… why it is that I moved to the countryside when I retired from work.

I have a whole new raft of house mates and I was out as early as 19:30 to ask them to turn the volume down. God knows what it’s going to be like by morning.

tonight though, I walked up to the city centre to see what was going on. And it’s flaming tqters out there tonight. Not quite as clod as it was last night, but taters none-the-less.

And my walk up into the city was relatively quiet and there didn’t seem to be too many people on the streets as I left here. But the closer that I approached the city centre, the closer I came to the madding crowd.

You remember on Christmas Eve that the Grote Markt was pretty empty and I was quite disappointed by that. But tonight was a completely different kettle of fish, which was something of a surprise.

So much so that they had crowd control barriers controlling admission into the square, as well as a whole raft of security guards frisking everyone who tried to enter the Square

As for me; well you know that I have issues about all of what is laughably called security and being searched. I found an entry where the people in charge were more … errr … relaxed.

But it wasn’t worth the trouble as far as I was concerned. The Grote Markt was pretty packed, and becoming more tightly packed every minute, and there was one of these discos blasting away right in the centre. Not my cup of tea at all.

So I made my excuses and left, and went for a long walk around the city.

It took me about an hour to walk everywhere that I was going. There were plenty of people about, including several who had obviously been a little too close to the barmaid’s apron.

I thought that I had left all of that behind in the UK but apparently not, so it seems.

And so I turned around and trudged my weary way homewards, where for the moment it seems to be all quiet. But I’m not holding out too much hope.

At least it gives me a peaceful opportunity to write up today’s blog without too many interruptions. I’m not sure how long it’s going to last – I hope that my new housemates move away tomorrow and go back home. I don’t like company as you know.

While you admire the remainder of this evening’s photographs, let me tell you that last night was quite a bad night as far as I was concerned.

It tok me ages to drop off to sleep and then I kept on waking up all the way through. I didn’t really have anything like a decent night’s sleep. Mind you, I must have gone to sleep at some time or other because the alarm awoke me bang on time.

I was alone at breakfast, and then came down here to carry on with some more 3D stuff. In accordance with my new resolution from yesterday, I attacked another aspect of the program – object editing.

With this, I can edit clothes, props and accessories in order to make my scenes more realistic. And later, I can have a go at creating my own objects – although that’s something for the long term.

WHat I did wasn’t all that successful, but at least it’s a start. Knowing that you aredoing somethingwrong is the first step to doing it correctly of course.

I went up town later this morning to the Delhaize to do some shopping for the weekend. Including another one of those beautiful loaves that I bought last week.

This afternoon I crashed out for awhile, did a few bits and pieces and then cooked tea, in the midst of the hordes of people who were also trying to cook. It’s a good job that I have my own pans and so on.

Although everything was cooked properly, the roast spuds weren’t roasted as much as I would have liked them to be. The sprouts though were delicious as you can imagine.

After a little rest, I headed off up town for my appointment with destiny. And you know the rest.

We’ll see how things pan out tonight and tomorrow morning. But with all of this noise and celebration, i really do wish that I was back at home