… this morning I was flat-out fast asleep when the alarm went off at 07:00. And looking at the timestamps on the dictaphone files it looks as if I had a peaceful night.
Consequently I have absolutely no idea at all why I crashed out not once but twice this afternoon. But stranger things have happened as far as I’m concerned, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall.
Nevertheless, despite everything, I did manage to beat the second alarm. And after the medication and checking my mails and messages I revised for my Welsh class.
The Welsh lesson was something of a mess and the improvement that I’ve been making over the last few weeks seems to have disappeared.
During the lesson, I was having to do my best not to speak Flemish and I’ve no idea why, so what will probably happen over the next few days when I’m in Leuven is that I’ll be speaking Welsh to everyone rather than Flemish.
When the lesson was over I went off for a shower because the physiotherapist would be coming round. So once I was nice and clean and tidy (well, relatively, as much as I can be) the physio rang me up to say that he couldn’t be round today. And that’s quite typical, isn’t it?
First thing that I did after my lunchtime fruit was to listen to the dictaphone. There was some stuff on there from during the night. I was with a couple of cats last night. There was a girl round at my house. I can’t remember who she was. We were talking about the cats, talking about how I’d trained them to do certain things. One of the things was when it was food time I just took a box of Munchies and shook it. They came running from wherever it was that they were and I made them their food – a handful of dry biscuits with some wet catfood. I gave her a little demonstration that worked quite well. I have a feeling that there’s much more to it than this but I can’t remember now.
Our four cats would actually do that too. If ever I wanted them for some reason, I’d just go outside and shake a box of Munchies. And then be trampled to death in the stampede. I must admit that I’m missing a cat or two.
Later on I’d been in midwestern USA staying in a motel. I got up next morning and got on my motorbike and headed off. I was listening on the radio to an interview about people living in Tennessee who had a kind of natural spring that was pumping compressed air instead of water. They had all kinds of inflatable objects that they were blowing up and putting in their yard. There was a company with a whole fleet of inflatable diggers and pump machinery. I rode past a place that had a load of inflatable cars there including an early 1950s Vauxhall Wyvern. I continued along the road but it suddenly petered out into a circle by an old demolished factory. I had to turn round and go back. I thought “at least it will give me an opportunity to take the photo of that car”. I turned round and set off back but for some reason I can’t have been concentrating because I left the road on the motorbike and slammed myself head-on into a tree trunk and did myself a mischief
The rest of the day has been spent filling in forms, printing off rail tickets and packing my bags ready for my trip to Leuven tomorrow. Not that I’m looking forward to it, trying to make my way around Paris on crutches. The Metro isn’t particularly disabled-friendly and there’s the long walk from Gare Montparnasse to the metro stop.
Add to that the fact that the last time that I was in Paris, the escalator from the platform up to the Gare de Nord was out of order and I had to climb up all the stairs, about 60 of them, with my huge suitcase and STRAWBERRY MOOSE. I won’t forget that trip in a hurry.
As well as all of that, there has been talk of changing all of the metro ticketing. Of course I have a batch of the old magnetic strip tickets that I hope are still operational, because being on crutches I’m going to be rather stuck for time if I have to queue to buy some more.
Having been quite careful about what I ate over the last few days, there wasn’t anything really in the way of leftovers to make a curry. However, it was a curry made of tinned bits and pieces that I made for tea.
And a big double-helping too because I’m taking the other half with me to eat in Leuven tomorrow night. I seem to remember a microwave oven in the hotel where I’ll be staying so I can warm it up. There’s a fritkot over the road but their vegan burgers are prepacked with tomato ketchup, which I detest with a passion.
But all of that is tomorrow. Tonight I’m off to bed ready for my 07:00 start tomorrow. Caliburn will whizz me off to the station and then I’ll be in the lap of the Gods. Heaven help me!
