Tag Archives: crash out

Saturday 30th April 2016 – BY THE TIME …

… that they had finished with my chemotherapy last night it was 01:30. And then slowly but intermittently I could drift off to sleep.

In between a couple of trips down the corridor I remember going on a nocturnal ramble or two with some of my 3D characters. Clearly they are all feeling lonely and left out these days.

But this morning I had the nausea, a fever and the dizzy spells, to such an extent that I didn’t feel like my breakfast. And you know that there must be something seriously wrong with me if I’m off my food. In fact it took me until about 11:30 until I started to feel better and just half an hour later I managed to demolish my lunch. Clearly much better.

This afternoon I’ve been drifting in and out of sleep, presumably to make up for the couple of bad nights that I’ve been having. I’ve not done very much at all. But now, even as we speak, I’m on the second round of chemotherapy so I hope that this all goes according to plan.

So what will tomorrow bring? Not a lot, I reckon. It’s Sunday and a day of rest.

Friday 29th April 2016 – JUST AS I EXPECTED …

… I didn’t have a wink of sleep last night.

My room-mate does snore, but nothing like as loudly as my previous ones. It was quite an acceptable level in fact. But he fell asleep with his television on and that meant that I didn’t drop off, and then I lay awake all night thinking about my operation.

I remember 07:00 coming along but then, as you might expect, with zero hour of 08:00 coming along, I dropped off to sleep. So I was rudely awakened. They offered me a wheelchair which I accepted, and then I was pushed for miles and miles around the hospital to the operating theatre.

I managed to avoid a panic attack although it was quite interesting watching the heartbeat monitor go up from 89 to, at one stage, 116. But I was draped in covers so I couldn’t see what was going on and apart from two small occasions, I didn’t feel a thing. In fact, if I were honest, it was much less painful than fitting a drain.

But here’s a thing. I asked them what would happen about taking it out when it’s all over and the answer is that they don’t. It’s here for life “just in case”, and it will need cleaning every three months. So my GP is going to have her work cut out with me.

Another thing that I found out is that if I have sex, I need to wear a condom otherwise I’ll be giving my partner a chemotherapy injection. Mind you, the chances of that ever happening, as I explained to the social worker who came to see me, are somewhat less than zero so it’s not going to be an issue.

She also mentioned that when I leave here, I won’t be going back to Sint Pieters but to the Pellenberg campus which is well out of town in the countryside. Nice and clean and green, but miles away from all facilities. I hope that there’s at least a supermarket and a fritkot nearby.

The chemotherapy was a nightmare (or, should I say, is a nightmare because I’m still plugged in right now). They start off slowly and gradually increase the pace, and I told them not to go beyond 50ml per hour because of the horrible side-effects that I had last time. But of course, no-one listens to an idiot and they soon had it wound up to 90ml/hour. And sure enough, I had the freezing cold, the violent shakes and the nausea and they had to come a-running to deal with the issues because I wasn’t prepared for it to drag on like last time.

They had to disconnect me for a couple of hours so that I could calm down and let my body resettle, and then start up with a limit of 50ml/hour. So it’s going to take ages for the stuff to filter into me but it’s their own fault; had they stuck to the 50ml/hour they wouldn’t have had the couple of hours interruptions.

Once things were back under way, I crashed out for a couple of hours and missed my tea. But they did bring it round later once I’d woken up so that was OK.

But I didn’t mention lunch. I had the dietician around this morning too and we had a good long chat. So for lunch I had boiled potatoes with a huge plate of vegetables, a bowl of vegetable soup and some soya desserts. It was delicious too – I really have an appetite for boiled potatoes these days.

So I’m not sure when the chemotherapy will finish, but I’m going to bed now to watch a film. I saw Inspector Hornleigh on Holiday last night but I’ve no idea what I’ll be seeing tonight. But here’s a thing. I had a close look at the three Inspector Hornleigh films and in each one, some young girl of about 11 or 12 has a walk-on part. And it’s the same girl in each film. She’s not credited in the cast, but I was wondering whether she’s the daughter of the producer or somebody similar. That kind of thing is not uncommon in the acting world – after all, Christopher Columbus’ daughters, Eleanor and Violet, had walk-on roles in several of the Harry Potter films.

Anyway, tomorrow is a new day and we’ll see what that brings me. It surely can’t be as bad as today, can it.

Sunday 24th April 2016 – SO MUCH FOR THAT THEN!

There I was last night wishing for a good night’s sleep.

So shall I tell you what actually happened?

I was in bed at 23:15 and started to watch the rest of the film that I missed the other night. That finished at about 24:00 and I settled down for the night after that. By 02:00 I still hadn’t dropped off and I wasn’t looking forward to the rest of the night, but I must have dozed off at some point because at 03:30 I was wide awake again.

And that’s how I stayed until 07:00 or thereabouts, listening to the birds starting up at about 05:30 and watching the day slowly dawn a short while later. But at some point after 07:00 I must have gone off again because I suddenly sat bolt upright, wide awake again at 08:50.

I’d been on my travels sometime during the night too. I was in a children’s home somewhere and all of the kids were very badly dressed, due to yet another funds crisis in Social Services. Anyone who had an appointment or interview had to ask in advance and some clean tidy clothes would be found, but these had to be handed back afterwards. It was a very oppressive regime. But what in fact was happening was that people who needed clean, tidy clothes had to go to the back of the queue and people who didn’t need them for an interview or appointment was given them instead. And those who received the clean clothes became members of the oppressive regime, kicking down the others in the home. It was just like life in the European Union.

Once I was up and about, I went for breakfast and then went out for my Sunday baguette and raisin rolls, and I even treated myself to a second coffee to go with the raisin rolls. And how nice that all was too.

During the day, I did next-to-nothing, taking it easy. In fact, the only excitement that I had was making my lunchtime butty. As for catching up with my sleep, I just had a couple of five-minute sessions here and there.

This evening I went for a long walk. I’d seen a pizza place away in the distance and seeing as how Sunday is pizza night, I went off to investigate. But it was more of a restaurant than a take-away place and this was reflected in the prices. I’m running out of money until I can get to a bank (cash isn’t necessary in Belgium – cards are accepted everywhere and there is no minimum spend that I have seen) so I abandoned that idea and headed off back into town to my usual pizza takeaway.

When I arrived back here, I noticed that I was a little short of breath but I didn’t have any discomfort. I was impressed with how I’d managed my walk tonight – this was much more like things ought to be, although it’s taken ages to get up to this state after my chemotherapy.

The downside is that I’m going back next weekend for more chemo and so I’ll be back to square one again, just after I’ve been feeling so good (well, comparatively). But this is going to be a regular occurrence so I might just as well get used to it.

Saturday 16th April 2016 – AFTER EVERYTHING THAT WENT ON YESTERDAY …

… I was late going to bed. And apart from one brief trip down the corridor, I remember absolutely nothing at all and, for the first time since I don’t know when, I slept until the alarm clock awoke me. I really can’t remember the last time that that happened.

I had breakfast as usual and then took it easy for a couple of hours before going out to the shops to buy lunch.

It’s market day in Leuven today and so I had a good wander around. I ended up with, apart from the usual things, 150 grams of olives in tomato and basil and two large vegan chocolate biscuits. I’m entitled to treat myself every now and again of course.

Not only that, I’ve bought myself some notebooks and pens. I have nothing to write on, and nothing to write with here, and so much is going to happen in the future that I need to take note about things to remind me about what I need to to. This is starting to become important.

After lunch, I struggled on but the walk this morning had worn me out. By 14:45 I was tucked up in bed and there I stayed until 17:20. I can’t be doing with this, I really can’t.

later on, I went out for food and bought another load of pasta and tomato sauce. That was really nice and I’m glad that I found this little takeaway.

So now, having had another miserable day, I’m off to bed. I hope that tomorrow will be better, but I’m not banking on it.

Friday 15th April 2016 – THE EXERTIONS OF YESTERDAY …

… were clearly far too much for me.

I managed to keep on going until about 16:40 and then I had to crash out. And I was out until 20:25 – stark out too. Far too late to go to fetch something to eat but luckily I had brought down here from Caliburn a packet of the Rich Tea biscuits that I had bought in Zoutelande the other week, so I polished those off instead. But I didn’t feel in the least bit like it, I do have to say.

But yesterday, I’d kept going until about 23:00 without an afternoon kip and this might explain some of the problems that I had this afternoon, although I did have a reasonable sleep. I don’t remember much about where I went during the night, except that I had some exciting company. I was in a pub where I’d gone to meet someone whom I knew, but when I arrived, I found that this person was sitting at a table with a couple whom I’ve known for 40 years. It was very nice to see them, that’s for sure – in fact it’s always nice to see friends, make no mistake – but I was hoping to have an intense chat with this person but was unable to do so with these other people there.
And later on, I was with two people whom I know who live in Germany. I was working for that weird American company again and so were these two people, and this time, I’d managed to make the company work like it should have done and people were amazingly co-operative. Not like that place at all.

I had toast again for breakfast, and the coffee was just as good as always, and then I had a quiet hour or two in my room until the cleaner threw me out. That gave me the opportunity to go off and do some shopping as well as visit the pharmacie to sort out the prescriptions.

I’ve also seen the manager of the accommodation here. I told them what is going on about my stay in Leuven and they have told me that I can settle up when I leave – that seems like a good plan. And I have an appointment with the Social Services at the hospital on Tuesday so we may well know more after that.

I enjoyed my lunch – I had a healthy appetite for once and soon made a mess of that, and then I had my mega-crash-out this afternoon.

But all in all, I wish that I could put an end to all of this. I don’t have the energy to do anything and, what is even worse, I don’t have the inclination.

That’s what hurts the most in all of this.

Wednesday 13th August 2016 – NOW, ABOUT LAST NIGHT …

… I was in bed by about 21:30 and it didn’t take all that long at all to drop off to sleep. And the next thing that I remember was that it was 05:35. I can’t have been for a wander during the night and I vaguely remember only the basics of some kind of nocturnal ramble going on during the night. It concerns Renown Garage where my taxi business was based during the late 1980s. They had dug up the petrol pumps and were concreting them, with this huge cement mixer. However, instead of water, they had mixed the concrete with petrol which had infiltrated into the foundations from the old petrol tanks. This had the effect (at least, it did last night) of making the concrete set quickly and super-hard, and they had far too much of it that they didn’t know what to do with it. I immediately seized on the opportunity to offer my back garden as a dumping ground for the concrete – with the aim of course of covering it over as a place to park my vehicles.

I felt quite better this morning, and even had an appetite for breakfast. And afterwards, now that I’ve bought some soap, I went for a shower and sorted out all of my clothes for washing. And this was when I realised that I only have one spare pair of undies and trousers – no socks, tee-shirt or jumper. Nevertheless, I put everything ready to wash.

I had to wait hours for the machine to free itself, seeing as the cleaner seemed to have gone berserk with the cleaning cycle, but it didn’t take long to wash. Meantime, I’d gone round to the supermarket for my baguette, tomato and banana, and as well as that, bought myself a bag of sweets and a bun because I was starving. This is definitely an improvement.

And my relentless thirst seems to have calmed down too, which is a good thing. You’ve no idea how much liquid I’ve demolished this last few days.

This afternoon I had a doze again for an hour or so and later on went out for tea. Thanks to all of the vegan cheese that I have, I went for another pizza and I polished that off quite comfortably.

Yes, definitely feeling a little better.

But you missed all of the excitement while I was out. Some young guy thought that he would be clever by cycling on the pavement around a traffic queue in the street. Instead, he cycled right into a grid in the gutter, his front wheel jammed and he went head-over-heels right over the handlebars.

Yes, I did have to laugh.

But tomorrow I’m back at the hospital. I’m having a blood test at the day centre and that will tell us whether I need another transfusion, or whether the chemotherapy is actually working.

It’ll be interesting to see what’s going on, and I hope that it’s working because I don’t want to go through too much of this under any circumstances whatever. It’s horrible.

Monday 11th April 2016 – IF I’M TOTALLY OUT OF IT TODAY …

… then there is a very good reason for this, because I was well away with the fairies during the night.

“Away” was not the word. I must have crashed out listening to the radio because I awoke at about 01:30, in the middle of the night, to the sound of the Clitheroe Kid.

And I wasn’t alone last night either. I had companions during all of it and I started off with none other than Nerina and my brother. He had a Ford Fiasco which had a luton body on it (don’t ask me how – or why) and he was out and about on his travels when he bumped into me, somewhere on the corner of Edwards Avenue and Edwards Close in Shavington. As we were talking, a police car loomed over the horizon and he beat something of a hasty retreat away from his Fiesta. I asked him why but he didn’t give a convincing reason and in the end I cornered him over the fact that it wasn’t insured. “Don’t you remember that as soon as I got my licence I was planning to go off on that drive across Europe but in the end I had to cancel it. That was because the insurance hadn’t come through”.
So from there we made our way into the company of Nerina who wanted some stuff moving. She didn’t care about how ill I was, and I couldn’t make her understand. We ended up bringing a quad motorcycle down some narrow stairs from an attic, getting it stuck at every turn, and once it was down, off we set. We carried on arguing all the way to where we were going, to Hankelow Hall, to my house in France, and even arguing in some roadside petrol station near Audlem (which was nowhere near Audlem of course) and I’d lost patience long ago.
After a trip down the corridor I was at the seaside. Only a teenager, I was with a group of others and there was a huge storm raging sending spray everywhere and one girl of our party was out running around in it. I went out to bring her inside but I ended up being overwhelmed by the magnificence of it all too and staying out with her. As the storm subsided we went for a walk and ended up taking a short cut through someone else’s garden . I asked her if she knew the people to which she replied that she did. I had no intention of meeting them so I persuaded her to retrace our steps and we were met at the gate by a crowd of people including the fire brigade. Apparently the place had caught fire and so we were asked what we had been doing. I replied with the first thing that came into my head – that we were collecting the pools money – but that was clearly the wrong thing to say because there was some scam going around about the Football Pools and I’d put my foot right in it. Nevertheless, an elderly couple whom I knew saw me with this girl and gave me a “knowing wink”.
And later still, I’d been out with a friend and her husband to a local bar. The husband was quite the worse for wear so she asked me to escort him home. I agreed, provided that she would bring a few bottles back for me to take to my friends. However, outside the bar, husband jumped on a bicycle and despite his wife’s most earnest entreaties, he wouldn’t get off and wobbled off down the street. I grabbed hold of the nearest bike, a kind of Moulton mini-bike with a flat rear tyre and weird handlebars, and shot off after him. But I was so impressed by this bike. Even with a flat rear tyre, the gearing was such that the momentum of going down Vine Tree Avenue took me all the way back up the bank in Chestnut Avenue, and I remember thinking that I shall have to look much more closely at modern bicycles

No wonder that I’m exhausted – but I’m curious to know what Shavington doing featuring in all of this these days.

I slept almost right through to the alarm this morning but it was a slow crawl to the breakfast room. And back here, I crashed out again for an hour straight afterwards. It took me ages to come round sufficiently but the cleaner threw me out of my room at about 11:00. This gave me an opportunity to go to the office to pay for my accommodation. I’ve paid up until Thursday morning because I’ve no idea where I’ll be after then. Will I be detained in hospital or will I be released?

As an aside, the receptionist complimented me on my Flemish. I suppose it must be returning by now but I don’t feel anything like as confident – or as competent – as I think that I ought to be.

I crawled to the supermarket to buy food for lunch and then crawled back here afterwards to eat it and then have another crash-out for a couple of hours. But at 20:00 I staggered out to the fritkot – not feeling very much like it at all but I have to eat and frits are full of fat which, apparently, I must have.

I was in luck at the fritkot – it was the anniversary of the opening of the place and so a medium portion was free. How often does this kind of thing happen to me? I had a struggle to eat them but they all went down and they must have done some good because now it’s 22:00 and I’m still awake.

But not for much longer. I’m off to bed and I’ll see where I end up tomorrow.

Sunday 10th April 2016 – AFTER MY REALLY BAD NIGHT …

… last night, the first thing that I did this morning was to dash to the washbasin by the wall (and I bet that you are so glad that I told you that, aren’t you?). And, strangely enough (or maybe not), I felt a little better after that. Mind you, that’s not difficult because I could hardly have felt any worse than I did during the night.

But having put all of that nonsense behind me, I managed to eat a breakfast and then I went off for a little walk. The Delhaize up the road was closed today (which I suspected it might be) and so I decided to head for the nearest bakery for a real stockbrood for once. And here I was in luck.

I’d forgotten all about the Belgian habit of everyone going to the banketbakkerij on a Sunday to buy koekjes – the breakfast ritual here in Belgium is for cakes and coffee and some of the cakes are magnificent. They aren’t for me of course, but they did have some sugar-coated raisin buns. Two of those with another coffee when I returned to my little room cheered me up a little.

At lunchtime, I had some vegan cheese on my butty and I’m a little disturbed because the taste seems to have changed. It hasn’t – it’s that my taste buds have changed since I’ve had chemotherapy and that’s disturbing me. It’s one of the reasons that I’m off my food right now. I don’t really fancy anything to eat and the idea of eating anything greasy makes me queasy.

Another thing that I’ve noticed is that I’m cold too, and that’s not like me. I ended up having to turn on the heating in my room to make me feel better.

I crashed out for a couple of hours this afternoon – nothing like as completely as I have done over the last couple of days though – and later on I forced myself out to organise a pizza. I must start to eat some food some time. Luckily, I have plenty of sliced vegan cheese hanging around.

Delicious as the pizza might have been, I had to force myself to eat it. And I managed it too and I felt slightly better too.

But I’ve now noticed another little problem – where I had this drain in my right arm, the area is now swelling up, just like the very first time when I was at Montlucon hospital. That, as we know, turned out to be a wandering blood clot and led to my having all of those injections twice a day for three months. I hope that it isn’t – I don’t want to go through all of that again.

Saturday 9th April 2016 – LAST NIGHT WAS THE FIRST …

… night that I’d spent in a single room for a while so I was determined to make the most of it. But having crashed out earlier in the afternoon, I was awake by 02:00 and spent the rest of the night drifting in and out of sleep.

And drifting in and out of nocturnal rambles too. I started out by leading some kind of commando pack and it was the evening of the invasion of Europe. Our HQ, such as it was, was a landing craft anchored offshore and it was from there that all of our missions were taking place. But after a few hours, a green light came on, somewhere in the sky over the land, and that was the signal for us to move our headquarters onto the shore, to a place known as Home One. Once we had established ourselves here, we checked over our radio equipment and picked up a television broadcast which was an advert for a quiz programme and which featured a young girl who was part of our team – a very fair girl with a blond pony-tail (and, incidentally, someone with whom I’d worked for a short while in Stoke on Trent once). She had made an unbelievable gaffe in this programme and when she had realised, she went a glowing shade of red and the television commercial was showing her changing colour, which we all thought was unfair to keep on broadcasting it. And at the same moment, another one of our female commandos had been manhandled by a group of civilians and one of our male crew who was quite keen on her immediately sprung up to go and give these people some retaliation, and we had to hold him down to prevent him, because this would surely blow our cover and we were not ready for this yet.
Later on, because by now I was having endless trips down the corridor, a friend of mine put in an appearance. He’d been doing car repairs and was making something of a reasonable profit but we were warning him that very soon he would start to get out of hand with this and the authorities would pick him up if he wasn’t careful.

Breakfast looked to be something of a disappointment. We had bread and coffee, and that was really about that. I was having a little curse to myself about that, especially as it was only about an hour later, after everything had been cleared away, that I discovered where they kept the jam and the speculoos biscuits.

D’ohhhh!

But I’m far from well – there’s no doubt about that. After breakfast I wasn’t up to too much and stayed in my room. So much for all of my plans to get out and about. It’s a beautiful city, Leuven, and would have been even more beautiful too except that the Germans burnt it down in 1914 and again in 1940. The former was the saddest of the two though because Leuven had been declared an “open city”, but the Germans of World War I had a policy of “frightfulness” in 1914, committing all kinds of atrocities on the civilian populations for no good reason other than to terrorise them into submission. Burning down the University and its magnificent, unique library was just one of many atrocities committed here in 1914 by the German invaders.

I made it as far as the Carrefour, which was a long way short of the Delhaize and much smaller so it didn’t have anything like the same amount of stuff on sale, and I ended up making a mistake and buying soup vegetables instead of salad. It made no difference anyway because I couldn’t eat all of my baguette.

And when you hear that I’m off my food then you really know that I’m not well.

from about 16:00 I crashed out again and I’ve been drifting in and out of sleep ever since. It’s now 23:30 and for once I’m wide awake, but I hope that it doesn’t last. I really need to sort myself out somehow.

Sunday 3rd April 2016 – I DIDN’T FEEL …

… much like it this morning, that’s to be sure. I was awake at 07:20 but that is of course not the same as getting out of bed. In fact it took me a good hour to summon up the courage to leave the bed. But once I was up, I started to collect all of my affairs together and it didn’t take too long to be ready.

And I discovered why the internet had dramatically reduced in speed and strength. It seems that the repeater for the wi-fi was in my room underneath the bedside cabinet and I’d unplugged it in order to plug in my laptop. It didn’t half work better once I’d reconnected it

I picked up Caliburn and then headed for the Belgian border, stopping off o pick up a baguette on the way. And then I had a nice drive along the Meuse where I stopped at a good spec somewhere just north of Profondeville to admire the view and have a little kip. Crashed out again!

My baguette was enormous and I struggled to eat it all, and then once I’d gathered my wits (which doesn’t take long these days) I set off. And by the time I got to Phoe … errr … Namur, the sun was out and everywhere looked so nice.

I had an uneventful drive back to Alison’s, stopping for a couple of hours on the Motorway Service Area at Heverlee to crash out for a while in the glorious, warm sunshine, and then to bring up-to-date the paperwork. And to have a coffee too, which is the first coffee that I have had since Thursday, would you believe.

But with the internet at the Motorway crashing out, I lost interest after a while and headed back to Alison’s. She loved her tree, which pleased me greatly because I don’t really ever know how to thank people properly, and we ended up having a good chat.

But now I’m off to bed because I have an early start in the morning. My treatment begins at 09:30, so they say, which means that I need to be signed in at 09:00. But I want to be there much earlier than that because, firstly, the earlier we start, the earlier we finish and secondly, I’ve no idea how long this treatment is likely to take, there will be side-effects so I’m told, and I have to see the Social Services people. I need to be on top form.

So I’ll see you all tomorrow and let you know how it went.

Saturday 2nd April 2016 – NOW, HERE’S A THING.

Even though I’d had an early night last night, I slept right through the night and didn’t remember a thing. I didn’t leave the bed once and it’s been a long time since that has happened. I did have some kind of nocturnal ramble though, but all that remains in my head is meeting Sue, a girl whom I knew from Swindon, taking her by surprise as I stuck my head around the door where she was working, and there was also some kind of road transport that consisted of a vehicle from the 1920s but with no engine – instead there was some kind of rotary pedal arrangement that required two people to operate it – something similar to a pedalo.

It took me ages to pluck up the courage to leave my comfortable bed – I’m feEling the strain now, that’s for sure. But then I went for something of a walk to find a boulangerie , without a great deal of success. There was a street market today, and an artisan-baker had a stand there, but she was selling “normal” bread by the kilo and not a baguette in sight.

I ended up at the little Carrefour supermarket in town and bought a baguette and a couple of other things from there and then wandered off to the car park to pick up from Caliburn what I need for lunch, falling almost immediately upon a boulangerie – and then another one about 100 metres away. But that wasn’t all that I fell upon. Around the corner at the back of the hotel is an Indian restaurant. They advertise a vegetarian curry with plain rice, with side dishes such as a garlic naam, and the prices looked so reasonable so that I’ll be going that way tonight to see what it all tastes like. It’s been years since I’ve had a good meal from an Indian restaurant – Montreal last August in fact.

From what I saw of Givet, it’s a pretty little place. A small French town with a maze of narrow streets. It’s clearly seen much better days, like most places in France, but its history is impressive. There’s a huge citadel that is perched on a headland and overlooks the town and in ordinary circumstances I would have gone up there. But these, unfortunately, are not ordinary times as we all know.

Back at the hotel I didn’t move very far at first, but at 13:20 they came around to clean the hotel room so I had to wander off outside for half an hour to take the air and go for a stroll along the river. And after lunch, I crashed out for a couple of hours, despite my mega-sleep last night.

I didn’t do very much at all later on, except to go out for my meal. And I need to be careful about saying that it was something of a disappointment. Stoke on Trent it isn’t, of course, and it’s something astonishing, as I will be the first to admit, to find an Indian restaurant in a town like Givet. That’s a fact worth celebrating on its own and I don’t regret having gone there for my evening meal. These kinds of places deserve all of our encouragement and support.

Back at the hotel, I climbed wearily up the stairs and into my bedroom. I switched on the laptop and discovered that the internet speed and strength had collapsed. I waited for about half an hour to load up the internet but I crashed out long before anything had loaded.

About an hour later, I woke up with the radio still playing, so I switched off the laptop and went back to sleep.

Friday 1st April 2016 – I’M BACK …

… on the road again today. I was awake early enough but when I switched on the laptop, there was someone on line with whom I wanted to have a chat. Consequently it was about 09:30 when I went downstairs and I hit the road straight away.

My first stop was at the town of Ramillies, the site in 1706 of one of the major, if not decisive battles of the War of the Spanish Succession. And it was here that I realised that I had forgotten my mobile phone and camera. Still, start as you mean to go on, I suppose.

Instead, I went shopping at the Delhaize at Inhout so as to stock up with food for my couple of days, and here I received a lovely smile from a young girl. I suppose that I’ll have to add it to the list of places to revisit. After all, it’s not every day that I have such a nice smile like that and I need to remember these places.

I called at a nursery on the outskirts of Namur. Alison is a very keen gardener and I want to thank her for being so kind to me, so I managed to pick up a young almond tree that will look really nice when it starts to blossom. I hope that she’ll like it.

Fuel at Namur was a mere €0:97 per litre, which is the cheapest that I’ve seen it for about 15 years. Caliburn was running quite low and so I profited by fuelling him right up, as I’m sure you would have done too at that price.

I missed the turning that I wanted at Namur and ended up on the wrong side of the Meuse – the eastern bank which is quite industrialised. It took me ages to find a crossing over onto the western bank, by which time I reckon that I had missed all of the picturesque hotels. but not to be outdone, I carried on southwards to Dinant, where the streets were undergoing a total renovation. There was nowhere to park, nowhere to move around, and walking around the town didn’t look very easy at all.

As a result, I pressed on towards the frontier, stopping for my butty somewhere where there was a lovely view across the river. Having no answer at a couple of bed-and-breakfasts, and at yet another, being told that it was full and I should refer myself to the other two in the town.And so I eventually found myself across the French border, in Givet. The first hotel that I found had transformed its rooms into apartments.The prices at the next few that I found frightened me to death and so as a last resort I found myself at the Ibis Budget on the outskirts of the town. I had no luck here either as the computerised registration system was down.

From here, I decided to cut across country to Rocroi where I knew that there were a few cheap hotels, but instead, negotiating the narrow one-way streets of Givet I found another hotel, the “Reflets Jaunes”. They were busy too and all of the cheap rooms had gone, but when I moaned about the price they allowed me a 20% discount which made it much more like my kind of place. There was secure vehicle parking too round the corner which was very handy because the streets weren’t half narrow.

Once I’d installed myself, I crashed out for an hour or so and then had a shower and washed my clothes. And I do have to say that I wasn’t disappointed with my hotel. I’ve been obliged to decline breakfast because it’s so expensive, although had I been a meat-and-dairy eater, I wouldn’t have complained for a moment because it really did look excellent, the way the receptionist described it. But the room is nice, warm and comfortable, and the towels are so fluffy that I’ve no idea how I’m going to close my suitcase when I leave here. The shower is lovely too and the internet connection is superb.

Later on in the evening, I went to see what there was to eat. There are several fritkots in the town but none of them sell falafel from what I was able to see. One was however next to a Carrefour “City” so while my chips were frying, I went next door and bought a cucumber salad to have with the chips.

After tea, I started to watch an Inspector Hornleigh film but my heart wasn’t in it and I’d gone in about 15 minutes. I’m definitely noticing how much I’m struggling now so I hope that the next few days will start to see a slight improvement in my health. It’ll be three weeks since I will have had a blood transfusion.

Tuesday 29th March 2016 – THERE ARE JUST SO MANY …

… job opportunities these days.

Yes, I’ll be back in the Netherlands at some point giving them lessons in English spelling because somewhere along the line, they seem to have lost their way.

But the existence of this product explains quite a lot and answers many questions.It must have been on sale in the UK at one time or another, because I’ve overheard loads of people wandering around Tesco’s or Asda going “where’s the basterd sugar?”. And now I know why.

After my dreadful evening last night, I was first up and first into the breakfast room yet again, and I was in and out by 08:30. It didn’t take me too long to pack and arrange my affairs, and by 09:10 I was on my way.

But something very surprising happened as I was leaving. I’d handed my key to the chambermaid and as I was walking away from the hotel, the landlady came chasing after me. Not, as you might think, to accuse me of taking the towels away, but to shake my hand and wish me all the best in my forthcoming trials and tribulations. I thought that that was very poignant indeed.

Off to the supermarket and stocking up with Raak Campagne Pils and gelatine-free licorice-and-banana flavoured sweets, and then I went off for a drive along the coast.

Just down the road in the town of Westkapelle I stumbled upon a museum. This features exhibits relating to the polders and dykes around here and contains a few exhibits from the battles around here that liberated the islands in the Scheldt estuary in late 1944.

That up there on the top of the dyke is a Sherman tank of course. From the USA and the most popular of the USA light tanks in World War II

“Exhibits relating to the polders and dykes”, I just said. And this area of the coast is littered with shipwrecks, which is hardly surprising when you remember just how close to the shore the main shipping lane is.

It’s bad enough in a motor-powered ship but it must have been a nightmare in a sailing ship. There’s hardly any room at all in which to manoeuvre. This pile of metalwork has been gathered from off the shore over time and is part of the exhibits.

That’s not all either. This is a Landing Craft – Tank and was one of the key elements in amphibious warfare.

It’s the kind of thing that I would buy in a heartbeat if I were to live on my own island somewhere off the coast. Caliburn would fit in there quite nicely with a little modification (to the LCT) and t would be just the thing to keep us all mobile.

I would gladly have told you so much more about the exhibits but as you might expect, the museum is closed. No surprise here.

So I travelled on up the road for a while and found a lovely spec by the seashore where I could watch the ships sailing along the coast, and also have a little snooze for a couple of hours. You’ve no idea right now how much I’m feeling the exertions of my travels.

I stopped for a coffee on the way home, at a motorway service area just before the International Border, and then hit all of the traffic around Antwerp. And that’s just how it was, all the way back to Alison’s.

I didn’t hang around for long though. I have a long day ahead in Brussels and so I crawled upstairs for an early night.

There’s just about enough time for me to tell you about my travels though. Some British person had bought a piece of land in France, but it was more like on Barony Park in Nantwich, at the top end of the street where Helena and Ann used to live. He was laying down some huge amount of concrete hardstanding there in order to erect a block of flats. Someone had been working for him but had left the job half-way through and an arrangement had been made for me to go and pick up his wages. I had to be there at 17:00 but when I arrived at 17:01, everyone had already gone – in that minute that I was late. I had to find a place to park there, annoying all of the traffic whilst I was trying to squeeze into a parking place – access was really difficult. I had a good look around but I couldn’t find anyone, and ended up by talking to a man who had been interested in buying the small plot next to this large one. He had thought that with this first man ordering to much concrete, he could add whatever he wanted onto the neighbour’s order and pay pro-rata. They could lay his concrete together and he would return the labour on this person’s site. However, the first guy was not at all in favour. he told him to bring his tonne of aggregate, his tonne of sand and of cement and we’ll do it in five days. This made the second guy have second thoughts about buying this plot of land for if this was how it was going to be like in the beginning, how was it going to end up in the future when they were living next door to each other? From here, I had to go back to my bus (for I was driving a bus) and pick up Roxanne’s grand-parents on her father’s side. We had to go and pick up our mail which was delivered to the garage of a block of apartments somewhere that looked like a street I know in Evere and was put in galvanised metal buckets. There was nowhere to park, as usual, so I had to park in the street while they nipped out to pick up their buckets and pick up mine too. Of course, at this moment a great big bus pulled up behind me and of course he wasn’t very happy so I had to move. I had to drive about 50 yards down the road to where I had seen a parking place. But it was tight down there and I had knocked the mirror on the passenger side of my bus so I couldn’t see properly and had to inch my way down there and inch my way into this parking space and shunt myself in so that I was close enough to the kerb. But this bus wasn’t helping because every time I went forward, so did he, which meant that I couldn’t reverse back in, especially with no mirror on the passenger side (it was a RHD bus by the way), and I was on the point of getting out and giving him a piece of my mind.
I was with Liz and Terry somewhere around the Pinware River in Labrador. It was where they have built the new diversion but we were actually on the old road but this was all now industrialised and a big city environment with a railway line that ran up there and a yard where containers were loaded and stacked. The first thing that we noticed was a shipping container that had not detached from its trailer, so the crane had picked up the container and the trailer – and then dropped the lot! The whole right-hand side of the road had been devastated by fire and I wanted to photograph this, so I had to drive around to find a suitable place to park (I was in Strider, but a RHD Strider, by the way). There was nowhere really to park and I lost Liz and Terry while I was doing this. I’d gone higher up the hill, but on turning round and coming back, I noticed that there was a road that turned off to the right so I turned off to travel along it, but it was a one-way street and I ended up going the wrong way along it. People were flashing their lights at me and some youngish guy tried to get into my car with me and give me a lecture, something about “all of these tourists coming into our country and thinking that they know their way around when they really know absolutely nothing. They ought to be given proper qualified guides to accompany them”. My reply was that I was interested in seeing things that I was interested in, and seeing them through my own eyes, not anyone else’s. This led to quite a heated debate. He started speaking to me in a language that I didn’t recognise but, remembering where I was, I guessed that it was Innu, which he confirmed. It was all very unpleasant.
We were out walking by the river somewhere round by Farndon, that area. There was a girl, rather like Pamela Hayes or that girl whom I met on that ship out in the Gulf of St Lawrence who looked quite tall (although she was wearing high heels) and she was intending to throw herself in the river. We had a big discussion about it and I explained that this wasn’t the solution – there were people far worse off than she was, and all of this sort of thing. There were people up to their necks in water struggling to get out and so on. I introduced myself and told her that I was out looking for an apartment somewhere as I lived at home with my five siblings and my parents in a little two-bedroomed house. My mother was swimming in the river at this time (although it wasn’t my mother, it was the mother of Helen – a girlfriend from my school days). All of our family was into things to do with painting – my mother was a painter and my brother was a house painter. I was actually on my way to Halfords to buy a box of assorted tap washers to do some plumbing. I knew a girl who worked there, but she was in the department that sold tapestries. My mother then came out of the water and we all had a big chat and then went off to buy these washers; However, there was nothing really suitable – they had a multi-pack of washers there but these were just bits and pieces. At this moment, the Police turned up. There had apparently been some other kind of incident going on there and they had come in response to that, but we were all held and interviewed about what we knew.
This next bit is nothing like complete because after I woke up, I fell asleep again almost immediately and so didn’t dictate it “at the moment” as I would normally like to do. From what I remember, though, I was on a train that had left France and was heading down to the south of Europe. I’d boarded it at the departure point, Paris, and it was crammed with people like most wartime trains were. We’d boarded it right behind the engine and had to work our way backwards to find a seat. We must have travelled for miles and there was still no seat to be found. We kept bumping into the guard and he was telling us all kinds of stories about wartime travel and so on. I don’t remember too much more about it, although we did end up somewhere down by Yugoslavia and we were still standing. But on the subject of wartime, I was explaining to someone that French railways were liberated “all at once”. They were surprised by that but I pointed out that the railway staff was actually civilian in most cases and would just take orders from whoever was giving them. It made no difference whether they were French, German or whatever, whether they were giving the orders or receiving them. They would not, in by far the most cases, be considered as combatants. So once the head of the pyramid of command had been liberated, so would all of the rest of it.

Monday 28th March 2016 – I’VE NOT TAKEN …

… any photographs today. But that’s because my sorties outside have been few and far between.

The hurricane really hit us during the night and I’m sure that the roof of my little room was about to be torn off. I had a really bad night because of that, and this didn’t bode well for the daytime.

I managed to go off on a couple of nocturnal voyages though. We start off with a group of three men who had gone west, intending to settle somewhere out there. They had come across a town where they intended to settle but it turned out that the town was very conservative and the people there were very unwilling to accept new arrivals. The people were very set in their ways and any new arrival had to conform to the way of life of the existing inhabitants. In the end, these three people were effectively driven away. About 10 or 20 miles down the road was a ruined barn-type of place with living accommodation on some kind of abandoned farm and so they restored it to its original purpose and settled there. These people were hard-workers and so the place prospered. There was a river on the boundary of this property and this formed the border between a couple of States. As these three people prospered, the area slowly opened up and many more people came to the area to settle and a small road network was created. A short-cut of the road network was proposed, that would go right past their house and cross the river right there, making their site into a little gold mine when it came to redevelopment as a town site. This was good news for them and good news for people in the neighbourhood, but what they wanted was merely to live in peace and quiet and not become involved in politics of any kind. But this news about the road would affect the existing town, which would be by-passed, and the town would decline rapidly. Not only that, the long-time inhabitants had imposed some kind of two-tier society where they had much more say than the new arrivals and this too was causing a great deal of discontent. The people in the valley around this farm decided that they would organise a huge protest march against the townsfolk, and they all congregated at the farm to go into town to confront the townsfolk and this was the last thing that these three people wanted. He couldn’t extract himself from the protest, being swept along by the tide and found himself right at the front, leading the march, which was what he didn’t want to do. When he and this march arrived at the town, he found that one of his brothers, who had stayed behind at the town, had been forced to lead a counter-march of the town’s senior inhabitants. The two of them walked quickly to try to get ahead of their respective marching bodies to meet up and discuss the situation, and try to find a way out of the impasse before the two parties clashed.
Woken up by an extremely violent gust of wind, I then went back to a James Bond or Avengers situation with me as the hero and I had a female sidekick. We’d been trying to break up this gang of violent crooks for ages, and all of a sudden we’d had some kind of breakthrough. My sidekick had been captured by one of the gang, a leading female figure, at gunpoint and this had left a couple of men. I had one of the men cornered and I hit him with a pistol and he was flat out so I stuck him in my car and chased after the two women. The unconscious man slowly started to come round so I sloshed him again. In the meantime, I was overhearing some discussion about all of the evidence that we’d somehow overlooked and left behind at this place that we had just visited. As a result, I reluctantly abandoned the chase and went back to this house to collect all of the evidence. I completely lost the trail of these two women, but at least I had one guy and all of the evidence, and while I was there at the house, I captured the other guy. So the case was complete, except for the woman, so I took everything down to the police station where the men were formally charged. They were then ushered away from the charge room, giving me looks of hatred and anger as they walked past me. A couple of other people then asked me what I was going to do about my female companion. I replied that to be honest, what I was really hoping for was that they have both made their peace and are now quite happily in a relationship with each other and live happily ever after. That would be ideal. From here, I wandered back into Crewe town centre where this girl of mine had a flat and sure enough there was the girl’s mother and also Alfie Hall of the Clitheroe Kid. They were emptying out this apartment and packing up her stuff making it ready to be sent on. They asked me if I minded, and of course I didn’t mind at all. I was happy that things had turned out fine for her in the end. It was really nice to see this and I hoped that once they were settled, she would write to me to tell me where she was living, and I’d go round to see her in the summer.

I was up early this morning and was in fact the first in for breakfast. After that, I went for a walk to the supermarket while the housemaid made up my room. And the wind was astonishing. I’ve never seen anything like it – dustbins (and I’m proud that I could remember the Dutch for dustbin – it’s vuilnisbak – right off the cuff without any prompting at all) all over the place. I’ve stocked up with supplies (although I forgot the hummus) and Raak Campagne Pils, and I’ll be going there tomorrow on my way out because – booh hoo hoo! – I’m leaving ehre tomorrow morning.

Back at the hotel I crashed out. Firstly, the bad night had really disturbed me and secondly, I can feel myself going downhill little by little. In fact, my eyesight is starting to go now.

After lunch, and another crash out, I went for a walk and found out why the town was so full of people when I tried to stand up on the top of the dyke. I say “tried” because it was impossible in this wind and there was no-one else up there either.

The ice-cream parlour was a disappointment – there was no dairy-free ice cream on offer and I’m depressed about that, I’ll tell you.

Tonight, I had a pizza again and I’m now very low on vegan cheese. I hope that I can get into Brussels on Wednesday to find some more. But now I’m crashing out again. I really am feeling dreadful right now.

Sunday 27th March 2016 – MY POSTILION HAS BEEN STRUCK BY LIGHTNING

Well, not quite, but round about 16:30 this afternoon, in the middle of a thunderstorm and hailstone fusillade, there was a dull thud, the building shook a little and all of the power went off.

I went for a walk a little later and this was what I saw in the distance. Huge massing storm clouds over there, hanging over the North Sea.

In fact, we had heavy storm clouds all over the place and in the distance to the south (remember that Zoutelande is on the north-west coast of the Schelde estuary were some very clear thunder flashes. It is therefore very tempting to suggest that the hotel had been struck by lightning.

That wasn’t all that was going on either. I’d been for a walk earlier while the housemaid made up my room, and was lucky enough to see a ship sailing up towards Antwerp, just offshore.

And excuse the lack of focus on the image – the wind was terrific and blowing me around like nobody’s business. This was the best of the images that I took, and that doesn’t say much for the others.

But talking of the housemaid, we had a little chat this morning. And the only language that we had in common was Italian. Imagine that in the Netherlands!

But those storm clouds that we saw gathering off the coast yesterday early evening finally arrived during the night. They hit my little room with such a force that I was immediately woken up, and when I went back to sleep, then half an hour later I was awoken once more.

This accounts for the dreadful night’s sleep that I had last night, and also for the number and variety of my nocturnal rambles. And believe me, there were dozens, quite a few of which didn’t make it to the dictaphone because either I fell straight back to sleep or else by the time that I found the dictaphone, I’d forgotten where I’d been.

Anyway, from what I do remember, I was in XCL, my red Cortina, and back at school (or, rather, a school in France, not my old one). I was an adult by this time and I only went back to school very occasionally, because I was studying Geography and History in my own time, but I would call in to the lessons if ever I was going past the school because I wanted to take the school exams and I needed to make sure that I was in touch with the course. As a result, I didn’t really know any of the children there. One afternoon, I’d bought something – some new seat covers or something for XCL so they needed wrapping. I had my yellow rucksack with me, which had now transformed itself into a school satchel. I’d turned up at the school and I can’t remember now how I had arrived but as I arrived, I remembered that there was something that I wanted. I had to walk all the way back to the car in order to get what it was that I wanted. As I walked out of the class there were all of these kids hanging around the door like you find at a school. It was the afternoon so there was a triple-period, but it was only the final two lessons, a double-period, that were history lessons but I had plans to do something in the period immediately after lunch. As I walked out of the school towards my car, I was singing “Daydream Believer” or, at least, trying to because I couldn’t hit the notes. I was devastated because I was hoping to sing it really well and show these kids a thing or two, but I just couldn’t get the notes.
A little later, I was back playing cricket and our team had unfortunately been skittled out. I was the last batsman remaining and I had to survive the last over so that our team would win. But it was now pitch-black and you couldn’t see a thing, and the bowler was bowling from around the corner behind the wall. All that I could do was to put my bat in the way and hope that that would block the wicket. For the final over, we started to have some friendly banter and the bowler said that he was going to bowl underarm at me. He took up a position about a foot from my wicket ready to bowl. I had to explain to him that he couldn’t do that – it was a no-ball. He could bowl underarm at me as much as he likes and no-one will say a thing, least of all me, but you have to bowl from back at the other crease, 22 yards away, just as you would do for bowling any other kind of ball in a cricket match. But it took me ages to get this to sink into this flaming bowler’s head.
A little later, I was back at work driving my car about and I’d been summoned into the office – it was a Sunday morning – but there had been some war that had gone on and it had been won by we westerners. However, there had been a few bits and pieces of unpleasantness that had come out of it. I needed to go to use the bathroom but for some unknown reason I had forgotten all of the vocabulary so I said what I could remember. This didn’t, for some reason, go down very well so I thought “sod them! I’m doing the best that I can and no-one can do more than that and it’s their look-out if it doesn’t suit”. But it was a bright sunny day and so I went on my motor-bike from the north-west of the city and there had been a heavy rainstorm earlier that day and now everything was flooded out. Now I couldn’t come my usual way into work because of this and at one stage I was riding through a park and on a pavement and then down the wrong way in a one-way street with water up to the axles on the motorbike, following some kind of lorry that was tearing up the roadway in this park. I’d finally arrived at work, and found that my boss had been searching through my drawers for something. He found some of Roxanne’s clothing that I was keeping there and he was proudly displaying it all around. I asked him “is this all yours?” to which he replied with a ribald joke. I said to him that it was Roxanne’s and I would like to have it back so he eventually gave it back to me and I stuck it back in my drawer.
After the next bout of thunderstorms I was back at another place of former employment with someone who was formerly a very good friend of mine. We were visiting the richest farm in the UK, run by the richest UK farmer and his wife. There were some tunnels that had been discovered on this farm and having inspected them, we noticed that they had been lined and that there was electricity going right down there. I immediately thought of a tourist attraction and so I button-holed the woman when I saw her and asked her about them. She replied that the intention was indeed to make them into a tourist attraction and so I wanted to know more? Was it World War II? Was it the Vietnam War? She replied that from what she had been able to find out, they went back to the 5th Century, which immediately suggested the collapse of Roman Britain to me. I was immediately aroused by this and so I intended to be the first person to go down there. I asked her if she knew to where these tunnels led, but she didn’t. However, it was her intention to explore them one of these days, so I immediately pencilled myself in to go and explore these tunnels with her. We would travel miles and I would invite someone from the University – I’m not sure now if I mentioned the OU – to accompany us. To me, it was absolutely marvellous and exciting.
After a very brief return to the arms of Morpheus, I was awake again thanks to the storm. And I can recount that I had been to see the Queen. I’d taken this puppy, which was really the star of it all, although I’m not sure quite why and so we were going to do a stage show with it when the puppy would be presented to the Queen. We were hoping that this puppy would be house-trained and behave itself in view of all of the excitement and not let itself down. This led on to a debate about cleaning. Tourism was still in its infancy and no-one really seemed to know how to clean up a place properly (as if I’m any expert) except for a dustpan and brush. Everyone was hoping that everyone else would prove to be the expert on cleaning up the building.
But the final part of my night-time voyage was easily the most exciting and astonishing. You remember yesterday that I mentioned the navigator whose body is in the Commonwealth War Graves part of the local cemetery? Well, last night, whilst deep in the arms of Morpheus, I set out to find his pilot. The voyage, which started out to be simple enough, took me, and two Ministerial cars and assorted Government officials to a small urban cemetery in the East End of London (where, incidentally, the pilot was not buried and I knew this, yet my journey still took me there) despite the obstruction of a well-known London solicitor who had instructed the two members of his staff who were assisting me not to give me too much help in my enquiries because, as I was later to discover, he was interested in the case from a personal point of view. In fact, being early for a 13:00 appointment, I suddenly made a decision to divert to this small cemetery one more time as I had suddenly made a dramatic realisation. I ended up inspecting the paperwork of an old woman who had just been laid to rest there, and was just about to make an Executive decision (and executive decision is one where if it’s the wrong decision, the person making it is executed) when the alarm went off. And how frustrated was I?

But none of it was wasted because this morning while waiting for the weather to brighten up, I did manage to track down some further information. Flying Officer Angus Peter MacLeod (for it is he), service number 63376, was flying as navigator in Mosquito Night-Fighter II serial HJ935 for pilot, Flight Lieutenant Basil John Brachi when they were lost over the North Sea on 29th January 1944.

And now that I have found out the serial number of the aeroplane, I can tell you even more. The plane took off at 01:15, one of seven from West Raynham in Norfolk on a “Serrate” mission, which was to pick up the radar emissions of the German night-fighters’ “Lichtenstein” equipment, and then follow the emissions to the source (ie the night-fighter) and shoot it down. However, the starboard engine of the Mosquito failed and so Brachi turned for home. A short while later, the port engine failed and so Brachi and MacLeod bailed out. No trace was ever found of Brachi or of the aeroplane, but the body of MacLeod was washed ashore near here on 5th May 1944. And here he lies.

I’ve not done too much today – not even been for my mid-morning (or mid-afternoon) coffee. I didn’t have the courage to go outside very much. Mind you, this weather didn’t encourage me too much.

but I did go out this evening and one of the little restaurants here directed me to the fritkot which is now open. And I had fritjes for tea, just for a change. And tomorrow, the ice-cream parlour in the town opens up. Of course, I shall have to go to give it an official visit.

apart from that, I’ve had a shower today and washed my clothes. And depressingly, I find that I’ve only bought two polo shirts with me, not three. So I’m going to have to stay in this one while the other one dries. Let’s hope that that will be tomorrow.

And I know know why next-door neighbour’s 06:30 alarm didn’t wake me up this morning. The hour has changed, hasn’t it. I didn’t realise until this evening when I thought that it was quite light for 20:00 when i went out for my fritjes. My telephone is automatic, and so is my laptop, so they got on with the job of changing the hour without me knowing anything about it. No wonder I was rather tired this morning.

But now I’m off for an early night because I can’t keep up the pace. Only a few more days now before my second hospital appointment so I hope that they will have some news for me.

EPIC HALL

The Poisoned Pen (or Poisoned Chalice, more like) – or my relentless struggle against reality