… how my Welsh course is going. It seems that every time I have a good day, a bad day follows immediately on its heels. I can’t seem to manage to have two good days one after the other.
And so having had a reasonable day yesterday, today wasn’t so good at all. Couple that with the fact that the mike on my webcam is feeding back and I can’t make the remote mike work on the computer, it’s not been a very good day.
That’s a shame because I’d been to bed fairly early (comparatively speaking) and had a reasonable (comparatively speaking) sleep for a change. And at some point during the night, Zero put in an appearance, so “hello” again to Zero.
Then I had awoken at 06:30 ready to leave the bed early but I fell asleep again and had to be aroused by the alarm.
Once I’d had my mails and medication etc I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. I was going for a ride on something like an elephant. There was a couple of others and we were quite high up on this thing that was moving around. It ended up in some kind of hall or ante-chamber. At that moment a young girl whom I know came out of her room with what looked like her baby brother or something like that. She had a chat with me up on whatever it was that I was on and she down below. She said that she was taking whatever it was to the bathroom. I said “we’d better make sure that we don’t step on him then”. She asked what I meant by that. I replied that i had to go to the bathroom too.
My passport – I’d lost it a while ago and I’d been issued with a temporary Belgian 6-month passport. That was running out so I had to go to renew it. It meant going into this warehouse place, a dingy Government office and queueing. There were quite a few people in there. It was rather disorderly. It was coming to 21:00, 22:00 and we were still there, a few of us waiting. I was worried that a couple of people would push ahead of me in the queue and be seen out of turn, meaning that when the place closed I’d be out on my ear. One person was being attended to and the girl working the machine was having no end of problems. Eventually one or two of the people in the queue had to show her how the thing worked. I was sitting here thinking that this is totally crazy. It’s 22:00 and I suppose that she wants to go home – I know that we do – and what will happen if it turns out that my passport isn’t actually valid and I should have applied for a British one when I lost my original one?
Finally I was back in Virlet. My place was a total mess as usual but there were all locals around there cleaning all the vegetation away from around the house. When I arrived I couldn’t enter the house so I was sleeping outside. The bad-tempered neighbour was there with her brush-cutter cutting away all around me. They were all going in and out of my barn and garage etc. I was becoming annoyed about this but they were taking absolutely no notice at all. Then I decided that I had to think about leaving as I was leaving the following day and had someone to pick up at some town near Chartres at 17:00 and I needed to make arrangements as to where they’d be. I also had some bits and pieces that I had to take back to Caliburn. That was a real hike through the village to where I’d parked the other van and then march back. While I was asleep it had begun to rain. I was asleep out there in the rain but the neighbour who was brush-cutting abandoned her cutting, went and lay down in the grass and pulled a tarpaulin over herself which I thought was the strangest thing I’d seen for quite some time.
That wasn’t everything either but you really don’t want to know about that, especially if you are eating your tea right now.
Once I’d done all of the I spent a while revising my Welsh and then, armed with a coffee and fruit bun, attacked the lesson. We had a new tutor today who has a strange way of teaching, it has to be said, and that took us through to knocking-off time.
At lunch time I went for a shower and then sorted out the dirty clothes, seeing as I’m on the point of running out of clean ones. I also tidied up the place a little so that the cleaner doesn’t die of horror.
At the weekend I’d bought a pile of fruit because it was cheaper to buy in bulk than loose, but I was somewhat overwhelmed with the stuff, so I gave my cleaner a pile of fruit when she left.
And then I set the washing machine off on a cycle and then went to see a neighbour for a chat. Not that I’m all that much in favour of socialisaing, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, but I have to make an effort.
Back here I hung out the washing and then made tea. There was some stuffing left so I added a small tin of kidney beans and ate it with rice and veg, another really nice meal tonight, nice and spicy. But I do like those new containers that I’d bought.
So right now, nice and early, I’m off to bed. Two more days of my course to go and then I’m going to relax. Until Wednesday next week, that is, because I’ll be then off to Paris and I’m not looking forward to that at all.
They probably won’t be able to do much for me, but I won’t ever find out if I don’t go.
