Thursday 19th May 2016 -I WAS OFF …

… on my travels again today.

I started off at the Doctor’s this morning at &0:00, only to find that my doctor is on holiday and it was a locum in attendance. That means that most of what I wanted to discuss was pretty pointless but I handed over a few letters from the hospital and had a form signed, as well as a quick check-up. My heart-beat is high but apart from that, things seem to be quite normal for now.

Montlucon was the next port of call. I had to pay a bill at the laboratory that does my blood tests and then another bill at the tax office for all of the documents that the hospital gave me before I went off to Leuven. There’s nothing else outstanding that I cans ee for the moment, although I have a couple of bills to pay at Leuven when I return.

Once that was out of the way I went back home for an hour, most of which was spent chatting to Nicolette whom I encountered in the lane. She seemed to be quite concerned about my health, which is nice of her.

Caliburn had his controle technique at 15:OO and the garage had forgotten that I was coming. But they squeezed us in and of course Caliburn passed with flying colours. And then we nipped off to the other side of St Gervais d’Auvergne for his service. So he’s all done and dusted now and ready for the road.

Back here, I crashed out for an hour and then made tea. Microwaved potatoes and mushroom and lentil curry was on the menu followed by some of Liz’s home-made vegan ice-cream. And now I’m off to bed. I’m feeling even worse than yesterday and to make matters worse, my “upset stomach” has returned.

I’ll see if I can pick up where I left off last night because I was off on a few travels too. The first part involved my being somewhere on the continent – it may have been in Occupied Europe or a neutral country during the war but it was a big tower-block kind of building. I was talking to a woman there who was expressing her surprise that the top floor was occupied by the British Royal Air Force Bomber Command which was using the premises to direct the bombing attacks against Germany, whereas just a couple of floors down, the German Luftwaffe had offices used to direct fighter control against the British bombers. I replied that that wasn’t the only thing that was unusual – out in the grounds was a military hospital where half the staff was British and half was German and they were dealing with wounded soldiers of both armies.
From there, I found myself in Crewe in a huge traffic queue trying to go over Edleston Road bridge. I was in a driverless car – a while Volkswagen Karmann Ghia – and so I left the car to see how it would do. And it advanced quite nicely in the traffic, except that it was going too fast for me to walk after and with my illness I wasn’t able to run after it – and this really had be worried. I remember that on the bridge was an end-terraced house with the door round the side (which actually fronted onto Edleston Road) and it was actually my house. I was reminiscing about how many of these houses used to be built on the bridges in Crewe.
We haven’t finished yet, because there was a football match taking place between one of Pionsat’s teams and a team that consisted mainly of females and which only had 10 players. Pionsat were however struggling to get on top in this game and on one occasion they broke clean though the defence and the player had a shot but a defender stuck out a foot and diverted it out onto the post and out for a corner. From the corner the ball came in and the keeper missed it but a Pionsat player headed the ball in off the post for a goal. There were three Pionsat players in an offside position but they weren’t interfering with play so there was no reason why the goal should be disallowed but one of the defenders, a young man, argued so much with the referee that in the end he was sent off the field, which tilted the game even further into Pionsat’s favour.

I’ll see if I can pick it up from there.

Wednesday 18th May 2016 – I WAS UP …

… and breakfasting long before the alarm went off this morning. 07:10 if my memory serves me well.

Mind you, I’d been up (and down) on several occasions during the night – I blame the drink that I had drunk while I was making my tea but who knows? And I was struggling on several occasions with the cramp again. It looks as if that has come back too.

I was off on my travels during the night. I was living in North America playing in a rock group and the other members of the group had seen a map of Europe and were intrigued by some of the literal (and not very correct) translations of European place-names and so we were keen to go and tour them. This involved registering with the European police in order to obtain a permit to travel, and in the end there were six groups registered, who could either tour individually, in pairs or all six together. So off we set and our first port of call was at an open-air music festival. We’d arrived during the night and set up camp in a big tent, all four of us sleeping in a large double bed. But next morning we awoke and went for a prowl around. Our attention was drawn to a huge “bigfoot” type of vehicle, so tall that two other vehicles were parked underneath it. It had a huge canopy over the right-hand side too, for sheltering passengers climbing up into the vehicle. We thought that it was a Duesenberg at first but closer examination revealed that it had the Chevrolet “bow tie” insignia on the front radiator grille.

But after breakfast, I’ve not done very much at all. I’ve not even been out of the house. I’ve spent some time catching up with the blog and that’s really about all. I’m still feeling the effects of the cork that I did yesterday and I’ve crashed out twice – once this morning and once this afternoon. And I’ve been cold too. I’ve not been warm since I’ve been back, but today was even worse.

And so I’m off to bed very shortly. I’m having a day out tomorrow and I need to be on form so I’ll call it a day and go to listen to the radio programmes. As I said before, I just can’t keep it up these days, can I?

Tuesday 17th May 2016 – I’VE BEEN OUT AND ABOUT TODAY

So having gone to bed quite early last night, I ended up chatting to Alison and Liz on the internet. And then, having dozed in and out of sleep for hours, it was midnight when I switched off the radio and finally settled down for the night.

I had quite a few trips down the corridor, what with one thing and another, but was wide awake by about 06:30, having been off to Stoke on Trent during the night. I’d bought a Land Rover chassis-cab with a crane or winch on the back. It was in good condition but a little scabby but down in the scrapyard we discovered two perfect doors (although of a slightly different colour) so we bought them and fitted them. The next task, as my friend explained to me, was the rear valance and he sorted out his angle grinder and wire brush to de-rust it so that we could paint it over. Zero came over for a chat too, which was very nice because it’s been a good few weeks since she’s appeared in one of my nocturnal rambles.

After breakfast I started to organise myself. I sorted out all of the washing into piles that will either go back home or come with me to Belgium, and then I sorted out the paperwork. I made an appointment with my doctor as I have some paperwork that she needs to see and I need a form signing. That’s for Thursday morning.

Once I’d organised that, I went off out and about.

first stop was the garage. It’s time for Caliburn’s Controle Technique on Thursday afternoon, so I’ve booked him in for a service and a visual check to make sure that there’s nothing about to drop off on the road.

The bank was next. There’s an important bill to pay and if I don’t pay it soon I’ll be transported for life or something so that was urgent. And then I went to the Intermarché for a bit of shopping.

Finally, I ended up back at my house where I dropped off a pile of stuff, stripped out the back of Caliburn and gave him a good brushing out, and now I’ve installed my temporary bed in there for when I go back to Belgium. I couldn’t find the OSB that I use and ended up having to use a sheet of plywood as a bed base. It’s not very satisfactory, bending and creaking in the middle, but it will have to do for now until I can think of something better.

But I’ll tell you something – and that is that I’m clearly not well. Two hours of working on Caliburn, and it wasn’t very hard labour that I was doing, and I was done for. I’ve no idea how I’m going to cope in the future if I can’t summon up the energy for this.

Instead of hanging out there to do more work, I ended up coming back here where I crashed out for three hours – really gone, I was. I’ll have to catch up back at home some other time.

Now that I’ve been to the shops and bought some garlic, I made one of my mega-curries tonight with mushrooms and lentils. But there’s plenty left for the next few days because I couldn’t summon up the appetite.

Now I’m off to bed again and to listen to the radio programmes for a while. I’m ready for a good sleep, even though I’ve already had a good sleep just now.

I can’t keep it up like I used to.

Monday 16th May 2016 – NOW, THAT’S MORE LIKE IT!

I crawled off to bed at something silly last night like 20:45 or thereabouts. I know that it was still light but I didn’t really care too much because all that I was intending to do was to listen to the radio programmes that I’ve downloaded onto my laptop.

Sometime shortly afterwards, I drifted off and apart from a couple of trips down the corridor during the night, I remember almost nothing until the alarm went off at 07:45. And I could have turned right over and gone back to sleep too. But that’s just the kind of sleep that I’ve been hoping to have for quite a while.

During the night, I was flying off to Canada too. A big wide-bodied jet and I was sitting in one of the seats in the middle,and next to me was quite an attractive lady with black hair and a black dress. She got up to use the facilities and a couple of minutes later, this big black dog (on an aeroplane!) came and sat on the empty seat next to me. I gave it a stroke but I was really hoping that it would go so that the woman would come back but the dog stayed and stayed, and that was that. On arrival in Canada we docked at gate 37, the very farthest gate away from the terminal, but we all ran to the immigration desk and found that we were the first people there. There were three desks, two of which had about 12 people each and the third which had just two or three. I was wondering about this – suppose that I went to the one with the fewest people there and found that it was reserved for something special and was turned away, I’d lose the benefit of having been one of the first to have arrived at the immigration desks.

I had a good day today too. It started off (and finished) by me cracking on with the blog. All of March 2011 is done, as is the bits of April 2011 that I seem to have missed at some time or other, and I’m well into May 2011. I’ll really be catching myself up soon at this rate.

I’ve also had a good go at Caliburn. The back has been emptied, tidied, a load of stuff consigned to the bin and then I’ve sorted out the stuff that I’m leaving behind and the stuff that I’m taking back. You might be wondering why I didn’t take the leaving stuff up to my house, but the answer to that is that it’s a Bank Holiday and there are other tasks that I need to perform that depend upon places being open so I’m combining all of the trips tomorrow.

But the amount of stuff that I’ve taken out of Caliburn means that he’ll go a good 5kph faster on the way back to Belgium on Saturday.

Another thing of note for recent times is that I managed not to crash out this afternoon. Despite the odd wave of fatigue I kept going for the whole day and so now I’m ready for a really early night. I’ll be listening to the radio again in bed until I fall asleep and then I’ll see where I end up tonight.

Sunday 15th May 2016 – A GOOD, SOLID, UNINTERRUPTED SLEEP

That was what i was hoping for yesterday. And did I get it?

I was in bed by 22:00 and fell asleep listening to some of the radio programmes that I recorded years ago from www.archive.org. Something awoke me rather dramatically an hour or so later and although I don’t know what it was, I did notice that Liz had been trying to speak to me on the internet. I replied to her but ended up going right back to sleep in the middle of the discussion. I really can’t last the pace these days, can I?

There was the usual trip down the corridor at some time during the night, and I was awake again at 06:30. But badger that for a game of soldiers, I turned over and went back to sleep. Next thing that I remember was at 07:30 and then I really couldn’t go back to sleep. By 07:45 I was up and about, preparing breakfast and looking for my medication which I seem to have left behind me in Pellenberg. Ahhh well!

At least it was a nice, sunny start to the day. The sun has followed me down here, so it seems, and just after breakfast it was streaming down the back of my neck for a while. And that was extremely pleasant.

As for today, I’ve been torn between three stools.

I’ve done two machine-loads of washing. All of the stuff that I had in Belgium with me plus all of the washing that was hanging around back at my house. There’s still plenty left over to do, but I’ll do another load just before I leave, and then everything will be up to date for when I return, whenever that might be.
I’ve been cracking on with the blog, bringing it up to to date. I’ve finished all of February 2011 and now I’m well stuck into March. If I’m not careful, I’ll be catching myself up
I’ve been drifting in and out of sleep too. I’m nothing like as young as I used to be and my health is still quite fragile as you know. It’s hardly surprising that I haven’t caught up with myself yet but I hope that I have done by this evening as I have a lot to do starting tomorrow

Liz had left me a ginger cake that she had made, and a slice of that went down a treat with my afternoon coffee. But there was no garlic – I ended up having to make garlic bread with a shallot and that’s not the same thing. I must buy some garlic if I want to do some cooking here.

So now, I’m going off for yet another early night and I’ll see how I get on. Tomorrow, I have to go back to chez moi and start my plans.

Tidying up Caliburn is the first item on the agenda.

Saturday 14th May – NOW …

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

But when I was gone, I was really gone.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I do like their optimism.

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

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

Ohh woe is me!

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

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

I’ve had enough for one day.

Thursday 12th May 2016 – HA HA HA!

Who was it who said something about “an early night” last night then?

For not only having stayed awake to watch a Mr Moto film (starring Peter Lorre in the title role), I stayed awake and awake and awake, and I was still tossing and turning at 03:45 this morning. So much for my predictions.

But I did manage to drop off to sleep at some point, and I was back at my old school, with a pile of girls, climbing up (not down) a rope of sheets trying to get in through a window or onto a balcony. And as for why I might be doing this, I’m afraid that I don’t have the foggiest. It’s gone clean out of my mind.

For the first time in ages I slept right through until the alarm went off and, resisting the temptation to turn over and go back to sleep, I went off for breakfast. Mind you, I paid for it later on in the day, crashing out at about 17:00 for an hour or so.

After breakfast, I went off on a prowl with the intention of exploring this famous bio shop in the Tiensestraat in Bierbeek about which I had heard so much. I’d driven past it the other evening but I didn’t have time to stop.

It’s certainly good at what it does, that’s for sure, but for me it was a little disappointing because there was none of the vegan cheese that I like. There was some – a kind of spreading mozzarella substitute – so I bought a couple of packs to see how it goes

I also bought a beautiful seeded baguette for lunch (which tasted delicious) and a couple of raisin buns, but I’ll be passing on the Knacker diabolique vegan sausages though. No matter how nice they looked, I couldn’t cope with the name.

But here’s another example of me having to change my national stereotypes. This shop, the Bio Planet, is another establishment that offers free coffee to customers, and there are a few broken biscuits to sample too, so I’ve added it to my ever-increasing list.

Things are definitely looking up here in Belgium.

And that’s not all either.

Just across the road is a Krefel electrical appliance shop so I went over there for a butcher’s. And I was astonished – really astonished. When have you EVER seen a standard-size domestic fridge that has a rated annual consumption of just 64 kilowatts per year? That is amazing.

And if you think that the fridge next to it, the one with freezer compartment, is equally astonishing at 98 kilowatts per year, there was one further down the row that had a rated consumption of just 93 kilowatts per year

And if that isn’t enough, the best is yet to come. Here in the shop was a standard-size freezer with an annual consumption of 101 kilowatts per annum.

This figure, and the one of 64 kw/A for the fridge, are figures that I have never ever seen for these appliances and had I been in a better place in my life right now, the fridge and freeze would be coming back home with me.

The fridge actually uses much less energy than the little 12-volt fridge that I have, and the freezer would go nicely in the barn running off the solar panels and wind turbine in there. I’d be set up for life with this lot.

You may remember the other day that I was moaning that my vegan cheese had been “tidied away” from the fridge at Sint Pieters. I knew that I wouldn’t have time to go back to Brussels for more and how I’d be stuck for my next series of travels.

But no longer, because here in the Carrefour – a mainstream supermarket – they are now selling vegan cheese slices too, and at about two-thirds the price of anywhere else over here. I was equally as astonished by this.

Yes, things are definitely looking up in Belgium right now.

Back here, I’ve pushed on with updating the older bits of the blog. In a mad fit of enthusiasm I’ve done all of January 2011 and I’m stuck well into February. But I won’t be going much further than this for now because I’m leaving here tomorrow as you know. I’m going to have a check-up and then I’m hitting the road.

I did mention that I crashed out this afternoon, and I had a strange occurrence when I awoke. I had a dizzy spell and was staggering around in here for five minutes until I sat down and gathered my wits (it doesn’t take me very long these days).

And for tea, I had pasta and ratatouille followed by spicy loaf and soya cream for pudding. Now I’m off to bed and I shan’t say anything more because I don’t want to tempt fate.

Wednesday 11th May 2016 – JUST FOR A CHANGE …

… I had something of a better night last night, falling asleep in the middle of a film at 22:15 and managing just one wander down the alleyway. I’d done some tossing and turning while I was in bed but nothing like as much as recently, and by 05:45 I was pretty much awake. 07:00 saw me with a coffee and a laptop, doing some work, and when was the previous time that you had ever heard of this?

It gave me an opportunity to write down where I’d been during the night before I forgot most of it (an experience that has been far too common this last week or so), and here we go.

There was a bunch of us in the Lion and Swan (the Boddingtons pub in West Street, Crewe) and it was after hours so all of the doors were locked. There was a banging from the window and someone from outside asking “I’m looking for a job. Is there any work available?”. The landlady went out to see and it turned out that it was some man, an Irish guy, who was doing the rounds trying to find work. The landlady made a few enquiries and found out that this person was under some kind of obligation to stay in Ireland and she was wondering whether the relevant people knew that he was now turning up in Crewe looking for work as if he intended to stay here.
From there, I rambled off into some James Bond-esque kind of adventure (we’ve been doing a bit of this just recently) involving some person who had gone missing. This involved a search of several places, some of which were quite impressive houses of the type that you would only find in Mayfair, but searched they were just the same. One of these houses was occupied by some kind of dowager-type of woman who dressed in keeping with her status and property and she allowed the search to take place but at one point, she simply disappeared. The hero made an inspection and discovered that there seemed to be a false panel in the wall and he reasoned that she had slipped behind it. He simply loitered in the vicinity because he was sure that she would reappear. And sure enough, she slipped out from behind the panel (where there was a stairway leading to a secret part of the house). As her head came into view he hit her so had in the face that the term “a glass jaw” was never ever more appropriate because you could hear the crash and tinkle right the way through the house.

While I was down at the kettle making my coffee, I noticed that we seem to have had a bird-strike during the night. I don’t remember seeing this outline on the window yesterday. And this looks very much owl-like if you ask me, poor thing.

But this brings me back to something else that I have been saying for 20 years. There are some foolish, misguided people who object to wind turbines on the grounds that birds fly into the blades and die. And there are other foolish and misguided people who object to wind turbines on the grounds that they make too much noise. But I’ve always wondered about if they make so much noise, why do birds fly into them? One would have thought that the birds would have heard the noise (and felt the turbulence too). But here, we have “living” proof that glass window panes are very harmful to the health of birds. Do these people then refuse to fit glass windows into their houses, or are they the typical, usual NIMBY hypocrites?

I think we should be told.

Once breakfast was out of the way, I needed to go off and organise my baguette for lunch. This involved, as usual, a trek of about 100 miles to the Spar shop at Lubbeek because there doesn’t appear to be anywhere closer

This is the baguette here, and those of you with eagle eyes will notice the weight of the baguette on the label because it’s going to be quite important in a very short minute.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that Belgium is “special” and Belgian maths are no different in this respect.

And so here’s a question – if a whole baguette weighs 250 grams, how much do you think half a baguette weighs?

And now check your answer with the weight shown in this photo just here and see if you are correct according to Belgian mathematics. How did you get on?

And so apart from that, I’ve been bashing out the blog – or, at least, the month of April 2011 – to make it conform to the new in-house standards. This has been quite a complicated month to do, and for a couple of reasons too.

Firstly I had to completely revise several entries for that month. Some entries were done in haste and would benefit from a complete revision. Not only that, a couple of them were quite important, if not significant, and so it was quite important that they were as complete and coherent as possible with as many photos as possible too.

Secondly, some blog entries didn’t exist. Back in the older days of this blog, if I were on the road I would blog whenever I had the opportunity, incorporating two, three, or sometimes many, many days into one entry. More recently though, I’ve been blogging every night (or sometimes, first thing the following morning) and if there was no internet access , I’d save them as text files and add them individually at the next opportunity. This is how I want my blog to be and so I’ve had to revise a pile of entries in order to reflect the “day-to-day” nature of the blog.

All of that has taken me all of the day, believe it or not, and I’ve not long finished. I did however have a little cheat and crashed out for over an hour at 16:00. And while I was “away”, I was watching a film, Carry on Christmas (and I don’t mean the cameo TV programmes but what passed as a real full-length feature film) in the company of the girl who has been described on these pages as “the one that got away”.

I spoke to Liz on the internet for ages too, and had a repeat of the delicious tea that I had last night – and it tasted even better too.

So tonight I’ll have an early night, watch a film, and prepare for an early start again tomorrow.

Nighty-night!

Tuesday 10th May 2016 – SO, WHAT ARE THE NEW DIGS LIKE, THEN?

First of all, it made a pleasant change to wake up and hear the birds singing. For the last few weeks I’ve been waking up to hear the birds coughing.

My room looks out towards the west, away from the campus, and I have the sun streaming in here towards the end of the afternoon and all of that is quite nice.

And that, I’m afraid, is about that.

Firstly, there’s no private toilet. I have to wander off down the corridor which, three or four times during the night, is going to be rather inconvenient to say the least.

Having had a bad night’s sleep yet again (I just can’t get comfy these days) and totally forgetting a dream that I was having, I staggered off in search of breakfast only to be told that … errr … there isn’t any. It’s not supplied.

Neither is coffee. And there’s nothing to cook on, no water fountain, no laundry room, no absolutely nothing.

The building itself is fairly modern – 1960s or 1970s I reckon, and has the air of being some kind of isolation hospital. And in the 50 or whatever years since it’s been built, I reckon that it hasn’t seen a lick of paint or an ounce of modernisation in the areas that I saw.

However, you can’t argue with the setting and if it’s peace and quiet that you want, then you can’t go far wrong here because there isn’t going to be anything to disturb you.

It’s set in huge grounds that have the appearance of having once been landscaped, and on peering through the trees there’s a really impressive chateau down there surrounded by a lake – or moat even.

I was tempted to go for a good browse around and to see what gives at the chateau but it was raining quite heavily on and off and so I’ve taken a rain-check on that and I’ll be looking into this at a later date.

So the first thing to do was to sort out some food for breakfast.

Alison had given me some dry-toasted biscuits and I had some strawberry jam. There was some grapefruit juice that I had bought last night and I had fetched some coffee from home. So that was breakfast all properly organised.

As for lunch; I nipped out in Caliburn to look for a baguette and ended up having to drive about a hundred blasted miles to Lubbeek before I found anywhere. And there wasn’t a single fritkot or cheapo fast food place anywhere on the way.

So what did I do for tea then?

Well, there’s a camping stove, some water, a saucepan, some pasta, some tins of mushrooms, some tins of mixed veg and a few jars of tomato sauce and so I cooked in the back of Caliburn like I did in France two years ago when I was in those digs in Rennes-les-Bains where there was no restaurant open. Some slices of that spicy cake with soya cream and I had a meal for for a King.

The secret of all of these matters is “preparation”. If you prepare for the problems, they don’t become problems, do they?

And how have I occupied my time?

Apart from tiptoeing through the tulip … errr … raindrops, I’ve been working on the blog again bringing it further up-to-date. I’ve probably done another 10 days today so I’m making a fair bit of progress.

And I’ve been on the phone to the bank (which took me about an hour and I shudder to thing how much that will cost me) for I’ve mislaid my bank card. I can’t find it anywhere at the moment and I need to order it because if I do go back home for a week, it needs to be there when I’m there so that I can bring it back with me.

My plans of finding a little studio or flat have come to nothing too. It seems that no-one will consider a lease for less than a year, so a four-month lease is out of the question for me. Good job that I have a Plan C, as well a plan B.

So now, I’m going to have an early night and see if I can remember what happens while I’m on my travels. I’m rather letting the side down right at the moment.

Monday 9th May 2016 – WA-HEYYYYYYY!

Yes, folks, I’m free!

I’ve been expelled from the hospital this evening, and I definitely heard at least one nurse say “if he comes back, I’m leaving!”.

Apparently everything is as it should be (but I forgot to ask about the blood count)and there’s no reason now for me to stay. I promptly gathered up my things and cleared off. You’ve no idea just how pleased Caliburn and Strawberry Moose were to see me, and we all quickly headed off into the sunset (well, it wasn’t THAT late, but it’s a nice piece of prose).

Earlier on in the day when I’d gone down to make my cheese butty, I went to the reception desk. Seeing that I was trailing a perfusion drip machine behind me, these seemed like a good time to go and negotiate the car-park situation – no-one could doubt my bona fides with all of that – and sure enough, I was given a free pass.

But when our Three Mustgetbeers went to use it at the exit barrier we succeeded in jamming up the machine completely. And by the time that someone came to unjam it (I had beaten a hasty retreat by this time) there was a queue a mile long at the barrier. Ahh well!

I nipped to Sint Pieters for the stuff that I had left behind and ended up having something of a “discussion” with the woman in reception. I’d parked Caliburn on the ramp outside the door of the hospital and my intention was to mention it to the receptionist in case she was wondering whose it was, and to say that I would be back in two minutes.

As simple as that, hey? But as you know, in anything in which I am involved, the facts are quite often different and the explanations that I was forced to give (all in Flemish too) took a darn sight longer than two minutes. It would have been quicker to have said nothing at all.

And it was all a waste of time too because they had cleared out my part of the fridge and everything had long-since been binned, including about €20-worth of sliced vegan cheese! I’m furious about all of this!

I did however stop at a huge supermarket on the edge of Leuven for a pile of shopping, including at long last, a decent pair of headphones instead of these rubbishy in-ear ones that are falling to pieces already, and then I made my way out (and I do mean “out”) of town into the countryside to the campus at Pellenberg where I’m staying until Friday.

But let’s return to the events since the last time I spoke to you all. I’ll tell you all about Pellenberg tomorrow after I’ve had a good prowl around.

When I went back into my romm last night it was absolutely stifling in there. So much so that I came back out here and watched a film on the laptop until about 22:30. And by then, it was much better back in the bedroom.
Memo to self – close sunblind first thing in the morning to keep out the heat

I slept a little better too, although the night was full of awakenings. Nothing like the previous one though, thank heavens, and I don’t recall the night-nurse (except for one occasion but I was awake anyway so that doesn’t really count).

I’d had some mega-rambles too and some of these (the bits that I remember anyway) are quite impressive.
Further memo to self – remember to charge up the dictaphone

I started off with a Sherlock Holmes adventure and it really was an adventure too. Nothing at all like Conan Doyle’s books but a huge Gothic horror ramble too that took us through the by-wys and alleyways of London, haunted houses in the countryside, graveyards and the like. Something very much akin to”Sherlock Holmes meets the Son of Dracula”. It was loosely based on a Sherlock Holmes story something like “The Engineer’s Thumb” but I don’t now recall exactly which one it was.
From here, we went on to have another cameo appearance from my Greek friend Maria. I was in Northampton, in a fourth-floor apartment looking out over a T-junction and one of the roads, the road to the right, was labelled something like “take this road to a better future”. This inspired me somewhat so off I set. But when I arrived down at the junction, the traffic lights changed to red. “This is an auspicious start” I thought to myself. But eventually I could continue along my way and I did notice that the road looked no different than any other street heading out of town. We did however come to a kind of sales room where there was an auction taking place. I arrived just as the last lot was being sold off – a 1940s-type of motorcycle and there were only two bidders. The price wasn’t all that high either but as usual, I had come totally unprepared, with no money or anything and so I had to pass up the opportunity. I did make a mental note, though, that I’d be back with plenty of cash if this is the kind of thing that goes on around here. And it was here that Maria put in an appearance too. It’s been … ohhh … 14 years since I’ve seen her in real life (but only about 2 weeks on here, I reckon) so we had plenty to discuss and tons of news to exchange.
But by now I was back home (wherever that might have been) in a rural environment with Nerina. We had an appointment in half an hour and I’d been working so I was dirty, and this is when I discovered that the hot water had been turned off, so no bath. I had to light the boiler and hope that 15 minutes would be enough to at least heat it up so that I could have a quick plunge. But that didn’t work out as it should so we cancelled that, and I missed the appointment in the end. But then I started to tidy up outside the house – trimming the edges of the driveway and in the end the place looked beautiful out there (I wish that I could do this at my house) so I carried on inside. There were all kinds of weeds and the like growing on the floor of the bedroom so I attacked those too and by the time that I had finished, the bedroom floor was so clean and shiny with nice brown parquet floor. It looked so beautiful. Even Nerina and a third person (I can’t remember who he was now) who was with us passed a comment and I felt so proud.

That took me up until 06:00, and by 06:45 I’d polished off the orange left over from yesterday, drunk some water and performed my toilet. And at 07:00 I was in the comfy chair in the day room, beating the sun by a good 10 minutes. Now that I’ve worked out how to make the comfy chairs recline, it was my intention to stay there until either the laptop battery or the coffee machine ran dry, whichever was the first, but I had failed to take into account the persistence of the nurses who did everything in their power to disturb me, such as giving me medication, changing my perfusion, taking my temperature and blood pressure, taking my weight (I’ve gained 1kg, by the way).

That’s not all either.

The doctor and the professor came in for a lengthy chat with me and this was followed by the girl from the Social Services department to discuss accommodation for me. It seems that a place has been found for me at Pellenberg until Friday morning for when I leave here, which (as you have seen already, I did today).

Later on, I was told that I had to go for an ear examination. The appointment had been arranged at 13:30 but was at Sint Rafaël across town so I needed to go there. This meant being picked up by the shuttle at 12:30. So at 13:00 I boarded the shuttle, having been pushed in a wheelchair about 20 miles around the campus here, had my appointment at 14:00 (and I have a hearing loss in the treble ranges of my left ear and telling jokes to foreigners, as Kenneth Williams and Alfred Hitchcock once said, is indeed “a total waste of time” because the doctor sat there pasty-faced when I explained that that was probably why I play bass guitar) and then had to wait for the shuttle at … errr … 15:00.

All in all, it was 15:45 by the time that I arrived and had they been more organised, told me earlier that I could leave, and disconnected me from the pipes and tubes, I could have waked there and back in half the time.

But the examination itself was horrible. I had all kinds of stuff including, at one stage, a camera, stuffed up my nose and in my ear and I felt dreadful.

And upon my return, I found that I had a new room-mate too. So it’s a good job that I was leaving, wasn’t it?

It was on this note, starving to death and totally fed up, that I went off to make myself a cheese butty. And you know the rest of the story.

Monday 9th May 2016 – DO YOU KNOW WHAT?

Yesterday was VE Day – the anniversary of “Victory in Europe” in 1945. And I didn’t see a single posting, on any social website or on the BBC News website – about the anniversary. That surprises me, for we are being bombarded with all kinds of anniversaries of events that killed half a dozen, 100, 3000 people, so why aren’t we being bombarded with the anniversary of an event that killed over 30 million people?

But then again, it doesn’t surprise me really. These other anniversaries are really highlighting events that took place either involving terrorists/freedom-fighters (delete whichever is inapplicable) at the hands of forces of the State (if the victims are of certain ethnic origins or colour) or “innocent” civilians or forces of the State (although how civilians can be “innocent” if they have voted for warmongers totally defeats me, and how the forces of the State can be “innocent” when they have been engaged to kill their victims likewise totally defeats me) at the hands of terrorists/freedom-fighters (delete whichever is inapplicable) (if the perpetrators are of a certain ethnic origin or colour or, as is more-often the case, religion)

It all goes to prove that these people banging all of these drums are just doing nothing more than stirring up an unpleasant and unhealthy agenda of their own – racist, anti-colonialist, religionist, call it what you will. Wouldn’t it be nice if everyone would forget just for a moment all about their own little issues and commemorate a day that ended a period that involved the killing of many, many times more people that their favourite little conflict , or the total sum of all of their little conflicts ever did.

And now, about VJ Day …

Sunday 8th May 2016 – I WAS A BIT PREMATURE …

… in my thoughts that I could turn of the air-conditioning in my room. By the time that I went back there at the end of the day, the thing had started up again and that was that. The night-nurse had a play with it later but he could only manage to slow it down rather than switch it off and so that was that.

It didn’t make a blind bit of difference though because firstly, the one right outside the door started off full-tilt a little later and secondly, we had an “incident” during the night. I’m not sure what it was but a group of family members which had stayed well-past the end of official visiting hours until the small hours of the morning suddenly upped sticks and went outside the room and two nurses came down, who promptly closed the security curtains around everyone else’s room entrances. One can only speculate.

I was awake until long after 01:00, again at 04:00, again at 05:30, again at 06:00 and I gave it up for good at about 07:00. By 07:45 I was encamped in the window seat in the day-room although with much less sun than before and with a nice pleasant breeze blowing in through the open door. But judging by the grief-stricken faces of the German-speaking family in there this morning, my speculation about the events of last night can only be correct. And later on, a nurse confirmed it when I asked her, although she was clearly unhappy to tell me.

I’d been on my travels too for quite a while during the night (so it can’t be the antibiotics that’s causing those then, can it?). I started off at home with my mother and my elder sister and we were as usual having a dispute. I needed everyone’s co-operation (and the chances of that every happening in our family were about zero, as anyone who has ever read any of this rubbish will realise) to be somewhere at 14:00. It was now 12:45 and nothing had happened and everyone seemed to be enjoying my discomfort. In the end I stormed out of the house, went off to a group of people – long-haired motorcyclists whom I knew – and we promptly all came back to my family’s garage-cum-service station (because last night that’s what we owned and that’s where we lived) and smashed the place and everything in it to smithereens and then burnt it down to the ground in an orgy of anger and destruction. It didn’t solve the problem of course but you’ve absolutely no idea how much better it felt.
Later, a friend and I were actually involved in the running of some kind of informal garage service. We’d taken over a derelict site that was still in working order (not the family one of course) and set ourselves up in business. I was dishing out the fuel from these dilapidated petrol pumps but I couldn’t let the cars go (there were only three of them anyway) because my colleague hadn’t come back with the paperwork that I needed (as you all know, I have a “thing” about recording fuel consumption, mileages and so on). When he did finally put in his appearance he had forgotten to bring the stuff with him so my plans were all of a waste of time. But then a car (a black Capri) appeared and asked for fuel, and an air line because the front offside (a RHD car) tyre was flat. My colleague said that the wheel bearing on that side had gone and needed to change it. The driver stuck his head over the wing of the car and asked if we needed to take the wheel off so I replied in the affirmative. He said “to blow the tyre up?” to which I answered that I thought that he was talking about the wheel bearing – you don’t need to remove the wheel to blow up the tyre.
A short while later, I was off a-wandering on the bank up to the railway station at the top end of Winsford. I don’t remember who was with me but one person might well have been Nerina (although I can’t be sure now) and the other was someone who was something of a long-term unemployed man who had to scratch around to make a living (reminding me very much of someone whom I used to know in Crewe in the early 1970s). We were walking up the bank and an aeroplane – a huge Guppy-type thing – passed right over our heads and descended even lower, passing over a village in the valley at less-than-rooftop height as it went into land at Manchester Airport (this is a good flight-path, I can tell you). The plane itself was painted white and belonged to the parcels carrier whose livery is white with dark red stripes and a kind of script writing (and whose name I will remember as soon as I press “Publish”). I asked our companion whether the planes flying as low as this overhead bothered him, to which he replied that these don’t, but the two that come over at 10:30 and 16:00 are devastating. We ended up back in his house and Nerina (or whoever) went into the kitchen to make food or something. The guy had been out for a while and came back, counting a sum of money which I reckoned to be about £120:00. This seemed to be his share of his “dole” money after his rent and other stuff had been paid. He told me that if I were to look in my jacket pocket I would find “a couple of quid”. This was intended to be for whoever was in the kitchen, for everything that she was doing for him, and he would be grateful if I could pass it on to her at a convenient moment.

Alison said that she would come to see me so I wandered back to my room to get prettied up ready for her visit – after all, I have to look my best, don’t I? And in my room I found a banana and a bottle of lemonade too. It’s like a hotel here and I’m so lucky.

When Alison turned up, she brought a few surprises with her. Such as, a pot of almond-based ice-cream, two cans of fiery ginger beer, two packets of dry toasts, one pack of rice cakes, two soya vanilla desserts, some strawberries, one partridge and one pear tree. The ice cream disappeared without trace right in front of her eyes and after she had gone, one of the vanilla desserts, the strawberries and some rice cakes went as well. And after she went, I went and made myself another cheese butty. My appetite is back and raging, isn’t it?

It was lovely to see Alison, though. A bright, cheerful, smiling face to match the sunshine outside. She stayed for almost two hours too which, at the price of parking here at the hospital, shows a major sacrifice. We had plenty of time to discuss my latest plans which, as you know, change with the weather (or, more likely, my state of health).

And if you think that that food was enough to be going on, that really isn’t all. My favourite little nursey, hearing that I couldn’t eat the bread on offer, went off and toasted a couple of rounds for me which was really nice of her. She even brought me an ice-cold bottle of lemonade afterwards so I must be clearly in her good books.

But apart from all of that, what else have I been up to today?

The answer is “loads and loads”.

I’ve finally been in the right frame of mind to have a huge attack at updating my blog.

You might remember that when I brought my blog in-house in 2013 all of the tags and links were missing, and the photos didn’t set right. I started a little plan of attack to correct it, which I have continued in a desultory kind of fashion but today I crashed right on, did the whole of April 2012 and some of July 2012 too (May and June need “special consideration” for which I need to concentrate). I just hope that I can maintain the momentum for the rest of the site.

So now I’m going to prepare for an early night. If I am being ejected tomorrow, I need to be on form. And furthermore, I need to know where I’m going to be living too because the girl at the Social Services was absent last week.

Good job that I have the fold-up bed and single quilt in the back of Caliburn, isn’t it?

Saturday 7th May 2016 – I DIDN’T FORGET …

… my spicy loaf thing after all that. It was actually in my rucksack where I hadn’t thought to look. It was about midnight when I suddenly remembered where it was, so I ended up with a midnight snack, and didn’t it go down well!

But a midnight snack will tell you something about yet another night here. Here I am all on my own in my room and once more I’m wide awake at silly o’clock not being able to go to sleep. We even had – and who in their right mind would ever engage – a night-nurse with a deep booming voice? He can’t whisper to the patients – you can hear him all down the corridor. I ended up closing my bedroom door, which is something that I hate to do here.

It seems to be that it’s the noise of the air-conditioning that’s making the racket that keeps me awake, so I made a few investigations this morning and I think I know how I can switch it off. I’ll try that tonight, which will mean that it will then be too hot to sleep.

Just wait and see.

But I did drop off to sleep at some point because although I do remember 01:00, the next thing that I remember was 06:30 and it seemed to be continuous too as far as I know, with not even a trip down the corridor this time. That’s progress, I reckon.

And while I was out, I was off back to Nantwich and my old school, and to something of a sex scandal, where someone was accused of sending indecent messages to a young girl pupil there. All of this was splashed over the BBC and questions were being asked everywhere. However, I happened to be watching a Polish sports programme on TV and they had a news broadcast at half-time, and this featured this particular story. It went into much more detail, saying that the girl was Polish and the messages consisted of words such as “Katya (or whatever her name was), go 20 paces forward” and “Katya (or whatever …) go ten paces left”, all like the instructions in The Musgrave Ritual and nothing like the innuendo that the BBC was implying at all. All it showed was how short of news the BBC was that it was blowing up out of all proportions a harmless media nothingness.

In fact, this bears a startling parallel to something that had actually occurred to me 30 years or so ago. In those days, the BBC finished broadcasting its radio programmes at 02:00, ending with a news broadcast, and when I was driving taxis through the night, I always listened to it. But a quick turn of the dial at 02:00 brought into reception Radio Free Bulgaria , the Communist-supported English-language radio broadcasts,and they always started at 02:00 with a news broadcast. It would have the same broadcasts using the same vocabulary, but by changing the stresses of the words and by changing the punctuation, it could make it sound totally different and, in many cases, mean exactly the opposite.

That was my first encounter with “propaganda” because even back in those days I was never so naïve as to believe that whatever the BBC was telling us was the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth and hearing the same news being told from a completely opposite viewpoint made that news sound just as credible as the BBC reports. So who was right?

Like I said, I was never so naïve enough to entirely believe the BBC and my cynicism has just gone worse over the intervening years.

So today we have made outstanding progress.

I was up and about and in my window for 08:00, basking in the sun for a couple of hours, and I scavenged a pile of fruit, a few bottles of lemonade, the rest of the biscuits and some spicy loaf too throughout the day. That kept me out of mischief.

But the highlight was definitely my permission. Being given leave to wander around the hospital for an hour, I went for a slow walk this afternoon. I ended up with a big hunk of bread and some of my cheese slices from Caliburn ending up with a huge cheese butty in the sunshine. It was the most delicious thing that I have eaten for ages.

A long chat on the internet with Liz followed and we discussed a cunning plan, more of which anon.

So now I’m winding down for the evening and I’ll have an early night hoping to catch up with my sleep. If it’s true that I’m being ejected on Monday, then there are just two more nights to go so I want to make the most of whatever time I have left here to catch up on my sleep.

But Alison is coming to see me tomorrow, so that will be nice. Especially as she will be bringing some vegan ice cream with her. I do hope that she remembers to bring a spoon with her.

Friday 6th May 2016 – NOW, I WONDER …

… about the allergy tests that I did at Montlucon just before I came away.

They gave me the tests, apparently, to see whether I was allergic to a new medication that they were proposing for me, but the tests came up with reactions so they didn’t proceed. After chemotherapy they started me off on a course of antibiotics – 2 huge pills that look like torpedoes – and that more-or-less coincided with my violent attacks of nausea and … err … other stuff. However they took the decision yesterday to suspend the antibiotics and strangely enough, I haven’t been to the bathroom once after an early-morning session.

Furthermore, during the course of the day, I managed to nibble down about 10 dry biscuits, one apple and two bottles of lemonade and, to date, they have not yet upped sticks and left. I would have had a couple of slices of spicy cake stuff too but for some unaccountable reason I seem to have left that behind in Caliburn.

Of course there’s a long way to go but it’s a rather optimistic sign, and I’m wondering if I had maybe an allergy to this antibiotic treatment that has caused all of this. It could also be that, given the shape of the things, I’ve been taking them the wrong way, of course.

And that does remind me of the story about the doctor visiting his patient and asked him “did those suppositories I gave you ease your piles any?”
To which the patient replied “to be honest, doctor, for all the good that they did me, I may as well have shoved them up my a**e”.
Mind you, with my face of course, it’s a mistake easily made.

I was really looking forward to last night having a room to myself but as you might have been expecting, it didn’t work out quite like that at all for I was still unable to go to sleep. And when I did, it was full of fits and starts and tossing and turning.

But it did mean that I was up early. And when I went for a little walk I noticed the sun streaming in through the window of the common room so I grabbed the laptop and settled down in the window to enjoy it. It didn’t last long though but nevertheless, with the heat pouring in down the back of my neck it left me feeling a new man, which is just as well because I’m fed up of this one.

The doctor came to see me and we had a very lengthy chat. And she’s clearly concerned because she went off and came back with the Professor. They were honest and admitted that they had never seen a chemotherapy reaction quite like mine but they seemed honestly to believe that I would triumph over it in the long term. They’ve prescribed a course of steroids for me to help me control my body mass, with my weight drifting away even as I speak.

They said that they are intending to keep me in until Monday at least which I suppose isn’t such bad news, for it means that I can go straight from here back to Sint Pieters which is more convenient for me and in any case it all saves me €20 per night while I’m here. We must focus on the positives.

Another thing that was mentioned was the subject of my dreams. Being curious about things of this nature, I asked whether or not there was any combination of medicines that would provoke such wild wanderings. She confirmed that it is not unknown, but no-one has ever done a study into it. So maybe there’s an opening for me here – I’m certainly being a pace setter, if not a trend-setter … "or an Irish Setter" – ed .

It came to prominence where apart from appearing personally in two episodes of the Clitheroe Kid, I went off on two of the most astonishing and vivid voyages that I have ever had. And true to form, when I awoke – bolt-upright – at 07:00, every last vestige of them vanished for ever. You’ve no idea just how disappointed I was about that.

So now, I’ll settle down for the night and hope that my little improvement will finally give me a really good night. I deserve one, and need one too, especially as I’m once more on my own tonight.

Let’s keep our fingers crossed and see what happens, hey?

EPIC HALL

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