, illuminated just like this.

On the way back home I walked across the Monseigneur Ladeuzeplein towards the Tiensestraat.

Looking behind me, I noticed that the trees had received some kind of decoration to relieve the monotony, but again, I’ve seen much better than this in the past.

When I arrived back home I went to sit down for a couple of minutes but ended up crashing out for an hour. For some reason, this walking thing is taking a lot out of me.

Not feeling hungry I just made a sandwich for tea. There’s no need to eat if I’m not feeling particularly like it.

Now I’ve written my notes I’m off to bed. There’s an alarm tomorrow so I want to be on form. I have a date in the afternoon.

Thursday 31st December 2020 – BY THE TIME …

… that most of you read this, we will be in a New Year. 2020 will have ended and we’ll have 2021 to contend with. Many people are hoping that this New Year will be better than the last but that’s an optimism that I can’t share.

Especially for the Brits who not only have Brexit with which to contend but also a miserable figure of just under 56,000 new Covid infections and just under 1,000 deaths despite a lockdown. What’s interesting is that whereas in the USA they are taking almost no precautions whatsoever, the relative figures per 1,000 of the population are much less.

Historically, all of these previous viruses such as The Black Death, Cholera, Spanish ‘Flu have all come in several waves and there’s no reason to suppose that this is any different. So I don’t see this year as being any better than the last.

But why be so miserable? Let’s look on the bright side of life. At the hospital today they have told me that symptoms of the disease that I have are now being traced in the kidneys. So you won’t have too much longer to suffer this depressing diatribe by the sound of things. And that’s enough to cheer anyone up, isn’t it?

While you admire the snail-like (lack of) speed of the new sewer and roadworks in the Monseigneur van Waeyenberghlaan that seem to be taking for just about ever, I myself managed to crawl out of bed to beat the 3rd alarm this morning.

And that’s not something that happens every day these days, is it? And considering that I had another miserable night where I took about a week to go off to sleep, it’s pretty good going for right now.

First task of course was to listen to the dictaphone to see where I’d been during the night. And to my surprise, I’d covered the miles yet again.

I’d started the night with all of us queueing at the ferries last night with lorries. I was in an artic with a big flat trailer and I’d managed to get my lorry down into the hold so when it came to driving onto the ferry I walked on behind the lorry in front and just stood behind it so as to mark my place. There was a big discussion about the ferry – whether we were to go from Grande-Synthe or Petite-Synthe and where it was situated, all this kind of thing, but I’ve forgotten it all now

Later on during the night I had a girl with me, a young girl and I don’t know very much about her at all. The 2 of us were talking about things and she was saying how she didn’t think much of prefects or housemasters or such. She was working herself into such a state that as someone walked past who was a prefect or whatever she just hit them with this iron crowbar and literally split their skull and knocked them to the ground. I picked up the girl and dragged her away and took her to another room where I phoned the police and ambulance to come to the victim. I was really wondering what I was going to say about this and my part in getting the girl all worked up like that.

Having transcribed the dictaphone notes I went and made some sandwiches for lunch as I was to have a busy day today.

That was followed by a clothes-washing session and then a shower. I have to make sure that I’m clean, smell nice and look pretty for the nurses there.

By the time that I’d arranged all of that, I was starting to run behind and I had to put my skates on. Luckily the rain that had awoken me at some point during the night had stopped and it was comparatively dry outside.

Surprisingly the streets were totally deserted. There wasn’t even a handful of people out there on the streets.

My route went as usual down into town, through the centre and out along the Brusselsestraat heading west (or going west of course).

Over the past year or so we’ve seen them demolishing the Hospital Sint Pieters, the hospital that was apparently built for the French community in Flanders but never used due to them all decamping to Louvain-le-Neuve. The demolition has been going on for so long now with so little progress being made that it must be costing them a fortune.

As I have said before … “and on many occasions too” – ed … MY OLD NEXT-DOOR NEIGHBOUR would have had that down in the twinkling of an eye, never mind over a period of more than a year.

They don’t make them like that any more

Something that’s been going on for even longer has been the digging and subsequent filling-in of the big hole in the car park in the Sint Jakobsplein.

It seems that at last they have filled in the hole and resurfaced it, not that they have made a particularly good job of it. But it’s still not available for parking by the general public as it’s all fenced off still.

It seems to me that it’s now being used as the storage area for the equipment and material for the work that’s going on in the Monseigneur van Waeyenberghlaan and the Sint Hubertusstraat.

and so it seems like this area of the car park will be unavailable for the next forever, I imagine because they don’t seem to be in any rush.

Here in the Sint Hubertusstraat, the lower part of the Monseigneur van Waeyenberghlaan the repairs are also a long way from being completed and while that vehicle is making a valiant attempt to pass down the length of street it’s making heavy weather of the journey.

So I pushed on up through the roadworks that you saw earlier, and arrived at the hospital with 10 minutes to spare, the time for which was lost trying to work out where I was supposed to go.

And if you think that the town was empty, the hospital was even more empty too. There were very few people wandering around there and hanging around waiting for appointments.

Eventually I was seen by the student at the Kidney department following the x-rays that I had a while back. She interrogated and examined me, and then she went off to talk to the Professor who is in charge of that section.

He came back and told me the news that I mentioned earlier, which isn’t the best news that I’ve had so far. The plan is that they will write to me to give me an appointment when they have the results of the samples that she took from me.

Then I went upstairs to the Oncology department for my usual treatment. I wasn’t long there, with no visit from a doctor, so it wasn’t long before I was allowed to leave. And then I had to go back for a prescription for some of my medication. Abd by the time that I’d picked that up, the chemist’s was closed – early for New Years Eve of course.

On the way into the hospital I noticed that there was a Christmas tree outside the hospital door.

By the time that I left, it was going dark and so the tree was all illuminated. The decorations were not exactly inspiring but still I suppose I ought to take a photograph of it for the record seeing as I’m not getting about as often and as far as I would have done had things been different.

It was quite cold outside now so I wasn’t going to hang about very long. I headed off down the street back towards town and my lodgings.

My way home retraced the steps that I had taken on the way out to the hospital.

By now it was quite dark and the Christmas lights in the town were illuminated. Here in the Brusselsestraat from roughly where I took the photo of the Sint Pieters Hospital and looking to the west there was a good view of the lights, or at least, such lights as there were here this year.

Apparently it’s not just Granville that is economising on its Christmas displays this year. The lights in Leuven aren’t all that much to write home about either.

From the same spot looking eastwards back to the town centre there are more Christmas lights to see.

But once again, I’m rather disappointed by the lights that are here in the Brusselsestraat. Of course, it goes without saying that with all of the uncertainty, the loss of revenue and the increased expenditure due to the current situation, there are going to have to be economies made here and there with regard to the budget.

Nevertheless it’s a shame that they have decided to do this with the Christmas decorations It’s the kind of thing that would cheer up everyone and bring a little happiness into people’s lives in these grim times

In the background of the previous photo you saw the spires of the Stadhuis – the Town Hall in the Grote Markt lit up by strings of LED lights. And so with the aim of wanting to see them in all their glory, I went home that way.

In previous years they have been multicoloured lights that change colour at regular intervals and make a rather beautiful spectacle. But not this year, unfortunately. We have a golden yellow light and that seemed to be that for the time that I spent looking at it. Not a change of colour anywhere.

Beautiful that it is, it’s again something of a disappointment. But I’ll go out tomorrow evening after dark for another good look around and see how the rest of the town centre looks.

It’ll have to look better than the Herbert Hooverplein because this really is disappointing.

No Christmas market, which is no surprise, but they could still have done something better than this. And if you are dismayed by this, the decorations and lights in the Tiensestraat were non-existent. I came on home.

Back here I crashed out for a while and then made tea. Nothing at all exciting – just pasta and tinned veg, followed by tinned apricot and some Soya strawberry dessert stuff.

Having written my notes, I’m off to bed, ready (I don’t think) for the New Year.

To all of you, I hope that this year will be better than the last year and that we can move about once more. I wish each and every one of you everything that you wished for everyone else last year, wishes for Brexiters and Trump supporters excluded of course.

Take good care of yourselves and we’ll see each other again – hopefully not at Philippi

Wednesday 30th December 2020 – I HAVEN’T BEEN …

… very far today.

And that’s because for most of the day we’ve been in the grip of a torrential downpour. It was going at it hammer and tongs when I awoke so to be honest I turned over and went back to sleep where I stayed until about 09:30.

It was still raining when I awoke so I had a drink and then listened to the dictaphone to see where I’d been during the night. There had been a party going on in the attic of my house in Virlet and for some unknown reason all of the lights went out. It wasn’t dark, but I was there at the cables trying to touch different cables with a connector to see if the lights would come on, trying to work out the position in which these two cables ought to be in, in order to make the lights wotk. It seemed pretty straightforward but you’ve no idea how complicated it was last night when all of this was going on. Occasionally I was getting the lights to be illuminated but they didn’t look bright enough, suggesting a bad earth or something like that or whether they had the terminals the wrong way round (which of course wouldn’t work LEDs). I was making such a hard job of making this job correct and I have to say that the wiring that I was messing around was a total mess to start with. It didn’t resemble anything like a set of wiring ought to do, except the wiring that I did right at the very beginning.

Later on there was a conflict in a family-run business and the old guy who ran it had been shunted out and the two brothers were fighting over it. It came to dividing up the assets and 1 of the brothers suggested that because of the way of life of the other, he wasn’t entitled to as much money. This discussion went on for ages and in the end they agreed to settle it by an exchange of assets – a painting and something else would be exchanged for a painting and something else of greater value and that way it would be quits. The 2nd brother went to talk to his father about it and in the end, secretly one night before this exchange was due to take place they agreed a change of assets themselves which left n°2 son better off and withdrawing all his claims, leaving his father who was in a much better place to fight the claims against his other son. As they were saying goodbye to each other it was a case of “for God’s sake don’t go home. You want to hit the road straight away to make sure that the other son doesn’t come round to your house by accident and catch you with this because you’ve had a much better deal and he would be extremely dismayed by this”. And then the father too hit the road with his ill-gotten gains but started to be dogged all the way by his illegitimate children turning up from when he was younger claiming their share, unpaid bills suddenly appearing that the company hadn’t satisfied and so on which would lead to a seizure of assets. It seems that the n°2 brother wasn’t as stupid as he looked and had gone and shopped his father for all of this in the hope that if all of the assets were liquidated he would receive more because of his family share of it.

This led to another walking adventure, of which there have been more than a few just recently. I was walking with another couple of guys walking away from somewhere which might have been this situation and having a really pleasant and pleasurable long walk through the south-west England countryside trying to get away from civilisation for a while. On one occasion we ended up lying underneath a car talking about bread pudding, whether you butter the slices of bread or not (ohhh! The excitement!)

Finally, I was being held prisoner for some reason and a big burly guy something like Bernard Bresslaw had been instructed to “deal with” me. When he took me outside I explained that we’d had our differences but they had always been fair fights and we took what was coming in good grace, but this was a pretty unfair way of doing it and did he think it right? etc. he started to see my point of view and agree but just then his boss came in, clearly exhausted and exasperated after a hard day somewhere and barked out a few orders, and I could see then at that moment that I was wasting my time.

As you might imagine, it took me quite a while to transcribe all of that. And what surprised me was that I’d been so far. I’d had a really bad night it it had taken me hours to go to sleep.

By the time that I’d finished, the rain had stopped so I cleared off quickly into town.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that we’ve been looking at this property for quite a while.

It’s part of the complex where I have my accommodation, a part that has not yet been developed. It’s been a rubbish dump for quite a while until they started to tidy it all up a while ago.

And I know the story behind it now because I asked the complex manager when I saw him. It seems that they had started to develop it into apartments for the hotel but planning permission was refused, and they have been fighting about it for the last 10 years. The manager isn’t all that optimistic about its future.

As for the tidying up, they apparently had a notice served on them by the local council.

There’s yet more excitement going on just around the corner in the Tiensestraat.

There’s a vague idea going on around in my head that last time that I was here they were doing something to one of the properties there but it seems that whatever it was that was here, they have simply erased it from the map. This is going to be something to keep an eye on over the next while.

From here I headed off into town to see what was going on. And the answer to that is “nothing”. It was a bit much to expect that the Christmas market was going to be working this year.

There was nothing whatever happening in FNAC either. If that was their New Year sale, it’s a bit thin. And I imagine that the New Year sales for most places will be the same.

In the Bondgenotenlaan they have been working on this property for a few years now.

It’s where WIBRA used to be and after they left it was totally stripped out down to the four walls. And it’s another thing that’s taking a while to come to a conclusion. They are a long way from finishing it.

Talking of WIBRA, I stuck my head in there and also in Zeeman but there was nothing to tempt me. Not even a nice new
woolly hat that I would like. I ended up in Delhaize for just a couple of things and then came back here.

After lunch I sat down and did some work on the radio programmes. I now have two programmes with the music chosen, remixed and paired. And I’m hoping to do a couple more on Friday.

Unfortunately I didn’t manage to do my Welsh homework as I … errr … had a little relaxation.

No tea either – I wasn’t al all hungry, so I wrote up my notes for the day, such as they were. No evening walk either as it’s still pouring down with rain and didn’t leave off until after curfew as you might expect.

So a rather late night, and tomorrow I have the hospital when I can see what they are going to do to me. And see how I’ve been keeping for the last couple of months since my last appointment in October.

And I shudder to think.

Tuesday 29th December 2020 – WHILE YOU ADMIRE …

… the images of this afternoon’s walk through the Groot Begijnhof and along the River Dijle, let me tell you about where I went during the night.

I started off with a lady friend of mine from University last night but somehow I mixed her up with a girl with hom I once worked. She was separating from a black guy. He was still living in the family home in Dantzig Street and finding the payments difficult to keep up and was saying that he would have to sell it. That surprised me because I was wondering what she was going to receive from this because it’s bad enough being the mother of a couple of kids but being kicked out of your family home and living in a little dirty flat isn’t very good for the morale or anything like that. She should be doing much better than this. I can’t remember any more about this dream but interestingly I awoke at 06:00 as I would have done had the 1st alarm gone off even though I’d switched off the alarms this morning.

And the fun was only beginning.

Later on I was with a girl who was a real blast from the past from 45 years ago. We’d been on some kind of date kind of thing. One evening round at her house I suggested going for a walk but instead one of her friends (who was in fact keen on me all those years ago) came with me instead. I decided that it wasn’t a good idea for her to come along (back in those days there were a couple of reasons why I didn’t pursue this line) so in the end I let her go back home. I was wandering around Crewe on my own looking at how disgusting and dirty the place was, thinking that I should drive around videoing it and putting it on Social Media to show everyone what kind of dump the place is. Then the principal girl suggested that we go for a drive. We got into her car and she drove, and she wasn’t a bad driver at all, quite good in this little Mini that she had. We drove off out of town and came to a road junction where we had to turn. She said that we’d turn right so I asked where we were going. She said “you’ll find out”. We were heading in the direction of the hospital and I wondered what was going on in there, whether one of her friends was there, for I was hoping to get her up a dark alley and be much more friendly than I had been to date but if we were going to the hospital to see a friend, that ruled that out, didn’t it?

There was something else that I don’t remember very much, about me being in a bathroom somewhere. There were 2 guys who were the handymen for this building and 1 in particular spent some time in the area where I was. When I went out there was just the other guy there so I said that the light was out in the bathroom that I’d just used and perhaps he ought to tell his friend when he returned to do something about it but I can’t remember where this fitted in at all.

Somewhat later I’d done a big pile of cooking and I had all of these casserole dishes full of stuff all over the place, 2 big ones. I’d been ill and been in bed so they had been sitting in the kitchen for 2 or 3 days. I’d invited Barbara Windsor back, presumably for a right old carry-on. I’d been seeing her a couple of tiles and eventually I plucked up the courage to ask her out. She came back to my place and I started to parcel up these casserole things into individual portions The portions turned out to be a lot smaller than I was thinking and she was saying that maybe I should have done it into fives instead of sixes We were listening to the radio in the background and they announced ‘Top of the Pops” and I’m not going any further along this road because it’s going to spoil a surprise that I have lined up for a few weeks’ time.

But by the time that this voyage ended, it was no longer Barbara Windsor- she had transformed herself into the girl who starred in the previous voyage and this will explain a lot to at least two people who follow these adventures more closely than they like to admit.

What with all of that, that took me up to about 09:30, which isn’t too bad for a lie-in, I suppose.

And by the time that I had finished transcribing all of these and all of the adventures from yesterday, of which there is quite a considerable amount which you will find if you go back to yesterday’s page, it wasn’t all that far off lunch.

And with having no cucumber and no salad cream or equivalent, I set off out to the shops yet again.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that when we were here last time, we saw them busy working on a house on the corner of the Dekenstraat and the Brabanconnestraat.

It goes without saying of course that I was interested in seeing how they were doing with it so I took myself off that way for a closer loon. And they seem to be fitting an outer skin on it, with these new modern bricks that are quite thin and not unattractive.

It’s a long way from being finished, which is no surprise around here when you see just how the builders work, so we’ll get to see plenty more of this work.

We’ve seen the building across there – the Pope Leo XIII Seminary founded in 1889 and installed in a building that was built between 1889 and 1896.

It’s a magnificent neo-gothic pile designed by Joris Helleputte, one of the finest examples of its type and period in the city, and so whatever was going on in the minds of the city fathers when they granted planning permission for the modern monstrosity opposite it which is the School of Engineering?

It really does destroy the whole effect of the magnificence of the former building, which unfortunately now due to the decline in the number of trainee priests, is now a hostel for devout Catholic students.

It’s enough to make anyone gasp in amazement.

Another thing that regular readers of this rubbish might recall is that there are still vestiges of the old medieval city walls dotted about here and there in the town.

When we were here last time I showed you a photograph of one of the old surviving towers in the Sint Donatus park, so while we’re passing through today, I reckoned that I would show you a remnant of the old city walls here in the park not too far away.

You may well have seen them before but I can’t remember. Anyway, here I am and here they are.

One thing that you will have seen before is the Kangxi-Verbiest globe, although you won’t have seen it from this viewpoint.

Ferdinand Verbiest was a Jesuit priest who in 1659 went as a missionary to China. trying to impress the Chinese with the knowledge that was current in Europe at the time, he showed them a globe. This prompted the Chinese into an outburst of laughter because at the time the Chinese were well ahead of the Europeans in this manner of thinking.

This is not the original globe. That remains behind in China. This is a copy here in Leuven.

The door to this yard opens up into the Naamsestraat and so I pushed on down the road.

Those two metal lines across the street – they indicate as far as they can the position of the Proefsstraat Gate which stood here from 1156 until 1755 and was part of the fortifications that we have just seen that encircled the city. It’s on the highest part of the street

Despite its age, it wasn’t the oldest of the gates around the city. It’s known that there were fortifications including a gate built somewhere around here in the 9th Century to protect the city from Norse raids.

And this gate here didn’t survive the defortification orders of the Austrian Empire either.

There’s a calvary built across the road from the stones of the gate, and that reminds me of the story about the time they wanted to built a calvary here in modern times and they sent out requests for a design. Due to a misunderstanding on the telephone, one architect sent in a drawing of John Wayne on his horse.

Through now into the Groot Begijnhof which is a part of leuven that I love.

This is the Huis Sint Niklaas, gifted to the city in 1983. And I’ve probably taken a photo of that before too.

In Carrefour I bought what I needed, also plenty of stuff that I didn’t realise that I needed too. In fact I spent more on this second trip than I did on the first.

And then a long stagger home, where I made my sandwiches and then promptly crashed out for a really good hour.

What awoke me was a phone call from a friend in the UK. We’ve been in desultory touch here and there but she decided to ring me to see how I was. We chatted for well over an hour about all kinds of things.

Later on, I went out to buy some chips.

You’ve seen a photo of where I stay before but it looked so nice that I couldn’t resist photographing it again. But my favourite chip shop was now closed so I had to find another one. Beans and chips and burger for tea.

Now it’s late and I’m ready for bed. No watching a film like I did last night. It’s too late for that. Especially as I have an alarm set for the morning. I did 2 lots of Welsh homework today but I still need to push on when and where I can. And Thursday is D-Day at the hospital so I need to be on form.

EPIC HALL

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

Category Archives: Belgium

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