Friday 9th August 2013 – WELL …

… this apartment might be sold (again).

Someone who visited it yesterday has made a written offer via a promesse ferme d’achat and, being fed up of things dragging on (and on and on and on) I’ve accepted it.

Of course, I’m not vending the peau of the ours before I’ve tue’d it. I’ve enough promesse ferme d’achats to wallpaper the living room, as you know, but it’s something at least positive. I just hope that it comes off.

But it wasn’t all roses today. I was just about to step into the shower this morning when the doorbell rang.

One of the people from yesterday wanted to take a couple of measurements. And then he offered what in th common parlance would be described as an offre bidon in cash underneath the counter, take it or leave it.

Of course he went out of the door with my boot up his nether regions. I hate people who totally waste my time like that.

And what with the fracas I forgot about my shower. Mind you it does remind me of that famous cross-examination in a British court in the 1960s during a trial on a charge of affray
Barrister “and you were kicked in the fracas?”
Witness “oh no – I was kneed in the bÛllÛcks”.

And so the amateur came round to make the offer and what should have been a 15-minute task turned into 90 minutes and more and in the end I had to shout at the agent immobilier to run off her battery of mobile phones so that we could flaming well do the flaming task that we had flaming well come here to flaming well do without a flaming interruption every 30 flaming seconds.

Rude, impolite, unprofessional, pig-ignorant, call it what you will, but it wasted everyone’s time and both the purchaser and I have better things to do than to listen to her on the telephone.

I’ll be glad when the apartment is finally sold and she p155es off.

But she didn’t go yet because she came back with 4 or 5 clients at 16:30 and was here until gone 19:00 and my day was totally ruined. I didn’t even have time to do any cleaning up and that annoyed me greatly.

Mind you, it wasn’t all bad.

I finished my magnum opus, all 41kb and 7700 words of it – enough there to keep us going for a lifetime I reckon – the second longest script I’ve ever written (apart from the Christmas Specials of course).

But there’s a lot to be said on the subject I’m discussing and there are some surprising issues that will have a few British people gripping the edges of their seats once we get well into the issue.

Apart from that, the Football Association of Wales, which features regularly in these pages, has shot itself in the foot yet again and has been humiliated in the courts.

Basically, the FAW expelled Barry Town from the league because the secretary tendered the resignation of the club.

However, the secretary doesn’t have the authority to do so – it’s only the owners or the Board of Directors who can do that and the secretary (who was formerly the owner) had relinquished control to the supporters earlier.

Nevertheless, the FAW accepted the resignation.

And despite all of the FAW’s pleading in court today, the judge ruled that “the FAW council had acted unlawfully in refusing the club full FAW membership and entry into the Welsh League in June this year” and that the FAW’s decision was “flawed and irrational”.

Yes, a right bunch of miserable pleaders, the FAW. Never mind anything else, it’s the members of the FAW Council who are bringing the game into disrepute if you want my opinion, and it’s high time that someone charged them with misconduct.

And so, in honour of the FAW’s achievements today in dragging Welsh Football through the mire and into the gutter, here’s Oliver Cromwell’s speech to the Rump Parliament, and as an address to the FAW, I couldn’t have put it any better myself –

“It is high time for me to put an end to your sitting in this place, which you have dishonoured by your contempt of all virtue, and defiled by your practice of every vice.

Ye are a factious crew, and enemies to all good government.

Ye are a pack of mercenary wretches, and would like Esau sell your country for a mess of pottage, and like Judas betray your God for a few pieces of money.

Is there a single virtue now remaining amongst you? Is there one vice you do not possess?

Ye have no more religion than my horse. Gold is your God. Which of you have not bartered your conscience for bribes? Is there a man amongst you that has the least care for the good of the Commonwealth?

Ye sordid prostitutes have you not defiled this sacred place, and turned the Lord’s temple into a den of thieves, by your immoral principles and wicked practices?

Ye are grown intolerably odious to the whole nation. You were deputed here by the people to get grievances redressed, are yourselves become the greatest grievance.

Your country therefore calls upon me to cleanse this Augean stable, by putting a final period to your iniquitous proceedings in this House; and which by God’s help, and the strength he has given me, I am now come to do.

I command ye therefore, upon the peril of your lives, to depart immediately out of this place.

Go, get you out! Make haste! Ye venal slaves be gone! So! Take away that shining bauble there, and lock up the doors.

In the name of God, go!”

-7

Thursday 8th August 2013 – I HAVEN’T FINISHED …

…my magnum opus for “Radio Anglais” as I had hoped.

I’m not too disappointed though – because I haven’t by any means been idle. The notes that I had prepared from last time ran to something like 15kb.

By the close of play today I’ve more than doubled that to 32kb, which is he equivalent of about 800 lines of text and over 5770 words.

Usually a radio programme’s “technical notes” bit runs to about 3.5kb so I’m looking at an equivalent of 10 programmes and maybe more (because I’ve still plenty of stuff to go at) and that will suit me fine.

Yes, 5 weeks to record just before I go and 5 weeks to record as soon as I come back.

Some more furniture might be going too. Someone has been round to look at the big wardrobe and made an offer.

I was hoping for more but I want to empty the place as quickly as possible so I shall gnash my teeth and let it go. She’s coming back for it on Tuesday – I hope she won’t have changed her mind.

Apart from that we had a pile of visits of people to look at the apartment. Some are clearly timewasters, of course, but one or two look more interested. We shall have to see.

I’m not too discouraged, though. In order to find a prince you need to kiss a lot of frogs.

I had another good dream too. I was at a product fair somewhere in the UK selling stuff related to my business but throughout all of the day I didn’t sell a tap, which was disappointing. A short while later I was wandering around Wistaston Road in Crewe near where the old timber yard was, which by now was all closed up and weed-infested, and I was following a couple of girls who were looking for old cars – Morris Oxford MO-type and pre-Farina Austin A50s and the like. And as I came to the bottom of Delamere Street where it joins Flag Lane round by the Old Vine, a pre-Farina A50 estate turned up into the street in front of me. I remember thinking to myself “how lucky – the only abandoned cars you see around here these days are old Morris Minors”

Yes, nostalgia ain’t what it used to be, is it?

-12

Wednesday 7th August 2013 – Yum Yum Yum

Yes indeed – tonight’s tea included a generous slice of home-made apple pie and soya ice cream.

I have to be honest and say that the apple pie is not one of my best – it’s overcooked, unfortunately (not burnt).

I am the first to say that I have a lot to learn when it comes to baking, but I’m never going to learn if I don’t have a go and at least it’s not an absolute disaster like my pear tart on the Ile D’Yeu.

The agent immobilier came round this afternoon with a few clients but no-one interesting.

One of them implied that he would make me an offer, but his sickly, smarmy smile told me everything that I needed to know about the kind of offer that he was likely to make so I told him not to waste my time or his time.

Someone else has made an offer on the place but the agent immobilier told them to save their breath.

The thing about offers of this nature is that the market is rather stagnant and there are people in Brussels with cash, so they wander around and make derisory offers, waving the used oncers under the nose of a suitable victim in the hope that he will crack.

Not that I’m complaining about this – that was exactly how I bought Expo, except that I only pretended to have the cash. If you were a follower of the old Xoom blog you will recall the panic that I had and the efforts that I had to make when my bluff was called.

Apart from that, I was up waayyyyyy before the alarm and I’ve done the additional notes for the next batch of Radio Anglais recordings and I’ve made a start on the main text.

With a bit of luck, God’s help and a bobby, that might be finished tomorrow and so I can crack on with other things.

-8

Tuesday 6th August 2013 – I PROMISE YOU …

… that this shall be the last time that I’ll mention parking.

So here’s a photo of two different vehicles well-advanced in front of the rear limit for parking, and this time a car parked here in the foreground and overhanging the pedestrian crossing.

What more can I say …“haven’t you said enough?” – ed

Meanwhile in other news, the first of the furniture has gone from the apartment. Nothing large or bulky though, but nevertheless it’s a start. I’m now €20 richer than I was before, so “spend, spend spend!”, hey?

But this blasted agent immobilier is thoroughly getting on my wick. She’s uncovered another problem now – that the monthly service fees are so astronomical that no-one will buy the apartment (and so she will lose her commission of course).

“I know they are” I told her. “Marianne was on a very limited income and so when the boiler was repaired in 2009 and the lift was overhauled in 2011 she didn’t have the money to pay her share”.

“Consequently the gerance of the building arranged two loans for her (and for other people too) for their shares and the monthly repayments are included in the service fees”.

“And if you remember “I continued “I mentioned this to the people who came this weekend and I told them expressly that these loans would be paid off at the sale and so they will have no implication for any new purchaser”.

“Well I spoke to your notaire and they know nothing about it” she wailed, and that angered me, her not believing a single word that I told her and her clients

“That’s hardly surprising” I retorted, “seeing as how my notaire is on holiday. You probably were put through to the teaboy.”
And on and on and on she wailed until I lost patience and told her to f*** off.

5 minutes later I had someone from the notaire on the telephone. “Will you tell that blasted Madame Blum to stop flaming well ringing us up every 5 sodding minutes about your flaming apartment. It’s getting on our blasted nerves”.

Yes, this stupid woman is the cause of more problems here than she solves.

Everything is a crisis for her, every reaction is a panic. She’s frightening away more customers than she’s recruiting, thanks to her attitude, and also with her business practices, about which I shall have much more to say at a later date.

But doing business with her is a nightmare. She is making problems out of nothing at all.

And apart from that, when I had the time (which as you can see, wasn’t as much as I would have liked) I did the two radio programmes for the Radio Anglais rock shows on Radio Tartasse.

I have to do two because I’m away at the end of September (I hope, unless there’s another crisis) so I’m recording two months’ worth at the end of August.

Tomorrow I’ll start to attack the rest of the programmes.

If the blasted agent immobilier lets me. What a shambles.

-8

Monday 5th August 2013 – I’VE BEEN HAVING …

… a bad day today.

Yes, I do have them every now and again. even though I had a restful day yesterday and a decent night’s sleep, I just couldn’t get going today and I’ve no idea why.

Not only did I not do the things that I was going to do, I didn’t do any of the optional stuff either.

I really need to get a grip and sort myself out otherwise I’m going to be here for ever at this rate.

However, my adverts all over cyberspace are coming up trumps and I’m fielding loads of enquiries about the apartment and the stuff that I have to sell, although I’ve yet to have any visits, let alone any sales.

Hopefully this might improve as time goes on, especially as the agent immobilier wants to bring people round on Wednesday.

I’ve also been thinking more about my mega-voyage in … gulp … just 3 weeks time. I have to sort that out too.

In other news, a Press Release from the Metropolitan Police says that they have accepted responsibility for the death of Ian Tomlinson, the newspaper vendor attacked by a policeman with previous convictions for violence.

“I apologise unreservedly for Simon Harwood’s use of excessive and unlawful force which caused Mr Tomlinson’s death, and for the suffering and distress caused to his family as a result.” says the Deputy Assistant Commissioner (not the Assistant Commissioner and not the Commissioner either) of the Metropolitan Police Force.

Harwood, by the way, was found not guilty of Manslaughter.

Meanwhile, in other news, a nightclub bouncer who saw an off-duty policeman hit a woman and so pushed him to the ground – hitting his head and killing him, and who was told by a Judge that “I am absolutely certain that you meant no serious harm to (the victim)” – he’s just received three and a half years for Manslaughter.

“One law for the rich, and one for the poor …”

-5

Sunday 4th August 2013 – YOU’VE BEEN SPARED …

… another discussion and more photos of the parking around here – not because of the fact that there was nothing to report (there was in fact even more than in the last few days) but because I’ve had other things to do.

I told you last night that I would go and visit Marianne today and give her a progress report, which I duly did. Her grave has been restored from the last time I was there, and it’s grown a basket of flowers – obviously someone else has been to visit her.

Her headstone hasn’t arrived yet though, but then again what I have ordered for her will not be the work of 5 minutes.

On my way to her grave I pass by the military section of the cemetery, where soldiers who died during the defence of the city in August 1914 and May 1940 are buried.

There’s also a section that deals with the civilian victims of the two World Wars and I went for a wander around that part of the cemetery today.

Many people, mostly British and Americans, tend to criticise, sometimes vehemently, the citizens of many occupied countries for what they see as their collaboration with the occupying powers during the wars.

They also criticise those in Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan who are standing their ground and fighting the occupying powers, but that is by the way of course.

But these British and American critics of the civilians in these occupied countries are being extremely naive. They simply have no conception of what was going on and what it must have been like to live in these countries.

Here are a handful of the hundreds of graves in this part of the cemetery – people who died after falling into the hands of the occupying powers.

If you enlarge the photo you will notice the legends thereupon – “FUSILLE” (shot), “EXECUTE” (executed), “DECAPITE” (decapitated) and all of the hundreds of graves here, of both men and women, bear similar legends.

And none of these legends tells you anything about the sufferings that they must have undergone at the hands of the Gestapo before the Gestapo tired of amusing itself with them and sent them on their way.

Yes, it’s easy to criticise people for collaborating with the enemy when there’s a whole ocean or a sea between you and the enemy. The British and Americans would think twice then.

I don’t seem to recall the British inhabitants of the Channel Islands putting up too much of a fight when they were occupied by the Nazis – in fact they even sat on their hands for 10 months, slowly starving to death, after the war had passed them by.

They couldn’t even seize the initiative then when the Germans no longer had anything to fight for.

There’s also a section for civilian casualties of the Germans in World War I.

Back then in those days the Germans made no secret whatsoever of their policy of “frighfulness” towards the civilian population. All kinds of atrocities were committed upon the civilian population.

All kinds of people were caught up in the dragnet during World War I and in this photo you’ll see graves of a couple of British civilians and a couple of French civilians, as well as some Belgian civilian graves.

The flat at Boulevard Reyers where I lived for a few years, that backed onto the Tir National – the National Firing Range – and that was where people who were singled out for “special attention” by the German occupying forces were executed, and subsequently buried.

Edith Cavell was shot there, and many famous people from World War I and II, and many SOE operatives who were running escape lines across occupied Europe and who fell into the hands of the Gestapo are buried in there.

Even more poignant are the graves of the “unknown” – no-one knows who they were and why they attracted the special attention of the Gestapo. From the one or two survivors of this kind of treatment, the suffering was appalling and death was often a merciful release.

Leaving Marianne’s grave, I heard a familiar sound in the distance – yes, a referee’s whistle. The football season has restarted here in Belgium and it seems that there’s a football club here in Ixelles – the Royal Ixelles Sporting Club.

They play at the sports ground down the hill from the cemetery and today, they were at home to La Hulpe in Division 3b of the Provincial League of Brabant, so I was informed.

And so I went for a nosey around, like you do … "like SOME of you do" – ed …

The standard was pretty dire, I have to say. FC Pionsat St Hilaire could have defeated both these teams without drawing too much breath, but at least it was football and so that cheered me up considerably.

I was wondering what I was going to do for my weekly football fix while I’m living here, and now I know. It’s played on artificial turf, but I don’t suppose you can have everything.

Reminds me of that gridiron player asked by a television reporter if he preferred grass or astroturf, replying “hey man, I ain’t ever smoked astroturf”

But never mind the stadium itself. That’s quite a modern edifice, but it’s surrounded by Council Houses and Council Flats and not just any old council houses either.

If you’ve seen my page onthe houses built by the Peabody Trust in London, you might recognise the influence.

Brussels was also a slum-ridden city at the turn of the 20th Century and a great deal of effort was put into rehousing some of the inhabitants of the worst areas.

The earliest social housing was in the centre of the city but by the 1920s the city was building out in the suburbs and I reckon that this might be one of those

So there you are – 4 photographs and 1002 words. You really ARE having your money’s worth today, and on my day of rest too.

Still, back to work tomorrow.

+33

-5

Saturday 3rd August 2013 – THIS PARKING THING …

… is getting out of hand.

As you can see, we’ve changed the car in the foreground (and several times too) but there’s still a good 6 feet or so of wasted space behind it.

As for the car in the background, that’s not moved now for over a week I reckon, still losing half a car’s length of space.

But apart from that I was up at the usual time, breakfasted, and then started sorting out the books.

And I reckoned that my ship had come in when I spotted a copy of “Si on Parlait des Miracles?” and, upon opening the flyleaf, the author had signed it with a dedication to Marianne.

So hot-footing it to an on-line second-hand book shop, I was going to make my fortune.

However, there are about 50 of these copies for sale there, and erery flaming blasted last one of them is signed with a perishing dedication.

I’m surprised that the author didn’t catch writers’ cramp.

Ahh well.

So on with the motley and as I was preparing to go out and do some shopping came a ring on the bell.

The agent immobilier was back with one of the people from yesterday and all of his family – including a young kid of about 5 so Strawberry Moose was once more in his elephant.

Once they had all piddled off I went to the shops but I didn’t stay long, especially as I had forgotten my coolbox. And the rest of the day has been one of relaxing – I even made myself a coulis of kiwi and soja milk.

So tomorrow is Sunday and it’s a day of rest. I’ll go for a walk and say hello to Marianne, I reckon.

-6

Friday 2nd August 2013 – I’VE BEEN BUSY TODAY

Due to the hot weather it was once again difficult to get off to sleep and so once again I had a little trouble trying to find my feet when the alarm went off. But I didn’t let any of that stop me.

The apartment now looks as if someone normal lives here, which makes a great change from how it was when I came back the other day. I don’t mind letting people come to visit now.

And there were two visitors, a young guy and also a woman. The latter brought her daughter with her, which pleased Strawberry Moose greatly as it meant that he had a hug.

I took full advantage of their presence, of course, by announcing that all of the furniture is up for sale too. One may as well try to kill several birds with one stone.

But in more important news, I’ve located the Belgian equivalent of Craigslist or Leboncoin, thanks to someone (whose name I have regrettably forgotten) on Facebook.

It’s called 2ememain and so I’ve advertised the apartment and I’ve also started to add the furniture, but it’s soooo sloooowwwwwwwwwwww to do that.

Still, a faint heart never won a fair maiden and all of that.

Tomorrow is of course shopping but I don’t want much and in any case I need to wait until the agent immobilier has called me. She says 13:30 but that could be any time between now and next Thursday.

Not the best at punctuality.

-2

Thursday 1st August 2013 – MORON PARKING

Even though you might think that this is a mistype for “more on parking”, and even though you might think that “more on parking” might be appropriate, I can assure you that I meant what I typed.

That’s because, further to my post of yesterday, we have three morons now taking up the space that any four real drivers would take up.

It’s certainly exciting, watching the unskilled of Brussels try to cope with modern-day technology.

But one thing that we must never lose sight of is that the driving test wasn’t introduced here until 1973, and there are all kinds of jokes about driving licences being given free as promotional offers in boxes of cornflakes and the like.

But anyway, this morning it was for some reason or other a struggle to leave my stinking pit but eventually I struggled to the coffee machine.

After that, and the customary hour or two on the computer, I attacked the apartment and you might find this hard to believe but it actually looks like a normal person’s living space and I’m exhausted.

Even the kitchen has been steam-cleaned and that’s a first since I ended up on my own here.

Tomorrow I’ll be giving everywhere a quick whizz round and then making a whole sheaf of adverts for distributing everywhere. I need to start moving on all of this furniture and stuff.

But like I said, there doesn’t seem to be any rush. This apartment isn’t going to sell itself very quickly

-2

Wednesday 31st July 2013 – TODAY’S SUBJECT IS …

… parking

And how Belgian drivers don’t have a clue. If you look very carefully at the two cars in this photograph, you’ll see that the nearer one has under-run the parking line by a good 4 feet, encroaching upon all of the vehicles further down the street.

Consequently, when the vehicles in front of him change during the course of the day, someone will find himself 4 feet short of a parking space, in a street that already has quite a bit of pressure on parking.

As for the car in the distance, he’s encroaching by half a car’s length and you can see already that there’s a space in front of him that no car could ever hope to fill. The words “stupid” and “selfish” spring immediately to mind.

The outcome of this is inevitable and I didn’t have to wait too long.

Some other motorist in a hurry to go to the boulangerie or the newspaper shop across the road can’t find a parking place handy and so takes a risk by parking behind the other car, encroaching upon the zebra crossing.

And here’s a nice photograph of the driver having a “frank exchange of views” with the Council employee who has just given him a €15 fixed penalty ticket.

Yes, Belgians just don’t “get it”, do they?

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, after a disturbed night’s sleep during which I had a bad attack of cramp and also had to go for a ride on the porcelain horse a couple of times, I struggled out of bed this morning and wasn’t feeling much like it for a while.

However, I eventually came round and then attacked this web page that I have been promising myself. And here it is, in all its glory and all nicely finished off.

All I need to do now is instead of advertising each individual item of furniture etc, I just advertise the web page.

The prices are really all “best guess” because I don’t have much of a clue. If anyone has any suggestions, don’t hesitate to make them.

However, there’s no urgency. This place won’t be sold in a week. Despite telling the Agent Immobilier yesterday that he can ring me next week for visits (when this place ought to be tidied), his oppo rang me today insisting on bringing someone round on Friday.

So after I gave her a piece of my mind … “do you have that much to spare?” – ed … the conversation went something like this …
Estate agent “is it okay to bring someone round on Friday afternoon then?”
Our hero “yes, I’ll be here”
EA “what time?”
OH “whenever’s convenient. I’m not going anywhere”
EA “is 4pm okay then?”
OH “yes, fine”
EA “or what about 5pm then?”
OH “whatever suits you best”
EA “well, how about 4:45 then?”

Well, quite! No wonder that they are struggling.

The place will be a tip because I won’t have finished, but whoever will be coming will just have to make the best of it.

-3

Tuesday 30th July 2013 – I’M HAVING A …

… bad day today!

And I missed some of it too because at about 15:30 I went and crashed out for 90 minutes. That’s just how it was.

Mind you, I was up long before the alarm and I don’t remember much of my dream except that there were two people in it who were green, something similar to Fantômas in the series of Louis de Funès films.

After breakfast I made piles of space in the living room and in the big bedroom and photographed almost everything that there is to sell.

My plan is to make a web page of articles for sale and then advertise it on places like Craigslist and so on, and have a kind of open day or two.

But here’s no rush because the Estate Agent called me again today. His pool of clients has now whittled itself down to zero and so he wants to restart the visits. Consequently we had a brief discussion.

Three times he’s “sold” this apartment “subject to the availability of finance” and three times the “availability of finance” has not been forthcoming. High time he presented some serious clients.

Apart from that, a lunchtime and at tea time (and the second portion of my potato pie was even better) I’ve been watchin the John Wayne film The Undefeated – and watching it open-mouthed.

Although this was the film that directly followed True Grit , it has to be one of the worst main feature John Wayne films that I have ever seen.

It’s a rambling, shambolic 100 minutes of tiny little sub-plots with just the vaguest hint of story stringing them along. It’s as if someone has taken a TV series of 26×50-minute episodes and made a collage out of the highlights.

His character in the film, by the way, is called “John Thomas” – probably because the film is all c*ck.

In other news, the BBC tells us today that “for years the Arab world’s dictators kept radical Islamic groups in check but the uprisings of 2011 gave them freedom to operate more openly”.

Anyone who has been following this load of rubbish for any length of time will be only too well aware that I’ve been saying since the Iraqi invasion over 10 years ago that the west will end up regretting the overthrow of Saddam Hussein and his like.

Truth travels slowly but it’s finally reached the BBC.

Trouble with me is that I’m 10 years ahead of my time.

-5

Monday 29th July 2013 – IT’S AFTER 22:30 …

… and I’m still waiting for my tea. I seem to have made a major miscalculation somewhere along the line and my potatoes in the potato pie aren’t cooked, so I’ve had to put it back in the oven. Still, “you can’t win a coconut every time”, so I console myself.

And in news that is bound to put the willies up every one of my readers, my dream last night was that there were two of me – and it doesn’t come any scarier than that. One of me was working on one floor of this building and the other one was working on the floor above. And all was going fine until something happened to the identity on the lower floor which required the intervention of the identity on the upper floor – witness statements having to be made and the like. That was when my two identities started to become worried, just as your identity is now, I bet. Still, as I have always said, you’re never alone with schizophrenia.

Someone asked me once if I was schizophrenic, to which I replied “I dunno – I’m in two minds about that”.

So, up with the lark and after a leisurely breakfast I started to attack the rubbish, and now there are another pile of bin bags ready to go downstairs.

And I dunno about Marianne – looks like she was taking over where Imelda Marcos left off, the amount of shoes I’m finding in here. But the small bedroom is now empty except for the bed and the wardrobe.

So after a brief pause to eat my now-perfectly-cooked pie, I can carry on.

I’ve also made an inventory of items here that need to be sold, created an account on eBay, and I’ve slowly started to list them all for sale. It won’t take long, in principle … “famous last words” – ed … to empty the place but I need things to start to go.

And the quicker the better. As soon as I can empty the place, the sooner I can go home.

And just by way of a change, we’ve had another monsoon just now.

-8

Sunday 28th July 2013 – I HAVEN’T DONE …

… a tap today!

Well, not quite true, but I certainly haven’t done anything exciting, and the only time I left the apartment was to go to buy a baguette.

I had a lie-in (well it IS Sunday, a day of rest) which was just as well, as I was having an exciting dream. I was up a mountain heading for some ski slopes and I took a different route and ended up higher in the mountains than usual watching the people skiing down a different slope about 200 feet below where I was standing. I’ve been on this ski slope in another dream quite a while ago. That time I was in my red Cortina parked up on the side of the road on a sharp hairpin bend in all of the snow and I do remember in that dream that I was in the mountains, more or less in the same place, and there was no snow and I was taking a different route to somewhere that I knew well but wanted to avoid the masses. But back to this dream – I had to go out of somewhere and I had no shoes so I was busily trying to fasten some thick triangular slices of fruit bread or cake to my feet with thick lumps of butter.

Yes, I’m definitely cracking up.

Anyway, today, I’ve starting a new project.

When I transferred this blog onto my site here the other week, the images and tags didn’t come through correctly. There are piles of images that didn’t show up, and the tags have come through any old how.

One thing that I used to do was to prepare monthly pages of photographs and also monthly pages of what I was up to on the farm.

I let all of that go as a result of my visit to Labrador in 2010 when I became snowed under with work,

But now that my blog is in-house, I can use it to fulfil both of those purposes with not much effort.

Consequently I’m having a go at updating the images and linking the tags correctly. It’ll take me a bit of time but it’s much more preferable than doing it twice again for the same result.

I also spoke to my niece’s youngest daughter in Canada – little Amber (isn’t Skype wonderful?). She’s heard that I’m coming over at the end of August and so she’s given me a little shopping list. I just hope that I’ll be able to pick up the stuff for her;

And as well as going to Canada, I’m also pushing to boat out – quite literally – to Agistri.

That’s a small island off the coast of Piraeus in Greece and Trixi is holding a singing and yoga course out there in October.

I need to work on my singing if I’m ever going to be any good and as it all sounds quite intimate and relaxing, I’ve booked myself a place out there. It’ll be good to have a break like that and I’m quite looking forward to it.

Believe it or not, I have never been to Greece before.

-6

Saturday 27th July 2013 – THIS YEAR IS …

… turning into something of a disaster, as if it wasn’t enough of one already.

J J Cale has died today, so it has been announced.

Many people might not know who he is, but I bet that most of you will know Eric Clapped-out.

And if you do, you will know the tracks “After Midnight”, “Travellin’ Light” and “Cocaine”. Cale was the guy who wrote those tracks, although they made Crapped-on far more famous than he himself became. You can hear Cale singing them on the album Troubadour.

Yes, he“can go to paradise Maybe once, maybe twice. Travelin’ light is the only way to fly”. He won’t be letting it hang out after midnight any more though.

Ray Manzarek of The Doors has also died this year, as has David Bowie’s longtime bassist Trevor Bolder. Richie Havens, who was the opening act at Woodstock – he’s gone too and so has Alvin Lee of Ten Years After.

My rock music programmes on Radio Anglais are fast turning into a necrology. It’s dreadful. Who is going to be next?

In keeping with the depressing spirit of things we’ve had two monsoons today. One at round about 09:00 and the other one started about 15 minutes ago and is still going on (23:40).

More rain has fallen in these two deluges than I’ve seen for quite a while, and that’s saying something given the weather just recently and the rainfall that I’v seen in my life in the Auvergne.

I did manage to get out and about though – an afternoon at Waterloo – or rather Mont St Jean – and the huge Carrefour and the Media Markt across the road.

I’ve bought a pile of food and on Monday I might even make another one of my famous – if not legendary – potato pies but apart from that, I didn’t spend any money on anything.

Not through lack of willingness or lack of things to buy of course, but I forgot to mention that I have a tax bill here to pay, relating to the final year that I owned “Expo”.

Yes, property taxes chez moi in the Auvergne are about €75. Here in Brussels it was €1200. No wonder I sold up and moved when I lost my job.

I’ve also emptied a pile of stuff from here. A huge (and I DO mean “huge”) mound of papers and four sacks of Marianne’s clothes have found their way into Caliburn and next time I’m out and about I’ll pass by one of the container sites and heave the lot into the appropriate container.

Tomorrow though is Sunday and I’ll be having a day off. Then I must crack on big-time.

Apart from that, I had another dream. I had a wind turbine on a mast on my front lawn and it was going round flat-out with the blade flutter that you get on the plastic blades of the AIR 403 wind turbines. A crowd of people were watching it and there were a couple of TV cameras filming it, and at a certain moment they all climbed over the fence onto my property to have a closer look, to film it and to record the sound. I arrived a little later, just in time to see the invasion, and I had to chase everyone away. Zero, about whom I spoke the other week, also put in an unscheduled appearance somewhere along the line.

-10

Friday 26th July 2013 – WE HAD A COUPLE …

… of rainstorms today

Not much of a surprise though because it’s been threatening for a day or so.

The first one woke me up, again before the alarm went off, but then that’s no surprise seeing as how I was away with the fairies for a while yesterday afternoon.

So after breakfast I sorted out a few papers that I needed for the notaire and off I went.

It takes an hour and five minutes to walk there, as I now know for I timed it.

Yes, off I went on foot. I seem to have much more exercise when I’m here in Brussels than when I’m at home in France. When I’m out I do a lot of walking.

Bit of a shame that the walkman went flat after just 400 metres but then you can’t have everything.

The notaire didn’t come up with anything that was unexpected – well, yes she did, but what I mean is that nothing in Belgium is unexpected, if you see what I mean – it’s all par for the course.

So I left the building, straight into another rainstorm, and walked into town.

And you’ll see what I mean about nothing being unexpected when you see the fine example of Belgian police parking in the city.

Belgian drivers are the worst in the world, and so it’s no surprise to see that the coppers have no room to be complacent.

With driving like this from the police farce, no wonder that they can’t recognise poor driving whenever they see it and so the standards go down and down.

I walked into town past the famous Colonne de Congrès.

This column, extremely controversial in its day, was designed by Joseph Poelaert and erected in the 1850s.

It is meant to commemorate the people who “ont fixé les destinées nouvelles du pays, après la fondation de son indépendance” – “gave the new country its new direction and future after independence”.

47 metres high, there is a spiral staircase of 193 steps inside and in the olden days it was possible to climb to the top.

Unfortunately, that’s not possible these days. Like much of Belgian infrastructure, it’s in poor condition. And it was badly-damaged by Hurricane Cyril on 18th January 2007.

At the foot of the Colonne is the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier.

One unidentified Belgian soldier was taken from each of the battlefields on which the Belgian Army fought in World War I and a blinded Belgian veteran made the choice of which one was to be interred here.

He was laid to rest here on 11th November 1922 and an eternal flame was lit.

After a mega-ramble I ended up at Elak, one of my favourite shops in Brussels. It’s an electronics shop and I buy my 12-volt LED warning lights and 12-volt piazzo buzzers from there.

I’m running a little low on the aforementioned and so I need to build up my stocks. No red lights in stock, and the blue ones are flaming extortionate, so I stocked up on a few green and yellow, and a couple of buzzers.

I’ve also found (well, remembered) a shop, Pêle-Mêle, that buys second-hand books, CDs, computer equipment and that sort of stuff and so I can move on a pile of Marianne’s stuff without too much effort and that will make even more room here.

I caught the bus back here, and once more crashed out for a few hours, but this isn’t doing any good. I’m going to have to start focusing myself so much better on what I need to be doing.

In other news, I was listening to one of the new CDs that I had bought the other day just before leaving. Warren Zevon’s superb Stand In The Fire.

A magnificent album, it really is, and it features, apart from “Excitable Boy”, “Werewolves of London” and “Send Lawyers, Guns and Money” (which will be my theme song for Canada-2013 of course) – to name just a selection of good music, a magnificent mickey-take of “Sweet Home Alabama”, entitled “Play It All Night Long”.

When I was in North Carolina in 2005 I remembered these Classic Rock radio stations that played nothing but “Hotel California”, “Free Bird”, “Bohemian Rhapsody” and, of course, “Sweet Home Alabama” non-stop. I wish that I had had a copy of “Play It All Night” back then.

Anyway I edited the relevant page of the journey to include the lyrics of the chorus. They were really appropriate for the journey through North Carolina.
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-4

EPIC HALL

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