Wednesday 16th August 2017 – WE HAVEN’T FINISHED …

… with our series of calamities yet.

First thing is that the keyboard on the laptop has now seized. I’m not sure how that has happened – it must have been when I closed the lid in a hurry and trapped a pen in between the keys, and this has somehow triggered off the key-lock combination.

Having tried all kinds of combinations that I (and several gallant friends) could remember, it’s still stuck firmly solid.

I discovered this this morning when I went to type of the results of my travels during the night. I was in charge of two young girls – aged about 9 and 5 – and I had to make a sandwich for them. The 9 year-old was straightforward enough but for the younger one it was the tiniest lump of baguette with next-to-nothing on it. It was clear that this wasn’t going to do her much good but I told her to eat it and if it wasn’t enough she could have a bit more. She was quite clear that she needed more than this. Nevertheless, I told her to eat it “and then we’ll see”.

I was awake at 02:30 this morning but no chance of me staying awake, even had I wanted to. I went back to bed and to sleep. 05:00 was much more like it.

I’d put the Canadian mobile phone on charge in something of a forlorn hope last night. USB data cables clearly don’t work so I’d tried the mains charger and it seemed to have done the business.

But here’s the next problem – in that there’s no credit on it apparently even though I had put $100 on it just before leaving. And so that’s never right. Just one more thing sent to try me, I suppose.

And yet another calamity surrounds the hotel. I’ve stayed here before but that was due to having to leave here at about 05:00 long before breakfast would be ready. This time though, there’s no issues about breakfast so I was quite looking forward to it – only to find that the place doesn’t serve breakfast.

The nearest Tim Horton’s is a fair walk away but nevertheless off I trotted for bagels, coffee and orange juice.

While I was there, and having a think – which I occasionally do – WhatsApp came to mind. using the Tim Horton’s wi-fi service, I downloaded it and configured it on my Europe phone.

My European service provider supplies a service for North America at €29 per fortnight and this doesn’t work out to be much more expensive while I’m here than my Canadian phone supplier would be, and the interesting thing is that I can use that in the USA.

All I need now is for Rhys to tell me the final two digits of the phone number that he’s using so that I can check that I have it and add it in.

Off I trotted down the street to reserve my bus for New Brunswick, and much to my surprise and delight, there are evening buses at the times and on the days that I want them. So I’m off on Friday evening at 21:30 to arrive Saturday morning at 09:00. But there’s a wait at Ste-Foy and … err … 2 hours wait at Riviere-du-Loup.

Next stop was the Dollar Store to organise a North American USB transformer for the phone. It takes about a week to fully-charge off the laptop. And it came up trumps with that and some other stuff too.

And outside, we had a strange sight. Loads of nursery-age kids wandering around the streets with guardians and the like. A couple of groups were in multi-pushchairs like the old “knife box” stage buses of the 1870s and I wasn’t quick enough with the camera, but I was for this arrangement that I thought extremely interesting.

At Bell Telephones I found the reason for my difficulties. The contract that I have has been abolished and, not only that, an upgrade to the system has rendered my phone obsolete.

And when I told the people that I wasn’t interested in buying a new phone, they lost interest in me completely. So that’s the end of Bell Telephones, then. I can’t say that I’m sorry.

It did occur to me afterwards that this was the same Bell shop that threw me out a few years ago. Perhaps it’s just an issue with this place and its manager, but I couldn’t care less now.

Not too far away is a computer shop, so I popped in. And popped out again with the cheapest USB keyboard in the place. If this doesn’t work then I’m stuffed (and it clearly does, because that’s how I’m managing to type this).

I’d arranged to see Josée so off I went to her place of work. The street where she works is a strange one – there’s a southern half and a northern half, with a bit missing in the middle.

And so, of course, Brain of Britain walked along a street that passed through the gap in the street so I had gone miles beyond it before I realised. And so I had to retrace my steps.

That had given me an opportunity to see a part of the rue Sherbrooke that I had never seen before. You might all recognise what that it up there, because we’ve stood on that point a few times before.

That’s the belvedere up on Mount Royal where there is that stunning view over the city that we’ve photographed on a few occasions. We’ve not seen it from this angle before though.

And what we have here is the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts. We’ve not seen this building before either.

The First Nation totem pole – yes, I can go along with that, but the purpose of the pile of used vehicle tyres totally defeats me. It’s nothing that I would call Fine Art, but then regular readers of this rubbish will recall that I do have issues with this kind of thing.

Here’s a view that we all might recognise, because we’ve seen this before too. And had I known that Josée worked right here I would have been here in a flash without all of this messing about.

This is the park in the rue du Parc with Mount Royal park on the left and the Parc Jeanne Mance on the right; and Josée’s office backs onto the big skyscraper where I came in 2011 to talk to those guys about wind turbines and the like. It’s an uncomfortably small world these days.

And who was Jeanne Mance when she’s at home – if she ever is? She was the first lay (non-religious) nurse of the infant Montreal community and is the symbol of nursing here in the same way that Florence Nightingale is in the UK.

What with all of my prevarications, Josée had gone to lunch when I arrived and remembering that there was a “Subway” around the corner, I went and grabbed myself a butty too.

After lunch I finally met up with Josée. And being aware of my plight, she had brought in a spare mobile phone that she had lying around. Not only that, she knew a place where they would do a decent contract for a couple of months at a price far less than Bell could offer and with far more functions too.

That was well-worth a coffee so off we went for a drink and a chat and to catch up on everything that had happened since we had last seen each other.

With it being such a nice afternoon we set off to walk down to the river.

I was distracted on the way by this notice carved onto the wall of this building just here. Near this spot was where Marguerite Bourgeoys had her school for girls.

We remember her – she was the woman who came out with one of the very earliest groups of colonists to Montreal to look after the welfare of the women and children of the colony.

When we were at Troyes we went to see her birthplace, if you remember.

We didn’t actually make it as far as the river. It was a beautiful, warm afternoon and the pedaloes on the little lake looked so inviting. And besides, I don’t have enough exercise as everyone keeps on telling me.

And so we took to the water and had a really good pedal around the lake for half an hour.

There’s quite a strong current in there too so heading upstream was quite a fight. And we ended up being quite out of breath by the time that we finished.

And do I remember this from last year? Or is it new?

Whatever it is, it’s a Big Wheel of course and part of the entertainment that’s provided along the old port of Montreal, although right now it’s not doing very much entertaining because there’s no-one about.

I don’t imagine that the view of the city is up to much though, because we are quite low down here and we are surrounded by tall buildings.

Seeing as by now Josée was exhausted and that I’d paid for the pedalo, she summoned up a taxi to take us to our final port of call – the jazz club in Montreal. There was a live act on and she had booked a table for us.

It has to be said that the live act was, well, not up to the standard that I might have expected given the nature of the venue. Even worse was that despite having ordered a vegan meal, they could offer me … errr … nothing.

I ended up with a salad and that was my lot. And with a bottle of water and the cover charge for the entertainment my bill came to $37!00. I shan’t be going there again, that’s for sure.

We put the world to rights on the way back and I ended up having an early night. My first day in Canada and it was a long one too. I was ready for a good sleep.

Tuesday 15th August 2017 – WHAT A NIGHTMARE!

“Start as you mean to go on” say I.

And so the usual performance at 04:00 this morning aroused me from my stinking pit. No idea what the neighbours are doing at that time of morning, but never mind.

And I saw from the fitbit (because I had another shower this morning) that I’d been awake a couple of other times during the night too. So all in all it wasn’t a good start to the day.

But it could have been worse. I could have been the two policemen in the Volkswagen van who thought it cool to jump the red light outside the building just as a motorist coming the other way decided to race the orange light. They will be sorting out that mess for quite a while, I imagine.

It’s only me though who could nip out across the road to the boulangerie for some bread for lunch and forget to take his money with him. Luckily there was some Moroccan bread at ?0:50, an amount which corresponded quite nicely with the small change that I had in my pocket.

But do you ever get the feeling that it’s not going to be one of your days?

We eventually managed to come to some agreement over the hotel room for when I come back. I arranged the room at the price that I’d paid for the room just now and I’m okay with that. Smallest room in the building but it’s not a problem, and neither is the price at just ?55 per night for a city centre hotel just a stone’s throw away from the station.

Having organised that, I headed off down to the Gare du Midi for my train.

The first TGV took me to Lille Europe. It was one of the older generations of TGV so we were rather cramped and it was not as comfortable as it might have been.

However, I was one of the first on so there was no problem about finding luggage space – something which can be an issue on these trains.

And my seat was right by the door too so I was one of the first off when we arrived.

We then had a wait at Lille Europe for my next train. And no-one was more surprised that I was to note that it was the double-decker to Marseille that had set out from … errr … Brussels 50 minutes later than the one that I had caught.

So what that was all about I really have no idea – why they couldn’t have stuck me on that one to travel direct, but I have noticed some … errr … anomalies with the SNCF booking site. Like the 7 minutes that it’s allowing me on the way back to negotiate the entire length and breadth of Paris Gare du Nord.

No electricity on this train, and we were all packed in, although with it being one of the new generations there was plenty of room to stretch out. And everyone was for some reason stressed out and irritable when we had to alight and the squabbles over unloading the baggage were something that I hadn’t seen for a while

Terminal 2 at Paris Charles de Gaulle is immense and it took a while for me to work out where I needed to be. But once I arrived, this was when the real problems arose.

Since 1st November 2016 passengers to Canada have needed a visa – such is the craven fashion that the Canadian authorities have surrendered to the Americans south of the border. Of course, with nothing having been said, Your Truly didn’t have one.

Neither did so many other people either, and there was a crew on duty to help passengers apply. Mind you, the female receptionist was far more interested in flirting with the male security guard than she was with dealing with stressed-out passengers, so you can imagine just how quickly this all descended into chaos.

Several bouts of sharp words – not all of them from me either – passed between the passengers and this girl and it took well over an hour for her to deal with what should have been a relatively simple matter. But in the end I was armed with an entry visa to Canada. And she won’t forget me in a hurry

We had the usual total nonsense at the “security” and I shan’t go into too many details because I’ve told you all about it so many times. There’s a couple of people there who aren’t going to forget me in a hurry either.

At the gate I had to … errr … negotiate in order to have an aisle seat. But the aeroplane had the last laugh in this respect because ONCE AGAIN the brassards had forgotten my special meal. There was a steward on the plane who tried to be funny with me about it, and he’s not going to forget me in a hurry too.

If I keep on giving people a piece of my mind like this, I’m not going to have much left by the time that I arrive in Montreal.

That is – if we ever arrive in Montreal because the plane was 50 minutes taking off, and very little of that was actually my fault.

Mind you, it would be wrong to say that I was … errr … unprepared for this. I’ve travelled with Air Canada before, haven’t I? The quinoa salad and Moroccan bread followed by the leftover fruit, with some of Alison’s crisps for a mid-air snack went down vert nicely.

To calm myself down I went to watch a film on the laptop (the in-fight entertainment is total rubbish) and found that the electricity supply seems to be set up for North American plugs only. And there I am with a North-American cable for my laptop power-pack, and it’s in the suitcase in the hold isn’t it?

Definitely not my day.

We were actually on time arriving at Montreal which was good news. The bad news was that there wasn’t a gate for us and so we had to sit for over half an hour until something was cleared. And that annoyed me intensely as you might imagine.

Much to my (and to everyone else’s) astonishment, there was hardly a queue at the Immigration desks and I’ve never had to wait for such a short space of time before being called up. And here the fun began again.

No trace of my visa, apparently. “But of course I have a visa” I wailed. How else zould I have been allowed to board the flight?”

So I had to connect my mobile phone, and that took much longer than it might otherwise have done too – not helped by the fact that I had switched it on to “flight” mode while I was on the aeroplane, and sure enough my Visa came up.

Or, at least, a Visa came up. But it wasn’t mine. That stupid girl at Charles de Gaulle had typed in my name incorrectly with the family name in place of the given name and vice versa. So that led to another round of arguments.

Eventually; after what can only be described as “considerable discussion” I was allowed through, but by now you can imagine the state in which I was. One exceedingly unhappy bunny here.

“Baggage at Carousel 6” was the notice, and so I queued at Carousel 6. And queued and queued.

After about half an hour of this I was pretty fed up as you can imagine. It’s a large suitcase (but not that large) so I wandered over to the oversize carousel to see if it might be there.

No luck there either so I wandered back to carousel 6. And queued and queued.

Something out of the corner of my eye made me turn round – and there on carousel 4 was my suitcase – and the suitcases of plenty of others who were likewise waiting. No idea how long it had been going around there but there it was – so I grabbed it and shot off out of the blasted place.

Getting my bus ticket was straightforward – and would have been even more straightforward had I not left my Canadian money in the suitcase instead of in the rucksack which was where I had originally placed it (I wondered this morning why I’d put it in there – now I remember!).

And only Brain of Britain can do this! When I stayed at this hotel before, it was in anticipation of an 05:00 start so I was long-gone before breakfast. And so it seems that I have managed to book myself into the only hotel in the whole of Montreal that doesn’t do breakfast.

And wandering around the city a little later in the evening, the nearest Tim Horton’s is quite some distance away. This isn’t so good, is it?

At least it was a beautiful evening and I enjoyed my stroll, even if it was quite late in real terms. I’m just around the corner from the “rue St Catherine Est” which is the “Gay Village” of Montreal so I was expecting it to be crowded with people.

But not so. No idea where everyone was, but in any case I decided to bugger off quite sharpish back to my hotel, finish off the quinoa salad and bread and have a good night’s sleep.

I need the sleep and to relax after all of my efforts. You’ve no idea just how stressful it all is doing all of this. I’m a bad traveller anyway and all of the problems that I’ve been having are enough to try the patience of a Saint.

And having given so many people a piece of my mind just recently, I don’t have very much left.

Monday 14th August 2017 – AT THE HOSPITAL …

… the news is not so good.

While the blood count is up slightly at 9.6 from 9.5, something else in the body (and I’ve forgotten what it was) has plummeted by over 25% – from 39 parts to 29 parts.

This has caused a few raised eyebrows and they wanted me to come in again to see if it might be just an errant result.

But no chance of that! My flight to Montreal is at 15:20 and I intend to be on it – and I won’t be back until 12th October. So my appointment is on 13th whether they like it or not.

And here’s a thing – I asked the hotel manager whether it’s cheaper to book a room over the counter or over the internet by a booking agency. To my astonishment he replied “over the internet”.

That was the last thing that I was expecting because I know how much commission these booking agencies charge. But if that’s what he wants me to do, then that’s what I will do.

Despite being awake at about 06:00 or something, there was no chance of me moving. It took the alarm at 07:00 to shift me from my stinking pit. And after breakfast I came back here and attacked yesterday’s magnum opus.

That took me up to shower time, and then a slow meander down the road to the railway station.

And my luck was in too. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that the trains to Leuven run at peculiar times – there are three all at once and then nothing for 40 minutes.

And so no-one was more delighted than me when an Inter-City pulled in just as I arrived at the station.

It was a double-decker too. Very nice, comfortable and modern, so I went off to sit upstairs.

Of course, Brain of Britain had forgotten his book and so he had to sit there and admire the scenery for the whole route.

Not of course that he was complaining about that too much.

At Leuven we had a nightmare of queueing for a new travel ticket – mine is on the verge of running out. But once it was organised it was off on the bus to the hospital and my appointment with Destiny.

I walked back through the town, picking up some stuff for lunch tomorrow as well as a nice sorbet as a treat. I reckoned that I had earned it.

You know about the irregular running of the trains between Leuven and Brussels. But here again I was in luck.

The train to Knokke was running late so just as I arrived on the platform, so did the train. otherwise I would have had an uncomfortable wait for the train from Welkenraedt.

These trains are old, dirty and rattly but they are here and that’s the important bit. I was soon back here.

We had another disaster for tea tonight. I’d been saving my plate of lentils for tonight but after they had taken my order and having waited for 20 minutes, they told me that “lentils were finished” even though I’d seen a plate in the cooler.

I ended up with a bag of chips instead.

It seems that I’m fated to have bad luck with my meals this time round. And so I’m glad that I’ve bought some emergency supplies for the plane tomorrow, to go with the crisps that Alison gave me on Sunday and which I forgot to mention.

Sunday 13th August 2017 – I’VE A FEELING …

… that tomorrow morning I’m going to be regretting today!

According to the Fitbit I’ve done … errr … 230% of my day’s activity and walked all of … errr … 17.4 kilometres.

Funnily enough, apart from the aches in the back of my legs (mainly from the cramp attack yesterday) I wasn’t any more tired than I might have been on occasions when I used to walk these kinds of distance on a regular basis.

What this actually means, I really don’t know but I’ll find out tomorrow afternoon at the hospital I suppose.

Despite the early night there was some kind of interruption in the building last night. I’m not sure what it was, but I ended up having to close the window into the communal airspace to keep the noise out.

06:20 when I awoke but badger that for a game of cowboys on a Sunday. I turned over for a short while – 08:20 was much more like it.

After breakfast I had a shower, washed my undies and prettied myself up ready for Alison. And while I was waiting for her I was accosted by some young African girl asking me if I were “Luke”. I explained that I was waiting for someone else but if she didn’t turn up and Luke didn’t turn up, we’d go off together.

She had quite a laugh at that which was good. It pays to be light-hearted, I reckon. And she was quite pretty too.

Ohhh yes – I can still chase after the women – even if I can’t remember why!

We’d arranged to meet at the viewpoint by the side of the Palais de Justice where there are some stunning views over the city.

Of course I had brought the camera with me to take some good photos but unfortunately the weather didn’t want to co-operate.

It wasn’t raining, which was quite lucky, but a horrible clammy, misty morning. and that put paid to the photography session.

We took the lift down into the Marolles and went for a prowl around the flea market. It’s been probably 15 years since I last went and there’s nothing like as much stuff – or as many customers – as there used to be.

And the prices – the days when you could find some absolute bargains seem to be long-gone. For one or two things, I had to go for a lie-down in a darkened room.

Mind you, Alison did find some marvellous coffee tables, and one of them disappeared into the back of her car. And had I had Caliburn with me, a second one would have disappeared too.

Something like a semi-globe with an olde-worlde wooden top cut in half and hinged so that you could use the inside of the globe as a storage space. How I would have loved one for my place!

We had a couple of coffees and went for a good walk around, passing once more by the viewpoint at the Palais de Justice.

By now the mist was starting to lift and the weather was looking better. To such an extent that Alison was obliged to divest herself of her jacket.

And I could take a couple of photos from up here too.

On her way home Alison dropped me off in Ixelles.

I went for a bag of chips at the fritkot and then down to the cemetery to pay my respects to Marianne.

But before I reached her plot I stumbled across this tombstone which I must never have seen before.

You need to be a French-speaker to understand why someone with a small mind like mine would find this rather amusing.

But Marianne’s grave is a little overgrown these days – it looks as if her other visitors have stopped coming. Next time that I pass by I’ll have to bring some gardening tools with me and do some tidying up.

From here, I decided to be brave and to see how far I could make it back to my hotel on foot.

And my route took me down the Avenue Buyl where they are once again modernising the tram layout at the junction with the Boulevard General Jacques.

I’ve no idea why they would be doing all of this work though – it was only a couple of years ago that they totally reorganised this junction so they can’t have worn it out already.

My walk continued down the hill and round the corner to the Abbaye de la Cambre.

regular readers of this rubbish will recall that we’ve been here a few times in the past and somewhere around I have a few photos that I’ve taken of it.

But I’ve not taken a photo of it from this angle before so I need to put this right.

There were hordes of people loitering around sunning themselves on the lawn this afternoon because by now the weather was quite nice

And this gave me an opportunity to go for a good wander around at the abbey and look for some spots that might come out really well on camera.

I hadn’t realised just how little I had actually seen of the abbey in the past.

My walk then took me along the side of the “etangs d’Ixelles” – the Ixelles lakes that were formerly park of the River Maelbeek.

This runs through the city from south-west to north-east but was filled in centuries ago. But it’s all very unstable and buildings along its course have been known to teeter and totter.

I lived in one once with Laurence and Roxanne and you could see the cracks appearing.

If you look on any good map of Brussels you can see the course of the river. There is plenty of parkland along its route and occasionally there are lakes.

in Jette, where I lived for many years, there was a huge parkland with all of the lakes that was very pleasant to walk around

In fact I often mused that 500 years ago I could have gone to see Marianne by canoe rather than by bus.

One thing that “foreigners” often say about Belgium is that the Belgians have a weird sense of humour.

My natural response is that the way things are in Belgium you need to have a weird sense of humour to live here, but when you see what the city fathers have done, you can understand why foreigners have this opinion.

It’s not every country where you would deliberately set out to build a set of ruins to liven up your city architecture.

Alison and I had noticed up by the Palais de Justice how they had set up a temporary pie hut and a pile of deckchairs for people to take the sun.

That’s clearly not an isolated incident because here at the Place Flagey we had a similar set-up. And by now we had a really good sun too.

It was turning out to be a nice day after all.

The casual strollers weren’t the only people to take advantage of the deckchairs either.

I hadn’t been there more than two minutes when an impromptu jazz band appeared and started to entertain the crowd.

They weren’t particularly up to much and the drummer was pretty dire but I’m all in favour of live music and I quite enjoyed it for what it was.

It gave me an opportunity to study the architecture too.

I used to have an apartment out on the Boulevard Reyers right next to the champignon – the mushroom-shaped tower that is the headquarters of one of the Belgian broadcasting companies.

Before they moved out there, they were based in this beautifu art-deco building in the Place Flagey. When I came to live here in 1992 the building was derelict and in a very sorry state.

It’s now been restored and they’ve done quite a good job of it. Plenty of trendy cafés on the ground floor and offices above.

Carrying on with my long walk I climbed up to the Avenue Louise – the posh bit of the city and walked all the way down the street towards the city centre.

I ended up back at the viewpoint at the Palais de Justice and by now the weather had cleared sufficiently for me to admire the voew and to try out the telephoto lens.

Of course, you don’t need me to tell you what this load of balls might be, because if anything is symbolic of the city, it has to be the Atomium.

And it does look so much better since they have cleaned it up. At one tile it was looking quite shabby.

That tower there in centre-shot is the tower of the Town Hall of the commune of Molenbeek.

But never mind that for a moment. If you look to the left of it, there on the skyline you’ll see a large block of flats.

it is in fact four large blocks of flats superimposed one in front of another and it’s in one of those where I lived for a very happy 11 years – the legendary “avenue de l’Exposition”

And now, we can’t have a good stroll around the city without bringing some controversy into it, can we?

This is the Mont de Pieté – the Roman Catholic religious charity in the rue St Ghislain that is charged with making loans to less-fortunate members of society who find themselves temporarily financially-embarrassed.

And on the wall is a plaque listing the names of the inhabitants of the local area who were victims of the Nazis in World War II.

As I have said before … “and on many occasions too” – ed …it’s all very well these people who criticise the civilians of the occupied countries for what is perceived to be a lack of resolution against the invaders, but they didn’t ever run this kind of risk.

But wait a minute! What’s this?

Not 50 yards away from the plaque on the wall of the Mont de Pieté are these four plaques embedded into the pavement.

These people are also victims of the “barbarie Nazie” but their names don’t appear on the plaque of the victims who lived in the area.

And not 50 yards the other side are some more plaques set in the pavement of yet more victims, and their names don’t appear on the plaque either.

But a brief examination of the family names and of their ultimate destiny tells you all that you need to know as to why they don’t appear on the plaque.

The Catholic Church isn’t interested in anyone whose religious beliefs don’t equate to theirs and certainly isn’t interested in “sharing the suffering of the afflicted” – and that’s what I call a disgrace.

I made it back to my hotel without once stepping on public transport, and found that i’d run out of water. So that meant a trip to the supermarket in the Gare du Midi.

And later on, I went out for what was probably the worst ever vegan burger that I have ever eaten and I won’t be going there again.

But with it being a really beautiful evening by now, I went for a walk along the boulevard to watch the funfair and to try a little “cut and paste” of images taken in the dark.

This image is well-cropped from the original and the results compare favourably with what the old Nikon D5000 would have produced under similar circumstances.

All in all, I’m not too disappointed

But if you want to see what the camera can do with its video facility, here’s a little film.

Again, this is edited down quite considerably from the original (as, in fact, are all of the photos that I take) and once again, I’ve had much worse results from this with other cameras

All-in-all, I’m quite satisfied with this camera.

So that was my day out then. 2002 words, 17.4 kilometres and the exciting thing about it was that I didn’t crash out either. It clearly did me some good although I’m now walking like John Wayne after a week on his horse.

I’ll regret this tomorrow!

Saturday 12th August 2017 – THE LAST TIME …

… that I had to be up and about for a train, I remember saying something about the internal alarm clock. And so itwas this morning.

With the alarm set for 06:00, I was wide awake at … errr … 04:27.

Of course it goes without saying that I … errr … rested until the 06:00 alarm went off. And by 07:00 I was sitting down having had breakfast, cleaned the bathroom and toilet and tipped bleach everywhere (I’d washed the floor last night before going to bed).

Not only that, I’d taken all of the rubbish to the collection point and washed the wastebins too.

The bus was on time more or less and it was all pretty painless. But Brain of Britain has struck again – battery in the camera is flat. So no picture of the train this morning. I wasn’t going to use the phone camera, seeing as we are now in the middle of a torrential downpour. Flaming August, hey?

The train is only as far as Versailles – the Versailles Chantiers railway station. There’s a lot of perturbation on the Paris railway network with the construction of this new metro line so we are having to take the bus.

It took its time too getting to the Vaugirard railway station and then I had to fight my way through the metro.

We started off as we meant to go on, with the new suitcase being jammed in the turnstile and I had to appeal for help from the staff.

But the new suitcase proved its worth – being quite easy to pull along, unlike the previous one. And it’s a much more convenient shape too for passing through the crowds.

But there was a curious incident at Paris Gare du Nord.

Some young guy stopped me to ask me the way to the metro. And a minute or so later, as I was fighting my way through the exit turnstile, my bumbag became disconnected and fell to the floor.

Was someone trying to disconnect it in the crush? I couldn’t see how because they couldn’t have got away, but it was weird all he same.

The TGV was packed to the gunwhales and it shot along at a fair old pace into Brussels. I was soon installed in my hotel – the Midi-Zuid where I stayed with Hannah back in March.

Having fought of waves of sleep on the TGV, I wasn’t so successful here and was out for about an hour. And when I awoke, it was with a severe attack of cramp – so severe that I can still feel the pain in my calf even now.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that I suffered terribly from cramps in the leg but apart from a brief one about a week or 10 days ago, I’ve not had one for months and months. But this one was the daddy of them all.

I went out a little later for some food, but as luck would have it, I ran straight into the Foire du Midi.

It’s that tile of the year again when the whole of the central reservation of the big boulevard around the city centre in the area by the Gare du Midi is transformed into a giant funfair.

Hordes of people and all kinds of events taking place here.

I fought my way through the crowds to find something to eat – and that wasn’t easy because I found myself in the wrong street – I’m definitely losing my touch.

But having satiated my appetite I went back to watch the entertainment for a while. It’s all good fun and you could hear the screams from across town.

It would certainly put me off my chips being up there with them.

So now it’s an early night and prepare myself for the fray tomorrow. I’m meeting Alison and we’re going for a walk around the market. That should be fun.

Friday 11th August 2017 – MY FITBIT …

… told me this morning that I could reach today’s fitness target by doing 4:46 hours of cleaning.

So it’s really true! Mt fitbit can really see into my apartment!

After my early night (and it was early too) last night, I was up with the cock and having breakfast at a reasonable time. And then I set to work.

Tidying up was one thing of course, and giving everything a really good clean around. The apartment is now looking as if someone actually lives here, which makes a change of course, and it’s vacuumed too.

The floors aren’t washed though. That’s the last job before going to bed so that I can mop myself into the bedroom and let it all dry through the night.

But I am though. Showered and shaved and haircut and fingernailed. I look almost human.

Tomorrow it’s to clean the toilet and the sinks in the kitchen and bathroom – drop tons of bleach down them.

I was in town too at lunchtime. Everything is still okay at the bank – the rent is paid, but still no money transferred over and this is beginning to annoy me no end. I paid a fortune (I’ve run out) in the little Carrefour for a bit of lettuce for lunch and for my butties tomorrow. They will keep me going through the day tomorrow.

Suitcase is finally packed and that was a nightmare. It’s only barely big enough and ended being something of a struggle. I hope that I don’t need anything out of there in a hurry.

Tonight I went round to socialise with the neighbours. A very friendly bunch but as you know, I don’t “do” socialising so I only stayed for a while. I came back to cut my hair and my fingernails ready for my trip.

So an early night and up with the cock tomorrow. 06:00!

But the good news, which I have saved for last, is that the hi-fi is now working. It must have been full of damp – which is no surprise – biut it now seems to have dried out. And so I’ve been on a major nostalgia trip listening to all of my cassette tapes from the 1970s.

The left speaker channel is flaky and the controls on the amp are confused – I ended up wiping a good ten seconds off Sweetheart of the Rodeo, which is a tragedy.

I can see me making a few purchases in early course as soon as I come back.

Thursday 10th August 2017 – THE ONE THING …

… about spending all morning copying files from one computer onto a memory stick to load into the other one that you are taking with you, only to find that one is formated in NFTS and the other in FAT 64 so the second laptop can’t read the memory stick, is that it encourages you to set up a Home Network.

And that was excitement in itself because with no instructions to go by, it was a very hit-and-miss affair to say the least. Trial end error? It was certainly a trial – and there were plenty of errors!

And 5.3GB of data took 2 hours to read – never mind start to transfer over. And so I was not at all pleased to find that the data wouldn’t go!

It took me an hour to resolve the issue, having to delve deep into the bowels of both of the machines, but I’ve eventually managed to make it work. And, as I write this rubbish, that data is 7% completed with another … gulp … 7 hours to go!

In between all of this, I’ve managed to attack the packing, and you have to deal with the important things first.

His Nibs is preparing for the (af)fray of course – it’s the rutting season and he has all of his engagements lined up.

I’ve packed a few clothes, most of which I’m going to leave over there, and a few other bits and pieces. I’ve probably fofgotten tons of stuff that I need but I’ll just do what I always do

Most people usually make a list of things that they need and pack accordingly. I just pack and then make a list of the things that I’ve forgotten.

But I have His Nibs, my tickets, my passport, my cash and my bank cards. That’s the important stuff anyway.

Tidying up was on the agenda too. but not too much of that because I’ll only clutter up the place before I go. That’s a “tomorrow afternoon” job, as is a shower, the washing, going to the bank and so on.

And tea?

More of the curry stuff that I made earlier in the week. Just one more lot to go, which is fine because there’s just one more night here. Saturday morning, His Nibs and I are hitting the streets.

I did mention a parcel delivery that I received yesterday, and I promised that today I would tell you what it is.

This is it, although you can’t see it very clearly. It’s two small black boxes, a pile of cable and an antenna, and it needs to be erected properly – something that I’ll have to do later.

It’s an AIS beacon tracker, which is of extreme interest to me, not just for the machine itself but for the benefits that come with it.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that I have a fascination for ships, and I regularly run a Ship of the Day” column on here. Every ship is fitted with an AIS beacon which transmits its position and some other information besides, all of which is of interest to me as you might expect.

There’s a project afoot to equip every port in the world with an AIS tracking device which will transmit the information to a central point to make up one of the biggest interactive databases in the world – an absolutely fascinating project for someone like me.

The port of Granville wasn’t covered in this project, but when I read that anyone who hosts an AIS tracker will have free, unlimited access to the database …well – say no more!

It’s up and working, and I can see it on the web site of the organisation. Once a few checks have been done, I’ll be having my free access account, which is good news for me.

It was a late night last night – about 03:00 in fact – but I was still up at 07:00. And I didn’t crash out either.

So I’ll brave the hurricane and go for a walk and then try for an early night. I have the cleaning to do, and then down into town, and I’ve been invited to a soirée later.

It’s all go here, isn’t it?

Wednesday 9th August 2017 – I’M NOT QUITE …

… sure what happened there but after crashing out in mid-keystroke and hauling myself off to bed for an early night, I slept right through until the alarm went off. Totally dead to the world.

And it was difficult to haul myself out of my stinking pit too. It was probably the best night’s sleep that I’ve had for a while.

Better than the day however. We’ve had showers on and off all the time, particularly when I wanted to go outside. Soaked to the skin going for the baguette and if anyone thinks that I was going to brave the wall over the harbour at lunchtime then they are very much mistaken.

Just by way of a change I’ve done some tidying up and cleaning up in here. Not a lot (that’s Friday’s task) but I’ve made a start.

But most of the day I’ve been doing stuff with my 3D animation program.

You may remember from the other day that I was telling you about trying to add a morph from a previous generation of templates into the one that I use. Well, badger that for a game of soldiers, because I’ve done something different.

Having had a flash … "oohh errr, missus" – ed … of inspiration I’ve actually managed to transfer in a complete set of over 500 morphs designed for a completely different template.

The world is really my oyster now, as I’m sure that you can imagine.

But it’s complicated things a little because a few of the morphs are interacting with the original morphs in rather a strange way. I’ll have to look into this – it’s probably nothing more complicated than a duplication of names.

Another issue is that I’ve somehow managed to “activate” the illustrations and leave as dead links the “active keys for some of them (and I’m sure that I did them all the same way), so that will be a little confusing.

But it keeps me out of mischief.

Anyway, off for a walk braving the wind and rain, and yet another early night.

And I had a parcel delivery – but I’ll tell you about that tomorrow.

Tuesday 8th August 2017 – BRAIN OF BRITAIN STRIKES AGAIN!

I had to go to the Bank this morning. And as I was running a little low on fruit and stuff I decided to make a list and go to the fruit shop in town and pick up a baguette while I was there.

So down I strolled, picked up my fruit, picked up my baguette – and then came straight back up here having forgotten all about the bank!

I’ll just have to go another time, won’t I?

Bu I don’t think much of the fruit shop though. It’s quite expensive and the quality is nowhere near as good as in the Leclerc.

I’m still not getting the hang of this sleeping thing though. 02:30 when I went to bed last night and awake after just 4 hours and 28 minutes of sleep, of which 3 hours and 58 minutes was restful sleep and the other 29 minutes was restless. Maths is clearly not the strongest suit of my Fitbit, is it?

A minor crisis in which I have run out of muesli, but I’m not making a batch just for a couple of days. Luckily there’s a packet loitering around here from when I was living in “digs”. That’l do until I go.

And talking of going, I’ve been synchronising the computers today. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that I bought a new laptop in the sales in June. I still have the old one, slow that it is, because of its light weight and extraordinary battery life. That will be coming with me on my travels.

Despite being the worst, slowest computer that I’ve ever owned, it’s done some sterling service and been on some incredible travels. And it will be on some more too. The synchronisation isn’t finished, but I’ll be dealing with that on Friday.

Not possible to go for lunch on the wall today. Every time one sets foot outside one’s apartment one is drenched with a squall of rain.

This afternoon I was on my travels again. I’d been invited for tea chez Liz and Terry as a pre-holiday treat.

Having had a shower to make myself look pretty (hence the Fitbit stats – I charge it up while I’m under the shower), I took the opportunity of

going to the railway station to pick up the railway tickets for Saturday (you can’t trust these machines to work when you need them).
That was exciting because there was nowhere to park (I pinched a car hire space in the end) and also because the machine wouldn’t give me the tickets either without the bank card that I used to order them.
“See the clerk in the ticket office” said the machine. And so I did. And she asked me for my bank card too.
Regular readers of this rubbish will recall me being stranded in Arizona in 2002 when a bank card was “suspended due to unusual transactions – and so now I have six different cards – and so we had quite a performance trying to decide which the card that I had used.
Eventually we sorted it out and I went outside to be greeted by the manager of the car hire concession and we had words.
going to Centrakor to buy some luggage labels. All luggage has to be fully-labelled these days and my suitcase – would you believe – does not have a luggage label supplied. At that price too!
So I bought a pack of flourescent lime-green ones. They’ll stand out on a baggage carousel.

But the traffic through the town was horrendous. One of these huge mobile home things driven by a novice having difficulty in manoeuvring through the streets. And so much time at the railway station that I was stuck in the rush hour and it took ages to move through the town.

Liz had made vegan burgers, which went down nicely with chips and peas, followed by fruit salad and vegan chocolate cake (and a doggy-bag for me). Liz let me borrow her printer to print off my flight tickets too, so that’s all sorted out.

But I was struggling to keep awake all evening so I made my excuses and left. No walk this evening – it was pelting down outside so I sat down to do wome work on the laptop.

But having fallen asleep three times in the middle of a couple of keystrokes, I gave it up and went to bed.

Totally wasted.

Monday 7th August 2017 – THESE LATE NIGHTS …

… aren’t doing me much good, you know.

I set the alarm at 07:00 in the morning because when I was going to bed at 21:30 or something I didn’t want to waste the day as well. But just recently I seem to have regained all of my old routine – still awake and fighting fit at 02:00 – working on an animation, would you believe..

Back in those days, regular readers of this rubbish will recall that an 08:30 start was the norm when it was a 02:00 sleep. But no matter what, I’m going to hold out for these 07:00 starts.

All in all, this sea air, this “place of my own” and this new evening walk routine seems to be doing me some good.

So with all if this in mind, it took two goes on the alarm clock (Billy Cotton as well as David Bowie) this morning to get me out of bed and staggering into the bathroom, but there I was all the same.

Baguette on the wall for lunch too in the sunshine. It was a glorious afternoon and I was out there until about 15:00 with my book on The Hundred Years War.

It’s a strange war because most British people know of Agincourt, Crécy, the Black Prince and precious little else. For France though, it was about 115 years of sheer continuous terror with rampaging “Private Armies” devastating the countryside.

I know about it from the English point of view of course, so a year or so ago I bought a huge, thick book of about 1,000 pages going into intimate detail of the war from a French point of view.

Tea was a mega-curry. Should have had lentils in it but I forgot to boil them (they take about 2 hours to boil). However I had tons of stuff left over in the fridge like the rest of the stuffing for the peppers, a few mushrooms and the like.

Add to that the pepper left over from the three from LIDL and a large tin of vegetables, it all went together quite well and was one of the best that I’ve made. And enough for four days too.

Ingrid was on the phone for an hour having a chat. She’s in life-changing mode right now too so we compared notes.

But much of the day was spent doing something quite exciting. With my 3D program I just work with a couple of basic templates for figures and I’ve worked on them myself to develop some characters.

But the easiest one to work with is about 10 years old and is no longer supported so finding accessories is very difficult. Stuff disappears off the markets and the newsgroups and is never replaced. The Usenet discussion groups have a retention time of about 3,000 days so it’s all dropping off the end.

But the stuff that I found the other day included some stuff from a previous generation of templates and in a fit of inspiration I’ve managed to develop a little script to make it fit my template.

It’s far from perfect but I’ll keep working at it.

As well as that, I’ve discovered the secret of adapting morphs from older generations of templates to fit the templates that I use, and these are generally better-crafted than current ones.

Again; it’s far from being perfected bu I have a couple that work and that is indeed progress.

I’ll go for a walk now and see what later this evening brings me.

Sunday 6th August 2017 – THAT’S A NICE …

… way to spend an afternoon!

Sitting in my living room with the window wide open, listening to the music. It’s the Festival of the Upper Town today and they had a live band playing in the little square.

No need for me to go out and watch – I could hear them quite clearly from here!

This morning I had a little lie-in. Awake as late as 07:45, but it was 08:15 when I crawled out

I’d been on my travels too during the night, with The One That Got Away. Her daughter was a ballet star but TOTGA thought that she wasn’t receiving the attention that she was due. I thought that she should force the issue by saying that she had received offers from elsewhere and was seriously considering them. But TOTGA thought that that was a bad idea in case her bluff was called.

I was out early for my baguette before the tourists cleaned out the place.

The skies were really clear this morning – no haze about at all and so I nipped in for the new camera and the new telephoto lens.

Jersey was there looking quite clear 30-odd miles away so I snapped off a quick photo.

The focal length isn’t as long as the one for the Nikon D5000 but it’s auto-focus and it’s come out reasonably clear for what it is.

Lunch on the wall as usual, in the bright warm sun, and then I went for a walk into the old town. The village fête wasn’t much to write home about, but there was some excitement.

They rigged up some kind of jousting machine where a member of the crowd was pushed down the hill in a wheelbarrow by a friend.

The person in the wheelbarrow had a long stick and the aim was to push the stick through the hole in the dolly.

It’s not so easy going down a hill at speed in a wheelbarrow, and if you miss the hole, you catch a soaking – just like these two girls.

Tonight was the best pizza yet – cooked to perfection. I did remember to take out the bottom baking tray and that certainly helped.

Now I’m off for a walk See if anything is still going on at the village fête. But I doubt it – it’s been quiet for the last hour.

Saturday 5th August 2017 – AND IF YOU THOUGHT …

… that I had been having a few quiet days then this one takes some beating.

It all went wrong before I went to bed actually. A blasted firework display at bang on midnight that went on for hours.

In the end I was praying for one of those occasions that rings a bell in the back of my mind from London 2 or 3 centuries ago when a spark from the first firework fell into the bucket where all of the others had been stored.

Instead of a beautiful one-hour display observed by 10,000 people, you had a half-second of something that was heard by everyone across the whole south-east of England.

So that set the night off on a bad foot.

Struggle out of bed, but a shower soon revived me. Trip down the road for the baguette, and lunch on my wall in the high winds. Blasted uncomfortable too.

Apart from that, I’ve been doing something interesting on the laptop and following the football results too – the season has restarted today. Where did summer go?

Tomorrow there’s a fête up here in the walled city. Music, dancing and, of course, the buvette. Nothing whatever takes place in France without a buvette, and if there is none it’s a national scandal.

Must be on form for that!

Friday 4th August 2017 – WHAT A NICE …

… meal!

I was at the shops today and at LIDL they were selling a pack of three peppers for just €1:49. Couldn’t resist that so I grabbed a packet. That’s one for the curry next week and the other two – well, one today and one tomorrow with a few bits hived off for the pizza on Sunday.

I like stuffing, and mine is excellent. An improvement on last weeks because I boiled up some bulghour and added that to the chopped tomato, mushrooms, onions, garlic, olive oil, pepper and herbs.

But not as good as last week because I forgot the tomato sauce.

Anyway, there’s more than enough left over for tomorrow – the rest will go in the curry on Monday.

But I shan’t do that again though – leaving it late to go shopping. I’ve tried to be away by 08:30 and first in the supermarket but it was 10:30 when I arrived and the queues at the tills at LIDL were out of the door.

And the usual mayhem at LeClerc. I’m glad that this is my last shop of the holiday season. Next time that I shop, it will be in Montreal. But all in all today, I spent just €24:00 for food for the week – and nothing else. No little toys or anything.

Mind you – grapes were at €1:69 in LIDL …

I had a strange night last night – awake at 06:30 and it’s been a while since I last woke up before the alarm. Mind you, I crashed out for half an hour this afternoon and that’s been a while too.

Lunch on the wall in the wind, and I’ve done some cleaning up too – necessary as you could smell the bin from down the street.

But highlight of the day has been finding a batch of about 500 *.zip files from 2010 that relate to when I started with my 3D program. I couldn’t find them when I changed computer in 2011 and subsequently forgot all about them.

But rooting around in a miscellaneous folder on an old hard drive that I’d coupled up to an external caddy, there they were. I’ve been uploading a few (like 200 or so) to the laptop and I’ll do the rest another time.

See – I am still being busy even if my motivation has all gone for the moment.

Thursday 3rd August 2017 – I HAD TO …

… turn on the light over the sink while I was washing up tonight. That’s a first. The nights are definitely getting shorter.

But then again, I was rather late – 21:15 in fact. Although it was just a quick tea (pasta and the last lot of the aubergine and kidney bean whatsit) I didn’t start to make it until late because I was preoccupied in some work that I was doing.

But more of this anon.

Although I was rather late going to bed, I was out like a light and off on my travels again straight away. Somewhere really exciting, so much so that I awoke at about 04:30 and dictated it into the dictaphone.

And it’s a good job that I did too because when I awoke at 07:00 with the alarm, I couldn’t remember a thing. So you’ll have to wait until I copy the notes off the thing before you can find out where I was.

And before I find out where I was too.

Crawling out of bed was difficult (to say the least) and then after breakfast I had to sit around. Expecting a parcel delivery.

By 12:00 it hadn’t arrived, and knowing full well that no-one works between 12:00 and 14:00, I nipped into town for a baguette and some tomatoes seeing as how I had run out.

Far too windy to sit on my wall so I ate in here, and I was dead right about the parcel delivery. 14:15 on the button he turned up, and the final piece of the jigsaw for my trip to Canada is all here.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that I had a very good mega-suitcase from years ago that took everything that I needed (and more) to Canada. But in 2014 I broke the zip on it so it had to be abandoned.

I found a substitute in a junk shop over there that was the correct size, but everything else about it was wrong. It was completely out of balance and very difficult to control

so, totally fed up, I found exactly the one that I wanted on the internet. A “four-wheeler” pull-behind upright suitcase that is actually bigger in volume but the dimensions are much less (it’s actually fatter). Lightweight reinforced too.

Cost an arm and a leg but I’m not up to much these days and this should (I hope) be great to pull along behind me. Because I have miles to walk.

Strawberry Moose fits inside it perfectly and there’s plenty of room for other stuff too. Which is good news.

And I need it too. It’s been a long time since I’ve had any.

Now I’m off for my walk, and I’ll have another early night. Now that I have my suitcase I can start to pack tomorrow.

Wednesday 2nd August 2017 – I HAD A …

… slightly better day today.

Probably due to the good sleep that I had last night – out like a light and that was how I stayed. And it was something of a struggle to heave myself out of the stinking pit (the bed, I mean).

A good shower and a change of clothes made me feel like a new man (pretty fed up of the old one) too.

What with the weather (torrential downpour for most of the day) all that I’ve managed to do is to struggle through the floods for the baguette. No possibility of going to sit on the wall with my butties at lunchtime.

So I hope that it’s better tomorrow – I need some things from town.

Tea was more aubergine and kidney bean whatsit – the longer it sits the better it tastes which can’t be bad. Just one more lot left for tomorrow.

Despite the weather I’ll be off for a walk in a bit. To stretch the legs and to see the outside. It’ll do me good to go out and about, even if it is into a rainstorm I suppose.

Hopefully it will be another good night like last night, and then a good walk into town should do me good.

EPIC HALL

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