Category Archives: Melun

Monday 5th December 2016 -DRAT AND DOUBLE-DRAT!

The other week, we discussed the problem of burst tyres on the motorway.

And so it should come as no surprise to learn that it was the turn of Yours Truly today.

Not quite on the motorway – in fact about 400 metres after I’d pulled off at Montlucon. But a flat tyre just the same. There’s a nail in it somehow.

Luckily, if there is such a thing that can be called lucky, regular readers will recall from 2012 when I had a blow-out on the M6 near Stoke on Trent, I’d pushed the boat out and bought three really good Hankook tyres. The fourth was a second-hand cheap tyre that I had bought because of the wheel that was attached to it. There was plenty of tread on it but I didn’t expect it to last very long. Anyway, it’s this one that has the puncture.

There’s a spare on Caliburn and that was a second-hand one that I bought for the wheel (it was the time when I was collecting a second set of wheels for the winter tyres). But when I had a look at it … well … I’ve thrown away better tyres than this. A fair amount of tread to be sure, but standing around for as long as it has has done it no favours. But at least I was mobile with not much effort.

selfish parking montlucon allier franceMy new enhanced mobility took me to the LeClerc supermarket where I stocked up with another big supply of food for Belgium. And while I was there, I had another big laugh at the selfishness of other drivers.

The driver of this car parked it up at the supermarket – and pretty badly parked at that – and walked away – and then turned round to come back and parked his car even worse, straddling the white lines.

The selfishness of people is astonishing, isn’t it?

Having done the shopping, I went off in search of some tyres. I’ve ordered two brand-new Hankooks and they will be delivered on Friday. They will be going on the front, the other Hankook that is still on the front will be the spare, and the nasty spare tyre will be going in the bin.

But I’m not thinking very clearly here. What I should have done was to forget about the new tyres, come back home and fitted Caliburn with his winter tyres on the front. And the money situation is going to be important because on the way down from Leuven, I could feel the other wheel bearing start to tighten up and that’s going to have to be looked at. It’s yet more expense that I can do without.

I had a decent sleep last night and the breakfast at the Premiere Class was quite good. And then I hung around there doing stuff until about 11:00. When they threw me out of the hotel I hit the road and drove steadily down to Montlucon

tacot railway station narrow gauge bourbon l'archambault allier franceI cut the corner off down at the end of the road and came back through Bourbon l’Archambault, and this building caught my eye.

You should all know what it is because I’ve taken you to see a few of these. It’s the old railway station of Bourbon l’Archambault and the railway concerned is the tacot, the metre-gauge railway network that covered the Allier during the first half of the 20th Century.

Built far too late to have a decisive influence on the country’s transport policy and built too cheaply, serving the layout of the terrain rather that the needs of the passengers (one commentator described the railway stations as decorating the abandoned landscape), the only surprise was that they lasted aslong as they did before road transport swept them away

There’s a new chain of budget hotels opening in France – called Ace Hotels. One has been built on the edge of Montlucon and so I went for a look around.

ace hotel montlucon allier franceAt just €49:00 per night, it’s excellent. Certainly the best budget hotel in which I’ve ever stayed. The only complaint is that there aren’t enough of them yet.

My view from the window was excellent, right across the motorway and into the Combrailles at the back. That’s where I’ll be heading tomorrow.

So in the meantime, I ordered a pizza and wasn’t that a disappointment? Overpriced, undercooked and crushed up on one side of the box – someone had carried it vertically.

I shan’t be going to that pizza place again.

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Sunday 4th December 2016 – I’VE HAD A FEW …

… twinges just recently but last night I had a major attack of cramp. Both calves too and I was in agony for half an hour. First time for absolutely months and months and months. I’d almost forgotten all about them.

But eventually the pain wore off and I could carry on with sleeping – until the alarm went off.

I’d been back to Labrador as well during the night. That seems to be a regular route these days. It’s all clearly playing on my mind.

First into breakfast this morning, and all alone too. and my 08:05 I’d finished, been to the boulanger for my baguette and rescued three plastic crates from the skip at the supermarket.

The morning was spent doing some tidying up (which is not like me, is it) and getting my room ready for being away for a week or so. I have to make an effort, I suppose. I did some stuff on the laptop too and an early lunch saw me down the road and at Cailburn by 14:00.

We hit the streets and fuelled up and then had a very uneventful drive down as far as Paris. One thing that I had forgotten is that Sunday late afternoon it’s “red” rates on the péage in the direction of Paris and I really was nailed for that. It wasn’t half painful

The Franciliènne was packed too – end-to-end traffic all the way around and it didn’t clear either. Things only eased off when i left and headed into Melun.

Plenty of room at the Première Classe on the edge of the city and the room was quite comfortable, even though some people in the room above seemed to be having a party. I had a really good pizza brought to me and then I crashed out for an hour or so.

Tomorrow after breakfast I’ll have part II of my journey, back to Montluçon at least. To do some shopping tomorrow evening and find a place to stay ready for part III.

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Saturday – 21st May 2016 – I’M BACK …

… on the road again and even as I type, I’m sitting in a little room in a Première Classe Hotel on the outskirts of Soissons (I’ve managed to find it today).

I managed my lie-in this morning – until all of, would you believe, 08:10 – even though I’d been on my travels during the night. Driving a lorry as it happens somewhere around the UK and a rough, horrible thing it was to drive as well and I was determined to have it taken off the road for major repair when I returned to the depot. But what surprised me was that it had only just passed its MoT a short while ago and I thought that that couldn’t be right. So I parked it up in the yard and the next lorry to come in was driven by my brother and he parked his lorry right next to mine blocking the through-way across the yard. Anyway, we left the yard and were immediately caught up in a scenario that involved the police on the motorway blocking off a car that was coming down the road. It was carrying antiques of some kind of dubious nature and the owner as telling us sometime later in this church hall where we all assembled that he’d been taught a manoeuvre to carry out whenever the police tried to stop him but as he drew a diagram to explain it, I couldn’t see how it would possibly help in such a circumstance.

It didn’t take too long to load up Caliburn and tidy up after me back at Liz and Terry’s, even though I managed to forget to bring back the fresh fruit that I’d put on one side. Mind you, I didn’t rush with doing it because I’m not up to that kind of thing just now. It was about 11:30 when I finally hit the road.

My next stop was back at my house where I dropped off a pile of my washing and collected some more stuff that I had forgotten the last time I was there.But I can’t for the moment find the big back with all of my single bed stuff. I wonder where all of that has gone. I know that I have it because I can remember sorting it all out after I’d finished the wardrobe last year.

It was a beautiful day when I set off but the farther north I drove, the weather deteriorated and when I left the motorway we were having a grey, overcast day. The drive itself was totally uneventful at first but at Nemours we had an incident where a wedding party decided to stop and block off a roundabout in order to take some wedding photographs and this provoked quite a bit of “reaction” from the other motorists.

Not only that, I’d noticed that there were some substantial queues at various petrol stations along the route, and my usual one at Melun was closed. When I eventually found a petrol station (on the N2 just before Villers-Cotterets) where there was quite a queue, I made enquiries and they revealed that some local television has announced that there is going to be a fuel shortage – something that has taken the garage proprietor totally by surprise.

So now, here I am -it’s 19:15 and I’m installed in my little room, and that is that. I’ll see you all in the morning.

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Saturday 14th May – NOW …

… that was much more like it. That was the most comfortable sleep that I have had for weeks. It was a shame though that my room was on the ground floor on the outside of the building at the foot of the stairs because I was kept awake for ages by some family group chatting at the foot of the stairs before they went their separate ways, and badger me if it wasn’t them again in the morning waking me up again.

But when I was gone, I was really gone.

I was away with the fairies during the night too. The first part concerned one of these reality TV shows and in this case it was a group of people who were setting up a garage – how they had to clear out some derelict and abandoned place, sort out the stuff inside, secure some stock-in-trade and set themselves up to do some work. They had three or four front-ends of minis, complete with subframes and engines, up on a ramp leading to the upper floor. All of this seemed to be so familiar and I wondered if I’ve been here before on another one of my nocturnal rambles just recently.
A little later, I was interviewing some woman. She was a single mother who worked as a school bus driver out in the Macclesfield area and had been transferred to a different route which went higher up on the moors on the Derbyshire border and in the snow. I was interested to see how she was doing with the difference in driving conditions, but she said that she hadn’t noticed the difference.

Breakfast cost me €5:00 and I had my money’s worth too. And then afterwards, I had an hour on the blog doing some more updating – I need to keep on at it.

The journey down to here was uneventful, apart from the weather. Yesterday I was having 28.6°C in Leuven and its surroundings. This morning it was a mere 12.6°C at Melun and the weather gradually deteriorated. We had fog, hanging clouds, rain, all kinds of stuff and the temperature dropped as low as 9°C. Definitely not the summer weather we should be having.

I called in at the Carrefour at Moulins to do a pile of shopping – some tins to take back to Belgium next weekend and also some food to eat while I’m down here. I can’t nibble away at Liz and Terry’s supplies.

My house is totally overgrown with weeds and the like and it was a struggle to get in there. I really must do something about that sometime (although I’m not sure when). I had a scrounge around and rescued all of the washing which I’ll do tomorrow and give it time to dry out before I go back. I’m going back to chez moi a couple of times during the week to tidy out Caliburn and get him organised for the next round of visits.

While I was there, I sorted out the post. No bank card yet, but there was a nasty bill that my insurance should have paid but it seems that they haven’t. On Monday, I’ll have to get on the case.

In St Gervais d’Auvergne I bought the last loaf of bread in France and then came back here narrowly avoiding squashing a team of motorcycle scramblers out for a run around, and then crashed out for a couple of hours (no surprise here).

For tea, I’ve had baked potatoes, baked beans and veggie-burgers and it was gorgeous. Now I’m going to crash out again and I hope that I’ll stay in bed until Monday. I need a good, solid uninterrupted sleep.

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Friday 13th May 2016 – NOW, THAT’S MORE LIKE IT!

Last night, I dropped off to sleep during the middle of one of the Boris Karloff “Mr Wong” films, and apart from a trip down the corridor in the small hours, that was all that I remember until 06:25. It was one of the best nights’ sleeps that I’ve had since I left France and I enjoyed it so much.

I’d been on my travels too, playing bass in a rock band somewhere and we had a concert to play, part of a huge music festival. And although we were set up and ready, our drummer (a friend of mine from way back) hadn’t turned up. He hadn’t sent a message or anything to say where he was or what he was doing, and because we weren’t therefore ready, our spot at this festival was slowly being whittled away by the organisers. And with him being my friend, my bandmates were having a little whittle at me about it. Everything was here from this drummer – his tent, his drums, even the roller skates for his roller skate hire business – everything except him.

So breakfast all eaten and done long before the alarm went off, a nice warm shower and clean clothes long before 08:30, even time to spend on doing some more blog updating before hitting the road at 09:30. And I apologise to Pellenberg for some of the things about it. Not because they aren’t true, but because it’s only half the price (like €10:00 per night) to stay here. I’m prepared to put up with the inconvenience at €10:00 per night.

First stop was the bank, where I had business to perform. And I learnt a thing or two there that I didn’t know either and that made me feel bettertoo. And afterwards, I went to LIDL where I bought myself a set of three new toys – some 800mm (massive) SDS drill bits, 16, 18 and 24mm, at €9:00 (for three, not for one) and these are so impressive.

Next stop was to Spit. This is a charity shop in Leuven that sells books, records, clothes and tons of furniture. It’s huge and full of stuff and I spent a pleasant hour in there looking for stuff. Not buying anything, of course, just looking. But I could have bought several items had I been of such a mind. There was some good stuff in there.

Lunch was at the fritkot at the Jacobsplein, and then off to the hospital for my check-up.

I gave a blood sample and it came back as 8.1. And that, surprisingly, is quite stable for the last couple of weeks. In fact, since I’ve been undergoing treatment, the blood count hasn’t dropped below 7.8. They reckon that I can go for a week without a transfusion because they are keen to see how I hold up. I explained that I’ll be doing a lot of driving but they seem to think that I’ll be fine.

I do like their optimism.

So they heaved me out at 16:00 – minus the transfusion – and I hit the road for home. And I don’t mean “home” as in Pellenberg but “home” as in the Auvergne because I’m coming back for a week. I need more clothes, more books, more stuff in general if I’m to stay here until September and I reckon I should grab it while the grabbing is good. My next appointment is Monday 23rd so I have a little 10-day window to do it.

But it was horrendous coming back. Totally horrendous. The traffic queue started just outside Leuven and lasted until well after Valenciennes. And then there were all kinds of perturbations on the Francilienne. All in all, a journey of less than 4 hours to Melun took just under six hours to complete. Ironically, before I set out, I was toying with the idea of going back via the old road to Auxerre but I reckoned the motorway would be less stressful.

Ohh woe is me!

If this isn’t bad enough, the Première Classe Motel where I’m spending the night (in view of my state of health I’m doing the trip back in easy stages and in comfort) isn’t actually in Melun, it’s in the neighbouring commune. However, there’s a street of the same name in Melun so that when you programme the street name and “Melun” into your GPS like someone around here did, you end up in the middle of some rather insalubrious council estate somewhere. That took me a good 20 minutes to sort myself out.

But as the legendary Marechal MacMahon once said – “j’y suis, j’y reste” or “here I am and here I’ll stay”. Or as Martin Luther put it – “hier stehe ich – ich Kann night anders” or “I’m staying here – I can’t do anything else”.

I’ve had enough for one day.

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Sunday 20th March 2016 – JUST IN CASE ANYONE IS WONDERING …

… the big patch of oil right by where I park Caliburn is due to the fact that I didn’t notice that there was a hole in the filler neck of my oil container when I was topping him up this morning. I seem to have ended up with more oil on the floor than in Caliburn’s engine. But he’s been topped up with water too, windscreen wiper liquid, all kinds of things.

I also washed and scrubbed all of the camping gear too so that that’s all ready. And apart from the coffee, I also seem to have forgotten the matches too. But at least I can buy them en route somewhere, I suppose.

So after a memorable night, memorable in the sense that I don’t remember anything about it, except for somewhere there was a girl of about 4 or 5 and another one, dressed in red and white, aged about 12 in it somewhere, that’s my lot. I was up yet again before the alarm clock and after breakfast, prepared myself, Caliburn and Strawberry Moose for the departure. All of my paperwork is on board as well, and I’ll let the new doctor sort out what he wants from all of this.

And after lunch, which was more home-made mushroom soup (made of real home-made mushrooms of course), we set off into the mist, rather like the boy who took his girlfriend out into the fog and mist.

chateau de puy guillon vernusse allier france. Letting The Lady Who Lives In The SatNav do her work, we followed a merry, mazy ramble through the Auvergne countryside towards the expressway at Montmarault, passing by the Chateau de Puy Guillon at Vernusse, somewhere that I have certainly never seen before.

Impressive it certainly is and well-worth a photo even if the battery in the Nikon D5000 was flat so that I had to use the camera on the phone.

And you can see what I mean about the mist as well.

Once I joined the expressway, the rest of the route was without a problem and everything went according to plan, although having left the SatNav on “shortest distance” rather than changing it to “quickest route” did show me parts of Fontainebleu that I have certainly never seen before. I fuelled up as usual at the cheap fuel station at Melun and then took the Francilienne as far as the N2 where I headed off in the direction of Soissons.

This was where the fun started because, having determined not to stop until I’d passed the rear of Charles de Gaulle airport, I then couldn’t find a hotel, astonishing as it might seem. That’s not quite correct – I drove three times around Villers-Cotterets following signs to hotels that clearly only existed in the minds of the signwriters, and found a place that was nominally a three-star hotel but looked like a chateau and would have been outside my price range.

Soissons wasn’t much better either. I found all of the post hotels, like the Campanile and so on, but nothing in my price range at all but a few miles outside the town, in a place called Crouy, I found a modern type of hotel, the New Access Hotel, advertising rooms at €35:00 plus breakfast €5:00. Full of foreboding, but tired and fed up and in the dark, I went and signed in.

As I feared, it was an old Formule One, clearly sold off by Accor as it needed renovation and wasn’t worth the money spending on it, and now run by an Indian family, as most of these places all over the western world seem to be. We discussed meals and it seemed that there was a pizza delivery service nearby, so I placed my order (there was a microwave so adding my own cheese would be no problem) and went to my room.

Despite half an hour trying, I couldn’t get the heating to work and it was cold. And then the plug was so tight up against the wall that I couldn’t plug in the laptop or the battery charger for the Nikon D5000. And then I realised that I’d been there an hour and my pizza hadn’t come.

So off I trotted downstairs and saw the daughter of the hotel owners. I told her about the pizza, so she asked me if I wanted to call them to remind them. I had a better idea. “You call them and cancel it. I’ll go and find something else” – having passed a kebab and pizza place just down the road.

I passed the pizza delivery driver on the access road but it was too late by then – my tail was up. And I had the last laugh too because it turned out that where I went to was the same place as where the pizza had been ordered from, and there was a free salad included to all take-away customers, and the salad would have made a meal on its own.

So back at Ice-Station Zebra and I refused a shower in the communal facilities. I ate my pizza and salad and with no electricity to charge up the laptop (I should have done that in Caliburn on the way up) I crawled fully-clothed under the covers, kicked out the bed-bugs and settled down for the night.

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Wednesday 6th May 2015 – DOESN’T CALIBURN LOOK SMART …

caliburn new number plate roady nemours france… with his new front number plate?

Here we were, going up the autoroute to wards Paris yesterday late afternoon in a howling gale and I stopped to make what is called a “comfort break”. Going back to Caliburn afterwards, I noticed that the white refelective part of his number plate was detaching itself from the background.

Cheap number plates, I suppose, and here I was off to Germany for two weeks. If it all comes apart in Germany I’ll be sunk, and the controle technique as soon as I return, I could do with having this fixed instanter.

Back on the autoroute again and we drove around the town of Nemours. And there on the Trading Estate I could just about make out one of these car accessory places. 18:55 it was, 5 minutes to chucking-out time, but nevertheless when I arrived they were still there. The plate cost an arm and a leg as you might expect, but they also had a fitting service for a couple of Euros. Anyway, there wasn’t much option. It’s cheaper than a fine and I’m going to have to have the number plate anyway for the controle technique. May as well do it now as later.

I’m not sure whether you can see it in the photo but I now have my dash cam installed. I had that running for the journey. It’s cheap, as you can tell by the price and by the quality of materials, and the instructions, written in basic Chinglish, are, shall we say, “unhelpful”. However, it does what it says it does, and quite good enough for what I want, although I’m going to have to stop talking to myself when I’m driving.

I was on the road by 15:00, having spent the morning tidying the house and doing a little cleaning, and I arrived here at about 23:45 after several stops. One of which was at Melun, where I discovered a new takeaway where they did me proud.

On the way up, though, I started to make a list of things that I have forgotten, including the cooking stove and the portable beichstuhl.

It’s going to be one of THOSE journeys, isn’t it?

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Sunday 4th May 2014 – I HOPE THAT YOU ALL HAD …

… a happy Star Wars day. Yes, May the fourth be with you, all of you.

As for me, I had a Happy Star Wars day, and for two reasons too.
Firstly, I had the first produce out of my garden. Only a handful of lettuce leaves, nothing to get too excited about, and especially since they were from bought baby lettuce that was planted and grown on, but garden produce just the same and it tasted beautiful.
Secondly, I had my first soalr shower of the year. And admittedly the water was only 26.4°C so I had to add 5 litres of hot water, but that solar hot water came out of the dump load for surplus electrical energy so it was all mine anyway. And besides, it was the first go in the new shower cabinet and that was exciting too.

Yes, you’re right. Surplus electrical energy. We finally had the day that we were promised for yesterday, with beautiful sunshine and not all that much cloud in the sky. And about time too.

And I missed some of it as well. With it being Sunday I had a long lie-in until 09:40 for which I was very grateful. Then after breakfast I carried on with the web pages. I’ll get them up-to-date if it kills me in the process.

After lunch I swept out the rear of Caliburn and now he’s clean and tidy. He has a bed – the one that I shortened the other day – suspended from the sides, and a matress abd clean bedding and it’s all looking quite comfortable in there.

When I had finished tea I washed up, finished loading Caliburn and then hit the road. 21:30, it was when I set off and by 02:00 I was somewhere between Paris and Lille in a service area having stopped off for 10 minutes to fuel up and pour some coffee out of the flask for me.

And now I’m going to try out the bed.

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Tuesday 22nd October 2013 – I’M SUPPOSED TO BE TAKING IT EASY …

… today, but you wouldn’t have thought so. First on the ‘phone was Rosemary. Her roofer is staying on for a day or two and so he’s going to have a quick go at her barn. Of course, we took the scaffolding down on Sunday, so could he borrow my roof ladder?

So at 08:30 they were here at Pooh Corner to take it away, and from there it all went downhill. Marianne called me to remind me of an errand that needed doing in Brussels and about which I had clean forgotten. Then I had two other calls in quick succession and I can’t now remember who they were and what they wanted – such is advancing age.

Then I had another task to perform. Seeing as how I’m not leaving until this afternoon now, I went to put another plan into operation and that involved meeting an estate agent in Pionsat. We had a pleasant morning out, but this idea that I have will not come to fruition, which is a shame, as there is a major stumbling block with my idea.

Back at Pooh Corner I fell in with Lieneke and Guus who are here for a week, and we had quite a lengthy chat. It’s always nice to see friendly people – they are in quite short supply here. And Raoul the cat put in his first appearance of the autumn. Checking up on his sources of food supply for the winter, methinks.

I loaded up the van and after a brief repos I set off for Brussels. And I got well on my way before I realised that I had forgotten my passport, and so I had to come all the way back again. I made it as far as Melun where I stopped for fuel and also for a bag of chips and a vegetarian pitta. I’m going for a little luxury in my old age. Another sign of old age is that I only made it as far as Valenciennes, a good 90 minutes short of Brussels, before I pulled off for a kip. I’m clearly not as young as I was. Consequently I didn’t make it here until about 02:30 – to find a major change about the property and also the fact that the internet is disconnected – more of which anon.

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Saturday 24th August 2013 – I DID SOMETHING LAST NIGHT …

… that I haven’t done for years and years and years – and that was to crash out on the side of the road for a couple of hours durig a journey between Brussels and Pooh Corner. It wasn’t as if it was late either – not even 02:00 and I was only 2 hours away from home as well.

I know that I had a bad night’s sleep last night but that has never bothered me before either so I must be getting old, I reckon. It’s a depressing thought.

Anyway after saying goodbye to Esi I set off for home and straight into an enormous traffic jam in the Bois de la Cambre. There’s a show of some kind there this weekend – we saw them setting it up the other day – and it’s blocked all of the roads. In the end I gave up, did a U-turn and came out of the city on the other side by La Hulpe. But in the queue I was stopped alongside a couple of British builder-type guys and we had a chat – and one of the things they mentioned was that they wanted to buy Caliburn. “Buy Caliburn? You can’t do that – he’s part of the family” I told them.

Once on the motorway the journey was quite uneventful except at the péage. With it being the height of the tourist season and all kinds of foreigners on the road they are manned …“personned” – ed and the girl, having had a good look at Caliburn, charged me half the price of what the automatic system charges me. I shall have to look into this. THen off for fuel at Melun ad out on the other side until I fell asleep.

But no issues this morning and I was back here for 07:30. I’m not overgrown – Liz’s Agent Orange stuff has done the trick and there’s thick luxuriant grass now – and I’ve had a slow day of unpacking, repacking, crashing out and configuring my new computer. But here’s a thing – the ew one is more-or less the same as the old one but of the 500GB hard drive only 418GB is available as opposed to 451GB of the older hard drive. THat means the secret file space for recording all of your keystrokes has ow goe up to over 80GB – one sixth of the drive’s capacity. THis Government paranoia thing is getting completely out of hand.

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Tuesday 23rd July 2013 – WELL I MADE IT

And if you ask me very nicely, I’ll make you one like it too – which is a story that I have told before, but don’t let that worry you.

I left home just after 21:00 – stopped for 5 minutes at the Carrefour at Montmarault to drop a little fuel in (I was going to fuel up at the Carrefour in Riom earlier but of course we went in Liz’s car instead), then 15 minutes at Melun for a total refuel and a stretch of the legs.

I arrived here at 04:05, which has to be something of a world record seeing as how it’s about 732kms. Good old Caliburn.

But I cheated really, because I’ve abandoned my traditional route over the mountains and despite the péage, these days I’m doing it all on the motorway.

Well, not quite.

I’m leaving the motorway at Fontainebleu, passing around the town and heading for Melun where there is a cheap petrol station, and then onto the N104 – the Francilienne – at the other side of the city.

That cuts a huge chunk off the journey and completely misses out the suburbs of Paris. It’s much less stressful and I’ve had enough stress right now.

Except of course when someone in a Porsche Cayenne is overtaking a long line of traffic, sees the radar, slams on his brakes and cuts in right in front of me. He got both barrels of Caliburn’s horn and when he pulled alongside me to … errr … remonstrate with me, he got what can best be called an “offensive gesture” too.

I was in no mood for messing about.

Anyway, I can’t believe that I left the apartment in Belgium in such a tip. I really don’t know what happened. It was as if I had been chased out by zombies and if Marianne had seen how it looked, she would have turned in her grave.

I went more-or less straight to bed and then up at 11:30, and a leisurely day recuperating. And also doing two big machine-loads of washing.

Now everyone makes mistakes of course, but what counts in life is how you get out of them. And here’s an object lesson in dealing with issues.

Tuesday night is cheapo night in the pizza place down the road – all medium pizzas at €5:95 and as I didn’t feel like cooking after all of my exertions, down I went and ordered a Country Vegetable without cheese.

When I returned (having picked up some wooden crates on the way back) I found that they had given me a ham pizza with cheese by mistake, so I rang them back to complain.
“Ahh – it’s you who had the ham pizza then. What’s your address?” which I duly told him.
5 minutes later the manager was round with my pizza. “I made you a large one, to make up for the inconvenience” he said, so I put some cheese on it and ate it all, musing to myself that “that’s how you get out of an embarrassing situation”.

Yes, hats off to them.

So an ealy night. It’ll be a day or two before I recover from the jet-lag.

Luckily tonight, I found Marianne’s cooling fan. And I needed it too.

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Tuesday 26th July 2011 – NEXT MORNING …

… saw me in IKEA where they had sold out of everything interesting and so instead I went to Marianne’s.

After lunch we took a pile of my old stuff down to the Charity Shops and then we went to Brico to buy a pile of cable to rewire all of her internet connections, and that took me most of the afternoon.

At 19:20 precisely I left Brussels, maybe for the last time as I now have no reason to be back there, and headed off home.

And I was glad to leave, I can tell you. Charity shops refusing goods, and refusing them with a sneer and an offensive remark, large vans deliberately turning into your path when they can see you coming, and the final straw was the brand-new Range Rover that tried to run me down on a zebra crossing. Yes, by that time I had really had enough and now I’m wondering how that Range Rover driver will be explaining the large size 9-sized dent in his rear wing.

Yes, I was in a bad mood when I left.

The journey home was exciting. The Lady Who Lives In The Satnav predicted that I would arrive home at 03:51, and I was home at … errr …. 03:50 precisely.

And that was quite a surprise, and for several reasons.

  1. She took me down a completely different route – the Mons by-pass, then the N2 via Soissons to the Francilienne, and then round via Melun, Fontainebleu and the RN7. She also wanted to send me via Nevers and Moulins but I took the short cut via Bourges.
  2. old cars panhard levassor franceI made a few unscheduled stops along the way. One of the stops, not too far beyond Mons but in France was this absolutely gorgeous thing that I saw.

    It’s been absolutely ages since I’ve featured any nice and interesting old cars in my postings, so it’s high time that we showed you another one. This is an original Panhard-Levassor and I think that it might be a CS model from the early 1930s – not that I know too much about it. But whatever it is, it is beautiful – it really is

  3. Another unscheduled stop was at Melun where at the ELF garage there – the cheapest in France, diesel was at 129.9. That called for a major fuel-up.
  4. and then we had the road works. The way out of Brussels was full of them, as was the Francilienne. I calculated that I lost about 15 minutes at least in that lot. And there were also road works on the roads between Gien and Bourges and that slowed me down quite a lot as well. In fact, along that stretch of road I started to fall asleep. It had been a long day

But apart from that, I didn’t stop at all – not even for food or coffee (luckily at Marianne’s I had made a big mug of coffee in my thermal mug). I was in a hurry to return home.

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