… one of those depressing dismal days where it has rained almost non-stop from start to finish. It started off badly when I had another one of those dramatic awakenings, where I find myself sitting bolt upright and wide awake. I was having some kind of vivid dream (and I’ve been having a few of those just recently), and although I don’t remember anything about it, I had the uneasy feeling that there was a catastrophe occurring somewhere – and it was that thought that caused me to awaken so dramatically.
Anyway, after breakfast I made a start on writing the text for my next rock radio programme for Radio Anglais but by 13:00 I abandoned it to go and pick up Marianne’s death certificates from the funeral director. I stopped off at the fritkot at the Place Flagey for some frites on the way – after all, I’m in Belgium now.
From the funeral director’s, I went to the local nick to enquire after these allegations that have been made against me and, as I had no doubt whatsoever, they have been classées sans suite. I can’t have a copy of the complaint though – I need to ask an avocat to ask the Procureur du Roi for a copy. The coppers don’t think that it’s worth the effort though. According to them, they never took them seriously, even for a moment but had to go through the motions.
From there I walked through the torrential rain across the city to my notaire to let him have one of the copies of the certificate, passing by the grounds of the European Parliament on my way
There was a meeting taking place and I was tempted to go in and spectate as I have done in the past, but I had other things to do. But I couldn’t resist taking a photo of the sign outside the Paul-Henri Spaak Building.
It’s true that they have extraordinary meetings there – I’ve sat through a few – but if this notice proves anything at all, it is that as long as the UK sits on its haunches and refuses to push for additional staff to deal with the increased pressure of additional translations and leaves it all up to the local Flemish-speaking Belgians whose “English doesn’t need any supervision – it’s totally perfect”, we’ll have a few more extraordinary translations too.
From the notaire’s, it was back to the bank at the Rond-point Schuman to check that nothing unusual was happening to Marianne’s bank account, and then I gave up. My knees were hurting a bit after yesterday’s marathon, I wasn’t comfortable, I was soaking wet and so I took the metro and then the tram back home where I crashed out for a couple of hours. All this walking is certainly doing me good.
Tomorrow I’m having a day off and then I’ll attack the next stage of the clearing up on Monday.
