Thursday 7th November 2013 – I’VE BEEN A BUSY BOY TODAY

Yes, high time I started work again around here. And even though I had something of a late-ish morning I still managed to do a good session before lunch.

First off, I repaired the woodshed. The corrugated iron sheets blew off while I wasn’t here and all of the wood is soaking wet. But I’ve rescued the sheets, nailed them down this time and used some bracing struts, and then covered it all over with an old tarp that was lying around not doing very much. That might hold it for a while until I can build the new one across the yard.

While I was outside I did some tidying up too and also a pile of weeding outside the house. It now looks as if someone is actually living here.

But that’s not all. The kitchen in the verandah was in a desperate condition and so I’ve tidied up in there and given it something of a superficial clean. At least the sink is empty now and unblocked which is a great improvement. Next task was the chest of drawers up here. There’s a screw retainer missing from one of the sides and so the drawers were dropping out of the runners. I emptied that, turned it upside-down to see what was needed and then fixed that.

After lunch, I emptied a couple of boxes out of Caliburn and dealt with those and seeing as I was in a good mood and having done a good day’s work I treated myself to a film. The Cannonball Run is 90 minutes of mindless mayhem but it’s a film that I can sit and watch time and time again, simply for the fact that it’s clear to see that the actors involved, and good actors too, are thoroughly enjoying themselves making it. As well as that, though, I keep a little database of film quotes and this film has contributed more one-liners to my database than any other film that I’ve ever seen. Who can forget immortal phrases such as “You wouldn’t last five minutes in a New York subway” or “It takes brilliance and years of hard work, and you wouldn’t understand any of that”.

Anyway, it’s beddie byes time now. See you all tomorrow

-4

Wednesday 6th November 2013 – AFTER SOMETHING OF A LEISURELY MORNING …

… in which it was something like 10:00 when I crawled out out my stinking pit, I started to work. But I do have to say that it was nice to wake up at home in my own bed with all of my own things around me. You have no idea just how much I’ve missed all of that over this last 10 months or so.

So what have I been doing? The answer to that is that being fed up of living in a tip, I’ve grasped the bull by the horns and there are now 5 sacks full of waste paper from up here as well as 2 sacks full of ordinary rubbish. And I can even see the top of the coffee table, which is very good news indeed.

I’ve also made a conscious decision that I will no longer use paper to light the fire. Having used firelighters for the last couple of times of fire-lighting, I’ve come to the conclusion that there is much less ash in the fire than there ever was before, and also the glass window of the fire isn’t tarring over as much. So that is going to be a little progress. It makes more waste paper here to be disposed of, but that will mean all the more for the recycling bins.

Another thing that I’ve done is to clear the kitchen table up here. I have the old white table that I used as a wallpaper pasting table and it’s in a pretty disreputable state. Covered with clutter of course and so I’ve sorted out a lot of that and when I finally reach it in the van, I can bring up the nice table and chairs that I liberated from Marianne’s and they will look quite nice in here. I’ll need to buy one of those oiled table cloths because I don’t want to ruin the tabletop but I can do that on Saturday at the shops if I go to Commentry.

Finally, I’ve been sorting out the web-hosting issues that I’ve been having just recently. I’ve been told that the management of the web-hosting company that I’ve been using have all left their posts, meaning that the company will eventually run down and close, with the loss of all of the data. One of the employees however, with whom I’ve had dealings with before, has accessed the company’s server and saved all of the files to his own server and so we’ve been engaged this last week or so (hence the “outage” of my organ) setting everything up. However, we did hit a snag. The guy dealing with my webhosting tells me that it seems that my domain name had expired and the credit card, which was linked to the domain name via an automatic renewal, has also expired, consequently the registrars were … errrr … proving difficult. Of course, that brought everything to a standstill until I contacted the registrars, and the following conversation ensued –
“Yes, your domain name has expired”
“When?”
“11th April 2013”
“So why didn’t you automatically renew it?”
“Well, your credit card has expired”
“When did my credit card expire?”
“Err … 30th September 2013”
“So what happened between 11th April 2013 and 30th September 2013?”
“Err … can I call you back?”
“No – I would like an answer now, especially as you have been giving my webhosts some very misleading information about my financial situation”

Anyway, the upshot of all of this is that my website is now back on line and all seems to be hunky-dory, for the moment. But it really was starting to be just like the bad old days of 4 or 5 years ago when my then-webhost thought it clever to impress her new masters by using her power over my website as a weapon.

I hope that we aren’t going back to those days.

-6

Tuesday 5th November 2013 – I’M GETTING TOO OLD …

… to sleep across the front seats of Caliburn these days.

Despite the ignonimity of having to stop for a sleep on the way home, and despite having taken precautions of rescuing two small cushions, one to wedge down between the seats and the other to use as a pillow, I still had the worst night’s sleep that I have ever had. I managed to avoid the cramp from the last time I slept in Caliburn, but I had an enormous pain in the neck all night and I’m not sure why. I just couldn’t get comfortable.

Still, I had had 8 hours or so of “rest”, if you can call it that, and that totally surprised me, but anyway I took to the road in a driving rainstorm (so much for the beautifully clear evening we had had last night but I did think that “driving” was quite appropriate) and with the odd stop for roadworks and for food at the Carrefour at Montmarault, I was back at Pooh Corner by midday.

I’ve unloaded a few things … "just a few" – ed … but I’ve spent most of the day chilling out and catching up on the sleep that I’ve lost. I’ve also lit the fire – the first of the year of course, and for two reasons too. Firstly, it was cold in here – at just 11.2°C and dropping, and that’s below the threshold for the fire. Secondly, I rescued some dry wood from Marianne’s and all my wood outside is thoroughly soaking due to having been exposed to the rain for the last 6 months. Consequently I need to dry it out, and sticking a load of it over a hot stove is the easiest way to go about doing that.

And with that, I crashed out yet again, and that was that.

-2

Monday 4th November 2013 – THE DEED IS DONE

Marianne’s apartment has now been sold and her estate liquidated. And when I see just the amounts to which everyone seems to have helped himself, there isn’t much of it left. “Vultures picking over the bones of a corpse” is what immediately springs to mind, and the metaphor seems to be quite apt. “Give everything that is left to the poor” said Marianne, and that’s what I will do, but I can’t help feeling that the poor are going to be rather disillusioned with the Vultures of Belgium.

First thing this morning was to roll up the mattress and bedding and have that ready to go. Second thing was to go to the DiY shop and purchase a new rubber gasket for the sink waste pipe outlet. I’ve fitted that and now the sink drains much better. Everything else that was hanging around went into the last cardboard box and the waste bin, and I put all of that outside along with the plants while I vacuumed everywhere.

The next-to-last thing that I did was to have a shower and to clean the bathroom and to pack up the suitcase of clothes. That went outside along with the shower curtain, and the final task was to read all of the meters.

Fetching Caliburn, I loaded all of the stuff up, and there wasn’t much room for anything else after that. I’d judged it quite fine. It’s a good job I wasn’t intending to take the plants with me – they are decorating the hall of the building now for people to do what they will with them.

I found a quiet nook and settled down with a good book until the relevant moment, and that was that. And I do recall saying to my lawyer as we left the building at the end “I won’t say a definitive goodbye to you, because I said that a couple of years ago and I still ended up coming back, but maybe we shall meet agin, a long time before Philippi”

I still have a few things to do in Brussels, not the least of which being to cancel the standing order about the payments to the apartment and also some things for Marianne, but that will have to wait for another time as I’ve rather lost interest in it all for now. I was on the motorway and out of that accursed nation.

At Melun, I stopped for fuel as usual but my friendly neighbourhood kebab house was closed. That was a disaster. However Dominos Pizza place was open and I ended up with yet another pizza vegetariana. And goodbye to the vegan cheese because I forgot to nip over the road earlier and buy some more.

But back on the motorway, round about midnight I was just overwhelmed with sleep and I’ve no idea why. I can’t keep going like I used to. Nothing for it but to pull off the highway and have a kip. I’m getting old.

-4

Sunday 3rd November 2013 – AND IN A CHANGE OF PLAN …

… I’ve been working today. Or, rather, what remained of today by the time that I got up. I wasn’t in much of a rush seeing as it’s Sunday.

Today was the day that absolutely everything that remained in the apartment, with the exception of what I want tomorrow morning, can be packed up and made ready to go. And not just that either – no-one came for the video and audio cassettes so I bagged them up into rubbish sacks and stuck the video cassettes in with the rubbish downstairs. The audio cassettes I put outside on the pavement with the broken clothes drier and, true to form, they disappeared during the course of the day.

The bed I dismantled – I’ll be sleeping on the mattress on the floor tonight, and the coffee and dining room tables I dismantled and wrapped in clingfilm – I can see the uses of this stuf during furniture removals.

So with all of that done, I bought myself a pizza (I shan’t be cooking again in here) and sat down to watch some gridiron until the late evening when it all went quiet. Then I went off down the road to rescue Caliburn and started descending all of the boxes in the lift (there were 7 lift-loads in all and I was hoping for no more than 5). It was at that moment that the concierge started to wash the hallway floor – 23:00 hours. He wasn’t pleased about me blocking the hallway, just as I wasn’t pleased about him washing the hallway at that time of night. He told me to put my stuff outside. Well, like I’m really going to do that in the pouring rain so I told him in no uncertain terms what he coud do with his broom handle and this led to yet another contretemps (long-term readers of this rubbish will know only to well that this is not the first contretemps that I have had with this ignorant peasant, but I digress)

So Caliburn is now almost fully-loaded, with more stuff that I was hoping to take back but there you are, and tomorrow is the final day, but we haven’t quite finished yet. The sink in the kitchen has now totally blocked up and there was no way of emptying it. Dropping my tea into the sink twice last week hadn’t helped. Taking the drain plug out of the elbow didn’t improve matters very much and so I bit the bullet and dismantled the entire system from the sink down to the main drain. And here was the culprit. Just in the downpipe from the sink, everything was all clogged up with a sub-human mass of congealed whatever that must have been there for a hundred years and Yours Truly was there for a good half hour chiselling it out.

So having finally dealt with what was left of Quatermass’s Experiment and seeing that the water was now draining out a hundred times better, I reassembled everything only to find that I’ve torn the rubber gasket that connects the downpipe to the sink and there’s quite a leak.

Ahh well – off to the DiY shop in the morning, I suppose. I could have done without this.

-3

Saturday 2nd November 2013 – WHEN THE ALARM WENT OFF THIS MORNING …

… I just rolled over and went back to sleep. Somehow I couldn’t summon up the energy to leave my comfy little bed here.

And when I finally did wake up, I decided that I would have something of an informal day of rest and not do too much. That was the cue for coffee in bed and a James Bond film, together with a good book.

That took me through until lunchtime and then I nipped out to the local shops for the baguette and the bits and pieces that I shall need for the journey home next week. Hard to think that this is effectively my final shopping expedition in Brussels, although I’ve said things like that before.

This evening, I went out again. No football in the Netherlands border area this evening, and none in the German border area either. There was however a match at the Argosstadionachterdekaserne, the home of KV Mechelen, where the home team was to entertain Zulte-Waregem.

People, including Yours Truly, do say that Belgians have no sense of humour, but you would be forgiven for thinking differently when you see the sign over the entrance gate to the stadium. You can tell that KV Mechelen aren’t doing so well in the league at the moment.

But the stadium itself, which must qualify for having one of the longest names in mainstream football, wasn’t easy to find. It was hemmed in right in the middle of an area of what would be in the UK some kind of Victorian working-class terraced housing and it did remind me of going to a football match in the UK back in the good old days of when all stadia used to be like this.

There was however some easy – and free – parking on the old railway goods yard about 500 metres away, and there were even a couple of marshalls to help everyone. Long time since I’ve seen this kind of thing.

The next thing was something of a shock though – unlike at Breda in the Netherlands last week, the stadium doesn’t accept payments by card – it’s cash only. And I wish now that I had paid with a card at the supermarket this afternoon rather than with cash. The nearest cash point was 1500 metres away, so I was told, and me with a bad foot too after my exploits with the coffee table earlier in the week. I didn’t need any of this. Mind you it was a good job that I arrived early.

So having procured a ticket, at €16:00, it was into the ground. And this was a surprise as well. A First Division game in one of Europe’s leading national leagues and the stadium had probably over 50% of its capacity as standing. When was the last time that you ever heard of this?

And as for the stadium itself, you can tell that they’ve never heard of the Taylor Report in Belgium either because this place wouldn’t have lasted 5 minutes in England following the report on the condition of English football grounds after the fire at Bradford City. It really was like stepping back in time to the early 1970s in English football and you have no idea how comfortable it felt to be standing up on the terraces.

But I don’t care what anyone in authority has to say – the fans are totally correct in their opinion of all-seater stadia. With so many standees in the ground, the atmosphere really was electric for the entire 90 minutes and the Mechelen fans must be the noisiest that I have ever heard at a modern football match.

The Powers That Be want everyone to be seated at a football match as in a theatre or a cinema, and give polite applause whenever someone does anything merit-worthy and to keep quiet the rest of the game. That is total nonsense and is what has ruined the game as a spectator sport. Football is all about noise and atmosphere, 90 minutes of bedlam on the terraces, and you can’t do that sitting down. And it’s not just about the merit-worthy actions either. When Zulte-Waregem’s n°3 went down rather too easily and for far too long right under the referee’s nose and on the “popular side” after a challenge early in the game, the Mechelen fans were on his back for the rest of the match with whistles, jeers and abuse to such an extent that his captain swapped him over to the other, more sedate side of the field.

THAT is what real football is about.

People might think that that is being grossly unfair to the footballers concerned. Four or five years ago I remember Craig Bellamy being quite upset about the abuse that he was receiving from the crowd. Firstly, I don’t ever recall him complaining or being upset when the fans of his team were dishing it out to an opposing footballer, and secondly, I will gladly go and stand out in the middle of a football pitch for a whole 90 minutes and let 30,000 people hurl as much abuse as they like about me and my family for only 25% of the money that he is on.

As for the football however, we had a torrential rainstorm and a 2-2 draw, the result being a fair reflection of the balance of the play. And the best player on the field was the Zulte-Waregem centre-forward who scored both his team’s goals. A different class of player than the others on the field.

I’d seen a Turkish Fritkot on my way into town and so I stopped off there and, sure enough, they conjured up a plate of falafel and fritjes. I enjoyed them too, especially as I felt that I had earned them. I’ll miss all of that when I leave. But I’ll have to come back ina couple of weeks though – there’s a book sale in the car park and I must add to my collection a copy of “Honkie and Ponkie On The Moon”.

I’m depressed though about how much Vlaams I’ve forgotten, I really am. I must do something about this.

-5

Friday 1st November 2013 – IT’S A BANK HOLIDAY HERE TODAY.

But not for me – I have work to do.

Now that the cleaner has finished, I can review the packing situation, especially as, on my travels yesterday to buy my bread, I liberated a pile of wooden boxes.

Everything was unpacked from the cardboard boxes and repacked in the wooden or plastic ones. There are two types of boxes – those that are wanted as soon as I get home, and those that can wait for whenever. The idea is that the least urgent stuff will be crammed right down at the far end of Caliburn and the more urgent stuff put closer to the doors. That way it will all be to hand.

You’ve no idea how long it took to do all of this – much longer than I thought – and then of course I had to dismantle the empty cardboard boxes. But at least now there’s plenty of space available in the apartment and it looks more like a furniture removal job.

For tea I had the last of the aubergine casserole that I had made earlier. Then, having washed the pot and the plates, they all went into a box. Tomorrow I’m out and Sunday I’ll have a pizza that I can eat out of a box with my fingers. I’ve officially finished cooking.

-5

Thursday 31st October 2013 – THE CLEANER …

… came round this morning right on time and was here for about 4 hours. I did what I could to help, but that wasn’t all that much and it was clear that I was in the way and so I skulked off to my little room and stayed there, just occasionally giving advice and assisitance.

I can’t say that I’m too impressed with what she did, to be honest. I was expecting a much more thorough job that this, but she did more in four hours than I would have been able to do in four years and so I can’t complain too much.

The purchaser turned up with a workman later. He wants to have the parquet floor sanded and polished, and needed an estimate. I didn’t have any good reason not to let them in and so in they came. It rather disrupted my plans a little, but that’s what plans are for, of course. And after they went, I cleaned a few of the more obvious places that the cleaner had missed.

There wasn’t much time left after that and so I had tea and called it a night. An early night with a good book is always a good idea every so often.

-2

Wednesday 30th October 2013 – IT WAS THE TURN OF THE TROC …

… to come around this morning. They were earlier than anticipated, something that took me very much by surprise, and I wasn’t really ready, but I wasn’t going to send them away. Of course not! Two of them, there were, and they worked quite rapidly to empty the place. It didn’t take them too long to dismantle the big wall unit either, and that soon disappeared into the back of their van.

What impressed me though was how they managed to move the wardrobe in the cellar. It was a little rickety and I was half-expecting them to dismantle it, but no – they had a huge roll of clingfilm and they wrapped it in that. You’ve no idea just how rigid that made it, and when I expressed my admiration, they gave me what remained of the roll, which was an unexpected bonus. 40 years and more I’ve been furniture-removing – I wish I had thought of this before.

After they had gone, I needed to arrange a cleaner. The estate agents had given me a phone number and in the end I was put in touch with a woman who would come at 09:00 tomorrow. Perfect timing, of course, and so I didn’t hesitate. That’s one more job crossed off the list of things to do.

Back to the cellar and that had a thorough going-over. I can forget about that from now on. I went back upstairs and took down all the curtains. The cleaner will need to be able to get to the windows.

But the apartment is now fairly empty, and when I talk out loud to myself I can hear an echo echo echo.

-6

Tuesday 29th October 2013 – ST VINCENT DE PAUL …

… came around today. Not the Saint in person, but some members of his charitable association. They took away the stuff that the Troc didn’t want and which hadn’t sold on the internet. They were quite pleased with what they had won, which made me quite happy because I was quite pleased to let them have it. I did ask them what Vincent’s sister Lynsey was up to these days but that went clean over their heads. No sense of humour, these Belgians.

It had taken me all morning to sort out the stuff for them and make sure that it was properly packed and boxed – we don’t want all of the stuff falling out all over the place and down the stairs. And now at least the place is looking a little emptier now and I can start to move things around and try to sort out the cleaning. It isn’t that easy when the place is overwhelmed with all kinds of stuff.

Now that I have nowhere to sit I’ve had to make a little kind-of studio in the smallest bedroom. Sitting on the bed and a plant across a box on top of the coffee table to make a raised table. But that was not without its problems either. I didn’t realise that the coffee table had a drawer in it until I turned it on its side to pass it through the door into the bedroom.And there was I in barefeet too. I’ve done myself a serious mischief now – toenail all broken and the big toe all various shades of red and black and I’m in agony with this.

I’ve also been down in the cellar. The wardrobe out of here needs to go and so the cellar needs to be emptied. Having seen the hoops that one has to go through in order to get the local council to come and take the stuff away I simply bought a pile of white sacks and spent a happy hour or two crusing up rubbish and filling the sacks. There’s a huge load of them and that will upset the concierge when he has to put them out for the bin men tomorrow morning, but that’s what he’s paid for, after all.

But at least the only thing in the cellar that doesn’t need to be there is this wardrobe, and that will hopefully be going tomorrow.

-4

Monday – 28th October 2013 – MORE OF THE SAME

Yes, back to work today. And to carry on from where I left off on Saturday, and every other day (apart from Sunday) since I’ve been here, I was up long before the alarm went off.

The washing machine is going on Wednesday and so I’ve sent most of the day doing a mega-wash of clothes and the like, making sure that everything is clean. All that hasn’t been washed is the stuff that is going to the clothing bins, and also the curtains, because it’s very hard to do those when you have builders not 6 feet away from where you are trying to work.

I’ve reaired a few pieces of furniture too – stuff that is also being collected by the guy from the Troc on Wednesday. The better it is and the better the condition in which it finds itself, the more money I’ll receive for it.

The notaire has also been on the telephone with a list of things to do, and a eadline by which I need to do them. I’ve totally forgotten that it’s a bank holiday here on Friday, so that’s one less day that I have to do stuff. This is all closing in on me rather rapidly.

-6

Sunday 27th October 2013 – SUNDAY IS A DAY OF REST

Especially when the clocks go back an hour. So it was really nice to get up, go for a gypsy’s, make myself a coffee and go back to bed to watch Carry On Follow That Camel, an excellent film totally ruined by Phil Silvers, and get up to find that it’s still only 10:30.

After breakfast I did rather less than usual, and after lunch went out for a wander. You may remember that a few weeks ago I went to the War Graves part of the local cemetery for a wander around. I went back for another look today and one of the graves there caught my eye.

It relates to a woman by the name of Marina Chaeroff – a Russian name but with a Belgian flag on her tombstone, and she is clearly shown as being decapitated by the Nazis. Like I said before, it’s quite easy to criticise people who were less-than-resilient when it came to dealing with the occupying powers when you don’t yourself run the same kind of risks that you would like them to run.

I went off to pay my respects to Marianne afterwards and, as a huge disappointment, the gravestone that I ordered hasn’t arrived. It’s a big job, I know, but it was promised for the end of the month and they need to get a wiggle on.

The familiar sound of a whistle from down the hill led me to the footy stadium where the Royal Sporting Club of Ixelles were entertaining their neighbours from Auderghem. €4:00 it cost me to get into the stadium so I was hoping to have my money’s worth.

Ixelles started quite brightly and were soon in front. And although they stayed in front for quite some time, we had a few astonishing developments. Ixelles were playing with a young lad on the right wing and he was streets better than anyone else on the field. He scored the opening goal with an excellent solo run and shot, but for some reason his colleagues seemed very reluctant to let him have the ball and he was isolated out on the wing for quite a while.

Ixelles’ tactics, to stand well off the defenders when the defenders were in possession, meant that they were being pushed farther and farther back and it was soon evident that despite being out in front and having the lion’s share of the game, Auderghem were gradually asserting themselves with all the time that they liked on the ball, and in the space of about 20 minutes, interrupted by half-time and one of the most astonishing cloudbursts that I have ever seen, Auderghem scored three goals, totally against the run of play.

The tactics of the Ixelles manager became even more bizarre. Instead of giving his players the old boot in the nether regions and telling them to move the ball out to the right wing, he withdrew the winger from the game, to the utter dismay and disbelief of everyone in the stadium.

The rest of the story you can write yourselves. Despite the heroics of the Ixelles goalkeeper, Auderghem went on the rampage and scored two further goals without too much effort and although Ixelles pulled one back right at the end, if the final scoreline had been 5-2 in favour of Ixelles, no-one would have been all that much surprised.

For Auderghem to have won this game 5-2 is one of those mysteries that will never ever be resolved – something on a par with what on earth was going on with the withdrawal of that right-winger on the hour mark, a decision that surely changed the whole aspect of this game.

+20

-36

Saturday 26th October 2013 – I REMEMBER …

… back to 2004 when I was ill and thinking that I ought to develop a new interest, that the subject of footy first came up. Brussels is ideally situated for being a Northern European footy fan and I do remember thinking that as Belgium and France are rather boring in that respect, I ought to cast my net a little further afield.

Dutch football fans are well-known for their passion and ardour and as the town of Breda is easy to get to from here on public transport (change trains at Antwerpen), then NAC came onto the radar. However, times changed, and things changed, and I changed, and that was that. Nevertheless, it was always something that turned around in the back of my mind.

Dutch football has some very interestingly-named teams such as Willem III, Heracles and Top Oss, but pride of place has to go to the enigmatically-named Go Ahead Eagles. Any team with a name like that deserves to be supported. And so imagine my surprise this morning when, over a cup of coffee, I glanced at the footy fixtures and found that the Eagles were playing away this evening – at NAC Breda!

So early this afternoon after lunch I leapt into Caliburn and shot off up the motorway as far as Weerde (I really ought to live in a town with a name like that – second only to the town of Silly of course) when I realised that I didn’t have my passport (I seem to be making a habit of this).

Back on my way to Antwerpen I encountered a Carrefour at Mechelen so I was even able to do a pile of shopping, and after that, with Golden Earring playing on Caliburn’s music centre in honour of my Going Dutch, I eventually arrived at the ground.

Nice and modern, which many purists (including Yours Truly) will think is a pity, but with plenty of space around it and plenty of parking too which makes a pleasant change.

Buying a ticket for an Eredivisie match is not easy. You need to have a Dutch FA clubcard to but a ticket for the match. if you don’t have one, which of course I don’t, you need to produce a national identity card, which I don’t have either, or else produce a passport, which I did have, so it was a good job that I remembered to go back and fetch it. But just €15 (that’s £12) for a ticket is an absolute bargain to watch a 1st-tier match in a keenly-fought domestic league.

Next stop was to buy some food. I left Caliburn (who has never been to the Netherlands before, by the way, so there’s a first) at the Stadion Rat Verlegh (a delightful name) and went on foot to the centre, and I’m glad that I did because I stumbled once more upon something quite exciting that I would otherwise have missed.

This is a Fokker 100 of the late 1980s or early 1990s and what it is doing here as an advert for a scrapyard I really have no idea. This isn’t the first one that we have seen either, for those of you with very long memories will recall the Andover that sat on top of a scrapyard at Ettiley Heath, at the back of Sandbach, for a while. But anyway, here it is and here it sits, and here it will probably stay until the price of scrap aluminium rises again.

It did rather remind me of that delightful story about the old World War I pilot reliving one of his battles during a live television interview.
“There I was, at 8,000 feet, all on my own, and suddenly these five German Fokkers appeared out of a cloud, right in front of me”
“I should mention, for the benefit of our younger viewers” said the interviewer “that a Fokker is a type of German aeroplane”
“Thats right!” ejaculated our hero. “These Fokkers were Albatroses”

So I eventually made it into town, following my nose which was quite interested in the smell of chips that it was detecting.

This brought me to a little square just on the edge of the old medieval centre and here was a beautiful historic building. I’ve absolutely no idea what it might be although it looks like an ersatz town hall or school building of the late 19th Century when the Dutch ran out of inspiration. However, I could be completely wrong about this and nothing would surprise me.

Here I was distracted as two pizza delivery motorcyclists burst out of an alleyway and headed off in different directions. That gave me a clue and so I headed into the alleyway and found myself at the back of a takeaway pizza lace. My takeaway Vegetarian with my own vegan cheese (I always come prepared) was one of the best I’ve ever eaten.

On the way back to the stadium in the dark, wishing that I had come here much earlier to properly explore the town, I encountered this object, right outside the football ground as you,might expect one such object to be. Whatever its proper name might be, I was told that the locals refer to it as the p155 house, and for very good reason too as you can see.

In fact I made very good use of it. I must stop drinking all of this flavoured water while I’m driving. It’s doing me no good at all, I tell you that. I’m not sure how I would have coped had I not found this artefact. It’s certainly a novel way to spend 1.2 centimes.

Mind you, it’s a bit disconcerting having to resort to something like this in front of a crowd of about 17,000 people trying to get into the Stadion Rat Verlegh. I mean, I didn’t want to give them all an inferiority complex.

But that’s enough of me talking rubbish. Let’s concentrate on the football.

Tyhe quality was rather … errr … less than I was expecting for an Eredivisie match. NAC were, well, about average I suppose but Go Ahead Eagles were thoroughly awful and how they were in one place higher than the home side before the kick-off I really do not know. They had a central defence pairing of Lord Lucan and Martin Bormann and for the second quarter of the game they were quite simply torn to shreds. Its no exaggeration to say that 4-0 at half-time, all the goals coming in that 20-odd minute spell, was something of an understatement.

It will also come as no surprise to anyone reading this that the second half was a totally different game. Naive followers of the sport would expect the second half to begin with the Eagles having their heads buried in their boots and a bouyant bunch of Breda boyos bouncing out to run up a cricket score (mind you, 4-0 IS a cricket score when England are batting).

But no, Breda had gone right off the boil and were content to play exhibition football for a while, passing the ball around amongst themselves instead of going for the jugular.

This of course gave the Eagles some kind of respite and a couple of times they snatched the ball away and went racing off down the ptch to give the Breda defence some VERY ANXIOUS moments indeed. I remember thinking that if the Eagles scored twice (which they could so easily have done), there would have been an almighty panic in the Breda side and anything could happen.

However the Breda defence stood firm and with just two or three minutes to go, they managed to pot a fifth goal to calm what was clearly becoming a jittery Breda performance. I don’t think that I’ve ever seen a side winning 4-0 look so nervous.

But I really don’t know why teams like this do this kind of thing. 4-0 up and looking good, and then going on the defensive for 45 minutes. They should have carried on with the allout attack, been 6-0 up after the hour, and then gone on to bury this team, instead of giving them a few easy chances to get back into the game. Really bad planning, this, and I would have kicked the players all around the stadium. A tight mid-table finish means that goal difference is all important when it comes to doling out the prize money at the end of the season and whenever you are given the opportunity, which doesn’t arrive very often for clubs like this, you should be going for the throat;

And on that note, I went home. Another one of my … errr … goals in life accomplished.

+14

-10

Friday 25th October 2013 – I’VE FINALLY FOUND …

… the Acte de Base, or title deeds, to the apartment here. And a few people are going to be in for something of a surprise because, if you remember from a while back when I had a run-in with the Syndic of the building about one or two matters, I find that I am completely correct in my assumptions and it seems, to my legally-untutored eye, that the Syndic has been ripping off poor Marianne for years. I shall have to look further into this, itemise where I think that there are problems, and invite an explanation.

It might be, of course, that I have simply misunderstood things. On the other hand, there might be five fingers. But it does prove the value of tidying up. Maybe I should do it more often.

Apart from that, I’ve binned another pile of papers that I was keepig on Marianne’s behalf. All that remains is some stuff that relates to an incident in her life that dates from 1996 and which I shall have to look into in due course, and some insurance details which I am 99.9% sure are of no value whatever but nevertheless need to be followed up.

So, what else? Not much. I’ve been fairly busy but I’ve not really accomplished all that much. I need to get a move on.

+19

-5

Thursday 24th October 2013 – THE MAN FROM THE TROC …

… came around this morning as promised and went through the furniture. He doesn’t want all of it and for what he does want, his terms are hardly generous, but then I’ve been trying to sell this stuff for a couple of months and only some of the stuff has gone, and I’ve really no idea what to do with the rest and it has to be gone by next weekend and so I have to cut my losses and move it on. I’m playing for much bigger stakes than a couple of hundred Euros.

I also had a phone call from the church of St Vincent de Paul. They could well be interested in what is left over, and they have a van slot free for 10:30 next Tuesday. Consequently, that will be the rest of the stuff gone, and what is left over after all of that will be out on the street on Wednesday evening, either for the dustbin men or for whoever it is that goes a-wandering past.

And apart from that, I’ve been tidying up again. I need to keep on top of all of this.

+28

-6

EPIC HALL

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