Tag Archives: alison weihe

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.

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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.

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Thursday 31st March 2016 – TODAY’S THE DAY …

… when I might learn something about my state of health and whether the Hospital at Leuven will do something about it.

But before I can think about that, I have other fish to fry. Hans is coming back from Zeebrugge this morning and we’ve agreed to meet up at the Motorway serviced just down the road from here for breakfast.

I was up early and off out to fahr’n fahr’n fahr’n down the autobahn about 3 miles to the service station where I waited.

And waited.

And then I had a phone call – “just pulling into the Services now – it was Tienen, wasn’t it?” as a matter of fact, it wasn’t. I was at Heverlee and so a quick thrash down the motorway brought me to Tienen and breakfast.

We had a good chat for a few hours and then I had to return to Alison’s, for she was intending to run me into the hospital, which was very nice of her and something that I appreciated a great deal.

First port of call was for a blood test. And sure enough, my blood count has gone quite down. It was 9.1 the last time I was here, but now it’s down to 7.8. That’s set a few alarm bells ringing at the hospital, make no mistake.

The doctor who saw me asked me quite a few questions and gave me a good examination, and then summoned her Professor – the kind of thing that always makes me feel better. But the news that I received deflated me rather rapidly. It seems that the Hospital here at Leuven thinks that I have a different type of lymphoma than that diagnosed by Montlucon. They didn’t understand the need for the removal of the spleen and, in agreement with the opinion of the District Nurses who have been visiting me at Liz and Terry’s, they don’t understand why I need to have these anti-coagulant injections and think that they might be doing more harm than good. The first week or so, yes. But today it’s long-beyond the bounds of necessity and I can stop immediately.

As for treatment, they propose a course of Chemotherapy. There are two types of this – a standard type that is the most common and which is recommended in 99% of cases. There is another type – about 10 times more expensive (and so it’s not reimbursed by the Belgian authorities) and 10 times more effective. And this is what they propose for me – a course of treatment that might last for as long as 6 months and they intend to start it on Monday morning. Furthermore, it has been reimbursed by my Medical Insurance in the past in other cases, and someone from the Social Services department of the hospital will be coming to see me on Monday to “help me” make the application for this treatment. Yes, not backwards at coming forwards, here at Leuven.

They aren’t sure how this is going to pan out though. I’ll be treated as an out-patient but I need to spend a few days recovering from each session. I’ve told them that I’ve nowhere to go to stay (I can’t keep on relying on other people’s generosity) so they told me that there is some guest accommodation at the hospital. The Social Services department will help me here too, to see if I qualify for a place.

And so here we are. I had my operation on 27th January and since then, nothing much has happened at Montlucon with regard to my illness. Here at Leuven, they have a decision within 9 days and propose a course of treatment starting in 4 days time.

It’s very easy to say, with hindsight, that it was the wrong decision to allow Montlucon to go ahead with the removal of the spleen, but there was a good chance that it might have worked and I was worried about any further delay. Had I known that the treatment would begin less than two weeks after my first visit, maybe I might have thought differently. And then again, Leuven has had access to all of the tests and analyses carried out by Montlucon which aided quite considerably the speed of the diagnosis. How long would I have had to have waited for all of this?

We went shopping afterwards to a Charity Shop rather on the style of a Canadian Value Village. Loads of interesting furniture, including a lovely coffee table that, when cleaned and polished, would look lovely in my little house. But all of this is a long way away.

Anyway, I’m off for the weekend. I’ll find a river somewhere and lodge myself in there for a few days to relax. I need it.

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Wednesday 30th March 2016 – OFF TO BRUSSELS.

And I’d forgotten what a horrible place Brussels was. That I can tell you for nothing.

I fought my way through the traffic and left the Motorway at Woluwe, only to find myself in a huge set of roadworks that seemed to go on for ever – way beyond the Woluwe Shopping Centre. But eventually I found myself on the car park of the Carrefour at Boisfort, right by the Demey metro station.

It goes without saying that the metro station was closed – in fact about half of them were, so I had a weary trudge all the way back in the opposite direction and beyond, to the station at Hermann-Debroux.

I arrived at the bank, which was to be my first port of call, where I needed to transfer some money from my savings to my current account. But I ruled that out when I discovered that I’d left my passport behind in Caliburn. That was no use.

But I made about 30 phone calls to the EU’s Personnel Department (I refuse to use the derogatory term of “human resources”. I’m a human being, not a unit of production, and the whole world went wrong when employers stopped treating their staff as human beings and started to treat them as just another business resource) before someone answered the phone. I explained my problem – and I’m not sure why I had to because the person to whom I was speaking couldn’t see me. So wasn’t that a waste of time? But she did say to call back at 16:00 precisely as her colleague would just be back from a meeting and I might just catch him before he leaves the office.

I bought some bread and tomatoes and had lunch in the Parc Solvay, then went on the bust and tram to Ixelles and the Health-Food shop to buy some more vegan sliced cheese. Four packs, so that’s me OK for a while. And then I went off to see Marianne and have a chat. She was probably surprised to see me, and she’ll be even more surprised shortly if I end up in there with her. But I’ll be heading in the opposite direction, that’s for sure. They are stoking the fires already.

By now, I’d pulled a muscle in my right leg and was in agony. But I pressed on and found my way back to Schuman, having been obliged to take a really circuitous route there, due to “perturbations”. passing through Maelbeek Station, which is all fenced off and covered over, the thought did occur to me that this bomber can’t have been much good, and his infrastructure even worse. Just 400 metres further on is the Arts-Loi metro station, which is the key hub of the underground network, and it doesn’t take much in the way of brains to realise that had his bomb gone off there, he could have crippled the Brussels Metro for good.

I’m on record, and from as far back as 2002 too, as saying that the only reason that there aren’t more of these attacks is that the perpetrators can’t be bothered.

And it’s no use crying about it either. The time for crying was in 2002 when millions of people took to the streets to protest at the actions of Western Europe in becoming involved in a war that had nothing to do with us. But the politicians took no notice, and here we are. And only a politician or a westerner can be so naïve as to believe that if you declare war on someone and start to attack them, those people aren’t going to turn round and fight back.

Ever since 2002, the West should have been preparing for casualties. The first actions of the UK politicians in 1939 was to order 200,000 cardboard coffins “just in case”. The naîveté of the West, its politicians and its citizens, has been unbelievable.

As Douglas Haig once famously said, “fear of heavy casualties is a good enough reason for not going to war, but it’s a pretty poor reason once you are already fighting” or something like that.

I telephoned my Personnel guy bang-on 16:00 and he answered the phone. And I could feel the disappointment in his voice as I spoke to him. But 15 minutes later, there I was and he gave me a few bits and pieces of useful information that I have filed away for future reference, including the fact that I’m entitled to claim travelling expenses for all of my appointments at Montlucon and if I can persuade them at Montlucon to wash their hands of me, which they have done already, for travelling expenses to Leuven too.

But I had the shock of my life in the coffee shop round the corner where I stopped for a rest. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall the regular appearances of a young girl known by the name of Zero after an Al Stewart song, the lyrics of which were extremely relevant – a girl whom I haven’t seen for … ohhh … 8 years, I suppose. But breezing into the coffee shop was a girl who would have been the spitting image of this girl, allowing for the passage of time. Even the shade of red hair was correct to the minutest detail. The surprise was so complete that I dropped my coffee. Of course, it probably wasn’t her but nevertheless, it was an astonishing resemblance. I felt like bursting out into the Warren Zevon “there’s a red-haired girl in a red silk dress. I’m asking her to dance with me, she might say yes!”

But I dunno – it quite caught me à la depourvu, as the French say.

At the moment, the Metro is closing at 19:00 so I leapt on a bus and asked the driver to throw me out when we reach a tram route. This was at the Arsenaal and I could board a tram 25 and then the bus 71 which ended up by me being at the fritkot that does lovely falafel.

From there, another bus dropped me off at the Place Weiner from where I could take the tram 94 round to Hermann Debroux and Caliburn again.

And then back to Alison’s.

I’ve had my money’s worth today, although my leg is killing me and I’m thoroughly exhausted.

But seeing this girl has quite disturbed me. Whatever is going on these days?

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

… job opportunities these days.

basterd suiker emte supermarket zoutelande netherlandsYes, 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.

sherman tank westkapelle netherlands museumJust 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

remains of shipwreck westkapelle netherlands museum“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.

landing craft tank LCT737 westkapelle netherlands museumThat’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.

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Wednesday 23rd March 2016 – BACK ON THE ROAD

So here I am again – hitting the road to the Netherlands coast in West-Zeeland – the bit that’s to the western side of the Scheldt estuary. I’ve never set foot in this bit before so I’m determined to put that right – not the least of reasons being that we haven’t had a Ship of the Day since last October and up there in the Wester-Schelde you can see these huge 300,000 tonne supertankers and container ships making complicated manoeuvres just hundreds of yards offshore as they line themselves up for the entrance to the harbour at Antwerp.

Years ago, there used to be a vehicle ferry across the river to Vlissingen but that’s now closed and replaced by a tunnel. We are told by Wikipedia that it is a “bored tunnel” and so Strawberry Moose, Caliburn and I have decided to go there to cheer it up and bring it some excitement.

So having now decided on my seaside trip, I’m awoken today not by the birds chirping under the eaves but a torrential rainstorm cascading down onto the roof. And that awoke me from a very deep reverie.I had been off in the mountains of Tennessee or Kentucky last night, some time back in the 1920s or 30s and I met a girl called Lousey (that’s pronounced “Luzie” by the way). She was very young and blond but was in what we would 50 years ago have called an “irregular union” with a boy only a couple of years older than she was, and they were living in a cabin with Lousey’s mother. Someone had called a priest, or maybe a Justice of the Peace down to this village to discuss this “irregular union”. It turned out, following an inquiry, that this boy and girl were in fact living together but the boy was a scavenger of scrap metal and donated the income from this into the household. He was thus deemed to be supporting Lousey the best he could despite his limited abilities. Accordingly, this relationship was deemed by the judge or the priest to be exceptionally a “regular union”, despite the extreme youth of the two people involved. We drifted on from there down a street called Losey Road, which we were told was named after this girl, and at the top of the road there was some kind of queue involving all of the people from the village. I was with someone, who might have been Liz but I can’t remember now. I had a small bottle of sun-cream and so I put a small amount on my hands and started to rub it into the skin. Lousey was just in front of me and she had the same kind of cream and was doing the same thing. She noticed that I was only using a little bit so she pulled a face, laughed and said that she used tons more of the stuff when she did it. I showed her my jar and replied that I only had this small jar and there wasn’t much left. If I had more I would use ten times as much and I’d rub it all over me. Everyone in the queue except Lousey and my companion burst out laughing because they had seen a double-entendre in my remark but my companion turned round to Lousey and said “would you swallow that, Lousey?” meaning the remark that I had made. By now, everyone else, including me but excluding my companion and Lousey, was rolling aound on the floor in fits of laughter about this even more outrageous double-entendre that had gone clean over the heads of my companion and of Lousey.

Downstairs, Alison had already gone to work so I had my breakfast and said goodbye to Brian, thanking him for all of his hospitality, and then I hit the road.

I missed my turning into Leuven, ended up going by Nossegem instead, following the signs for Machelen instead of Mechelen and then being stuck on the Antwerp motorway due to a road accident, being unable to exit for the turning to St Niklaas. It really was not my lucky day.

But I am going to have to change my stereotyped ideas about the Netherlands and write a different script. I ended up in a “Jumbo” supermarket in Breskens which sold, inter alia a non-alcoholic drink called Raak Campagne Pils. One look at the label told me what this might be, and one sip out of the bottle later that night told me what it was. It was indeed the nearest thing that we can buy in Europe to Canadian Root Beer so now I am properly set up. But that wasn’t what I wanted to say. What I mean by my comments is that here in the “Jumbo” there was a bench for customers to sit, and we had free wi-fi, free coffee and free biscuits and I’ve never ever had anything like this anywhere else.

finnlines ro ro freight carrier wester scheldte vlissingen antwerpOn the beach at Breskens, we could peer through the rain and see right across the river to Vlissingen and the huge Finnlines ro-ro freight carrier that runs a regular service between Antwerp and Helsinki.

If that doesn’t qualify for a ship of the week, I dunno what will because this thing is huge, and I do mean huge.

Mind you, it had plenty of competition including an MSC container ship that was coming up behind it, which I didn’t photograph, for reasons which will soon become apparent.

sonche trader cadzand wester scheldt antwerpFirstly, I was distracted by this monster turning into the river at Cadzand.

This is the Sonche Trader, built in 2009 of 53,000 tonnes and flying the flag of Liberia. she’s coming in from Callao in Peru via several other ports. Her last port of call was Rotterdam, although it might not look like it.

And as I turned my attention to the MSC container ship, it was here that I was distracted once more because I had a phone call.

One thing that I do like about being a dazzling European cosmopolite … "did you forget “modest”?" – ed … is that here I am heading south to north via several different countries, and I have another dazzling European cosmopolite friend heading east to west through several other different countries, and our paths dramatically cross.

hans field selfie ted ferry terminal zeebrugge belgiumAnd so half an hour later, Strawberry Moose and I are in the ferry terminal in Zeebrugge, Belgium, having a coffee and a chat with my friend Hans and his travelling companion, Selfie Ted.

They are travelling from their home in Munich on his way to the UK to see family. You’ve no idea just how small the world is, and regular status updates of your social networking sites, so that your friends can see where you are, make it even smaller still

pauls hotel duinbergen knokke heist belgiumIronically, before I drove up to Belgium I was planning on coming up on the train, and if I had a few days spare, like now, I had planned to come to Knokke-Heist to stay.

And when you are feeling tired and ill and you need to stop, you find the first available hotel regardless of price. And so here I am, in Knokke-Heist of all places, at a shabby-gentille hotel at €70:00, breakfast included, and for Europe, I’m quite satisfied with what I received.

Surprisingly, there’s no fritkot in the vicinity because I went for a slow walk to look around, and I’m not taking the van out to go to look. A packet of biscuits (and my root beer) will do me for tonight.

Tomorrow, we’ll hit the bored tunnel, cheer it up and then go off to Zouteland on the island of Walcheren to see what we can find.

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Tuesday 22nd March 2016 – TODAY’S THE DAY …

… that I have my defining interview at the Universiteit Ziekenhuis Leuven – the University Hospital of Leuven.

And so this morning I was up fairly early, bumping into Alison on the way downstairs.

I’d been back on my travels during the night too. Back to the UK in fact. There I was, rushing to catch a train at what was supposed to be Stafford railway station and my brother was there with me and he was holding me back by trying to have a discussion with me, talking to me about all kinds of stuff and I was rushing to catch this train and I wished that he would shut up and let me get on with it. Next to get in my way was a plant seller going on about how we all ought to buy plants and how everyone in the USA ought to learn gardening and all of this kind of thing and I wished that he would shut up too. There was then some American with a small wicker basket full of growing plants and a British guy was there with an almost-identical basket of plants that he had bought somewhere for just 3p more. And as I rushed for the train, a train was pulling in so I burst into the station and towards the stairs but then I realised that I didn’t have a ticket so I had to run off to buy one for Crewe. And then I ran down the stairs to the platform where the train was standing – a train of old-stock maroon coaches. The guard was leaning out of the window of a first-class carriage saying that it was full in there and then he stepped down from the train to a group of his colleagues led by a young female platform manager. I asked if this train was going to Crewe to which they replied that it was going to Birmingham which is of course in the opposite direction. But there was another train pulling in behind and the guard suggested that this might be the one. I asked the female manager if this was the London train (even more in the opposite direction to Crewe) and she came out with a sarcastic comment. I told her to stop making these witty remarks designed to do nothing but bring a smile tothe face of her sycophants and answer my question. And there I was, wanting to go on to Crewe and no-one would tell me which train I wanted to go to Crewe.

Alison had taken a day off work to look after me, which was very nice of her, so after breakfast we went into the centre of Leuven for a look around and a coffee. It’s been years since I’d been there and I couldn’t remember the place all that much, but Alison knew of a café where they served decent coffee so that did us fine for the morning, just chatting and watching the world go by.

At lunchtime, seeing as we were in Belgium, there’s only one place to be and sure enough, we soon found a fritkot. That would do us fine and it goes without saying that the chips were beautiful.

As for the hospital, it’s absolutely HUGE, and I do mean that. So much so that you could fit the hospital in Montlucon into the foyer and instead of having a trolley park like they do in a supermarket, they have wheelchair parks where you can borrow a wheelchair.

I had to be registered, which took ages, but at least everything was properly explained to me, not like Montlucon. They even gave me a brochure and I had a choice of language – Flemish, French and English.

“Follow the blue line” said the receptionist once she had finished with me, and about two hours and three miles later we arrived at another reception desk. My documents had arrived by internal intranet quicker than I had arrived on foot so I was told to take a seat in the waiting area. This was the corridor facing a row of doors which were the consulting rooms – 15 in all, which is a massive improvement on Montlucon.

I was summoned into n°13, which I found rather ominous, and I presented my papers. Not all of them, I have to say, because I was selective in what I let them see. Anything that might have prejudged the issue, I selectively held back as I don’t want the results from Montlucon to influence their minds. They can see all of the scans and all of the reports and all of the examinations, but nothing that suggests a diagnosis. I want them at Leuven to make their own diagnosis.

But I did let them see a letter which I personally think is quite infamous and which has annoyed me greatly. It’s a letter from the surgeon to my own doctor saying “the operation is a success and there are no after-effects to consider. Mr Hall can slowly pick up his former life bit by bit, the only constraints being the effects of his severe anaemia”.

That’s right – the only thing that is holding me back is my severe anaemia, and that’s what I went into the hospital for in the first place, and there’s no mention of them now looking for a cure for it. It’s as if they have abandoned hope of dealing with it, and that has upset me enormously. Hence my visit to Leuven.

As expected, the doctor picked up immediately on this, and was also totally confused about my 3.8 blood count. “Do they measure the blood on a different scale in France?”. But when I reassured her, she too was horrified by my problem.

After a good hour there of tests and examinations and questions (and a blood test) she excused herself, saying “I’ll have to go and have a word with my professor”. And that filled me full of optimism. You wouldn’t get this in Montlucon. And when she came back, we had a discussion and a debate, and the result is exactly the result that I wanted. I could have been detained for two or three days there, which I didn’t really want. I could have been told to go home, and come back in three weeks (or maybe not at all) qhich I am, quite frankly, not up to. But instead, they took all my papers away to read and told me to come back on 31st March at 15:30. That’s exactly what I wanted and it means that I can have a nice relaxing week by the seaside.

Alison and I then came home via the scenic route and after another lengthy chat – that took us up to about 22:30, I went off to my attic and to bed.

So why, I hear you ask, have I chosen Leuven for a second opinion?

There are a variety of reasons and I’ll do my best to explain them.

The first of which is that France, like many countries in the world (including the UK and the USA, before anyone says anything) is very chauvinistic. If I were to ask my doctor to recommend someone for a second opinion, he would probably send me to someone whom he knew in a neighbouring hospital. That’s no good, because he would only have had the same training and experience as my doctor.

The hospital at Leuven is huge, as I have said. It’s a teaching hospital – a University Hospital – so it’s constantly at the forefront of the latest news and development in medical treatment. It will(I hope) know everything about new discoveries and techniques long before the news filters down to a small rural hospital in France.

Alison was treated successfully for a very serious illness, as were a couple of other people whom she knows, and I’ve heard good things about it from my time in Brussels.

Furthermore, my experience is that the Belgians are much more cosmopolitan than most people in the world. They have no false chauvinistic national pride as such and so it’s much more likely to be the place that, if they can’t help me with my problem, a doctor would say “well, I heard about this illness being treated successfully in Los Angeles or Vladivostok”, without a hint of misplaced national pride. And with my medical insurance, I can travel the world looking for treatment.

Of course, having said that, I bet that it won’t work out at all like that. But it’s clear that Montlucon isn’t working and I’m going nowhere there. I have this medical insurance that entitles me to treatment anywhere and so I may as well make use of it. I’d be silly not to. And here in Leuven, I can speak the language after a fashion (and after a week here, I’ll speak it better too and I love the Flemish language) so all in all, it’s the ideal place for me to take my first step on the road to what is likely to be a very long and interesting journey.

And, of course, I’m amongst friends too and that’s very important. I may not have many friends but quantity is not important, it’s quality and I have some of the best friends that anyone could wish for, as events since November have proved.

Where would I be without you?

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Monday 21st March 2016 – SO OFF I SET …

new access hotel crouy soissons france… from Ice-Station Zebra at 09:15, straight into the Intermarché over the road for a tomato and baguette to go with my vegan cheese for lunch. And of course, with it being Monday, there was no fresh bread. Still, start as you mean to go on, hey?

But I got my own back on the hotel for the miserable night that I’d had here. I helped myself to an extra mug of coffee, an extra orange juice and a third lump of bread to go with the jam – so saving on the heating didn’t save them anything in the long run. But as I have said before, at €35 per night plus €5:00 for the breakfast, I have no reason whatever to complain.

The drive up to Leuven was totally uneventful except that it took ages to find a boulangerie, but it was well worth the wait as the bread was beautiful. And I almost lost my way in Maubeuge, so much has it changed since I was last here years and years ago. But one thing that I discovered was that just half-an-hour from where I spent the night, on the outskirts of Laon, is an “Ibis Budget” hotel. More expensive than where I spent last night, to be sure, but the heating will probably work and they do have private facilities. As well as that, Laon has a very interesting history and is one of the places on the list of “towns to see before I die”. Consequently, I have made a note of the hotel.

But I’ve forgotten what a dirty, depressing place Belgium is. You can see it as soon as you cross the border. And the roads can match the worst that Labrador and Northern Quebec can offer. They are a disgrace to the western world. I can see now why I left the place as soon as I could.

So while I’m stopped at Heverlee Services eating my butty, let me tell you about last night’s travels.

We started off with something to do with a sandbank in the English Channel. It was only visible at low tides and then only on occasion, and there was one permanent settlement on there, with ust one permanent inhabitant. Although it was a British possession, it was accessible by some kind of causeway from the French mainland. You could see by some kind of heat-map or similar that the English Channel was very low in places and that there were these semi-submerged sandbanks all over the place.
But from there I was on my holidays, in a chalet on a sand dune somewhere. There was some bad feeling here at this place and I was the centre of it for some reason. I’d heard that some people were planning to attack me when I returned home, but I was out for a walk and going to buy some milk (I’m not sure why) and some bread from the shop. I scrambled up over a dune and came past the chalet of the owners who pointed out a sandbank to me (could this have been the earlier one that I was talking about?) but anyway I scrambled on to the camp shop. Here, I was chatting with the proprietor and he told me about one or two incidents on the camp so I told him that I’d already been attacked but I had fought off my attackers with a milk bottle and described in gory detail just how I had done it.

Alison rang me up while I was eating my butties. She was finishing work early and so she would be home by 15:00. so at 15:05 I was outside her house, with her waiting for me at the gate. She introduced me to Brian and we all had a cup of coffee.

Alison and I worked together at that weird American company – The Conference Board. That was a strange place to be – a ruthless American company operating a ruthless American employment regime and being upset by the constraints imposed upon it by European employment law. Not only that, it was living about 30 years behind the times in its commercial approach and was resisting all efforts to drag it kicking and screaming into the 21st Century. There were only 4 of us who were anything like normal, and we had all gone within 12 months. And if I’m classing myself as “normal”, you must really all be wondering about the others.

We had such a chat and so much to talk about that I didn’t realise that it was well after 23:00 when I staggered up into the attic. She has a lovely house – an old 2 bedroom end-of-terrace house with about 5 different extensions so it’s like a labyrinth inside and it’s wonderful.

So now I’m tryng to get myself ready for my hospital appointment tomorrow. This is the crucial moment in my life so I need to be on my best form.

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Monday 29th February 2016 – LOCK UP YOUR DAUGHTERS AND HIDE THE SILVER!

Especially if you live in Leuven, in Belgium. Because I’ll be off on my travels in early course and Leuven is the destination.

I was on the phone for quite some time this morning, firstly to the hospital at Montlucon clarifying all of the appointments that are organised for the next couple of weeks. And once we had done that, I spent the rest of the morning on the phone to the UZ Leuven in Belgium. I told them a brief story of my medical history, how I was satisfied with neither my treatment nor my progress and, quite surprisingly, the doctor with whom I spoke totally agreed with me. I ought to be doing better than this.

The upshot of this is that he’s agreed to see me in Leuven on 22 March at 14:00. And so I’m going.

What’s even nicer is that my friend Alison who lives a short drive away from Leuven has very kindly offered to put me up for a couple of days while I’m there and let me borrow one of her three cats. I think that that’s a really nice and generous gesture on her part and makes me feel so much better. Terry however clearly reckons that she doesn’t know me all that well.

And not before time too because I had the blood test this morning and the results were ready by teatime.

And it’s grim reading. What started out at 10.4 when I was in hospital and went down to 9.8 and then to 9.0 has now dropped dramatically through the floor to a dismal figure of just 8.0 – that’s a loss of over 12% in a week. And that’s after everything that I’ve been through and all that I’ve suffered over these last couple of months. Nothing has improved, I’ve picked up a pulmonary embolism and I’ve suffered pain like I never knew existed.

And all, apparently, for nothing.

And the thing that galls me the most is that my loss of blood is dramatic to say the least, and there’s not been a peep out of the hospital. I would have thought that this is all becoming urgent, not to mention crucial, and the people at the hospital haven’t shown even the slightest hint of interest at all.

In other news, I’ve had a reply back to my e-mail the other day. They’ve asked for my phone number so they can call me for a chat. Right after I made “other arrangements” for a second opinion. But of course this phone call is probably to tell me that I’ve been sacked or some such. I wouldn’t be surprised.

So having got all of that off my chest, what else has been happening?

We had another night of being careful how we left the bed due to bits of me being all over the floor. Twice in two nights, this.
But back in the arms of Morpheus and I was back off to a lock-up garage somewhere that I didn’t know and in there was some kind of small two-door estate car, dark blue, resembling a late 1960s Toyota or a FIAT 128. I was looking at this along with another person who had some kind of mechanical aspirations. The vehicle had been bought by my brother at an auction for £400, which was a lot of money to pay for such a vehicle, never mind its poor condition, and the person I was with expressed his surprise that my brother hadn’t tried to beat down the vendor to a more realistic price. Anyway, I couldn’t hang about. I was off up to Stoke on Trent, somewhere round about the Waterloo Road (which it wasn’t, but never mind) in a big van that I had at the time. I ended up down a side street in a maze of terraced houses being shown a room that was to let in a terraced house that was being used as a lodging-house. A girl that I knew – someone from my old days in Stoke on Trent – was running the place and so I asked her about it. She said that it was formerly a vet’s office but when it came onto the market it was too good to miss and so she converted it into rooms, with she and her family living in a tiny room right at the top. We went outside, there was a lovely (if that’s the word) view of the street lights and the urban area in the dark of the North-Western Potteries, all of the lights twinkling in what was a very late and clear evening. They say that the best time to see the Potteries is during the hours of darkness during a power cut and the local newspaper once famously described the old railway line that passed through here as “10 miles of the world’s worst scenery”.
But scenery notwithstanding, I’ve now moved on to Brussels (so there really isn’t all that much difference) living in an apartment that was part of a house conversion – what they call a trois pièces en enfilade. It’s not a very pretty apartment but anyway we start off with me not being there. I’m with Nerina up on the huge concrete windswept plateau on the high-rise council estate not too far from the Heysel Stadium and we’re looking over the parapet to some mid-rise (about 10-storey, I dunno) concrete-and-glass tower blocks. There are about dour of them, with a square footprint and they have some kind of reputation of being quite comfortable and pleasant places to live. Nerina was saying that we should have gone to live in a place like that and while I didn’t disagree for a minute, I did say (and quite rightly so) that a place such as that is way outside our budget. But we ended up back at our apartment (or maybe it was mine and she was only visiting) and we started to tidy up the place. There had been a new television delivered and I was idly flicking through the channels when I suddenly found a Morecambe and Wise film – and one which wasn’t part of the Morecambe and Wise trilogy either. And so I sat down to watch it while Nerina sat down at the other end of the apartment to do some painting. At a certain moment she asked me to pass her a bottle of paint of a red colour and so I walked over there to hand it to her, but it was the wrong bottle that I gave her.
Before she had time to say anything about this, the alarm went off and that was that. And despite a reasonable night’s sleep I was thoroughly exhausted. It was all that I could do to stagger downstairs.

At least I didn’t have to wait too long for the nurse to come to take my blood test.

Once everything had been sorted out and we’d had lunch (I had the very last of the curry with some bread) I cracked on with the dictaphone notes and now, there remain just 26 soundfiles to transcribe and we’ll be done. And I can’t wait to finish them off because there’s a lot of other work that has now built up and I need to deal with that too.

For tea we had pasta and sauce and garlic bread, and I’m really going to miss all of this when I go to Leuven – if I ever get there because I went out for a walk just now with Liz and I couldn’t even make 50 metres up the hill outside.

I have therefore cancelled my little trip out on Wednesday to collect Caliburn as I’ll be in no state at all to drive him.

All of this is starting to look very ominous indeed and I am dismayed.

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Tuesday 22nd December 2015 – WELL, I HAD THE CALL!

Yes, at about 09:30.

“Mr Hall, we’ve had your blood test results. You need to come in this morning for a transfusion”
“I’m still waiting for the District Nurse to come, and it’s over an hour’s drive to Montlucon, you know.”
“Well you really need to be here before midday”.

And so that was that. With no District Nurse by 10:30, I was off and gone – on my way to Montlucon.

Mind you, I was off and gone long before that. Despite having once to leave my bed (for the usual reasons), I had a really good night to make up for the dreadful one that I had had the night before. And I was running the Formula One racing network too. My youngest sister was driving one of the cars and my niece in Canada was doing the voice-over television commentaries. However, we were under attack in our house (which bore a strange resemblance to Hankelow Hall, the abandoned stately home where we squatted back in the 1970s, except that there was a more modern extension built onto the back) by people who wanted to take over the running of the organisation. We were trying to defend it resolutely but looking out of the back, I noticed that a load of gear, including skis (for some reason), was being passed from the new extension into our house on the floor below through a window that should have been guarded by my elder sister. The door into our room was then battered down and into the room surged a crowd of people, TV cameras, everything, and my sister saying that we had all agreed to pass on our rights to this new company. I however made it quite clear that she was not speaking for me.
From there via several removes, I ended up back at my house in Gainsborough Road Crewe where I was living with a woman who was about 20 years older than me, and we had a daughter of about 11. The behaviour of this woman was extremely bizarre, which puzzled the girl and me a great deal.

strawberry moose violet sock sloth camping story time sauret besserve puy de dome franceSo after breakfast, we had to play Hunt The Moose again. Today, Strawberry Moose was in the sun-lounge camping. And also reading a story to his new best friend Violet the sock-sloth.

Robyn was keen to join in of course. She loves having stories read to her and no-one reads stories like Strawberry Moose. And in exchange, she drew a beautiful picture of him.

At the hospital car park, there was hardly anyone about so I had a good spec right by the entrance just 200 metres from the front door of the hospital. And they were waiting for me when I arrived, which made a nice change.

“Only one go” I said to the nurse trying to inject the drain into me. “They had four goes last time that I was here”
And so she did it in one, and a more painful injection I have never had. Total agony.

Lunch wasn’t up to much unfortunately, but you can’t expect much in the way of special diet when you turn up a l’improviste. However, I had foreseen this, having been caught out last time, and I had packed a packet of crisps, a handful of Liz’s home-made vegan biscuits and a banana. They didn’t ‘arf go down well. What was not so acceptable was the inexcusable, unpardonable sin of forgetting me when it came to bringing round the afternoon coffee. The fact that I MAY just have closed my eyelids to give my tired eyes a rest is neither here nor there. What you can be sure of is that harsh words were exchanged – and I did get my coffee.

I also got something else quite important too. The internet speed at the hospital is quite respectable for a public place, and so I profited by downloading a huge pile of radio programmes and a Mr Wong film from archive.org. That should boost up my supply of listening and watching matter if I’m going to be incarcerated elsewhere.

And talking of that, I was also speaking to my friend Alison, with whom I used to work at The Conference Board – that weird American company in Brussels. She had a very serious operation in Belgium and was full of praise over the treatment and care that she received. I’ve always said that Belgian health-care is the best in the world and that is where I would go if I were ever seriously ill, and so I asked her which hospital it was that she used.

It’s the one at Leuven, and having made enquiries, Alison told me that there is in fact a dedicated lymphoma department there. Furthermore, she rang them and it transpires that they would be glad to talk to me, and they passed their number onto her to give to me.

Why I’m doing this is that they have already told me that they don’t have the facilities to treat me in Montlucon. If I need treatment I have to go elsewhere. Clermont-Ferrand is, at the limit, acceptable because I’m still within some kind of travelling distance of possible visitors and facilities, but anywhere else is uncharted territory with no possibility of visits. Smuggling supplies into the hospital will therefore be extremely difficult and I’m not going to survive on what food a hospital can offer me.

Not only that, I’m dismayed at how much Flemish I have forgotten since I’ve left Brussels. I reckon therefore that a spell of immersion in a Flemish-speaking environment will do me the world of good.

An added advantage of Leuven is that there’s a Belgian 2nd-Division football club – OH Leuven, in the immediate vicinity and public transport in Belgium is very good. I’m sure that I can smuggle myself out of hospital occasionally on a Saturday night. If so, I can track down a fritkot too, and Alison has already promised to be my conduit for illicit food parcels.

I was thrown out of the hospital by 16:00 and I was wondering whether to go home for an hour or so but I wasn’t feeling up to much so I came back here. As a surprise, Liz and Kate have made me some vegan ice cream – strawberry and also choco-mint. It wasn’t ready for tea though but it will be fine for tomorrow. I hope that I’m still here to eat it, and not detained elsewhere.

I met up with the District Nurse too. He’s concerned about the continued use of this anti-coagulant and reckons that I ought to speak to the doctor about it tomorrow. he can understand why I needed it but it seems to him that the crisis has passed. He reckons that it’s now at the stage where it can be doing more harm than good, especially if I keep going for the total of three months for which it has been prescribed.

I’m all in favour of that. It’s costing me an arm and a leg for a start, and it will also mean that I can go back to having my Sunday morning lie-in. These continued 07:45 starts are killing me off.

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Friday 8th May 2015 – HERE …

caliburn overnight sleep stop heverlee leuven louvain belgium.. is where I spent last night – at a motorway service area at Heverlee, near Leuven. And I slept the sleep of the dead too – totally painless it was. Didn’t feel a thing.

And even better, there was a nice hot shower available too. And didn’t I enjoy that? I haven’t felt so good in ages.

Mind you, I forgot to buy a bottle of water and so my morning coffee, in a roadside rest area while they cleared away an accident down the road, and coffee made with sparkling water is certainly different, that’s for sure.

I wasted the morning not doing very much at all, and then met up with Alison for lunch. Alison and I worked together for an American company for almost a year, and we both walked out at more-or-less the same time. And for the same reasons – basically that American companies have no idea of the notion of cultivating staff loyalty, and rule their employees by fear. There’s no place in my environment, nor in Alison’s environment either, for an attitude such as that, and we can’t understand why it is that other people allow themselves to be pushed around.

marianne orban grave ixelles brussels belgiumAfterwards, I went to check up on Marianne and to have a chat. It’s hard to believe that it’s two years since she passed away, but then at this sort of age time passes quickly.

It seems that I wasn’t the only person to go to visit her either, for there were a couple of other pots of flowers that had been left on her grave. I’m glad that she hasn’t been forgotten and that she is being looked after by people locally. It’s not feasible for me to come to Brussels to tend to her as often as I like.

civilian victims of the gestapo ixelles brussels belgiumIt’s also VE day today – the end of the War in Europe, so it’s only right to go to pay a visit to the interred in another part of the cemetery here at Ixelles. There are some military graves here, but there are also some graves of civilian victims of the Gestapo.

There are many people, one or two of my acquaintances amongst them unfortunately, who criticise the French and the Belgians, and a few other people too, for what they see as a lack of resolution by the population of those countries when it came to resisting the German invaders.

But if you have a look at these gravestones, you’ll see fusillé – “shot”, or executé – executed, or decapité – decapitated. These were the risks that people were running every day for four and a half years of the Occupation, so it’s hard to be as resolute as some might like when you are risking all of this.

And, of course, it’s very easy to beat the drum when there’s an ocean between you and the invader. I’d be interested to see just how brave these critics would have been had they been over here amongst the Gestapo during the Occupation.

I braved the rush-hour traffic and set out for Germany. I’d forgotten just how busy the roads could be on a Friday afternoon and I’m glad that I’m no longer involved in any of this.
crossing the border Belgium Liege Aachen GermanyAnd here I am crossing the border into Germany not too far from Aachen at the back of Liege.

The camera on my new phone has quite a high resolution and isn’t far off what the Nikon D5000 can come up with on a good day. It’s also easy to use on the move so moving pictures are back with us again.

However, I needed to be careful. Can you make out the blue flashing lights just down the road? I wouldn’t have been surprised if they had been waiting for me.

It seems that I have entered my destinations into the Satnav in the wrong order and it’s doing the route backwards. That’s clearly no good so I need to change it all. At a rest area at the side of the Autobahn I pulled up to reprogramme it, but then I thought “what they heck” and it’s here where I’m going to be bedding down, German police permitting.

And talking of the Police, I’ve managed this year to avoid having a run-in with the Belgian police this year. Either my luck was in or else they must have been all asleep.

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