Category Archives: Mont St Jean

Friday 3rd June 2016 – I’M BACK …

… in Soissons again – at the Hotel Premiere Classe of course and I suppose that you are all wondering why I don’t move in here.

But the reasons why I’m back are twofold – firstly, I’ve come to recover my mobile phone (which I now have in my sweaty little mitt until I leave it somewhere else) and secondly, and more importantly, I’ve been let out of hospital today.

The doctor came along this morning and told me that nothing now is likely to be done to me until they receive the results of my samplings back from the laboratory, so if I were to stay in the hospital, I’d be just kicking my heels until then. And so I decided to take my wracked and ragged body off for a change of scenery, and they’ve given me an appointment for Monday 13th (yes, the thirteenth – good job it’s not a Friday!) of June. That’s when we’ll (hopefully) find out where everyone has been going wrong with my diagnosis.

I spoke to the girl at Social Services and after an inordinately long wait, she confirmed that they would have me back at Pellenberg from Monday until the day that I go for my results. That gives me a week to track down a room in a house and now that I have my phone back, I hope that I can do that.

But the result of having to wait around so long was that it was 15:30, instead of 14:00 when I left the hospital. And after another session where I jammed the exit at the car park, I was of course decanted straight into the traffic. Not quite as bad as the last time, but bad enough all the same. I stopped off to pick up some fuel at Mont St Jean, given the excitement that’s going on in France at the moment.

The drive down was uneventful although I did pick a new route – down the péage and then onto the motorway for Reims and Lyon, leaving somewhere short of Coucy. And luckily, there was a guard on duty at the tollbooth who recognised Caliburn as a van and not a lorry and I paid just €4:40 for the tolls and not four times that. I hate these automatic tolls.

The road into Soissons is a road that I know well from the old days, bringing me past the walled city of Coucy-le-Chateau (which readers from way back will recall us doing the touristy visit early one morning in midwinter many years ago on our way back from an Open University Students Association meeting) and straight into the town, and now I’m holed up in the Premiere Classe where I’ll be staying until tomorrow.

And I hope that I have as good a sleep as I had last night. Not the best, it has to be said, but my room-mate didn’t snore at all as far as I could tell and once I’d finally managed to go to sleep, I just had the odd awakening here and there and was dead to the world when the nurse awoke me. I’d been on a voyage too, but don’t ask me where because I’ve no idea now.

Still, tonight I’ve asked for the quietest room in the house and judging by this and that, I might actually have it too. Let’s see how I’m feeling after a good rest and a good breakfast tomorrow, hey?

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Saturday 27th July 2013 – THIS YEAR IS …

… turning into something of a disaster, as if it wasn’t enough of one already.

J J Cale has died today, so it has been announced.

Many people might not know who he is, but I bet that most of you will know Eric Clapped-out.

And if you do, you will know the tracks “After Midnight”, “Travellin’ Light” and “Cocaine”. Cale was the guy who wrote those tracks, although they made Crapped-on far more famous than he himself became. You can hear Cale singing them on the album Troubadour.

Yes, he“can go to paradise Maybe once, maybe twice. Travelin’ light is the only way to fly”. He won’t be letting it hang out after midnight any more though.

Ray Manzarek of The Doors has also died this year, as has David Bowie’s longtime bassist Trevor Bolder. Richie Havens, who was the opening act at Woodstock – he’s gone too and so has Alvin Lee of Ten Years After.

My rock music programmes on Radio Anglais are fast turning into a necrology. It’s dreadful. Who is going to be next?

In keeping with the depressing spirit of things we’ve had two monsoons today. One at round about 09:00 and the other one started about 15 minutes ago and is still going on (23:40).

More rain has fallen in these two deluges than I’ve seen for quite a while, and that’s saying something given the weather just recently and the rainfall that I’v seen in my life in the Auvergne.

I did manage to get out and about though – an afternoon at Waterloo – or rather Mont St Jean – and the huge Carrefour and the Media Markt across the road.

I’ve bought a pile of food and on Monday I might even make another one of my famous – if not legendary – potato pies but apart from that, I didn’t spend any money on anything.

Not through lack of willingness or lack of things to buy of course, but I forgot to mention that I have a tax bill here to pay, relating to the final year that I owned “Expo”.

Yes, property taxes chez moi in the Auvergne are about €75. Here in Brussels it was €1200. No wonder I sold up and moved when I lost my job.

I’ve also emptied a pile of stuff from here. A huge (and I DO mean “huge”) mound of papers and four sacks of Marianne’s clothes have found their way into Caliburn and next time I’m out and about I’ll pass by one of the container sites and heave the lot into the appropriate container.

Tomorrow though is Sunday and I’ll be having a day off. Then I must crack on big-time.

Apart from that, I had another dream. I had a wind turbine on a mast on my front lawn and it was going round flat-out with the blade flutter that you get on the plastic blades of the AIR 403 wind turbines. A crowd of people were watching it and there were a couple of TV cameras filming it, and at a certain moment they all climbed over the fence onto my property to have a closer look, to film it and to record the sound. I arrived a little later, just in time to see the invasion, and I had to chase everyone away. Zero, about whom I spoke the other week, also put in an unscheduled appearance somewhere along the line.

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Saturday 24th December 2011 – I DIDN’T FEEL …

… much like getting up this morning.

I can’t sleep in Brussels and it’s pretty pointless trying, if you ask me. And so when the alarm went off at 08:30 I was already alive and kicking.

Having fallen off the end of the bed three times during the night doesn’t help much either and so I turned the bed round in the middle of the night. And so tonight it will be my feet that will fall out.

This morning we went shopping at the Shanti – the health food supermarket over the road in the Avenue Adolphe Buyl. Start as we mean to go on, I suppose.

After that I made a start on the work that we had to do. I’m not here merely to pass the time of day or to sit and put my feet up – I have plenty of work to do.

Another shopping trip, this time to the Carrefour at Waterloo (or, rather, Mont St Jean) for the stuff we couldn’t find at the health food shop was on the cards for later and after a coffee, we went to Chi Chi’s, the Tex-Mex restaurant down the road from there, for a Christmas Eve meal.

We arrived much earlier than anticipated for our booking, but there was a table free and so we didn’t have to wait around.

Back here later, we watched the Chronicles of Narnia II – Prince Caspian, which isn’t a patch on the first one unfortunately, and that was Christmas Eve.

And now I’m off to bed. I have to wait until tomorrow to find out what Santa has bought me.

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Saturday 12th February 2011 – We just worked half a day today.

Liz finished papering the bathroom and then painted the half that she had papered yesterday. It looks quite nice too. I carried on scrubbing down the walls in the living room and you wouldn’t believe how much dirt and muck and mess there is on them. Mind you, it doesn’t half look better now.

In the corner next to the bathroom is a little alcove where I hang the coats and leave the shoes. Marianne and I wallpapered there a few years ago but the bit at the bottom is quite badly soiled and needed doing again. But learning the lesson from my attic at home, and bearing in mind that we have a box of unused wall tiles going spare, Terry cut off some of the wallpaper and tiled down there. Now that’s so much better and of course if you are throwing muddy shoes about then all you need to do is to wipe down the tiles.

After lunch we had a brainstorming session and decided on yet another change of plan. The grouting of the WC tiles is awful and nothing we seem to do can clean it up. Grinding out the stuff doesn’t work either as it just creates dust everywhere and there isn’t the room to swing a grinder around so we decided that we would take them off and replace them. The sink is fine but the WC has seen better days and so we are going to replace that, put new pipework in the bathroom and change the tap.

And so with all of that, the stuff to seal the balcony, a pile of door handles and so on, we spent over €400 at Brico. The one at Mont St Jean instead, where they have the rudest staff in the whole wide world. And where they also have the rudest customers in the world too and Terry and I can give it back in spades.

At the Carrefour there we spent well over €100 in food for the next week. We’ve each given our orders for meals and so Liz knows what to cook. Spicy bean fallujahs with spicy rice, and rice pudding are on the menu – I can tell you that 😉

Once the shopping was finished the staff expressed a wish to be wined and dined at a Pizza Hut. Their wish is my command, unless I want to finish off this apartment all on my own, and so a good time was had by all.

But seeing how much these renovations are costing me, I hope that we can finish the work before my heart and my wallet give out. I’m not used to spending money like this.

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Saturday 5th February 2011 – This gale is still howling away

It’s been going almost non-stop for over 48 hours and shows little sign of abating.And here we are trying to cut tiles and paint window frames and we’ve ended up with dust and paint everywhere.

Mind you, I have the making of a magnificent bathroom thanks to Liz’s artistic eyes and Terry’s workmanship. It’s certainly something. It might even be finished by Monday night and that will be real progress.

In the bedroom all of the woodwork is painted, we have wallpapered and there’s a couple of coats of paint on the ceiling, although there will be others as the ceiling is quite thirsty.

This afternoon I took Liz and Terry to the battlefield at Waterloo but there was far too much wind to make it possible to climb to the top of the Butte du Lion. And at the huge Carrefour at Mont-St Jean we did a week’s worth of shopping and spent a fortune. But it was worth is for I even found a supply of vegan cheese. And that doesn’t happen every day.

Then off to the big Brico where we spent another small fortune, but now we have all the wallpaper and paint that we need for here. I needed an operation for the removal of my wallet, and was given oxygen afterwards.

A major disappointment was that Chi-Chi’s, the really good Tex-Mex restaurant in Overijse, had closed down. Terry suggested a pizza, Liz fancied a fritkot, but once I had Tex-Mex on my mind that was that and we fought our way into Brussels city centre for the other Chi-Chi’s. Terry was suitably impressed with the roads in the city, of course. He reckons that they wouldn’t be out of place in Ougadougou or Dar-es-Salaam.

And what a good night it was in Chi-Chi’s – excellent service (none of the staff is Belgian), really good food, and a couple of South Americans entertaining the diners. It’s been a long time since I had such an enjoyable evening. Liz enjoyed her Mexican coffee and Terry loved his deep-fried ice-cream.

And so that was our day. And a good day it was too, with a good time being had by all. Tomorrow is a day of rest of course, and then back to the grindstone on Monday.

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