Tuesday 27th February 2018 – JUST FOR A CHANGE …

… I’ve done very little today. In fact, I’ll go as far as to say that I’ve done badger all. Not even any of the usual tasks that I set myself.

It was another late night, although nothing like as late as the previous one, and I was out like a light until the alarm went off. And if I had been anywhere on my travels I certainly don’t remember it.

It was still a haul to crawl out of my stinking pit, but I did manage to beat the Billy Cotton and the second alarm clock. But to say that I was lethargic for a couple of hours after breakfast is probably an understatement.

Once I’d got myself into gear I started to attack the 3D project that I had begun yesterday. And to be honest, I didn’t end up any further forward despite all of the hours that I put into it. And in the end I discarded it.

But it’s not any time wasted. I tried a different approach by using a program called Hexagon, a freeware 3D image editor, and while it didn’t complete the project as I had hoped, I learnt an awful lot about the program and that’s time that is never wasted. You can’t have too much education

I had a shower of course, and the usual walks today too, and tea was the doggy bag from Saturday and Liz, with some potatoes. And really nice it was too. Standing for a couple of days definitely improved the flavour as it always does with spicy food.

So with nothing at all done today, there’s a lot of catching up to do tomorrow. That will probably mean an early night, just for a change.

Monday 26th February 2018 – DON’T SOME PEOPLE LIKE TO RUB IT IN?

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that I went to my Health Insurance people the other day to hand in a pile of documents so that the Doctor who oversees my case at the Insurance office could see them.

And today I had a leaflet from them. “What steps to take when a member of our scheme dies”.

Yes, nothing like rubbing it in, is there?

Mind you I felt like death this morning. Having had a really good sleep yesterday it upset my body rhythm completely and it was 02:00 and beyond before I went to bed.

Struggling out at 06:20 was clearly too much and after breakfast I crashed out well and truly for a good 90 minutes.

However during the night I’d been on my travels again. A few of us were on a train travelling from Chester to Crewe past the old Calveley station, but someone kept on inserting into the voyage old photos of the Chester – Mold – Ruthin railway line. And I’ve no idea why.

After my little wasted morning I decided that it was time to do some work. And so I’ve been hard at it since then. I’ve had another session with this 3D program that I use. I’ve been doing something that I promised quite a while ago, and that is to experiment with textures and templates.

It’s one of those things that the first step takes for ever, but once you have done one of them, it’s fairly straightforward. As regular readers of this rubbish will recall, I’ve been using Paint Shop Pro as my graphice editor for over 20 years, but even now I’m having to find and use facilities and functions that I never knew existed.

Despite all of my efforts, it’s still not doing what I think it ought to do. And so I’ll have to put a great deal more effort into it. It’s certainly progress though, all the same.

Having spoken to Rosemary on the telephone, I went for a rather late walk this afternoon.

And I once more fell in with the workmen digging the trench. It seems that they are laying the conduit first, and the cables will follow. And then there will be the connection to the network later.

I did ask about the timescale, and he reckoned that it would be about a year to have it up and running. That’s disappointing from my point of view – I was hoping for it to be much more rapid than that.

But nevertheless, that’s progress too, and I can’t complain too much about that.

Back here, it was time for coffee, as it always is when I come back from my walk.

And I usually allow myself a little treat, and that’s why I like birthdays so much because, having visited Liz and Terry, I’m supplied with another vegan chocolate birthday cake.

Sticky, gooey and chocolatey, and absolutely delicious. This should last me a couple of weeks and then I’ll have to have another birthday.

Tea was a stuffed pepper with the leftover stuffing from the other day. And my walk this evening took me past quite a few people also out taking the air.

So having had a decent morning’s sleep this morning, I wonder how I’ll get on tonight.

Sunday 25th February 2018 – WHAT ODDS …

… would you have had on a team 3-1 down, with two of four minutes of added time played, coming back to snatch a draw?

Yes, an exciting football match in the Welsh Premier League this evening with Aberystwyth Town playing Carmarthen. And Aberystwyth running away with the game until a dramatic substitution late in the game threw on a reserve centre-forward who is clearly made of granite.

And Carmarthen could even have snatched a winner too – they wrestled possession away from Aberystwyth from the restart after their third goal and raced upfield, and only a dramatic save from Chris Mullock at point-blank range saved Aberystwyth from one of the most dramatic collapses that I have ever seen.

As for the football that I saw this afternoon, that was dramatic too, but for different reasons.

With it being a cup weekend, there should have been no local football but several clubs took the opportunity to catch up on some of their postponed matches.

US St Pairaise and ES Saussey in the Departmental Third Division were two of those. So in the nice sunny but windy weather I headed out to St Pair.

Saussey won the match 2-0 which was a rather harsh scoreline. St Pair had their fair share of the play but found a couple of centre-backs who looked far too good for this level – even in the warm-up you could see that nothing would get past them – and when it did they found a keeper in excellent form.

But the difference was really that although Saussey didn’t have many chances, they took the ones that they had. One was a poor clearance headed back over the defence to a forward running on, who rounded the St Pair keeper really well to score, and the second was one of those goalmouth melees with another poor clearance played back into the melting pot.

However that wasn’t the most exciting part of the match. This was really a grusge match between two teams who clearly hated each other, and the referee had his work cut out to keep order. How the teams finished with 11 on each side is beyond me. The Saussey player who scored the first goal – he had loads of skill for this level and St Pair gave him some rough treatment, to which he responded quite often in a manner that had he done so on the public highway he would have been given 30 days without the option. On a couple of occasions his team-mates, and once even the referee, had to drag him away from some unpleasantness and eventually he was substituted for 15 minutes to calm down.

And he wasn’t the only one whose behaviour left something to be desired so no-one should think that I’m singling him out. Several of the other players ought to have a close look at their own behaviour on the pitch too.

Still it all adds to the atmosphere I suppose.

Talking of unpleasantness, I shall be very unpleasant if I lay my hands of the person who sent me a text message at about 06:00 this morning. On Sunday, my day of rest too!

But badger that for a game of soldier, I went back to sleep until 09:30. And quite right too.

And this morning I’m not ashamed to say that I did nothing whatever. After all, it IS Sunday.

After lunch it was the football, and then back here it was more football of course as I mentioned at the start.

Tea, rather late because of the football, was pizza of course and I have to say that it was the best that I have ever made. Just for a change, the base came clear of the greaseproof paper without any problems at all. And the rest was excellent too.

A late tea meant a late walk. And the temperature has dropped again considerably. And now I’m going to bed.

But we’ll finish where we started – with the football on the internet. And I’m really glad that I bought this television because it makes such a difference watching it on the big screen.

Saturday 24th February 2018 – HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO ME!

And it was so nice to receive so many greeting from so many different people.

And it’s so nice to be here too. It’s been a long, hard road this last 27 months or so and there’s plenty more to come as regular readers of this rubbish will recall.

But despite everything, I wasn’t here last night. I was away with the fairies.

I’m not sure now who I was with at the start of last night’s travels but it quickly developed rather distressingly into a family affair and I don’t need that right now. But first I was with two other people – whom I forget right now – and I can’t remember what it was that we were actually doing. But it had snowed quite heavily and there was plenty about. All of these kids were enjoying themselves in the snow and we quickly organised them into two teams, one of boys and one of girls, and arranged for them to have a snowball fight. My father made an appearance and made a ribald remark, to which I replied that the boys were at the top of the hill and the girls at the bottom, and no doubt they would all meet in the middle at some point in the fullness of time. But what depressed me was that here the kids were, having no end of harmless fun and the headlines on the local radio news programme were all about “gangs of marauding youths rampaging through the town” – and it was nothing like that at all.
From there we repaired to my brother’s house. He was having all kinds of printer issues so I spent a while examining everything. It appeared that he was putting too much paper in, for a start, and was aligning it wrongly so that only one of the guide wheels was picking up the paper, and so pulling it in off-centre. So I told him what to do and showed him how to do it, and left him to it. Half an hour later he told me that it was still doing it, so I went to see. And not only had he changed the printer from the one that we had used before, he had the bad habit of pulling backwards on the paper – just like you would do with the elastic of a catapult – just before the printer went to drag it in. And so the paper missed.
Next stop was my niece. She was printing her right-wing revolutionary tracts in a kind of purple-red ink but she too was having printing issues. Her scanner had an automatic feed but it was feeding all of the papers in at a time rather than feeding them in one by one as it was supposed to. And as a result we ended up there for hours having to feed them in one by one by hand.

And it was cold in the living room too when I awoke. The temperature outside had fallen to minus 1°C outside during the night. And while that’s a far cry from the minus 16C and minus 19°C that we used to have in the Auvergne, it’s nevertheless the coldest that I had recorded since I’ve been here.

After the medication and breakfast and so on, I had a shower and then went off to the shops. And I spent more than I intended too too. I’ve let supplies run down a little this last few weeks and I needed to stock up somewhat.

So LIDL And LeClerc felt the benefit of my largesse, as did NOZ. I treated myself to three DVDs – an obscure spaghetti wewtern and a couple of 1950d cowboy series collections. As well as that, there was a kind of shoulder bag thing, quite small but with several pockets and just the right size for the new camera and telephoto lens. Only €4:99 too.

Almost every petrol station had a queue at it this morning too, and so as I was quite low I fuelled up with diesel. And then had a close encounter with a motorist who decided to reverse out of a car parking space without looking, right in front of Caliburn.

Back here, I … errr … had a relax for a while and so consequently had rather a late lunch. And then set about to organise a load of washing. However I was interrupted as one usually is when one is in a rush so I was rather late going out.

Liz and Terry had invited me for a Birthday tea so I went for a good chat too. Liz made me a nice vegan birthday cake but with no candles on it. Apparently she’s rather concerned about Global Warming. I did tell her that these days you work backwards and count the years that I have left, but that cut no ice with Liz.

ON the way back the floodlights were on at Cerences so I stopped to watch the last 20 minutes of football. I couldn’t tell you who they were playing because the guy whom I asked mumbled something that I couldn’t understand. So I asked him again, and he repeated it in exactly the same fashion so I’m none the wiser now.

And in the time that I was there nothing exciting happened either.

So now my birthday is over. And I’m off to bed. Will I still be here next year? Who knows. But what I do know is that my next six-month session of treatment starts at 08:50 on Thursday 15th March.

I am not looking forward to that at all.

Friday 23rd February 2018 – AND YET ANOTHER …

… mystery is resolved today.

And I’ll tell you about it in a little bit.

But first, let me tell you about last night. Although I didn’t get to bed as early as I would have liked, I was still right away with the fairies almost from the word “go”. And I did go on my travels too during the night.

And when I awoke suddenly at 06:15 I thought to myself that I would remember all of the details about this.

But a lot can happen in the five minutes between going back to sleep at 06:15 and the alarm awakening you at 06:20. But what I can remember is that a group of us went a-shopping in different place and when we compared our articles ad the prices that we had paid, they were so wildly fluctuating that we were convinced that something was wrong somewhere.

It was a struggle to leave the bed, and the leisurely start didn’t help much to get me going. But I was jolted out of my reverie by an urgent appeal.

A friend of a friend of a friend has some kind of website with some kind of chatroom facility on it, and he’s changed the chat program for another one and although he could make it work, he couldn’t explain the mechanism to anyone else, even after two days of trying to draft something.

And so I spent the morning looking at this chat program and as luck would have it, it’s based on something that was pretty common 20 years ago and a testament to the idea that “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”. And, as it happened, I happened to know all about it because I worked with it extensively during the period 2003-2007 during another existence.

And so having refreshed myself with the program quickly, I spent the morning writing a tutorial for it.

The problem was that the one that came with the program is, well, let’s just say “complicated”. And people don’t want anything that is complicated. The truncated attention span of the MTV generation doesn’t run that far and they’ll just walk away. So I had to express it all in about 10 or 12 simple bullet points.

That took me up to lunch, which was another butty, and then I … err … had a little relax. And a little later, another session with the European Photograph Mountain.

And then we went for a walk.

And beautiful weather it was too and so I took myself off around the headland.

On the car park by the lighthouse was a digger digging a trench, and I fell in with a couple of workmen. It seems that, at long last, fibre-optic cable has come to Granville and they are laying the cables.

For once, I’m going to be at the head of the queue for something rather than at the tail end, as I was back on the farm, but when you consider that my first encounter with fibre-optic internet service was back over 20 years ago in Brussels, then maybe it’s not all that much to crow about.

My walk though was considerably extended because away in the distance I could see that myastery ship of yesterday back in the harbour.

So seeing as it was such a nice day I continued on with my walk and went down to the harbour for a closer look.

She is indeed called La Grande Ancre and is indeed out of Cherbourg. But apart from that, I’ve not been able to find anything about her at all, except that back in 2005 she assisted at a shipwreck off the Iles de Chausey, rescued the survivors and towed the damaged boat here to Granville

And while I was there admiring La Grande Ancre, two men from the harbour office came from the port office to liberate a pontoon that was in the way of something.

And so seizing my opportunity I pounced on them. I’ve always said that if you want to know the answer to a question, you have to ask the question. And so I did.

And no the mystery is solved.

The lock gate that we have seen is only temporary and will be replaced in two or three weeks by the new ones.

And as for how it works, it’s on a horizontal pivot and simply folds flat on the bottom of the harbour when the tide is in.

So now we know.

Back here I had a coffee and then SHOCK! HORROR! I did some vacuuming. The place was still littered with confetti from the carnaval and it was getting on my wick. It filled the dust container of my vacuum cleaner (it’s only a smallish one) and I had to work out how to empty it. But at least the place looks a little better now.

After the guitar session it was tea time, and that was frozen lentil and green pepper curry from a couple of months ago. And delicious it was too. And once more, I took the route along the clifftop outside the walls for my evening walk.

Now I’m going to have a glass of lemonade and an early night (I hope). And a pleasant dream too.

Thursday 22nd February 2018 – TWO MEN …

… went past my window this afternoon.

And that was something of a surprise because I live on the first floor about 25 feet above the ground.

But it was no mystery when I went out to see what was going on.

There’s a cherry-picker out at the back with two men in attendance, looking at the guttering and the corner of the roof on the Foyer des Jeunes Travailleurs next door.

My guess is that the vicious winds that we’ve been having over the past couple of months have dislodged something important and now is the time to fix things.

What was a mystery was how I managed to forget completely and totally where I had been during the night. When the first alarm went off I could remember it but in the panic to be out of bed before the second alarm went off, well, that was that I’m afraid.

We had the usual slow start to the morning and while I was waiting for the medication to work I attacked the European Photograph Mountain for an hour or so and freed off another few GB of memory space on there. If I keep up like this, the disk will be empty.

A little later I went for my Thursday shower and general clean-up. And having done that, I hit the streets.

My perambulations took me down to the harbour of course, and there I just missed the raising of the drawbridge or whatever they do to it.

And we have a new ship in port, and I’ll have to make further enquiries about this one because it looks extremely interesting, having a van the size of Caliburn anchored to the deck.

Here she is; just joining the queue to leave port. I wasn’t early enough to see her when she was tied up.

With not having the telephoto lens with me, and being too far away to take a decent shot, I had to make the best of the job that I could.

I couldn’t read her name correctly because of all of the equipment dangling over the stern, but it looks as if she’s called La Grande Ancre out of Cherbourg.

There’s no reference of her on the internet that I’ve been able to find and she’s not in the port records either. So I’m not quite sure how I’m going to track her down.

I carried on to LIDL as usual and didn’t buy anything special. But being fed up of soup right now, I’ve bought some proper bread and lettuce and I’ll be making myself some butties for the foreseeable future. And much to my surprise, at lunchtime I found that I could actually eat them. It took a while, but there we are.

This afternoon I was feeling the strain of my walk. I’d made it all the way up the hill without stopping which is quite a feat and I knew that I would pay for that. But it didn’t stop me going out for my afternoon walk in the sunshine. It really was nice, although a bit windy.

Back here, I crashed out yet again, which is no surprise of course. And then I had a session on the guitar.

Tea was a stuffed pepper which was really nice of course, and then my evening walk. And 116% of my daily activity too, which is good news.

And so maybe an early night. And if I go anywhere during the night I’ll try to remember where it was.

Wednesday 21st February 2018 – AS PROMISED …

… I’ve retaken the photographs that bombed so spectacularly yesterday.

Here we have the men working in the tidal harbour messing about with the mooring chains, and there’s also one of the sunken boats that I mentioned yesterday. They seem to be making no effort to salvage that.

Yes, it was a beautiful afternoon today, a little cold and windy though but nice blue skies and it was a pleasure to walk down to the harbour, seeing that I didn’t have much else to do.

And with the camera, now fully charged, and the telephoto lens, there’s a really good view of what they are doing at the harbour entrance.

There’s some kind of guillotine gate to retain the water, and I’m not sure whether it sinks into the ground or is lifted out by the crane when the tide is coming in. I’ve certainly never seen it dangling.

And the pressure is behind it must be phenomenal. With a traditional hinged door, the pressure of the water behind it keeps it closed. But this must be tilting about dreadfully, the way that it’s pivoted

One thing that I didn’t do was to beat the second alarm this morning. I’d heard the first one of course but then I must have gone back to sleep because Billy Cotton summoned me from my reverie. And if I’d been anywhere eon my travels during the night I can’t remember now.

We had the usual leisurely start to the day and then I began to attack the European Photograph Mountain. Despite having tidied it up quite considerably, I’m still coming across things that totally surprise me. Like a directory hidden deep in the bowels of the hard drive with over 8GB of photos in it that are quite possibly quadruplicates of stuff that I’ve organised earlier.

And despite all of this, there is still some substantial amount of files that I can’t yet find which ought to be around here somewhere.

For a change I remembered to rescue the soup from the freezer for lunch, and then I attacked the missing blog entry for Saturday. That’s now on line, if you would care to look back a few days.

And then we had my walk down to the harbour and the deathly (and I do mean deathly) struggle back up the steps to here. It’s not looking so good right now.

And that reminds me.

When I was seriously ill before and they gave me my first lot of treatment, it was a three-month course. And when it was discovered that it had failed, they gave me another three-month course. This time, they have told me that it’s a six-month course. That, I suppose, speaks volumes in itself. It’s a very depressing thought.

Back here I had a coffee and some more of my chocolate, and then fighting off the urge to crash out, I attacked the missing blog entry for Sunday. That’s done too, so you have several now, all for the price of one, you lucky people.

That still left plenty of time for a play about on the bass guitar, and I managed to work out the bass line to Deep Purple’s “Strange Kind of Woman”. I’d almost forgotten all about that. And I’m trying to work out the bass line to Lindisfarne’s “No Time To Lose” – which is confusing to say the least. But I’ll get there

Tea was the rest of the oven chips, beans and a vegan burger. And I went out for a walk afterwards, first time for several weeks that I’ve followed the muddy path on the outside of the walls. It’s been dry since Sunday, much to everyone’s surprise.

And I’ve had a good look on Amazon too. I’ve left both of my guitar tuners back on the farm, and I need some new strings for the bass. What with one thing or another I’m building up quite a shopping list.

Still, it IS nearly my birthday … HINT HINT.

Tuesday 20th February 2018 – THE ONE PROBLEM …

… with having a really major crash-out during the day is that when it comes to bed-time, you just aren’t ready for sleep. So never mind 23:30 – at 01:20 I was still wide-awake and reading something on the laptop.

And when you do go to bed and finally fall asleep, then you fail to be up and about by the time that the second alarm goes off.

Mind you, I’d been off on my travels again. And weird travels they were too. It was the story of some little cartoon-character marionette who was the butt of the humour in this cartoon strip because he was always falling off objects and making a fool of himself. he had a couple of partners – one of them an “old man” rather in the style of Big Ears and the other one was a bird who was the “conscience” of the cartoon. And so in the new revitalised comic strip each character had a window where they introduced themselves, and in the fourth window were signs that the three characters had decamped rather quickly, with a speech bubble appearing from offstage saying “and I’m a bear”.

I ought to do this stuff for a living.

Which reminds me – if you have enjoyed what I’ve been writing or want to express your gratitude for the effort that I put in on your behalf, why not make your next purchase from Amazon via the links on the sidebar to the right? It costs you no extra but I receive a small commission on the sale and it helps with my web-hosting expenses.

Make sure you pick the correct box for your country.

After the medication and the breakfast, I had a little relax and then had some work to do. And there was plenty of it too.

First job was to download all of the files from the travelling laptop onto an external hard drive and then copy them to the one here. That’s not as simple as it might have been as there is stuff on this external hard-drive going back to 2014. This meant that I had to review it all, categorise it and either copy it over or delete it. And this led to confusion when I had two files of the same name, each one with different amendments.

Another task that I needed to perform was the result of a total mystery. There’s a site on the internet that I access with quite some regularity but for some reason about two weeks ago it gave me a “403 error” message – “you are not authorised to access this directory from this server”, even though it’s a root directory.

And so after much trial and quite a few errors, I abandoned the site which was a shame, because it had been of quite some use to me and I’ve not subsequently been able to find another with similar information. But when I was in Leuven with the travelling laptop, I found that I could access it as normal.

And so back here this morning, I tried to access it with the travelling laptop. But no luck whatever. Back to the 403 error message.

But there’s an open wi-fi network from the Foyer des Jeunes Travailleurs that I can access with a little configuration. And so I configured the travelling laptop to access that network and, to my surprise, I’m back in.

It seems that my network provider doesn’t like this particular site – the blockage is at their end, not at the receiver’s end. And I’ve no idea why because it’s not as if it’s a “black” site or anything like that. It’s a total mystery to me.

After lunch, I had a shower, a shave and a change of clothes. I need to look my prettiest best because I was going out.

The tide was right out when I set off, and so I went down to the tidal basin to see what I could see.

And would you believe it? Although you probably would. The battery in the camera went flat just as I was about to take a photo. So you’ll have to make do with the photos off the new smartphone.

But the quality of these images is rubbish, especially on telephoto or zoom, so I’ll have to replace them in due course.

The mystery of what the digger and the men were doing in the tidal harbour is resolved, thanks to a local yokel, who turned out to be a very vocal local yokel indeed.

What the digger was doing was dragging for the anchor chains for the boats that are moored in the tidal basin. It seems that many of them have sunk into the mud, taking the odd small boat with them.

Now that they have been uncovered, they can be examined, repaired or replaced as necessary.

The quality of this photo is really so poor that you can’t tell what it’s supposed to be.

But in fact it appears that they have installed a kind of guillotine lock gate installed that rises up to hold back the water when the tide is out.

I’m not sure whether it’s a permanent or a temporary arrangement, but it seems to be working after a fashion and there’s quite a lot of work going on around it.

And another mystery is solved too.

Remember the big crane in the Boulevard des Terreneuviers? It seems that they are knocking down this house in the rue du Port and intending to rebuild it with something else.

The crane is for handling the deliveries of building materials.

And at least the camera on the phone can produce something that might just about be reasonable for this close-up view. Right now, I’m not impressed at all with my photographic equipment.

Down at the Post Office I finally sent off the letters that I had typed before going to Leuven. And that was an adventure too as I struggled to come to grips with the self-service technology.

And to my dismay I found that I had actually purchased a stamp for a letter that was postage-free. That upset me.

The Carrefour was next, and I was struggling for shopping there as they haven’t had a delivery for a week. I had to go to the fruit shop for some more expensive bananas, but at least they have some fresh coriander for my carrot soup.

Back here I had a coffee and some more German vegan chocolate and then, shame as it is to say it, I was away with the fairies again.

18:45 once more when I finally surfaced, and that at least gave me sufficient time for a strum on the guitar.

Tea was oven chips, beans and a vegan burger, and then I went off in the wind for my evening stroll.

Now I’m going to try for an early night, although how that’s going to work with the good sleep I’ve had this afternoon I really don’t know. And that also means that you’ll have to wait a little longer for your missing two days.

Monday 19th February 2018 – NOW WASN’T THAT JUST SO NICE?

:To be back in my own really comfortable bed just like that, even though it was cold. And having left the alarm call on for 07:20, I could – and did – have the Sleep Of The Dead. And I deserved it too.

I’d been on my travels too during the night – investigating a situation where one of the Maths teachers at this school was up to some kind of subversion and we had to examine their teaching techniques to see if we could discover who it might be. And yet before we could begin we were caught up in an incident outside the school which was clearly related to what we were trying to do – one of the teachers concerned may well have been working on the public at large and so our investigations had to encompass this kind of behaviour too, which immediately enlarged the scope of our enquiries outside the original boundaries and for which we didn’t have enough staff.

After the usual leisurely start to the morning, I attacked the tidying up. Well, sort-of. I’d bought a pile of stuff back from Leuven and this all needed sorting out and stashing away. And then there were a few things that I needed to catch up with, as well as finding someone on-line with whom I needed to speak – and that took a while.

And then I made an unfortunate discovery.

I hadn’t only gone away and left the water heater switched on (it’s on a timer so it’s not too bad) I’d left the fridge door slightly open. And so that had been running non-stop and the freezer compartment was iced up to such an extent that it had pushed open the door. That meant of course that I had to attack that so that I could close the door and calm down the fridge.

Onion soup was for lunch – I’d completely forgotten about the tomato soup that I had stuck in the freezer before I went.

This afternoon I had to download all of the files off the travelling computer (the little lightweight notebook) and copy them onto the laptop that I use at home. I hadn’t finished doing that when it was time for walkies, so I put that to one side and out I went.

The weather was downright miserable though. We’d had a hanging cloud all day and it was one of those clingy wet kinds of cloud that makes you feel all miserable.

Nevertheless, there were a few people out there walking, or, rather, sloshing through the mud, and you couldn’t see all that much away into the distance.

Peering through the gloom though I could however see that this dredging operation in the tidal basin was still ongoing. It looks as if they are going to be in there for the duration.

And I do have to say that I wonder what is the point of it all.

Back here, I had a coffee and some chocolate with the intention of sitting down and cracking on with the file transfer. That was at 16:30. But the next thing that I remember was that it was 18:45. I’d crashed out for over two hours.

Personally, I blame all of the effort that I had undertaken in Belgium. I left here on Wednesday and returned on Sunday. And on ever day I was well over the 100% effort on my fitbit. I’m not as young as I used to be, and my health is deteriorating as you know. I can’t keep on going like I used to.

And so having missed out on my session on the guitar, it was pizza for tea – and a good one it was too. And then my usual walk, where I spent a good 10 minutes giving a stroke and a cuddle to my long-haired furry friend in the old town.

Now I’m heading for an early night. I have lots to do tomorrow.

And don’t worry about the missing couple of days on this blog. I’ll finish downloading the files off the travelling laptop and then I can complete the entries.

Always assuming that I don’t crash out again, of course.

Sunday 18th February 2018 -FOR A REASON …

… that I didn’t understand at first, I slept the Sleep Of The Dead last night.

But I awoke with a start at about 06:40. I realised that I had changed the time of the alarm yesterday so I knew that it wasn’t yet time to awaken, but after about two minutes it hit me that today is Sunday and the alarm was programmed not to ring. And so instead of the usual Sunday morning procedure where I try my best not to awaken, we had the opposite procedure with me trying not to go back to sleep.

And then another thought hit me too.

All throughout the night there had been complete and utter silence from next door. I hadn’t awoken once. Perhaps they weren’t out partying last night at all, but had left the place yesterday morning.

I wondered whether to do a lap of honour.

I’d been on my travels too. Nina, a former girlfriend of mine, was to put in an appearance and so I needed to tidy up Caliburn, especially the back if a little session of indoor alligator wrestling (unlikely) were to take place. I also had to do some more tidying up elsewhere and this involved Dismantling the hi-fi system. Some woman helped me do this because it wasn’t easy, with cables, headphone leads and all of this kind of thing all tangled up into some kind of spaghetti mess that we were desperately endeavouring to sort out.

So with my noisy neighbours apparently having left yesterday, and having had a good night’s sleep as a result (and about time too) I was ready for anything.

Well, almost.

I made a mistake in the boulangerie. To me, a baguette is a baguette, but apparently not in Leuven. Had Jesus ordered five of the ones that were given to me there would have been no miracle about feeding the 5000. I have enough to feed myself for a week.

I took my leave of the guy at the hotel. He asked me if I’d enjoyed my stay. I explained the issues that I’d had with my neighbours and he pulled a face. I told him that I would see him in a few weeks time, and hopefully he would have a quieter room for me…

Emerging from the alleyway at the back of the hotel (to save walking all the way round the block) I burst out laughing when I saw the boulangerie.

We’ve all seen (and some of us have stood in) the queues outside the bakers’ shops in Poland and Bulgaria, places like that under the Communists. And here in Belgium we have exactly the same situation.

Of course, maybe not for the same reasons, but it’s amusing nevertheless to see it.

My luck was in at Leuven station. The earlier express to Brussels was held up while they endeavoured to negotiate a wheelchair and its occupant aboard, and so I leapt on board too.

There’s no doubt whatever that the guy was disabled, but when I saw him a little later walking around the train I thought that he might have given the porter at the station a little more help. But then, that might have meant that the train would have left earlier and I would have had a cold and miserable wait on the station for the next train.

And I managed to drop my woolly hat – the one that goes on my woolly head – in the train and some woman shouted after me as I was about to alight.

And although it was a cold and miserable wait in the waiting room at Bruxelles-Midi, at least we had some entertainment. For police officers manhandling … "PERSONhandling" – ed … two boys out of the restricted area. “I didn’t steal anything” wailed one of the boys but the police are the same the whole world over and took no notice whatsoever.

The TGV previous to mine had been 10 minutes late but my train actually pulled in early, which made a nice change, and so I was one of the first to clamber aboard which is always helpful.

Old, tired and a little tatty around the edges. And the train wasn’t much better either. These first-generation TGVs have done quite a lot of work.

There were a surprising number of empty seats too – probably 80 or 85% occupancy. My experience of TGVs is that they are usually packed to the gunwhales.

We arrived at Paris Gare du Nord bang on schedule, which is just as well seeing that my train to Granville has been advanced half an hour because of the engineering works on the line. There’s no time to loiter.

But even more importantly, I arrived totally intact with nothing else missing from my trousseau. That makes a change after the events of the past few weeks.

But this train thing is going to become an issue in early course. They have a rolling programme of modernisation of the stations along Line 4 – the direct line between Paris Gare du Nord and Paris Montparnasse-Vaugirard. And on 17th March the platforms on the line here will be taken out of service.

There’s always an alternative route, like Line 5 to the Place d’Italie and then Line 6, but it’s complicated and takes much longer. And time is tight.

And in case you’re wondering, it is a different train from the one that I photographed in Brussels. Our train was made up of two train sets coupled together and they were of different classes.

I arrived at Paris Montparnasse-Vaugirard and my waiting room with 20 minutes to spare. And found a seat next to a girl from California who spoke French with a remarkably good accent.

You’ll remember last time I was here and the “incident” involving the woman and her mother. Here, we had quite an ugly incident where a couple arrived after boarding for their train had completed but before it had left, and they were refused admission to the platform. The abuse, insults and vitriol that they were giving the staff was outrageous.

Just to make things clear, it states quite definitely on your ticket that you should be present on the platform no later than 2 minutes before the departure time, and I’m sure that people don’t realise just how much of a walk it is to Vaugirard. Apart from the 1.3 kilometres of foot passage from the Metro (I’ve measured it), the platforms at Vaugirard are right down at the end of Montparnasse’s Platform 23, which is a very long platform. It’s a marathon hike and you won’t do it all in a couple of minutes.

Eventually we could board our train so I took my leave of my companion and had another nice travelling companion for some of the way home.

I left my seat though a couple of miles out because at a certain point there’s a really good view of the Eiffel Tower and I wanted to get an eiffel of it.

It’s not come out very clearly because there’s only so much possibility with a swaying train and a camera shot through a dirty double-glazed window.

After my companion left I settled down to my butties and then dozed almost all the way to Granville.

We arrived on time, which is late these days because of the engineering works, and I had to help a woman with her suitcase (what help would I be?) as she struggled with a screaming infant.

And then through the drizzly rain (quite a change from the weather in Paris) I had a weary, dreary walk home. It’s definitely taking a lot out of me. If my health deteriorates further (which it’s bound to do) I’ll have to remember not to come home on a Sunday. The buses don’t run on Sunday.

Back here after I eventually arrived, I crashed out on the sofa with a coffee and was out of it completely until about 20:30. I missed tea of course, but I did have a bag of nuts and raisins.

And with the fitbit telling me that I’ve done 80% of my day’s activity, I crawled out of the apartment for a lap around the old town. When I came back I was on 102% so that’s enough for today.

I’ve done enough. I’m off to bed where I shall sleep for a week.

Saturday 17th February 2018 – I’M A MISERABLE PLEADER.

Yes, I’m definitely losing my touch.

Maybe it’s trying to do it in Flemish that’s the problem, but on the other hand being a miserable ignorant foreigner who has travelled for for no avail usually works wonders.

But retournons to our moutons as they say back home.

Yet another miserable night as my neighbours awoke me when they returned home at 02:00 and carried on their party until 04:00 or whatever. And as I have said before, it’s not really their noise that’s the issue – it’s more the fact that i’m a light sleeper and the walls are very thin.

I compensated by setting the alarms for 07:30 and 07:40 instead of the usual time one hour earlier. After the medication and breakfast, I had a shower and change of clothes and then attacked a few things that needed my attention.

Alison came through at 10:30. She was just about to leave home so that gave me 15 minutes to gather up my wits (it doesn’t usually take me that long these days as you know) and go to loiter on the corner at the end of the street.

She arrived on time and we hit the road for our day out. She had made several suggestions as to where to go (I always have this problem of people telling me where to go) but the one that stood out above all of the others was Aachen of course – in Germany.

The thing that I like about living in Belgium is that you have a choice of four countries – France, Luxembourg, Germany and the Netherlands – on your doorstep. Luxembourg at 100 minutes is the farthest away and the rest are a lot closer than that.

The weather wasn’t what I expected though. Considering that it was Germany in February I was hoping for sub-zero temperatures and several feet of snow. Instead, we had a glorious Spring day with a beautiful blue sky.

I felt rather disappointed.

Alison is off skiing in a few days so she wanted to look at some of the clothing in the big Sports shop on the edge of the city centre. So that was to be our first port of call

But we were distracted by a café that we hadn’t noticed before. It wasn’t the vegan options on offer but the fact that sitting in the window were four rather large cats.

This place is called the “Katzencafé” and the idea is that you can go in there for a coffee and cuddle a kitten. And on chatting to a few friends later I was told that there are these cat cafés springing up all over the place these days. I’m all in favour of that idea of course except that these cats were rather aloof.

Still never mind. The coffee was good and we enjoyed the company.

There was nothing that took Alison’s fancy in the Sports shop (at least, not at a reasonable price, that is) and so we went up the road to the Muller supermarket where I bought some more of that white vegan chocolate that I like

We found a square that we hadn’t noticed before where there was a good view of the rear of the town hall and the rear of the cathedral.

I’d not seen the town hall from this angle before, and I do have to say that it was quite impressive.

As an aside … "you’ll get used to this" – ed … the German for "Town Hall" is Rathaus, which is rather appropriate, as I’m sure you’ll all agree.

Our new little route took us on an exploration of the city in places that we hadn’t visited and past sites that I hadn’t previously seen. And that’s always good news.

And to my delight, I discovered a Bio shop that sold the very brand of vegan cheese that I like. They only had two packs of it though, and now they don’t have any at all.

I also discovered a huge model railway shop and we passed a good half-hour in there. I would love to have a little N-gauge layout back at home, but not at the prices they are asking. There was an HO/OOgauge Big Boyof the type that we all know and love and which was on sale at an astonishing €2599.

Passing via several other shops we made it to the Source where I had another drink of the hot sulphuric water. It tastes disgusting of course, but there’s no point in going to the Waters if you have no intention of taking them, even if you have been misinformed.

Unfortunately there wasn’t all that much of a photo opportunity seeing that the building was cluttered with pedestrians and street furniture and the like. I shall have to come along here at 05:00, and bring a Stihl Saw with me too.

The market stall that was selling those delicious fennel-flavoured sweets last time – that wasn’t here today which was bad news. And although our walk was quite interesting there wasn’t really all that much to see that was exciting.

And so, feeling the cold and the exhaustion and the hunger, we detained to the little restaurant that we know – the one by the Roman remains. Alison had a spicy chicken meal and I had the quinoa salad.

Being duly fed and watered, we set off for a slow wander back to the car. But Alison drew my attention to the rays of the early evening sun that were just catching the clock tower right by the town hall.

Alison reckoned that it was worth a photograph, and who was I to argue with that?

Back in the car we headed for Leuven in the early evening sunset – our journey being interrupted by the scenic tour of the roadworks halfway along the highway. And when I arrived back I had a coffee and a little … errr … relax.

Round about 19:30 I set off for the football ground. OH Leuven were playing KFCO Beerschot-Wilrijk, a team that I have yet to see, so I was quite looking forward to the match.

But hereby hangs a tale.

With there having been “certain incidents” in the past, the whole ground and surrounding streets were surrounded by police and admission was by prebooked ticket only. And no amount of pleading on my part would convince anyone at all – Police, admission booth, security staff, stadium management (yes, I got to see them all) would change their minds.

Of course, arguing with Belgian administration – particularly from a position of weakness – is a pointless argument as anyone who has ever tried it will tell you. But you have to go through the motions anyway – I don’t give up without a fight.

However in this case, I was singularly unsuccessful and repaired to a bar across the street where several other people, including someone who had come from Italy, in the same position as me were gathered to watch the match on television.

I’ve never understood the fascination for watching football on TV. Yes, fair enough if it’s the only way of seeing a game, but it’s nothing like watching the match in the flesh – nothing at all. There’s no atmosphere for a start, and the focus of the camera cuts out all of the interesting stuff going on in the background.

So at the final whistle, I headed back home again in the cold – to total silence next door. Perhaps they are out partying and they’ll be back at something silly like 03:00. So I’m going to bed quick and grab a couple of hours sleep.

Friday 16th February 2018 – MY NEIGHBOURS …

… are getting on my wick.

I dunno what they are doing in their room but involves noise – noise that goes on until 04:00 in the morning.

It’s not as if it’s a very loud noise but the walls are paper-thin here and as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, I’m a very light sleeper.

And so with my noisy neighbours next door, I had no qualms whatever about my very noisy alarm going off at 06:20 this morning. Or the noisy repeat at 06:30.

But despite everything I was off on my travels during the night.In a shed where a group of young kids had barricaded themselves in to protect themselves against some kind of monster. But they had left their pony outside in its stable in the field and someone was wondering if they should protect that too. But another kid piped up that if you spread out your forces too thinly to try to protect everything you end up protecting nothing. So they didn’t. And the monster’s attack on this shed was very half-hearted and the pony was unscathed.
A little later, these kids were looking for their black kitten that had escaped. The search involved wading up to their knees in some very muddy water much to the amusement of some nearby workmen, and this became even more amusing when one of the kids had made it into the water and the kitten was spotted running across the top of a brick wall nearby.

After breakfast and the usual pause to let the medication do its stuff (yes, I obtained another prescription when I was at the hospital) I went off to the railway station.

There was an Intercity to Brussels that was running late, and it pulled into the station just as I arrived so I leapt on board and settled down in a comfortable corner with my book.

And as a result of the late arrival of the train, I for one arrived in Brussels at the Gare Central before time, which is always very nice.

The metro was quite painless too – took me all the way to Merode in minutes.

Consequently I was early at my health insurance people, even though we had another distraction.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that I have a thing about “parking”, and there are no finer examples of bad parking to be had than in Brussels.

Here we have a delivery van stopped to unload a couple of parcels and so he’s blocking the street as he double-parks.

But hed he not been so lazy, he could have advanced not even 10 metres and parked his van for two minutes in front of the dark blue Peugeot.

But obviously walking that extra 10 metres is far too difficult for the poor dear.

So back to the plot.

I presented myself at the reception.
“You’ll have to wait – it’s not 09:30 yet”
“But …”
“You’ll have to wait”.
And so I waited
At 09:29 “it’ll be open in a minute. Can you show me your badge?”
“I don’t have a badge – I’m a foreign visitor”
“Then you’ll need to go to reception to fill in a form”.
“I know. That’s what I was trying to do when you stopped me”

Eventually I was allowed in and, to be frank, I needn’t have bothered. When I’ve been there before, they’ve been most kind and considerate in that office.

But not today. I dunno what’s the matter with them but they just seemed to be more keen to see the back of me. I didn’t accomplish half of the things that I intended to do.

But instead, I went for awalk across the park and down to the Rond-Point Schuman. It was a beautiful morning.

The park is the Parc de la Cinquantenaire – the 50th Anniversary Park, and was established by King Leopold II in 1880 (although the huge arch wasn’t built until 1905) on the site of a military parade ground for the nearby barracks, to host an exhibition to celebrate 50 years of Belgian independence.

Several subsequent exhibitions were held here until the new site out by the Atomium was developed.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that I have mentioned parrots in Belgium before.

There was an aviary in the city that was bombed during the war and all of the exotic birds escaped. Surprisingly, many of them survived the cold winters and went on to establish breeding colonies in the wild.

There are considerable flocks of these exotic birds all over the city these days, and here are two of the aforementioned sitting in a tree in the park. It’s hard to believe that this is a city in north-west Europe with a continental climate.

At the bank I picked up two of my cards (for some reason the third hadn’t been prepared and I’ll have to go back) and even more surprisingly, they work. That’s all of my financial issues resolved right now – for the time being. I can actually access my money now.

Back down on the metro to the Gare Centrale and Malou turned up on time.She’d been out on the Belgian coast for a holiday and was returning to Luxembourg. We’d agreed to meet up for coffee seeing as it’s been years since we last met.

We put the world to rights for a couple of hours and then we both went our separate ways. She on to Luxembourg and me back to Leuven.

There were still a few things that I had wanted to do here in Brussels like visit the railway museum, and this was what I had planned for this afternoon. But having had a bad night, I came home instead.

Via the Vegan shop in Leuven where I picked up some more vegan cheese. I came back here, made myself a cheese and tomato butty or two, and then … errr … relaxed for a while. I’d had a bad night.

18:00 saw me head off to the railway station for my train at 18:36. And because it was departing before 19:00 I had to pay full price and not a weekend saver ticket.

And the train was 20 minutes late coming in and – would you believe – 23 minutes later still in leaving (just missing the 45 minutes-late threshold for compensation) Which meant that I could have bought a weekend saver anyway.

We arrived in Lier 45 minutes late which meant that I had to scramble over the road for my big bag of chips for tea, and then scramble off in a hurry down the road to Het Lisp.

No prizes for guessing why I had come to Lier, of course.

There’s one game in the Belgian Second Division on a Friday night every week, and this week it’s the turn of Lierse SK against KSV Roeselare.

Lier is easily accessible from Leuven even late at night (or early in the morning) so it’s always a good choice of ground to visit.

With KSV Roeselare being the visitors, I was hoping that we might have the Battle of the Cheerleaders.

Both teams have cheerleaders, which is always very good for the morale, but I do have to say that the young ones of Roeselare can knock spots off the home team. Much better organised and much better choreographed.

But no such luck. It was just the Lierse SK cheerleaders here tonight. It’s better than nothing of course.

Cheerleaders we might have, but fans we didn’t seem to.

I’ve been to Lier and the Het Lisp Stadion on several occasions to see the football, but I don’t think that I’ve seen the ground as empty as this.

It’s not quite the “announcing the fan changes to the teams” that you have at Tubize, but it was disappointing all the same. And there wasn’t much in the way of atmosphere to compensate. It was all very subdued.

The supporters weren’t the only thing that was subdued either. The Lierse SK team played like they were half asleep. They had little enthusiasm, little attacking spirit and, so it seemed, little interest.

Strangely enough, Roeselare didn’t seem to be in all that much of an attackign mood either, content to move the ball around ahead of the defence.

It wasn’t until about the 25th minute when they first tried the ball over the top. And a player running in shot, the keeper could only parry it, and a Roeselare attacker followed up.

Roeselare still kept on pouring forward, and much to everyone’s surprise Lierse SK scored against the run of play.

Well into the second hald, the first time they tried one over the top and won a corner. From the corner we had a carbon copy of Roeselare’s goal.

The match still went on at a pedestrian pace from Lierse SK’s point of view and with about 10 minutes to go, Roeselare were awarded a penatly – which was saved.

This had the effect of switching on the current to the Lierse SK side and they started to attack. The final 10 or so minutes of the game were quite exciting.

In stoppage time, Lierse won a series of corners and had two (dubious) appeals for a penalty turned down. And so as you might expect, Roeselare roared upfield and scored the winner with almost the final kick of the game.

I was back on the station just in time to catch the earlier direct train to Leuven, which cheered me up no end. So I was back here before midnight.

But my neighbours are partying again. I think that it’s going to be another long night.

Thursday 15th February 2018 – THAT’S NOT SUCH GOOD NEWS

My blood count is now down to the critical level – almost.

It should be between 13.0 and 15.0 as you know, but recently it’s been hovering round about the 9.2 mark.

8.0 is the critical amount when the emergency services swing into action, and today it’s down to 8.2.

This should come as no surprise to anyone who has been following my adventures over the last few weeks. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that I was quite ill over Christmas and New Year and I’m still not back up yet.

So that plan now is that I’m going to have to undergo a series of blood transfusions – one per month in fact, for the next 6 months “and then we’ll see”.

That’s going to disrupt all of my plans.

Last night the old plan worked a charm. I took the laptop with me to bed to watch a Bulldog Drummond film in bed. And I managed about 10 minutes of it before I was away with the fairies.

And off on my travels too. Quite literally. I’d moved house and was living in a completely different town. And a letter came from one of the other inhabitants of my old place telling me how she knew about my relationship with the postwoman. I took hours to craft a very non-committal reply and was on the point of sending it when I thought to myself that it was easily open to misinterpretation nevertheless, and the easiest way to deal with the matter, seeing as whatever had happened in the past was to totally ignore the letter. And so I did. And instead I went for a walk and much to my surprise at the end of the High Street, which I hadn’t explored before, the road took a steep drop down to a nice bay where there were crowds of people having fun in the water. I went off for a look around and ended up on a grassy bank. Somehow I wasn’t able to reach the water at all.

Just for a change I was up quite early, and with no medication (because I had forgotten it as you know) I had an early breakfast and then a shower. And while I was under there I washed my clothes too.

After doing a few things I hit the streets and the shops. But I found another part of the old city walls that I hadn’t discovered previously, and so I followed them around for a while.

First stop was Kruidvat for some gelatine-free sweets, and then to the cheap shops like Zeeman and Wibra for a new jumper, but there was nothing doing.

At Sports Direct though, there were some more of the trousers that I like, but also some good-quality jumpers at a reduced price of €14:00 each, or 2 for €24:00. So they disappeared into my backpack along with a couple of pairs of trousers.

On the way up to the hospital I stopped at the bar to see if the guy who runs it whom I know was there, but he wasn’t. So I went on my way up the hill – very slowly.

You know what happened at the hospital because I told you just now, and then a very depressed and fed-up me headed into town. Alison wasn’t ready so I went for a coffee until she appeared.

We went to la Cucaracha and had another Mexican like last time, which was just as delicious, and then round for a coffee.

Afterwards she drove me back here which was very kind of her, and that’s my day finished.

It’s all so disappointing, but so what? I just have to get on with it. No point in brooding on it. Just like the defendant who found out that the judge of his case was only four feet tall – “these little things are sent to try us”.

Wednesday 14th February 2018 – I MADE IT …

… to Leuven without any disaster or without losing anything. So that has to be something to celebrate.

But it seems that I’ve forgotten to bring my medication, I forgot to turn off the water heater, and I seem to have omitted to bring with me the letter telling me the time of my appointment.

So we’re still going true to form, aren’t we?

never mind 06:00 – I was awake at 03:30. But of course there was no danger of my ever leaving my bed at that time. I must have gone back to sleep though because the alarm awoke me at 06:00 and I was out of bed before the second one went off.

Just for a change I didn’t take my medication – I need to be on the move quite smartly – so I had an early breakfast, tidied up somewhat and then took the rubbish to the bin outside.

Everything in the apartment was cleaned and bleached where appropriate, and I did some last minute packing before I hit the streets.

Just for a change it wasn’t raining and it only took me 25 minutes to make the station. So I had plenty of time to loiter around, and with the new touchpad on the coffee machine I could even have a coffee.

Now here’s a thing. On the train I had a bad attack of nausea and I’ve no idea why. But it soon cleared up and strangely enough I felt so much better as we sped through the snow to Paris.

Paris was surprisingly quiet and I was at the Gare du Nord in a new record of 40 minutes, and that included stopping to buy the tickets for the metro. I bought two – one for the return because I’m stuck for time on the return as regular readers of this rubbish will recall.

At the Gare du Nord I could eat my butties, and it’s bad news that the baguette that I bought yesterday didn’t last as well as the usual one that I buy and which was sold out.

Surprise, surprise! The TGV was half an hour late leaving Paris and we didn’t make up the time on the journey either. But it didn’t matter because at Brussels-Midi I only had enough time to buy a rail ticket to Leuven before an Inter-City express pulled in.

It’s freezing here – absolutely taters. And the heater in my little flat-hotel (which, for a change, has the bed upstairs) could be better.

But I had a coffee and then hit the shops. The Delhaize about 15 minutes walk away came up with stuff that I need while I’m staying here. And tea was baked potatoes with a tin of curried vegetables. Once I’d sorted out the electricity issues, I could make the microwave work.

Delicious it was too.

So now I’m off for an early night. I’ve done 124% of my daily exercise routine so I’m quite happy with that.

Tomorrow, we shall see what we shall see.

Tuesday 13th February 2018 – THE BEST-LAID SCHEMES O’ MICE AN’ MEN …

… gang aft agley, as the old saying goes.

And that’s certainly true of many people, particularly of me, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall only too well.

I’d had yet another decent sleep, and been to Brussels to see my old friend Enzo, who proudly told me that he had a job of work to do at 16:00. And that was a shame, as I also had a jo for him to do at 16:00. But never mind. With a smiling grace, he cheerfully accepted both jobs, so I left it to him as to how he was going to work it out. My next port of call was to wander around Nantwich to a small marquee where several expensive cars were on display. One of them was a Rolls-Royce – or maybe a Bentley – and the salesman was showing a surprising disinterest in his product. When I queried it with him, he told me that he has just been sacked for having made, in what he thought was a secure confidence, some kind of derogatory comment about the product that he was selling. It had reached the ears of his employers and they had told him that when he goes home at the end of the day, not to bother coming back. He was complaining that he now had no work to do, and so I told him that my friend Enzo had two jobs to do at the same time, and he wasn’t complaining.

I just about beat the second alarm, organised the medication and then had my breakfast. I put the heater on in the bathroom and was settling down waiting for the bathroom to warm up, and the telephone rang. Terry was once more having vehicle issues.

He’d been taken to a garage down in Avranches but had no way of returning home. So I quickly had a shower, set up the washing machine and then headed off down there.

Finding the garage was not easy, and then we had to wait ages while they sorted out all of the paperwork. As a result it wasn’t until midday that we arrived at Roncey. Luckily Liz was back from work so she made coffee and lunch and we had a good chat.

After that I headed home, only to find that all of the post offices are closed for Mardi Gras. So all of the letters that I had written yesterday – they’ll have to wait for a few days now.

Up to that point the weather had been absolutely gruesome – one of the worst days of the year. And that didn’t bode very well for the Carnaval procession. But dramatically, the clouds cleared and we even had a little sun.

Consequently I nipped down to the town to watch it all go by yet again, was once more pasted in confetti and had a couple of dances with a couple of female performers. That’s not like me, is it?

But I couldn’t keep it up for the rest of the afternoon and came back here, for a … errr … little relax.

For tea I finished off the tortillas and stuffing, with spicy rice, and then had my usual walk.

Tonnes more photos to edit and upload, something that I was planning to do this morning. But that will all have to wait now. I’m not sure when I’ll find the time now to get around to it.

But now it’s bed-time. I have an early start in the morning as you know. With it being Shrove Tuesday today, it must be Sheffield Wednesday tomorrow.

And as I’m writing this, I realise that, in the confusion, I have forgotten to do my urine sample for the hospital. So I won’t be taking the p155, which is a shame.

EPIC HALL

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