Category Archives: leuven

Saturday 25th January 2020 – THEY WERE RIGHT …

… about this “fatigue” thing as a side effect of this new medical treatment.

Last night I crashed out long before I’d finished the notes for the day and having anticipated some kind of reaction and thus having switched off the alarm, it was 08:37 when I fist saw the light of day.

And that’s not to say that I left my bed either at that time.

But when I did, I had my medication and then came back up here and finished off yesterday’s notes. And it took me an age too because I wasn’t quite “with it”.

After breakfast I attacked the dictaphone to see where I’d been during the night.

I started off with someone and we had been in a Traction Avant – a white one – and it was the road that left Shavington past the High School. It was very steep and got steeper and there was loose gravel and stones. We went roaring up there at a ridiculous speed making tons of clouds of dust, everything at the risk of punctures on the sharp stones. We got right to the top and we were talking about this and I can’t remember now. Then it came down to having to go back. I ended up with these two girls in the car with me. I must admit that was quite keen on these girls and so I asked them “do you want to go the way back or do you want to go a different way?” There was in fact a different way that was much more quieter and much more intimate. I thought “yes, we’ll go back a different way”. But instead they took me back yet another way, not the way that I was thinking. We were in a Morris 1100 by this time. We got back down the hill and the road was all flooded. We turned left and it was flooded there so I told the girl who was driving – one of these girls was driving – “keep it out of the wet. Keep it well over this side of the road and go really slow”. Just as we got there some guys were standing about and sending a huge splash on everyone so you couldn’t see and the cars were having accidents. Some people were getting out of their cars chasing these boys. I was telling these two girls that I just can’t get used to this kind of behaviour. It’s nothing like what it is in Europe and I just don’t understand it. They said something like “yes you get the complaints about the kids being on the streets all the time and out of the control of their parents and here they all are”. And at that point I must have awoken because the voyage seemed to have stopped there.
Later though we had the Pears soap commercial kind of thing. Clare had posted something about Wright’s Coal tar Soap in her Social Network page. We were playing football and some of the tackles were really desperate and dangerous and these kids were doing fine. There was a “share” button where you could share this video out with different people so I pressed “share” so that my friends could see the kind of foul tactics that this team was using against a team of kids. I don’t remember much about this but I seem to remember that I lost my wheelchair somewhere. And what all of this and the flashback to the Granville – Olympique de Marseille have to do with Clare and her soap I really have no idea.
Later still I was with Terry and Liz at Darren and Kate’s. We ended up in the cellar and their cellar was enormous. It was really really nice. I was being shown around it. There were four or five little rooms, one a boiler room with a boiler in it. They had cupboards hanging from the ceiling where the drawers pulled downwards into the room. I thought “how strange is that? it’s stupid”. But they pulled the drawers down and showed me that they were all arranged like shelves inside with all screws and all that kind of thing in it and it was really well done. The boiler was nice and hot and there was a big table by there and Darren and kate were working out some kind of design on the big table. One of the kids shouted that all the cats were out. A big grey and white one came in to the cellar and “no, we haven’t seen that. Are you sure that that one is ours? There are only 3 or 4 like that in the whole world. I gave it a big stroke and a tickle under the chin. It turned out that it belonged to a famous actress. She had had it as a kitten and one of the kids had lost their cat so she gave it to the kid.

Believe it or not, all of that took ;e up until midday, at which point I went out for some bread.

Deciding to go for an extended walk and see what was in the shops, my perambulations took me via the FNAC (where there was nothing of interest) into the Bondgenotenlaan where I could qdmire the work that;s being done to the old “Wibra” shop.

We had some good things from there in the past and it’s a shame that they moved into smaller premises where they only carry a fraction of the stock.

They have completely gutted the building until there is just the facade left.

We saw then a while ago having dug out the cellar and now they seem to be fitting in the concrete flooring for the first floor, the ground floor having already been done.

It’s taken them an age to get this far and I can’t see them finishing it off any time soon. But it will be interesting to see what will be going on here in the end.

Kruidvat had nothing of interest and neither did Zeeman, Hema, Sports Direct, Blokker and Flying Tiger. But the Wibra did. I’d bought a flexible rubber spatula for cookery purposes a while ago and I’ve found it useful for so many things. But I don’t want to taint it with tomato sauce and stuff like that so I need another. And there in Wibra they had small ones for just 79 cents.

Couldn’t find any small pyrex bowls, and neither could I find a set of pastry-cutting rings. I shall have to keep on trying my Systme D method.

having been to the Delhaize for my bread, my attention was distracrd yet again, in the Brusselsestraat this time.

This mobile food stall in the outdoor market here is one that I haven’t noticed before. And I surely would have done because it’s advertising quite a range of vegan food.

Not that I was too interested at that moment, having organised my butties for lunch, but I made a mental note of its existence for it might one day come in useful.

Coming back up the Tiensestraat I noticed that they had been digging a hole in the pavement so I went to have a look down inside.

Not that I was sure what I was going to see of interest, if anything at all, but these brick foundations look interesting. The building here is a comparatively modern one so these presumably relate to a previous building here on the site.

And I bet that they would have an interesting story to tell us if only they could speak. It’s the kind of thing that is full of history.

Back home to the back of the Condo gardens in the Windmolenveldstraat.

We’d seen yesterday that there was some work going on on the fence here, but there’s more work going on at one of the houses in the Tiensevest that backs onto the Windmolenveldstraat. The rear of the house has been demolished and it looks as if an extension might be being built here.

That’s something else for me to keep my eye on in the course of time, I suppose.

By the time that I returned it was long after lunchtime so I made my butties and a coffee. The aim was to carry on with more work but instead, this fatigue thing caught up with me and I crashed out again.

A proper, deep, full-blooded intense crashing out too. I was properly gone with the wind and for some while too.

When I finally rejoined the Land of the Living I had a shower and washed my clothes and then carried on with some more radio stuff.

The music for Project 17 is now chosen as far as I can, and I’m about half-way though the music for Project 18. With a live concert to fit in somewhere in between, I’m now well into March and that is exactly where I want to be. I need to be at least 2 months ahead of myself just in case I do actually make it back to the High Arctic again.

Tea was pasta and vegetables with lentils in tomato sauce followed by peach halves and sorbet. Thoroughly delicious it was too

later on, I went for a really good walk. My route took me around the Tiensevest, up the Parkstraat and into the Naamsestraat.

It’s a route that I hadn’t taken before so I was hoping to see lots of new things the existence of which I was previously unaware. And I wasn’t disappointed either because I came across the Sint Michielskerk in the Naamsestraat.

Built between 1650 and 1671 by the Jesuits, it’s said to be one of the most important baroque churches in the whole of Europe. And it certainly looked impressive to me from where I was standing.

No mention seems to be made of any damage during the Sack of Leuven in 1914 so it may well have escaped that, only to have been hit during a bombing raid in 1944.

You can’t win ’em all.

Just up the road a little at number 37 is this beautiful building.

Leuven was, and still is, a very rich city and there’s evidence of that all over the place. Magnificent houses are everywhere and this one is a typical example.

These days it seems to be a solicitors’ office but it would be interesting to look into its history and see who lived here in the past. Whoever it was can’t have been short of a bob or two and I for one am quite jealous.

We’ve been to the Hogeschoolplein before, but not down at this end.

Here is the statue of Andre Dumont. He’s more usually associated with Liege but his claim to fame is that he was responsible for the geological maps of Belgium published between 132 and 1849, having travelled all over the country – on foot. He deserves a statue for that alone.

As for the square itself, it was created between 1807 and 1812 and there are several colleges from the University scattered around here – hence the name.

But it also has another claim to fame too.

We’ve seen Pizzamats and Potatomats and breadomats in the past, but the Hogeschoolplein is the only place in the whole wide world where i have ever encountered a Dessertomat.

And if you think that I’m joking, I’m not. Put your three or four euros in and dial the appropriate number and you’ll have your Black Forest Gateau or Tiramisu without any more ado than that.

It’s probably the most interesting thing that I’ve seen in Belgium.

Back here I wrote up my journal and now I’m off to bed. Later than intended. And despite it being Sunday, there’s an alarm set for tomorrow because I’m having a day out in Germany. And I’m looking forward to that.

An early start so I need to be on form. But with only 5 hours sleep I’m not sure how that’s going to work at all.

Friday 24th January 2020 – THAT ISN’T …

… the news that I was hoping to hear. Not at all.

My blood count is down to 8.8 – something that will not surprise any regular readers of this rubbish because they will recall that I’ve been mentioning over the last couple of weeks the fact that I’ve not been feeling myself … “just as well” – ed.

Worse though is the fact that my kidneys are now playing up again. They want me to see a kidney specialist the next time that I come.

It looks as if I’m starting to break up. But that was something that was always on the cards. People start to die of this illness after 5 years, and although I was diagnosed with it only 4.25 years ago, there’s no telling how long I had been suffering before I was taken to hospital.

Last night, despite the comfortable bed, I had a very mixed sleep. Tossing and turning around, waking up, all of that. There had been time to go on a voyage or two though.

We started off on The Good Ship Ve … errr … Ocean Endeavour again and we were all having to get off to go for a coach drive. There were crowds of people in this square waiting for the buses and there was a lot going on. Some people who we were with decided that they weren’t going to do as they had other things that they really wanted to do. Anyway it was to see the statue of Sir John Slessor . They asked me if I knew anything about Sir John Slessor. I said “yes, he was an Anglo-Irish guy who was associated with Polar Exploration at one time”. I told a bit about a story but I can’t remember the bit now. There were crowds of people milling around and someone came up to me and asked me if we were going on a train. I said “no, we’re going on a bus”. Someone else asked the same question. There were loads and loads of Arab kids around and every time that I got up to go somewhere they would sit at my seat and I would have to go and grab my seat back again from him. We were sitting there waiting for these buses to come. I had some rare church relics with me – a box of something and a china – porcelain cross, white with blue edgings and I was afraid that one of these days I was going to break these, the way that I’m picking them up and putting them down. I can’t remember who I was with now but I was with some woman or other on this trip.
Later on, I was at the radio and I’d interviewed a rock band. It was an interview that I had done by chance with no plan in mind and I’d had a call or something for one of these programmes so I sent them that.

The alarm went off as usual and I was out of bed before the third alarm which is good news. And after the medication and breakfast, seeing as my appointment isn’t until 13:30, I attacked some radio stuff.

Not one project, but in fact two. The music for the first one is chosen (except the last track of course) and I’ve chosen half for the second one. I may as well use my free time here profitably.

There was a break while I went to the Spar shop for some bread.

At the back of the Condo Gardens here in the Windmolenveldstraat it doesn’t look good at all – or at least, it didn’t. But it seems that they are making a concerted effort to tidy it up so that it looks pretty.

The new fence looks really nice – and what a pity some low-life character has decided to leave his mark on it. That’s the kind of thing that makes me quite fed up.

A little further on down the Tiensestraat there are some exciting signs of activity.

They are using a stone-cutter to slice huge chunks out of the pavement and they are installing tactile pavement right by where the kerb drops are for the pedestrian crossings.

As an aside, I once had a female friend who worked for the Royal National Institute for the Blind and she reckoned that she had some of the responsibility for introducing tactile pavement into the UK.

Back here, I made myself a butty or two and round about 12:00 I headed off up town.

Straight away, back in the Tiensestraat, I was interrupted by an old car.

We haven’t seen an old car in a while so I reckoned that I had better photograph it. According to the badge, it’s a Lotus 7, and according to its front number plate, it was registered in 1965.

But these are things that you can’t take for granted. Many Lotus 7s were sold in home-assembly kits and there were several other clones doing the rounds too. So you accept with care the “evidence” of the badge.

There’s the little open-air fruit and veg market today in the Herbert Hooverplein.

That was my immediate destination as I wanted an apple and a pear to take to the hospital with me. But having waited for about a week while the assistants served a couple of the slowest customers that I’ve ever seen, I rather lost patience.

Yes, I gave it up as a bad job and abandoned my prospective purchases and carried on the the hospital.

Regular readers of the rubbish will recall what I’m going to be discussing next because we’ve been keeping an eye on these.

We’ve looked at the Hospital Sint Pieter here in the Brusselsestraat. It was built for the French community here in Leuven apparently but they left to go to Louvain-le-Neuve.

This became a huge white elephant and was never ever used to its potential. The respite care was here and so were the guest rooms, where I stayed for a while when I first came to Leuven.

Now it’s empty and they have made a start in demolishing it.

We’ve also seen the big hole in the car park in the Sint Jacobsplein.

As to what they were doing with this hole, I really have no idea. And I don’t suppose that I shall ever find out either because by the looks of things they are now filling it back in again.

Had I come by here two weeks ago when I should have been at the hospital, I might have noticed. Anyway, it will probably be fully restored the next time that I come.

This is something that we haven’t seen before.

The road by the traffic lights in the Monseigneur van Waeyenberghlaan is closed off and they have been digging up the road right here. It looks as if they are doing something to the drains and sewers but I’ve no idea what.

It does make me wonder if it is connected in some way to the hole that they dug in the St Jacobsplein car park. That would make a lot of sense I suppose.

The final thing of note is also in the Monseigneur van Waeyenberghlaan.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that sometime last year they completely gutted this block of flats – stripped it right back to the bare concrete. They now seem to be well-advanced with the renovation, and there was a lorry delivering a load of insulation.

The ground floor has been done out into shops so I’ll be interested to see who moves into them when they are ready.

At the hospital they are giving me yet another new treatment. Something called IQYMUNE which, according to Helena, is the bee’s knees. So we shall see.

And it had better be too if it’s to arrest this sudden decline.

Most of the time that I spent here, I was asleep. And it took the doctor an age to awaken me when he needed to talk to me about my kidneys.

My butties had unfortunately disintegrated inside my bag so I ate what I reasonably could, and then spent 15 minutes in the toilet on the way out cleaning bits of tomato, lettuce and hummus from the inside of my rucksack. What a mess!

On the way home I didn’t loiter. Just picked up my fruit and a tin of lentils from the Delhaize and came straight back. One of the side effects of this new medical stuff is “fatigue” and if I don’t have enough problems with that already!

Tea was the second burger with pasta, tomato sauce and vegetables. Followed by peach halves and mango sorbet. Totally delicious, it was too.

And then the football. Rhydaman v Caernarfon Town.

Rhydaman had comfortably disposed of Carmarthen away in the previous round and while Caernarfon are a different proposition to Carmarthen, the home advantage should normally count for something. Especially when I saw just how packed the ground was.

But Carmarthen were undone by four magic moments of Trundlemania and when we saw that Lee Trundle wasn’t playing tonight, then any advantage evaporated.

The game was littered with errors from start to finish and Caernarfon will have to improve dramatically and work on these silly mistakes if they want to push on into Europe. But even so, they had more in the tank than Rhydaman did.

They were 2-0 up by half-time and later in the game when Rhydaman tired, Caernarforn went on the rampage and scored 2 more, exactly as I had predicted to Johan Gallon in my interview with him a few days ago. Not even the introduction of the veteran Andy Robinson by Rhydaman could turn the game around.

Anyway, as this medication is responsible for fatigue and tiredness, I’d better hurry up and finish this before I …

ZZZZZZZ.

Thursday 23rd January 2020 – HERE I ALL AM …

… not sitting in a rainbow but sitting in a posh living room in a duplex apartment here in Leuven.

The one thing about being a very regular customer of these apart-hotels is that if there’s a higher-grade accommodation vacant, they give me a free upgrade and I’ve struck lucky this visit.

A lovely big double bed, nice and comfortable. All I need is a nice and sweet young lady to share it with me and I’ll be well away. Ohhh yes – even at my age I can still chase after the women. I just can’t remember why!

The only down side is that I have noisy neighbours who seem to be partying. But I can’t hear a thing because I remembered to bring my really good headphones with me and with Colosseum Live going full-tilt into my ears I can’t hear a thing.

But that album has its downside, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall. Although it’s one of the top five live albums ever recorded, it was the one that was going round and round on an endless loop while I was on The Good Ship Ve … errr … Ocean Endeavour in 2018 and 2019.

Of course it immediately brings back all kinds of memories, mostly good but some quite bad and there are people like The Vanilla Queen and Castor and Pollux going through my mind as I listen to it.

Somewhere I read something along the lines of “anyone who spends any time in the High Arctic will come back a different person” and that’s certainly true.

Just for a change, this morning I was up quite smartly and it didn’t take me long to get everything ready for leaving. I’d had a shower last night before going to bed so I didn’t even need to deal with that.

Plenty of time to go a-voyaging too. The first little trip had something to do with the website and about how I’d changed round the radio programmes or something like that so that there was a whole new series of numbers starting on 1st January 2020 on the first January of the year with all kinds of different – there were two different strands of numbering now one of which was the radio concerts and one of which was something else but I can’t remember any more about it now unfortunately
Later on, there was a huge dispute between us over something or other and it led to someone coming storming round to our house going to throw a cup of cold tea over everyone. I had a cup of cold tea ready and he came storming in. I told him to sit down but he said “I’m going to throw this cold tea over you. What are you going to do?” I replied “I’m at my house. I’ll throw a cup of tea over you and you’re the one who is going to have to suffer”. He looked at me for a minute and then said “I can see that you aren’t going to flinch. You are brave enough”. I asked “so how are we going to sort this out?” He said “we need foue elastic bands like this size” and he showed us one of them. Of course I didn’t have any that size so I had to go across the road and ask one of the neighbours. We were in Vine Tree Avenue at the time during all of this.

Back in the Land Of The Living, I finished getting ready. The rubbish went out of course and then I followed it up to town.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that bad parking plays a prominent role on these pages.

Hardly a day goes by without me seeing some new depths to which the general public has sunk and here’s another prime example. We’re at the roundabout at the end of the rue Lecampion and this motorist has decided to park his car right across the entry to the new block of flats.

The motorist in the big SUV can’t get his car out of his own car park because of it, and I would have loved to have had the time to hang around and see how this story would unfold.

Instead I headed off to the station and there I was treated to the delight of the train being already at the platform.

No coffee though. Once again the coffee machine is out of order and this is really annoying. How am I expected to go on a journey like this without being armed?

The ticket-stamping machine was having issues too and it took several goes before it would accept my ticket and stamp it.

Bang on time we set off and I fell asleep. A right deep sleep too and it took the ticket collector a good minute or so to awaken me from the dead to check my ticket.

We were 15 minutes late arriving in Paris but it didn’t quite matter so much because, as predicted, out train now arrives in the main station rather than in the vaugirard annex and that saves me a considerable amount of time.

The metro was running too and was quite rapid, so I had a good half-hour to spare before my train to Lille.

That half-hour was spent in a queue at the SNCF office. I’d had an e-mail yesterday telling me that my seat had been changed and I would have to make further enquiries.

Eventually I managed to make someone deal with me quickly and, armed with a new seat number, I could take my seat on the train.

It’s one of the older “Reseau” TGV trainsets, number 226 which puts it in the first wave that were delivered between 1995 and 199.

Nice and comfortable they are, and I could sit and eat my butties and fruit in comfort, which is always nice. And have another little doze too. I’m not in any great rush to do anything.

Due to “affluence on the line” our train was 20 minutes late arriving in Lille- Flanders.

With only 15 minutes (and having to cross town to Lille-Europe) between trains, you might think that I would be panicking by now.

But not a bit of it because if there was “affluence on the line” for us, there would be “affluence on the line” for the Marseille – Brussels train that would be folllowing behind us too and that was the one that I was catching.

Sure enough, that one was half an hour late so I had plenty of time to ring up the hospital and check my appointment time. 13:30 it is tomorrow.

The trainset that came for us is a model that we have seen before on a regular basis because it’s this type that does the Paris-Brussels service, The Thalys PBA trainsets, albeit in a different livery.

My place here was quite comfortable too and I even managed to doze off for half an hour or so yet again.

In Brussels I only just missed the 15:58 – I had my hand on the door when it pulled away.

But there was another one right behind – the 16:13 to Genk. It’s one of the push me – pull you train sets and coming into the station in reverse so I didn’t get to see the identity of the locomotive pushing it.

So by 16:50 I was in Leuven after a relatively painless, straightforward voyage for once and wasn’t I a happy bunny?.

Having organised my room I went shopping at Delhaize. Tons of stuff for the next few days to keep me out of mischief and I shall have to add “herbs and spices” to the list of things that I bring with me from home. I’ll make up a sachet of oregano, basil, tarragon, garlic, chili powder etc and put it with the coffee.

So tea tonight was a vegan burger with mixed vegetables, spinach and pasta, all tossed in a tomato sauce and it was delicious. Pudding was peach halves with mango sorbet.

The party next door seems to have finished so I can go to bed. Nothing much to do tomorrow morning so I’ll have a lazy day before I head off to the hospital round about 12:30, something like that.

I wonder what they will tell me.

Sunday 15th December 2019 – AND FINALLY …

… I made it back home.

And the journey was exciting, but nothing like as exciting as the outward trip.

Once again last night I was in bed early with every intention of watching a film. But before I went to do so, I carried on listening to the radio programme to which I had been listening before I slipped beneath the sheets.

And that’s how I found myself a couple of hours later. Out like a light of course. So I switched off the laptop and went back to sleep.

During the night there had been a few voyages. And strange ones they were too.

There was a fancy dress party taking place and I had decided to go as a woman, don’t ask me why because I don’t have a clue either. I had the dress and tights everything like that and I went out all dressed up and people were looking at me rather strangely as you could imagine. But I ran out of time and didn’t have the make-up so I had to do without the make-up which spoiled the whole effect as you can imagine. But I went outside and there were all these people outside, cheering me on, men were pretending to chat me up, so on. There was Malcolm Madeley (!) and he clearly didn’t recognise me, something like that and he made some kind of offensive remark. I said “you want to get a grip, Malcolm” to which he suddenly stopped and disappeared. He realised that it was me. I had to walk round to Aunt Mary’s. I knocked on her door and the guy who was with her who was a guy a lot younger than she was but was something to do with our family from somewhere or other and these two little kids about 3 or 4 came out. We were talking about some kind of court case involving these kids. Aunt Mary was saying “well now they are here it’s only 5 weeks to go before this case”. But as these kids walked out of the step there was this pram coming the other way. It hit them and they flew through the air and actually landed on top of the pram. I thought “these kids are going to get hurt. They are always doing these kinds of thing, always getting hurt, all kinds of stupid accidents, breaking their arms, breaking their legs, something. But this time they were all right which was quite a surprise. Then we had to hobble off – me hobbling on my high-heeled shoes back towards picking up my car to go to this do again but it was this thing with the kids that was so surprising. And I’ve no idea what that was all about at all.
Later that night I was with someone last night and it might have been Nerina but it might not and we were in Northern Wyoming, somewhere like that. On our way to visit some battleground, somewhere like that of the Native Americans. The road was a really difficult road. It started off being a decent road but was all gravelly, a dirt road as you might expect. We were behind this lorry and there was a car coming the other way, a big jeep-type thing swerving in and out of the traffic and he nearly hit us going past this lorry. We were wide-eyed about that. The GPS was talking to us about this road, giving us a talk. We suddenly breated the brow of this hill and came to where all these dressed stones were, in a pile like some kind of wall. It was telling us that this was where the fort was this was the barbecue was, all this kind of thing .We dropped down the hill into the village by the river and there were ancient railway locomotives on display there. We went inside the museum and there were all beds there with people sleeping in them like they might have done 100 years ago, 2 or 3 to a bed, babies in the bed, all this kind of thing and newspaper reports about “how my parents are going back to the UK after visiting us”. It turned out that we were now in Newfoundland and Labrador for some unknown reason and we were giving a tour of this museum with all of these toys and artefacts going back 100 years or something and life must have been really primitive for people living there in those days. So we had a tour of this museum with these old toys and old dirty beds and dirty people sleeping in them and I remember saying to whoever I was with that we ought to be going as we have a lot to do and in any case I wanted to see these old steam locomotives but she was busy engaged there talking to people and she didn’t really want to come away.

But despite all of this, I was soon up and about when the alarm went off at 06:00. Beat the second alarm by a country mile.

First task was to make my butties because I had a feeling that this was going to be a long day. Tidying up everything and packing my bags and collecting up my shopping, I headed out for the station.

I arrived at the railway station about 06:50 and didn’t have long to wait for a train.

There was a direct train at about 07:20 direct to Brussels but there was an earlier one from Genk at 07:08 that goes via the airport and on the basis that a bird in the hand is worth any number in the bush I leapt aboard that one.

It’s one of the AM96 multiple units built by Bombardier and delivery to the SNCB started in 1996. They have a peculiar characteristic in that the driver’s cab pivots round 90° so that when two or more of these multiple units are coupled together, the passengers can go through from one unit to the next.

My train to Paris was at 08:43 so I had about an hour to kill. I drew some cash out of the bank and then bought my raisin buns for breakfast from Carrefour.

I didn’t have to wait long because the train came in quite early and we were ushered up to the platform.

It’s one of the Belgian SNCB PBKA (Paris Brussels Cologne Amsterdam) train sets, number 4302 upon which we have travelled on previous occasions. These PBKA train sets are becoming somewhat long in the tooth these days, being first delivered in 1995, but they still rattle along at an impressive 300 kilometres per hour when there’s nothing in the way to slow them down.

While we were waiting to move off, I had a quick look on the internet. The 13:54 to Granville was still down as running so I hoped that it would still be listed by the time I reached Montparnasse.

Bang on time we were, pulling into the Gare du Nord. I wandered over to the SNCF offices where they checked the trains. The 13:54 is still listed as running for the moment, but there’s nothing else going anywhere near Granville now for the rest of the day so it’s that one or nothing.

The girl stamped my ticket to Caen to effectively prove that I’d been to the SNCF offices (one thing that I’ve learnt since living in Europe is that European officials love paperwork and rubber stamps so you should never ever miss out on an opportunity to have a rubber stamp put on a document whenever there’s a crisis looming).

Well over three hours to go before my train, and the day wasn’t too bad out there so I decided to walk.

Unleashing the big Nikon D500 I took a test shot of the big hotel, the Hotel Terminus Nord, just across the road from the station.

There is also this rather bizarre statue here too, just outside the station and I’ve absolutely no idea what it’s supposed to represent. I imagine that it’s some kind of winged beast, but that’s about it.

According to the route map that I consulted prior to setting off it was something like 5.5 kilometres as the crow flies between the Gare du Nord and the Gare Montparnasse.

But the way that I was planning to go, it worked out (I checked later on the fitbit) at 7.5 kilometres because I wasn’t going to miss out on a few of the sights while I was in the vicinity. Paris isn’t my favourite city – far from it in fact – but there are still places to see that ought not to be missed.

Like Notre Dame for example.

It’s been years since I’ve seen it and it doesn’t half look different now. On 15th April 2019 it caught fire and was very badly damaged. The roof has gone and it took the spire with it. It’s really in a sad condition like now and so here’s hoping that like a phoenix it will rise again from the ashes.

The estimates are that it will cost billions of Euros to restore it, although a considerable part of that money will be to restore parts of the cathedral that were in poor condition prior to the fire.

Across the Pont Neuf or “Bridge number 9” we’re in the Latin Quarter, so puer amat mensam to you, hey?

My intention was to go for a wander around for half an hour but I completely forgot, being sidetracked by this beautiful outfit here. A horizontal twin motorbike, which might have been an elderly BMW or a more modern Urals or Cossack, with a very period sidecar attached.

It’s not the kind of thing that you see on the streets every day and it took me completely by surprise.

Something else that took me by surprise was on the corner of the Boulevard St Germain.

It goes without saying that on my travels I’ve seen plenty of polar bears, but never one on a street corner in Paris. We’ve seen actresses standing over the air grids of the Paris Metro and seen their skirts disappear in the updraught, but an inflatable polar bear family is something else.

It made me quite nostalgic for the High Arctic and I wonder how I’m going to get there next year, having had a little disagreement with some people

By now I was starting to flag a little, so it was with an enormous sigh of relief that I caught sight of the Tour de Montparnasse at the end of the street as I rounded the corner into the rue de Rennes.

It seems to have slipped my mind to mention that I was not actually travelling light today. I had my rucksack which was quite heavy anyway with this and that, and a carrier bag with with a pile of heavy shopping in it.

And even though I can see the Tour de Montparnasse, my walk is far from over. The railway station is a good few hundred yards behind the tower and then I have this enormously long hike all the way down the station to reach the Vaugirard annexe.

Walking down the rue de Rennes I came across this wonderful sight.

Definitely a sign of the times, this is. With the European Union promising to phase out the manufacture of the internal combustion engine by 2040, there needs to be more electric vehicles on the streets. But there won’t be unless the authorities provide places where the owners can recharge them.

And so this charging station here shows how far along that road the French authorities are in this respect – in great contrast to how they are in several other countries, including the UK.

On that shocking note I went past the Tour de Montparnasse and there in the distance behind it is the Gare Montparnasse.

The original station, the one where the Granville train failed to stop all those years ago and went hurling across the concourse and out of the end wall into the street, was actually on the site of the tower. And that explains why when the metro from the Gare du Nord throws me out at the “Montparnasse” metro station, I still have this very long underground walk to the Montparnasse railway station.

Yes, they moved the railway station but they didn’t move the metro station with it

Looking at my watch, it was 12:00 or thereabouts when I reached the Gare Montparnasse. 90 minutes or so it had taken me, and that was really impressive considering that I’m not at all well and I had my heavy load to lug around with me.

Mind you, it’s not something that I want to do too often because I was pretty nigh exhausted after that. I was pretty much at it non-stop, without a rest. Next time I do it, if there is a next time there will have to be a pause-café somewhere along the route.

There was a long wait for the train but we were allowed on board earlier then usual. And so we had a longer wait for the train to leave, seeing as its start was delayed by 15 minutes.

Without a ticket I had to sit anywhere in a vacant seat. And so of course it goes without saying that it was reserved to someone else so I had to move.

The ticket collector came by so we had a chat about my ticket, in a delightful conversation where I spoke in French and he replied in English.

And that was one thing.

It hasn’t escaped my notice that having gone for time after time after time in the past without having my ticket checked, it was checked on every train today. Probably a grève de zèle or “work to rule” going on too. So it was just as well that I’d been to the SNCF office to declare myself a “stranded traveller” and have my ticket rubber-stamped by an official.

After all of that I fell asleep and didn’t wake up until we reached Vire. And we pulled into Granville bang-on time despite the extra stops that we had and the 15-minute delay.

Having left the station and feeling surprisingly fit considering my long walk today, I walked back through the town to the apartment.

While I was going up the rue des Juifs I looked over the wall and there tied up at the unloading quay is our old friend Thora. She’s come in on another trip from the Channel Islands.

This evening I’ve not done much. Finished off the falafel with some veg and cheese sause, and I declined the opportunity to go for a walk. I reckon that with 162% of my daily activity carried out, I’ve done enough. No wonder I was exhausted.

But now I can’t sleep. So I’ll probably be awake for ages but we’ll see how it hangs out. I have a busy day tomorrow.

And as an aside, there were plenty more photos from where these came from that haven’t made it onto this page. If you want to see them, which I hope you do, you need to go to THIS PAGE.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

In fact I went on quite an exploration this morning.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

december creche grote markt leuven louvain belgium

december rijksarchief vaartstraat leuven louvain belgium

Friday 13th December 2019 – THE GOOD NEWS …

… is that my blood count has gone up yet again. It’s now at 9.2 which is pretty astonishing as far as I am concerned. And I made a point to ask exactly what treatment they are giving me for my illness and the answer is “nothing”. The tablets that I take are to counter various side effects and the medication is to boost up my immune system.

But as for the illness, absolutely nothing.

Mind you, it’s pretty disconcerting to see that your doctor needs medical treatment herself. She had problems with her foot. But nevertheless, she can come and soothe my fevered brow any time she likes. This is a University hospital and all of the staff at this level are young University students. There has to be some benefit of my illness and I intend to make the most of it.

But as for bad news, then there’s plenty of that.

Firstly, my train out of Paris has been cancelled on Sunday due to the strike. It’s not the end of the world though because there are other solutions, amongst which “hiring a car” should never be ruled out. But there are options other than that to consider first.

Even so, hiring a car might sound expensive to some, but when you think about the price of a hotel in Paris, it’s not an outrageous proposition at all.

And that’s not all. You’ve all heard about the results of the Uk General Election where 14 million people voted for the Fascists and only 6.5 million voted to revoke the exit from the EU.

That in itself isn’t so important. But what IS important is that I now lose

Some of my UK pension rights
my health insurance rights
my employment rights
my rights of free movement and residence in the EU

And when one of my (ex) friends in the UK posted something bewailing her lot and I replied telling her to make the most of what she’ll be getting because I’ll be getting much worse than that, she called me all kinds of names (honestly!) and accused me of all kinds of things for not sympathising with her, even though she didn’t spend a single moment thinking about my lot.

But that’s the true spirit of the British people. Mean, narrow-minded, selfish, self-centred. I’m better off without these people dragging me down. And isn’t that just why I abandoned everyone in the UK in the first place? It can’t be a coincidence that they all end up like that. They all show their true colours eventually.

It’s definitely Friday 13th today!

Last night I wanted an early night so I tried the usual standby – switch on the laptop to watch a film. And sure enough, it works every time. Within 10 minutes I was away.

And right away too. There are a few files on the dictaphone that weren’t there when I went to bed, so it should be interesting to see those when I make it back home.

The alarms went off as usual at 06:00 etc but seeing as my appointment at Castle Anthrax wasn’t until this afternoon I was in no rush to rouse myself. A little lie-in did me good and it was 07:30 when I finally showed a leg.

This morning was spent firstly dealing with last night’s little perambulations.

I vaguely remember something about ships and fuel tankers having to reposition themselves and so on. Some captain had to reposition his ship but he hadn’t brought his money with him so it was rather pointless. i’d ended up at my electronic studio and I was trying to work on something. I managed to produce a really really good electronic music track and while I was at it I produced some vocals and overdubbed them over a piece of music that someone else had written and they were really really good. A few people came round to my house to do something with the computer so I had these tracks playing in the background and they looked really impressed. Although after a few minutes they asked “are we going to get on with some work or are we going to listen to this all day?” and I thought that maybe I had played a little too much and that was a shame because I was so impressed with what I’d done.
Sometime later we were back with the songs again and someone was going to bring some music over and we were going to do all of the singing. It meant getting out of this crowded tram. Someone was fighting their way to the door but the doors closed and there was a cry of “jam the door”. Someone stuck their foot in it so that it wouldn’t close, and it rebounded open. This person had to fight their way out through the crowds and out of the door. We ended up talking about fishing again and the situation of the British having sold all their permits and are now getting upset because the permits that they sold are now making money and the ones that they still have aren’t, and as usual.

Then we had the issue of dealing with the egocentric and selfish Brits in the UK but I did tear myself away to go to the Delhaize for shopping. Pasta, burgers and frozen veg will be on the menu or the next few days.

Back here, I had a shower and a clothes wash, made my butties and then headed for the hospital, calling at the Delhaize in town on the way because I had forgotten the vegan cheese and vegan mayonnaise.

Pouring down with rain now but I pushed on regardless.

My route today took me, as usual, down the Brusselsestraat and past St Pieter’s Hospital. An early and significant casualty of the linguistic war, this huge modern hospital was constructed to serve the French community, apparently (so I was told) who, once it was built, created a new town called Louvain-le-Neuve and moved all of their infrastructure out there instead.

The memory that I will always retain of this place as they make a serious start on demolishing it is that there were still the makers’ labels on the double-glazed windows on some of the floors because the rooms on those floors had never even been occupied.

By the time that I reached the hospital I was looking something like a drowned rat. 13:30 was my appointment but I was treated at 13:45 and then I was sat in a chair for a while as the medication was pumped into me.

Rosemary rang and we had a good chat while it was all going on, and eventually I was thrown out. A call at the pharmacy for medication and then down into town.

Last time that we were here they were excavating a giant hole in the middle of the car park on the Jacobsplein, and I was interested to see how they were getting on and, more importantly, what they were going to be doign with it.

So here I am, and all that I can say is that in the last 4 weeks or so there hasn’t been very much change in the situation. The hole is still there and there doesn’t seem to be anythign to indicate why they have actually gone and dug it out.

It’s probably one of those things where time wil ltell and I should come back in four weeks time where I shall be equally confounded.

A visit to the Origin’O Health Food shop was also on the cards The Delhaize doesn’t sell all the vegan product that I need.

Before I went in though, I took the opportunity to take a photo of the Christmas lights in the Vismarkt. You can do quite a lot with modern LED lighting and this looked particularly good to me.

That was the cue to go into the shop and see what was on offer. They had some of that nice smoked vegan cheese that I had before so I bought some more of that, as well as some more grated cheese for the pizzas and the cheese sauces.

Though the rainstorm had died down by now, it was still wet and miserable going back to my little room.

For that reason, and also for the fact that I had the little Nikon 1 with me and not the big D500 with me, I didn’t hang around too long looking at Leuven’s Christmas lights, beautiful as they might be like these ones in the Bondgenotenlaan.

What I’ll have to do is that if it’s not raining tomorrow evening, I’ll bring the big Nikon out for a walk and go on a prowl around the city to see what I can see.

By the time that I arrived back at my room it wasn’t far off tea time so I made myself some food. And it wasn’t too bad either. It’ll keep the wolf from the door for a while.

There was football on the internet later. While Connah’s Quay Nomads were being turned over by Cefn Druids, we were being treated to Barry Town v TNS.

And it was easy to see why TNS have been Champions of the Welsh Premier League for the last couple of hundred years. Barry Town had been leading the league at one point this season but TNS dealt with them in summary fashion, winning 4-1 away from home without even breaking sweat.

First to the ball on almost every occasion they never looked in trouble at all and had Ratcliffe in the Barry goal not played a blinder, TNS could easily have doubled their tally.

As far as I’m concerned, they may as well give the title to TNS right now because no-one is ever going to stop them. They could even afford the luxury of leaving Greg Draper their leading scorer on the bench until about the 80th minute.

On that note, I’m off to bed. I’ve had enough for now. Nothing planned for tomorrow except to recover from today so if the weather has improved I’ll just go for a long walk.

See you tomorrow.

Incidentally, I did take some photos of the Christmas lights of the city. Too many to put on this page so if you want to see them you need to go to this page

Thursday 12th December 2019 – WELL I NEVER …

… ever thought that I would make it to Leuven today. But here I am none-the-less, sitting in my little room in the Dekenstraat waiting for tomorrow and my rendezvous with doom at Castle Anthrax.

It all started so well too this morning, even though I was the first to realise that on a day of “National Action”, the situation can change in the blink of an eye.

Last night I wasn’t in bed as early as I would have liked, what with having a few things to do, but nevertheless I comfortably beat the second alarm call this morning, never mind the third.

During the night I’d been on my travels too. There was something going on about something to do with the radio last night. We were in Granville and it was to do with the copyright. Someone said that I had gone on for an hour doing something yet according to my calculations it was less than 10 minutes. But they insisted that it was an hour. Ann Myatt was there and she was getting involved in this argument about copyright and I wasn’t quite sure what was going on.

No time for breakfast or anything this morning. I made my butties (I’d bought an extra dejeunette yesterday) and generally packed my things for the trip. As well as that, I took all of the recycling down to the bins.

Eventually it was time to hit the streets so valiantly braving the rainstorm I set off.

The first thing that I noticed down in the harbour is that there had been a shuffle-round of the ships. Thora had moved place and that Normandy Trader was now in the unloading bay underneath the crane next to Marite. She must have slipped into port under cover of darness too.

And all that I can say is that Normandy Trader must have had a really rapid turn-round.

At the station, much to my surprise, my train was in and waiting. Yes, start with some good luck because I didn’t expect it to hold out.

And I was right too.

Firstly, the station coffee machine was out of order. That always puts a dampener on any of my travels, that does.

Secondly, I don’t have much time to traverse Paris, and no Bourvil to carry my suitcase either so when they announced that “the train will be making a few additional stops” my heart sank into my boots.

The weather was quite miserable though. There’s a good place to take a photo of the Eiffel Tower from the train and I was in a good place on the train to seeit and photograph it.

But not today though. There was a pile of damp mist and low cloud obscuring it and the photo was a waste of time.

12:05 is the arrival time of my train in the Gare Montparnasse-Vaugirard in Paris. We finally pulled into the station at 12:20. And with my train out from the Gare du Nord at 13:15 I needed to get a wiggle on.

No chance of the metro though. All closed off and boarded up with the strike.

Still, there’s always the Bus 39 so I hurtled off outside to the bus stop to find that everyone in the whole wide world had had the same idea. When the bus eventually came, we all piled in and were crammed in like sardines. I’ve never ever in my life been in such a crowded bus.

It wasn’t to last though. After about 5 or 10 minutes or so the driver announced that he wasn’t going to go to the Gare du Nord but his “colleague behind” will be doing the trip. We all had to alight knowing full well that we had been sold a pup, but there was nothing that we could do about it.

No “colleague behind” either. We were standing there like piffy on a rock for about 15 minutes until a 39 came by. It was already heaving but nevertheless there was a mad scramble and once the lucky first 10 had wedged themselves aboard, he closed the doors and off he shot, leaving the rest of us behind.

After about 10 minutes I realised that any further wait was pointless. I’d been keeping my eye open for a few minutes and then, sure enough, a taxi with his flag up came by. I let out a yell and he pulled up. Grabbing hold of the door to claim it, I shouted to the people at the bus stop “taxi share to the Gare du Nord?” but they all looked at me as if I have two heads – which I probably have. No-one came to join me so I set off alone with the driver and badger that lot!

Finding a taxi was one thing – getting to the station was another. Everything was conspiring to be in our way today and we eventually reached the Gare du Nord at 13:35. It cost me @24:00, which was not, I suppose, too unreasonable for Paris on a day of General Strike.

Next stop was at the Thalys office to negotiate a new train, but it turns out that it’s not them but the SNCF that I need to see (exactly the opposite of the situation last time) so I wandered off to their office.

Another lengthy wait but it was worth it because there was just one more train out to Lille – at 14:45 – and I managed to blag my way onto it, free, gratis and for nothing.

While I was waiting, I’d done some research. My new train is due to arrive in Lille at 15:48. There was a local train from Lille going across the border to Tournai in Belgium at 16:02 (arriving at 16:34) and an SNCB train from Tournai to Brussels at 16:44 (arriving at 17:48)

Having found my seat, I settled down and dozed off (and who can blame me after my exertions?).

I awoke some time later to find that our train was stationary in the countryside. “Obstruction on the line” was the reason. By the time that it was removed and we had set off again, I could see all of my hopes melting away into the distance. And when we finally arrived at Lille, it was 16:20 and my train had long-gone.

But I’m nothing if not determined. Browbeating an attendant, she sent me off to the SNCF offices to see what they could do. They could find me a Local train to Tournai at 18:08 but from there I would be on my own.

It sounded like a reasonable option to me though – at least I’d be on the right side of the border. But I was convinced that I could do better.

Off down the road to Lille Europe – the big new TGV railway station. It took ages to find my way in, due to all of the reconstruction, but eventually I made it to the SNCF office. After yet another long wait, I was told that they could get me on a TGV direct to Brussels – the next one being at 20:08. And the receptionist wasn’t very pleasant either about that.

Another option is the Eurostar office. I’d seen that there was a Eurostar from London to Brussels, calling at Lille-Europe at 17:30. I tracked down the Eurostar office and went in there with my sob story. The girl there listened, looked at me for a moment, had a little think, and then simply stamped my ticket “bon for voyage 17:30” – free, gratis and for nothing as well! She told me that I would have to make my own seating arrangements.

And she was right too. The train was heaving and it took me ages to find a free seat. Probably the last one on the train.

But what was interesting was the ticket control on the station. It wasn’t the railway company as such that did the ticket checking but a couple of security guards. They were wandering up and down the platform checking people’s tickets on a rather ad-hoc basis rather than at a barrier at the head of the stairs, which would have been the most logical place to control the passengers.

They had a brief glance at my ticket, saw the rubber stamp from the girl in the office and that was that.

We pulled in to Brussels-Midi at 18:11 and I had to wait until 18:28 for my train to leuven.

But no matter what, I wasn’t going to wait on the platform. There was one of those bitter, biting winds that finds its way through your clothing, your skin, your flesh and your bones. I came down onto the little walkway underneath the platforms where I could admire the station and the crowds of people.

Brussels-Midi is a very old station in the sense that it hasn’t been modernised any time recently, so it has a quaint kind of character all of its own that many main-line stations have lost.

Bang on time at 18:28 our train pulled in and I was well on the way towards Welkenraedt.

Today we had one of the Class 18 electric locomotives, one of the workhorse classes of the Belgian SNCB that pull a great many of the long-distance trains around the country, even if their introduction to the railway network was not without its issues. But now you see them all over the place.

We finally pulled in to Leuven at about 19:00. And when you think about this, then despite all of the issues that I’d had, I was only two and a half hours later than normal. And Had I gone via Tournai on the train that I had planned, I would have been just 15 minutes ahead.

Now I’m settled in. Too late for the shops, I’ve had beans and chips for tea and now I’m off to bed. After all of that effort I think that I deserve it too.

How close was I to having my chips today?

fishing boats unloading port de granville harbour manche normandy france

christmas lights rue lecampion granville manche normandy france

Monday 18th November 2019 – SO HERE I AM …

… back chez moi after a pretty uneventful journey home.

And I do have to say that I’m not sorry to be back because I like my little apartment here on my little rock. It’s not much, but it’s hoe all the same.

But as usual, I couldn’t sleep last night. 01:00 I was still up and about. And I saw 02:00 come round too. But I don’t suppose that it mattered too much because there’s not too much else to do on the train except sleep.

At one point I did manage to drop off to sleep and I was joined during the night by Castor and Pollux. I’ve no idea why or what was going on but I do remember them leaping off the ship into the icy wastes. And I can’t even say if the ship was The Good Ship Ve … errr … Ocean Endeavour either.

The alarm went off at 06:00 as usual and by the time the third alarm went off at 06:20 I was dressed packed, had returned the key and was halfway down the street towards the station.

And there wasn’t much time to loiter about for the train either.

Well in advance of the 06:42, I was in time for the 06:29. But I wasn’t sure whether that might have been a good idea when I saw what was pulling my train.

It’s one of the old Class 21 locomotives, the oldest of which is now 35 years old. And as more and more of them break down, and as many spare parts are no longer made, the worst ones are starting to be cannibalised to keep the others running for as long as possible.

But never mind the locomotive. Where there’s an elderly locomotive it’s likely that there will be elderly carriages too and that was the bit that I wasn’t going to enjoy.

And I was right too. We had a rake of rather elderly carriages of the type with the plastic leatherette benches rather than the comfortable cloth seats that are found on more modern rolling stock.

So I settled down thinking to myself how lucky I was only going to Brussels and not to anywhere else any further away.

Things have progressed dramatically on the SNCB over the last few years, haven’t they?

Plenty of time at Brussels-Midi so I bought some raisin buns and sat on a seat to eat breakfast. As usual these days, I was harassed by the odd beggar or two and I told them to p155 off.

But a short while later there was “a commotion” elsewhere in the waiting room involving these people, the Police and Railway security staff were there, bags were being searched and people were being led away.

How bizarre.

The train was already in the station so we could board it quite quickly.

It’s one of the “PBKA” – Paris-Brussels-Cologne-Amsterdam – trainsets. Quite comfortable of course, and I was asleep before we had even left the station.

The motion of the train departing awoke me and I noticed that we were 15 minutes late leaving. So when the controller came past I asked her if she could note my ticket in case I missed my connection.

However she reckoned that we would make up some of the time and that anyway I’d have plenty of time to make it to Montparnasse – Vaugirard.

So I went back to sleep.

She was right though.

We’d made up about 5 minutes of the lost time and I sailed through the station to the underground and down onto the platform where there was a train already waiting.

As soon as I put my sooty foot upon it, it cleared off out of the station.

No issues on the line as far as the Montparnasse metro station, and then for someunknown reason the walk all the way through the labyrinth undergound and then through the station to the Vaugirard platforms didn’t seem as long as it usually is.

Mind you, there was a diversion for pedestrians due to development, and the new route took me along a platform where TGV had just pulled in, so I was swamped with people.

Here’s my train (on the left) at Granville railway station next to its brother who is working the Caen – Rennes line.

My train was already in at Montparnasse – Vaugirard although we had to wait a few minutes to board it. It was a shortened train too, just 6 carriages instead of 12 so there were no seat reservations and it was a free-for-all.

Luckily I managed to have a seat to myself, and I slept most of the way back to Granville.

That’ll teach me to have a late night.

Another very good and brisk walk all the way back home again.

The odd stop here and there to see what was going on in the town. And it must be getting near to Christmas because they are now erecting the Christmas lights in the town.

This blasted year has gone round round far too quickly for me.

Freezing cold in the apartment (9°C) so I wound the heater up full blast. did a little casual unpacking and then had a relax for a while doing some stuff on the computer.

And carrying on with my project about downloading digital tracks of some of the albums that I own on vinyl. I’m determined to digitalise everything.

Tea was a bag of aubergine and kidney-bean whatsit followed by fruit salad and coconut cream.

And then I hit the streets – and immediately came back for the tripod because t was a really beautiful night.

The sky was so clear that you could actually see the individual lights on Jersey – all of 58 kms away, so I was determined to capture them.

But then I hit a snag – I couldn’t work out how to make the delayed shutter action work, so this one hasn’t come out as well as it might have done.

But by the time that I had made it round to the headland, I’d worked it out. And so this one is much better.

Away in the distance across the bay and behind a headland or two is the city of St Malo. And tonight not only could you see the glow of the lights in the sky, you could actually see one or two lights over there.

It was a good idea to go back for the tripod.

There was a load of traffic out there at sea tonight too.

While I was busy setting up my equipment and taking the photos, I’d seen a light slowly coming closer and closer towards me.

No prizes for guessing what it might be either. It can’t be anything else but a trawler of course, so I took a few photos of it at different speeds and exposures to see if one good one comes out of it.

It was a hive of activity in the port tonight.

The tide was quite a way in so there were plenty of fishing boats in the harbour unloading at the fish-processing plant.

I had a good look at them for a while and then came back. Running for part of the way – just a hundred yards or so.

Mind you, I had run up the stairs here to get to my room for the tripod so I’m not complaining.

Tomorrow I’m having a little lie in and then I’m back to work. There is plenty to do and not enought time to do it – the story of my life I suppose.

But at least I’m back home and that is good.

erecting christmas lights rue couraye granville manche normandy france

night baie de mont st michel st malo brittany granville manche normandy france

trawler fishing boats fish processing plant port de granville harbour manche normandy france

Sunday 17th November 2019 – REMEMBER LAST NIGHT …

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Well, I am on holiday” she explained.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

All very convivial.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

house parc de tervuerense park tervueren belgium

view from house vossemvijfer parc de tervuerense park tervueren belgium

vossemvijfer parc de tervuerense park tervueren belgium

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I hope we have such a good time tomorrow.

Friday 15th November 2019 – I DON’T CARE …

… whether they are vegan or not, you won’t catch me ever eating any Hobbit Knackers.

Yes, I’ve been to the Health Food shop today. I’ve abandoned the Loving Hut for the Origin’O because not only does the latter have a better choice of vegan products, it’s cheaper too.

And so I’ve stocked up with vegan cheese today – the sliced kind as well as the grated variety – seeing that I’ve run out back at home.

The Origin’O is situated in a small street – the craenendonck – which leads off a little square called the Vismarkt – the Fish market.

That probably at one time was a beautiful little square before the developers laid their hands upon it because part of it has been modernised out of all recognition.

Some of it however does retain some of its original character even if it might be looking a little tired these days. It does however still have quite a bit of charm about it.

The streets that lead to the Vismarkt from the centre of the city make up part of the most beautiful area of the place. Narrow little pedestrianised streets lined by quaint old buildings which somehow seem to have survived the Rape of Leuven in August 1914.

Every now and again I’ve been posting photographs of the area as more and more things down there catch my eye, and so I can’t understand why it is that this building here in the Mechelsestraat has escaped my gaze until now.

It even has the date – 1691 – set into the walls of the building which makes it all even more impressive.

It’s built in the typical elaborate Flemish “Golden Age” style from the period when the Spanish Empire (which ruled the United Netherlands at that time) was in its apogee. And I would like to come back to this planet in 300 years time to see what buildings of our current epoch are still standing and still looking as beautiful as this one.

Another place that I visited today was “Exotic World” – the shop on the corner of the Brusselsestraat near to where I stayed when I lived here. That place is full of exotic herbs and spices so I bought some peppercorns, some fenugreek and some fennel seeds. I’m determined to spics up my cooking when I return home and this will do the stuff.

Last night after all of my exertions I was in bed quite early. Plenty of time to go on a few travels

And I can’t have been in bed more than 2 minutes before I was off to sleep and immediately (and the timestamp bears this out) off on a ramble where I was doing something like someone had died and there were four men who had inherited the money or who were inheriting. There were four individual sums, already calculated and divided so that they would have one each, and then a lump sum that needed to be calculated and divided between them. I had to pass a paper round to get them to sign it which they did. And then we started to talk about a few things like the division of the money. And at that point I suddenly woke up.
However at some time prior to that I was making a meal. It was deep fried wedge potatoes and onions in soya cream with all different kinds of things and plenty of carrots, whatever. I had to do it in two batches because there were two different groups of people. The first batch came out which was either for three or four people but it didn’t look enough so I was taking vegetables out of the second batch to put in it. I remember saying that while this doesn’t seem to be enough for them all they can always go back into the kitchen and get some more out of the other batch for the other people and hope that there will be enough to go round for them.
And it sounded so delicious with some black pepper that I’ll be making some when I return
And later there was something about going to a pub, a group of us. This pub used to organise a tournament against its groups of visitors and had actually made it through to the semi-finals of the competition. There was something about a shipment of liquor that was being sent somewhere. While I was in the airport I heard a call over the tannoy “Mr so-and-so, this is just to let you know that your shipment number so-and-so has been taken away by Customs to examine it and see what it was to make sure that it conformed to the waybill”
And later on still I was doing something with someone from the internet. I’m not sure why but I ended up with him at his house showing him my Audacity program and all of this, how everything worked and how you could record and crop tracks to make sound bytes all this kind of thing. He was quite impressed. When he went, my mother said ‘he’s a nice boy”. “Yes” I said, and I said that he lived on Alton Street but of course where I meant to say was on the Sunnybank Estate although it isn’t the Sunnybank Estate at all but on the one round the back of the park – Wistaston Green Estate.

When the alarms went off I was quickly out of bed and I’d soon medicated and breakfasted. Next stop was a shower and a clothes wash, and to my dismay I noticed that the drainage was blocked and the water wouldn’t evacuate. I made a note for the administration.

By now it was time to leave the place for the hospital at Castle Anthrax.

Off into the cold and dark morning, down the street into town and past the early morning market on the Herbert Hooverplein.

Not much going on there right now because it’s too early, but there will be much more activity there a little later when everyone else starts to emerge from their houses.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that I stayed for a while at the St Pieter Annexe of the hospital. But no-one will be staying there now.

Because of a change of policy involving the Francophone community, the hospital was never ever used to anything like full capacity. And with the decision to regroup all of the services at the Gasthuisberg, it’s been practically empty for the past few years.

But there’s been a proposal to redevelop the site and build something more useful, and now the demolition crew has moved in.

My route across town took me past the St Jacobsplein car park at the back of the church just there.

And that seems to be the subject of a great deal of work right now. I’ve no idea what it is that they are intending to do there but they have dug a great big hole in the place.

It’s probably one of those things that I’m going to have to investigate in due course as the months and the work unfold.

Another piece of work that we have been following is the apartment on the corner of the Monseigneur van Waeyenberghlaan and the Tervuursestraat.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that earlier in the year we noticed that the building had been emptied, and then we watched it being gutted over a couple of months.

Now, they seem to have made good progress in rebuilding it and I don’t imagine that it will be too long before it’s ready for reoccupation.

My appointment at the hospital was for 09:30 and I was there well in advance.

With no identity card I made myself known to the reception staff and was quickly signed in by a receptionist with whom I had a delightful trilingual conversation.

And I do have to say it – it’s now about 4 times in a couple of days that I’ve been able to identify myself with my new carte de sejour. I do know of people who are intending not to apply for one, and they are going to find things extremely difficult as time evolves.

09:30 was my appointment and by that time I was already being tended to by a nurse called Laura. And she can soothe my fevered brow any day of the week.

This new treatment is extremely rapid and by 11:45 it was all done and I was ready for home. I’d seen the doctor and had my run-down of the last medical visit.

He asked me if I knew that I didn’t have a spleen. I replied that I did because I knew that I had nothing to vent when people (like those on The Good Ship Ve … errr … Ocean Endeavour) got my goat.

There are a few gallstones too and a little thing with the liver and kidneys but apart from that, there’s no problem. The blood count has improved slightly yet again – to 9.0 but I still can’t do anything about having more of a gap between appointments.

At the pharmacy I picked up enough medication to last a year and then headed back via the Spar supermarket where a small demi-baguette was bought to go with my vegan cheese for lunch.

With plenty of time to spare, I did some more website amending and dictaphone transcribing, as well as having a little … errr … relax, the first one for quite a while.

Later on in the evening I went back out again and met Alison. We ended up once more in Green Way, the vegan restaurant, where my taco rolls were excellent, although not like mine at all

A chat in Kloosters, the hotel bar where we had a coffee and a good warm by the fire, and Alison brought me back to my little room here.

But now I’m exhausted, and it’s no surprise why, because I’ve done almost 150% of my (increased) daily activity. And even I’m impressed with this.

However over the past month I’ve only lost 100 grams in weight. That’s no good at all with this new improved fitness regime. I need to be losing much more than this.

At 100 grams per month, I’m going to be around for ever.

Thursday 14th November 2019 – THAT WAS AN INTERESTING …

… route that I took to get to Leuven today.

While I show you a photo of the train that I took at Paris Gare du Nord, a different type of train than the usual ones direct to Brussels, what I hadn’t noticed when I had booked my journey was how the change-over at Lille would take place.

It hadn’t occurred to me that there would be any problem at all. My train out from Lille to Brussels is a standard TGV and so it would be leaving from the new Lille Europe TGV station and my train from Paris Gare du Nord is also a TGV, I didn’t even question where its terminus might be.

So when my INOUI TGV pulled into the older Lille Flandres Railway Station just 15 minutes before my Brussels train was due to leave Lille Europe, I was wondering whether or not I had made a poor decision here.

It’s lucky that I know the city fairly well and know my way around, so I was able to put on something of a spurt, even stopping to take a photo of the bizarre buildings outside, and arrive at the platform with a couple of minutes to spare.

This new keep-fit me is really working hard at it and it’s just as well, for if I had had to stagger all the way there in the state of health in which I found myself previously, I might have had a problem.

Much to my own amazement, and almost certainly to yours, the door to my carriage and reserved seat was situated right at the foot of the stairs down which I had descended.

Consequently I was able to clamber aboard without delay and take my seat in comfort before we hurtled off into the countryside, and I made a mental note to take more notice of my travel plans in future, otherwise one of these days I’ll come unstuck.

On that note, I settled down for a little snooze all the way to Brussels.

And I needed a sleep too because I had had another late night. Even at 00:45 I was still backing up the computer before closing it down.

It wasn’t the Sleep of the Dead either, because I awoke once or twice, according to the dictaphone entries. And when I transcribe them I can tell you all about them

But I still managed to be up with the second alarm, and then I did some general cleaning and tidying up, and preparing my stuff for the journey. And it did occur to me that this time I was completely disorganised and unprepared for the journey. That’s not at all like me, is it?

The train is leaving half an hour earlier so I had to leave the apartment half an hour earlier too.

Despite the wind and the rain, the fish-processing plant was going full-tilt. Plenty of activity down there so they must have had quite a busy night there with plenty of trawlers coming in.

And regular readers of this rubbish will recall the big red van that seems to have been abandoned on the concrete pad by the plant. That’s still there so I really am wondering what’s going on with it.

That wasn’t the only excitement in the port today either.

It seems that our old friend Normandy Trader has come in during the night and is now moored up at the usual mooring point that she shares with Thora

Don’t think that I’ve forgotten that I’ve been invited to drop in and say hello to the crew. But there’s no time for that today as I have a train to catch in half an hour

So I put a spurt on and made it to the railway station in plenty of time, only to find that the coffee machine is out of order.

That’s not a very good start to the day.

But still, no worries. We headed off into the bright blue yonder at a rattling pace, only to become unstuck at Argentan where a delayed connection kept us waiting for 20 minutes.

Despite that, we were only 5 minutes late arriving in Paris (which shows that this train can do it if it tries) and I had a fairly easy trajet on the Metro to the Gare du Nord.

This new lean, keen, mean me can push it along if it tries these days. There was even time to buy another carnet of tickets and to eat my lunch before boarding the train.

We’ve talked about the journey from Paris to Brussels, and at Brussels I only had 10 minutes to wait before an Inter-City train to Welkenraedt pulled it.

It was nice and quiet at first but at Brussels-Centre we were invaded by a horde of kids aged about 7 or 8, on the way back from some kind of school outing.

Alighting at Leuven, a brisk walk brought me to the apartment complex and after a wait of about 10 minutes someone came to see me and give me the keys.

Now I’m installed and quite comfortable in my little place which is possibly one of the best here in which I’ve stayed.

Plenty of time to go shopping too, and down at the Delhaize I stocked up with a bit of food, even though they didn’t have any of the spicy beans that I like. I had potatoes, veg and a burger for tea and it was delicious, followed by fruit salad and orange sorbet.

Now I’m off to bed. I have my appointment with destiny tomorrow.

Friday 18th October 2019 – I REALLY DON’T UNDERSTAND …

… this illness at all. I really don’t!

It has been no less than 16 weeks since my last medical check and treatment. In other words, I have missed four of the urgent treatments that I must have every four weeks to stay alive.

And so, dear reader, you would have expected me to crash in through the hospital doors like the Wreck of the Hesperus on “the reef of Norman’s Woe”.

Consequently you will be somewhat surprised, if not alarmed, to learn that my blood count this time after all of this absence has actually RISEN from 8.4 to 8.9

So just WHAT it going on?

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that I expressed surprise at the dramatic collapse in blood count between the examinations in May and June, and also to the fact that when I had my blood count examined at the laboratory at Granville it gave a totally different reading to the one at the hospital.

And so, dear reader, we face three possibilities here –
1) I’m cured (presumably praying to Mecca the other day had the desired result).
2) The high emotion and turmoil through which I went and which I noted towards the end of my trip on The Good Ship Ve … errr … Ocean Endeavour at the back end of August produced enough natural adrenaline to stimulate the red blood cells all on its own without artificial aids
3) The laboratory at the hospital is hopelessly inaccurate.

Either way, it seems that a sea voyage to the High Arctic in the company of a large group of miserable, depressing people intent on spoiling everyone else’s fun and to whom I could vent my spleen (which I can’t because I no longer have one) at the top of my voice in real anger and actually mean what I say sounds like a good plan to me.

Furthermore I seem to have lost 8 kgs in weight over the four months, and I mused that if I keep that up at the current rate, then by Christmas 2022 I will have gone completely.

But the biggest surprise is yet to come.

Clearly I’m better than I ought to be at this particular point so firstly, they changed my medication. And if my Orcadian medical adviser is reading these note he can tell me all about a medication called Privigen, because that’s what I’m taking.

Secondly, they asked me loads of questions about the voyage and the state of my health while I was away, questions that I have never been asked before.

Thirdly, they brought a specialist in to see me “for a chat”

Fourthly, Kaatje, my Social Worker who is really a psychiatrist assigned to me as part of the terminal illness programme under which I’m registered, came to see me for a chat and she was asking me a pile of probing questions too, about life on board ship and the voyage in general. I told her about the nightmare that I had when I was on board ship and about the emotional roller-coaster that marked my life over that five-week period from towards the end of August to the beginning of October (after all she has to earn her money) when I was in a pit of deep depression and anger after the first nightmare and the even more wild one a week or two later, and she was busy making notes. But she left without getting to whatever point she might have wanted to see me about, had there been a point to her visit, and that set a couple of bells going off in my head.

Fifthly, I was summoned for an x-ray and an echograph of my torso, and that alarmed me too. And I’m no doctor or x-ray tech, but I do know enough about echograph images to know that I didn’t like what I saw on the screen, and I had noticed that he had taken his time and made several passes over a certain part of my torso just underneath the ribcage.

Sixthly, when I went to the reception area to enquire about my next appointment, which they always hand out regularly, they replied “we’ll send a letter to you”.

So I smell something fishy – and I’m not talking about the contents of Baldrick’s Apple Crumble either.

Another surprising thing, not relating to the hospital, or maybe it is, is that contrary to all expectations, I had an absolutely dreadful night. After two more-or-less sleepless nights and a long day yesterday, I was expecting to sleep for a week but in fact it took me ages to go off to sleep and once I did, I was wide-awake by 03:00.

No chance of going back to sleep either – I was up and working on the computer by 04:30.

At 06:00 when the alarms went off I had a shower and washed the clothes that were outstanding, and then set off for the railway station. The Carrefour was open so I grabbed some raisin buns and launched myself aboard the train for Welkenraedt that had just pulled into the station.

At Leuven I heaved myself out of the train and headed off across the city to the hospital. On the way, there were thousands of scouts and girl guides all over the place and they seemed to be having a disco in the town square outside the Town Hall.

At 08:30 in the morning?

There’s a new check-in procedure at Castle Anthrax. Apparently you have to swipe the screen with your identity card. That;s fine, except that being a foreigner I don’t have an identity card. I have to muscle my way into the queue somehow so all of this is going to end in tears sooner or later.

Eventually I was registered and sent to a chair downstairs for my treatment. A few little dozes throughout the day, but nothing violent.

When it was all done (and this new medication is quicker than the previous one) I could leave and pick up my medication for home. And this world is getting far too small for my liking, as I have said on occasions too numerous to mention. The pharmacist looked at me and asked “you’re the guy who went to the North on that ship, aren’t you?”
“Blimmin’ ‘eck”, as the much-maligned Percy Penguin would have said.

There was plenty of time for me to go for a wander, and then I met up with Alison. We went for a coffee, a vegan burger at the Green Way and then another coffee at Kloosters.

She told me about all of her health problems and I told her all about my voyage on The Good Ship Ve … errr … Ocean Endeavour, all about the miserable bunch of passengers with whom I’d been stranded, all about the petty jealousies and squabbles, the spitefulness and selfishness, the mad stampede at the induction meeting where the first in the queue wiped out the buffet for the latecomers and left an indelible stain on my memory before the voyage even started, and the turbulent events that took place on the final couple of days of that miserable voyage.

Strange as it is to say it, I did actually enjoy the trip regardless because we got to some of the places (not to all of them by any means!) that I had always wanted to see, even if the others wanted to see them for different reasons.

The mean-spiritedness of the other passengers didn’t bother me either. I worked in the tourism industry for years and I’ve seen it all before and I had some kind of vicarious pleasure watching to see just the depths into which the behaviour of some of the passengers could descend. Even when some of the vitriol was directed at me, and even more so at Strawberry Moose I found it quite amusing to see the lack of self-restraint and goodwill amongst the passengers.

Even when I mentioned on a couple of occasions to a couple of the organisers that everyone seemed to be going stir-crazy, nothing was done to break up the tension and by the final day, the organisers were as stir-crazy and irritable as the worst of the passengers and one or two of them completely lost all sense of reality by the end.

Many of the early explorers refer to “cabin fever” – where they have to spend several months of winter in confined and cramped quarters in the company of others whom they started off liking by by the time of the thaw they were poised on the brink of murdering each other. It was just like that on board the ship.

Rather reluctantly, I came to the conclusion that the voyage last year when I made so many friends and had so many memorable moments must have been the exception to the rule, and these trips this year are much more the norm.

My social media page contains many names from that trip in 2018, but on this set of voyages this year, then apart from Rosemary who is already on it, and a couple of other people who were not involved in any fracas and who are well-known to themselves, then there isn’t a single person from any part of that voyage who merits a single moment of my time.

Anyone who wants to comment on any of the foregoing, please feel free to use the “comments” facility here. The link is active for a week or so, so if you miss it, add your comments to a later active posting.

I don’t expect you to agree with me, but I do expect you to be polite.

So abandoning another good rant for the moment, I made it back to my hotel by train and here I am, rather late but ready for bed. I have an early start on Sunday so I’m having a lie-in tomorrow with no alarms. That will almost inevitably mean that I’ll be wide-awake at about 04:30.

Friday 28th June 2019 – NOW HERE’S A THING

I had my blood test at the hospital, and there has been a dramatic change in the situation.

Last month (albeit almost 6 weeks ago) the blood count was about 9.1. I’ve had it checked at Granville twice just recently, and it was at 9.4. But today, it’s plummetted down to near-critical 8.4

And that’s a total surprise to me because that just doesn’t seem to be right at all. Something is wrong somewhere. And I do have to say that right now I’m feeling better than I have felt for a while, which is a good thing.

Last night was a rather depressing night. I wasn’t sure to leave the air-conditioning on and have a bad night’s sleep because of the noise, or else turn off the air-conditioning and have a bad night’s sleep due to the heat.

In the end, I chose the former. And despite turning off the film that I was watching because I was tired, and rocked and rolled throughout the night.

Nevertheless there was plenty of time to go for a series of nocturnal rambles.

We started off last night at the OUSA conference in somewhere overlooking the town square and all that was taking place.I had a poem to read later on that day that I had organsied the previous day with someone. It took me ages tofind my notes and I was panicking like I usually do when I can’t find something, until in the end I came across them. We were going through the start of the day’s procedure. We turned up with an old red Vauxhall VX4/90 (the Virctor shape from about 1962-64) pulling a caravan. It was the President, and she got out and told us that she had been away last night in her car and had had a problem with a tyre on the caravan. This had to be fixed but since she had the tyre fixed it’s been causing her more problems, going flat, air leaking out and so on, until in the end somewhere in Yorkshire they found a garage open and he found that the tyre had been fitted incorrectly so he fitted it correctly. But it seemed that there was a fault in the price for the fitting, so he rectified that, much to her dismay.She was telling us all problems about the car.I couldn’t help noticing that everytime she started up the car it was struggling to get goign, struggling to run, put your foot down on the accelerator and it immediately flooded and we had to wait for a minute for it to clear.I was convinced thatthe car wasrunning so rich that that was causing a lot of problems. I was going to tellher to have the mixture looked at but I never had the opportunity, so I was going toinclude it somewhere in my poem, and wondering how I was going to work that in.
Later I was with a large group of civilians and our town was being invaded. We were blanketed in shells and you could see one shell sticking out of the sand and it hadn’t gone off. Later I was invited to some kind of TV panel game, and there in the courtyard was another tank of the invaders buried right up to the neck. I thought that the invaders hadn’t had a very good time here, had they? I had togive a chat and write a short poem about the enemy being here. I said for those there, there’s any number of those – any number. but for the ordinary visitors, none whatsoever. At one point we were saying, look at that enemy tank, buried up to its neck in rocks and bricks, and on the other hand 5 minutes later we would be extremely scared in case a tank picked out our house as one of the ones tobe destroyed.
Later still I was with my brother last night and we were in London. We were on one side of the road and we had to cross to another, dodging in and out of the traffic. And I found that I could run. I wasso amazed that I could run, and I told him. The car we were dodging was a D reg white Cortina Mk I kitted out as a minicab. But instead of having the paper licence in the back window like they do in London it had the name and phone no written on broad white masking tape stuckin the rear door windows. The driver did a U-turn butit was strange because he was on the correct side of the road but did a U-turn “inside” rather than “outside” across the road, so he was facing the wrong way. Then he crossed the road on foot to knock on a door or did he have a key to open it? I can’t remember. It was completely strange. Anyway I went into this corner pub at the side entrance because I was trying to find a passenger for a taxi. It was a very posh Burtonwood pub but I couldn’t see anyone in there at all. I went out of the front door and there was a girl sitting on the pavement, wearing a kind of light-coloured kilt thing, a big burly girl. I asked if she was waiting for a cab, and she replied “yes” so I apologised for coming to the wrong door of the pub, and took her back through the pub and out to my car. At that point she lit a cigarette, and I was just about to tell her that smoking was not allowed in my cab, and I awoke.
Finally I’d been out with a group of people. We had some big ships, or there was a big ship. There was about 40,000 cups of tea served on this ship, something ridiculous. It had some connection with refugees and the ship would go out and fetch refugees. I was with someone who was very much in the background, and there were another two people, a man and a woman. he woman was born in 1952 so she told me and so was the guy. They were really in charge of this operation.They would keep on going off to bring back these refugees. Whoever it was thatI was with – it might have been Nerina, something like that, she went off and that left me alone in my house, so I spent all the timepicking up rubbish and rying to get the place look tidy as there was rubbish everywhere. No matter how much I picked up, it only made a slight difference so you couldn’t see just how dramatic the improvement was. We ended up back on the beach again. I was with this other girl and the guy came back. He’d been off to get some newspapers or something, and handed me three, the Daily Express, the daily mail and the Chorley Weekly Advertiser or whatever the Chorley local paper was because he came from that area. When I looked at the Daily Mail and the Daily Express I said “thank you very much but I’ve already been to the toilet this morning” which didn’t get the laugh that I was expecting. Justthen I looked further down the coast and this ship was setting out. I thought that that was the ferry going to one of the islands -we were in the South of France, that area, and it might have been the one going to Corsica or Sardinia or whatever. I gave the ship the name “Cote d’Azur”, I’ve no idea why.As I went to grab my camera, three really high-speed ferries shot from the south towards the north, towards the coast. I went to quickly grab a photo, but for some reason the shutter was on a very long aperture and shutter speed and I wasn’t able to get a photo because by the time I had adjusted the camera to take the one of the ship going out, the shutter was still open. So I ried to take a photo of this ship sailing out, which had now become three ships sailing out – there must have been another 2 creeping behind it while I’d been distracted by these three ships coming in.

It didn’t take me long to leave my stinking pit and after the medication and a coffee I had a shower and washed my clothes. I like to keep on top of my washing.

Down at the railway station I bought some raisin buns for lunch and hen we had all of the confusion about the trains. There was a signal failure at the Gare Centrale so the trains were all in confusion. I eventually found one to take me to Leuven.

We arrived at the station at 08:30 and by 09:25 I was in the hospital. Despite the heat and the distance, I had a good walk all the way there with my knee hardly hurting.

They didn’t have my medication due to me having changed the day, so they had to hunt around for some stuff. They eventually found me a pile of sample stuff so my mobile stand looked like a Christmas tree.

The nurse there wanted to practise her French with me so we did all of or stuff in French. She knew Granville very well, having spent several holidays there.

It took ages for a doctor to see me, and when she did she was disappointed about my results. She was even more disappointed when I said that I wasn’t going to be back until 9th October. She was impressed with Granville too and looked at some photos of the town.

Rosemary rang too and we had a little chat.

The doctor still hadn’t come back by the time that I was finished. I had to hunt her down. She gave me prescriptions for three months (which she wrote out wrong, asI was to find out) and a lecture from the Professor.

In the end, she agreed that I could have a three-month holiday from medical attention, but probably more because she could see I she was determined.

Another healthy stride out into town and a travel arrangement where I spent over an hour trying to sort out something or other, and then off to meet Alison, going via the ice cream place for a sorbet in the heatwave.

We had a chat, and then to Greenway for a burger and Kloosters for a drink. After another lengthy chat, she drove me back here.

Now I’m off to bed. I have an early start in the morning.

Wednesday 17th April 2019 – REGULAR READERS …

… of this rubbish will recall that back in 2010 in the wilds of Labrador I encountered a musician who sat in isolated scenic spots around Canada and played the accordion.

This evening out on the Pointe deu Roc there was a bassist, keyboardist and drummer doing the same thing.

Well, they weren’t actually doing it, but they had their instruments set out and I found out, as they came running down towards me to stop me giving them a solo on the double bass, that they were only pretending to and that they were filming it with a drone.

Not a sign up anywhere to tell me – or anyone else – what was going on. So serve them right. Having ruined their film set, I wandered off.

Last night though, I didn’t wander far. An early night, but yet another one where I couldn’t go to sleep. By 04:45 I had given up, and I was even up and about before the alarms went off.

It didn’t take me long to finish tidying and packing, and I was actually on the road before the third alarm went off.

The 06:36 to Oostende arrived at the station at the same time that I did. So benefiting from the advantages of my pre-purchased ticket I could leap aboard.

This meant that I was in the station at Brussels-Midi quite early. Plenty of time to go to Carrefour to grab my raisin buns for breakfast, and I took them into a quite corner for a little relax.

The train was in early so we were allowed up. And there I encountered a jobsworth who insisted that I take my ticket out of its plastic jacket so that he could see it.

Sitting next to me on the TGV was an elderly lady, but I didn’t pay much attention to her. I was either attacking my Antiquities Americanae again or else I was having a little … errr … relax.

We were bang on time in Paris Gare du Nord and the metro was good too – just the odd hiccup here and there. But the two metro stations underneath Notre Dame seem to be closed for now.

With no hold-ups along the way I was soon at Vaugirard, and while I was waiting to board the train, I had a chat with a couple of other people too. It’s not like me to be sociable, is it?

The train was quite empty so my neighbour went off to find a seat on her own. I carried on with my book and had a doze for about half an hour too.

But one thing that happened on the train rather offended me.

There was a large North African family in the train and they all alighted at Alençon, bags, baggage, kids and all. And after they had left, one woman sitting in our carriage went down to the luggage rack to make sure that they hadn’t taken her case with them.

It was very conspicuous that she didn’t do that whenever a European family alighted from the train.

It was a nice walk back to here in the warm sunshine, and on arrival I simply sat and vegetated for a while to gather my strength. And I wasn’t as tired as I thought I might have been.

Tea was a plate of pasta and veg tossed in garlic, pepper and olive oil, and then my walk around the Pointe du Roc.

My little walk took me around to see what has been going on at the chantier navale while I was away.

There’s what seems to be an old small trawler that has been converted into living accommodation, and there’s also some kind of pleasure boat or passenger tender in there undergoing repair. There must be plenty of work here for the company there.

The fishing industry is keeping on going too.

There were a couple of trawlers out there tonight and the one on the left looks as if it is doing a circuit with its net out taking a catch.

But now it’s after midnight, and I don’t feel at all tired, which is a surprise. I can see me heading for a little crisis tomorrow when the lack of sleep catches up with me.

EPIC HALL

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

Category Archives: leuven

Saturday 25th January 2020 – THEY WERE RIGHT …

Friday 24th January 2020 – THAT ISN’T …

Thursday 23rd January 2020 – HERE I ALL AM …

Sunday 15th December 2019 – AND FINALLY …

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

Friday 13th December 2019 – THE GOOD NEWS …

Thursday 12th December 2019 – WELL I NEVER …

Monday 18th November 2019 – SO HERE I AM …

Sunday 17th November 2019 – REMEMBER LAST NIGHT …

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

Friday 15th November 2019 – I DON’T CARE …

Thursday 14th November 2019 – THAT WAS AN INTERESTING …

Friday 18th October 2019 – I REALLY DON’T UNDERSTAND …

Friday 28th June 2019 – NOW HERE’S A THING

Wednesday 17th April 2019 – REGULAR READERS …

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