First of all, it made a pleasant change to wake up and hear the birds singing. For the last few weeks I’ve been waking up to hear the birds coughing.
My room looks out towards the west, away from the campus, and I have the sun streaming in here towards the end of the afternoon and all of that is quite nice.
And that, I’m afraid, is about that.
Firstly, there’s no private toilet. I have to wander off down the corridor which, three or four times during the night, is going to be rather inconvenient to say the least.
Having had a bad night’s sleep yet again (I just can’t get comfy these days) and totally forgetting a dream that I was having, I staggered off in search of breakfast only to be told that … errr … there isn’t any. It’s not supplied.
Neither is coffee. And there’s nothing to cook on, no water fountain, no laundry room, no absolutely nothing.
The building itself is fairly modern – 1960s or 1970s I reckon, and has the air of being some kind of isolation hospital. And in the 50 or whatever years since it’s been built, I reckon that it hasn’t seen a lick of paint or an ounce of modernisation in the areas that I saw.
However, you can’t argue with the setting and if it’s peace and quiet that you want, then you can’t go far wrong here because there isn’t going to be anything to disturb you.
It’s set in huge grounds that have the appearance of having once been landscaped, and on peering through the trees there’s a really impressive chateau down there surrounded by a lake – or moat even.
I was tempted to go for a good browse around and to see what gives at the chateau but it was raining quite heavily on and off and so I’ve taken a rain-check on that and I’ll be looking into this at a later date.
So the first thing to do was to sort out some food for breakfast.
Alison had given me some dry-toasted biscuits and I had some strawberry jam. There was some grapefruit juice that I had bought last night and I had fetched some coffee from home. So that was breakfast all properly organised.
As for lunch; I nipped out in Caliburn to look for a baguette and ended up having to drive about a hundred blasted miles to Lubbeek before I found anywhere. And there wasn’t a single fritkot or cheapo fast food place anywhere on the way.
So what did I do for tea then?
Well, there’s a camping stove, some water, a saucepan, some pasta, some tins of mushrooms, some tins of mixed veg and a few jars of tomato sauce and so I cooked in the back of Caliburn like I did in France two years ago when I was in those digs in Rennes-les-Bains where there was no restaurant open. Some slices of that spicy cake with soya cream and I had a meal for for a King.
The secret of all of these matters is “preparation”. If you prepare for the problems, they don’t become problems, do they?
And how have I occupied my time?
Apart from tiptoeing through the tulip … errr … raindrops, I’ve been working on the blog again bringing it further up-to-date. I’ve probably done another 10 days today so I’m making a fair bit of progress.
And I’ve been on the phone to the bank (which took me about an hour and I shudder to thing how much that will cost me) for I’ve mislaid my bank card. I can’t find it anywhere at the moment and I need to order it because if I do go back home for a week, it needs to be there when I’m there so that I can bring it back with me.
My plans of finding a little studio or flat have come to nothing too. It seems that no-one will consider a lease for less than a year, so a four-month lease is out of the question for me. Good job that I have a Plan C, as well a plan B.
So now, I’m going to have an early night and see if I can remember what happens while I’m on my travels. I’m rather letting the side down right at the moment.
