… o’ mice an’ men gang aft a-gley.
And so they did last night. With countless interruptions of all sorts and kinds of nature as I was trying to listen to Hawkwind and work myself up into a frenzy of passion before going (hopefully) to sleep, the final straw just as I was reaching the climax of “Spirit Of The Age” when someone sent me a message “would I be able to pick up a party of Ukrainian refugees in Cologne and escort them to Normandy?”.
That led to some kind of intense discussion and debate that reached the conclusion that if they could reach Cologne and go to the huge refugee welcoming centre here just outside the station, they could help them to reach Leuven on Friday and I can do the rest.
We’ll see how that all pans out over the course of the forthcoming week with my hospital visit on Thursday and so on but the immediate result was that the nice warm and comfortable, contented feeling that I had after listening to Hawkwind had evaporated completely and I ended up lying in bed working out a route and plans of how the trip would be accomplished.
Another night of tossing and turning in bed again and I’m having far too many of these just recently.
At some point I must have gone to sleep because there was stuff on the dictaphone. Later on (“later after what?” I asked myself) I was leading a couple of refugees around in Europe trying to get them to Normandy. I can’t remember very much about it and couldn’t decide what I was doing when I was awake and what I was doing when I was asleep
At another point I was in a Lada saloon driving from Greece to Normandy bringing a family of refugees with me, an old man, a young boy and a mother, having to organise them and find my way, part of which was on my old road from Virlet to Brussels.
So you can see that it’s the kind of thing that’s really getting to me even in my sleep.
There was an alarm this morning set for 08:10 and when it went off I was actually up and about, which just goes to show that I can do it when I really try.
Just for a change (and a real change too) I was first down for breakfast but gentleman that I am, I waited for all of the others to arrive. And my luck was really in this morning because I found the baked beans. So now as I walk around the city I shall have assistance from the wind.
Even though we finished breakfast quite quickly, it was 11:00 when we tore ourselves away from the table. With not having seen each other for so long, we had so much to talk about.
Jackie, who is our travel guide, knew of a 28-storey tower on the right bank of the Rhine where there is an observation platform so we headed off for the Hohenzollernbrucke that goes across the river.
The lift up to the top was an impressive machine. 28 floors and it probably took about 8 seconds to reach the top. We half-expected it not to stop and to launch us into the ionosphere.
But the views from the top really where impressive. Just wait until you see them. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that many years ago I was on my way to Central Germany in Caliburn and as we came over the brow of a hill Koln was spread out before us. This afternoon we could see all the way back to that viewpoint.
After we descended we walked upriver for a while and then crossed back over to where the “crane” apartments are. There’s a pleasant cafe situated in the foot of one of them where I was introduced to the delights of rhubarb-flavoured water. And believe me, it’s delicious.
We walked back along the banks of the Rhine into the town centre and after Alison had collected her luggage and found her rail ticket, we stuck her on the train to Brussels and then the rest of us cleared off to the brewery in the town centre.
Eventually we had to break up the happy party. Jackie went home, Hans and I collected our luggage and went back to the station for my train to Leuven and his to Munich.
The train to Liège was quite busy as far as Aachen but afterwards I could stretch out a little. The train to Leuven was a double-decker so although there were crowds on the platform, there was plenty of room on there as well.
A long wait at the fritkot for a bag of whips to eat with my burger that I’d brought from home and now I’m ready for anything. Almost anything, that it, because it’s bed time. A few bad nights has wasted me and so I’m having a lie-in tomorrow morning.
