… is that my blood count has gone up from 9.4 to 9.8 and that my protein loss has declined from 1.42 to 1.08 (which is still however a long way from the ideal of a maximum of 0.15)

The bad news though is that the improvement isn’t rapid enough. If you remember last year, it shot up to 13.0 and they signed me off for two months. This time though, they won’t sign me off and the monthly treatments will be continuing.

This means unfortunately that there will be no trip to Canada this year so how dismayed am I? I was looking forward to a nice long break away in Labrador and some other places too, but I can rule all of that out now.

And not only that, the 2kgs weight that I lost over the last couple of months have come back. And I don’t understand that either because regular readers of this rubbish will recall that I’m not eating anything like as much as I used to and I’m keeping up with all of the exercise that I can.

Despite everything that I said about being exhausted, that long crashing-out yesterday evening didn’t do me any good at all. My usual stand-by of watching a film on the laptop didn’t work – in fact I ended up seeing two from start to finish and it didn’t have the slightest effect.

And then I had a really bad night with several attacks of cramp, and even a trip down the corridor at 03:15 and it’s been a long, longtime since that has happened.

But it wasn’t so bad to prevent me going on a nocturnal ramble. And it was another one that might put you off your supper or something. I was up on a hill with someone looking down on atypical suburban street scene, and we were watching a man delivering parcels in one of these big brown UPS vans. He would arrive near his destination, switch off the engine and before the van shuddered to a halt he would leap out, deliver a parcel and leap back in, switching on the engine so that whatever momentum was left in the vehicle would fire it up again. I admired his style and I suggested that I ought to recruit him to drive one of my taxis. But suddenly he was called away elsewhere so he leapt out of his van, having forgotten to switch it off. The van collided with two vehicles and did them some serious harm before coming to a halt. The two drivers were, as you might expect, extremely annoyed by this and with their badly damaged cars, proceeded to ram this van and to reduce that to rubble too. A pedestrian had been knocked over in the initial collision and, thinking that he was the van driver (there was no-one else at the scene) they proceeded to beat him to a pulp. We called the attention of the van driver, now a long way from the scene, to what was going on but he either didn’t hear us or didn’t want to hear us, and was well away. I reckoned that maybe I wouldn’t want him to work for me after all.

We had the usual morning performance and then a shower and change of clothes. And outside as I was leaving the building I was once again assailed by the hotel cat who wanted to be picked up again.

I’d hardly gone 50 yards when the heavens opened and I was drenched. Luckily I had my rain jacket but I was still soaked to the skin nevertheless.

And a poor little kid about 5 years old was scootering through the streets with her mum when she encountered a metal grating where her scooter slid and she had a very heavy and uncomfortable fall. Poor little kid!

But the rain soon cleared up and the rest of the walk was quite pleasant.

But there are big changes afoot in the city.

This is the St Pieters Campus of the hospital and it’s here where I stayed when I first came to Leuven. It’s hardly used these days despite hos modern it looks, and all of the signs plastered around it seem to indicate that it’s going to be demolished and a kind of art gallery and public park are to be built on the site.

‘What a waste of a good modern building” was my immediate thought but it is something of an eyesore and the plans that they have seem to be quite exciting, especially as they intend to uncover a culverted arm of the River Dilje.

But we’ve seen all of these projects on paper before, and finding the funds to carry out the architect’s intentions isn’t as easy as drawing up the plans.

And regular readers of this rubbish will recall four weeks ago I published a photo of this spot in the Brusselsestraat in my “Only In Belgium” series of photos.

And it’s clear that my blog is being very widely read these days, especially by the local council, because they have now put up the correct road sign, showing the road narrowing on the right.

I’ll have to find something else to complain about now, won’t I?

Like parking for example.

Pathetic parking features regularly on these pages but only regular readers of this rubbish will recall that it all originated in Belgium when I was there in early 2013

So it’s only correct that I post yet another example, once more in Belgium.

I was really early at Castle Anthrax. So much so that I was all plugged in, wired up and sat in my comfortable seat a good 15 minutes before my appointment was even due. You wouldn’t have service like that in the UK under the NHS.

And I was there until about 15:30 before they threw me out. Back in four weeks.

Having picked up my medication I walked back to my little room, going via the Loving Hut (where SHOCK HORROR they have run out of vegan sausages) and Kruidvat for some gelatine-free sweets.

Coming back from town I came a different way and this sculpted relief on the side of a house here caught my eye.

Leuven was invaded by the Germans in August 1914 and in their well-publicised policy of “frightfulness” they set out to wipe out the city.

The library, that had tens of thousands of books going back 1500 years was burnt to the ground and dozens of acres of the city were destroyed.

This sculpted relief is a symbol of that period. And what is astonishing about it is that it managed to escape the attention of the Germans who came here again in May 1940 and burnt down the library again.

As I have said before … "and you’ll say again" – ed … it’s very easy for people to criticise what they consider to be a lack of resolution against the invaders, but they didn’t have to suffer what the invaded people had to suffer.

And don’t forget that the British abandoned the Channel Islands to the Nazis and didn’t dare invade the islands to reoccupy them until after the War was over.

For tea tonight I encountered the world’s only Italian restaurant that doesn’t have any pasta. Instead I had to have a pizza. Just as well I’d been for cheese at the Loving Hut.

So now another early night. I’m off for a day out tomorrow so I need to be on form.