Tag Archives: strawberry moose

Wednesday 12th October 2016 – AT 03:45 …

… I was still awake, tossing and turning around, but I don’t remember too much about anything after that.

However, I do remember the alarm clock going off at 07:00 and again at 07:15. and when they started using a percussion drill at 08:30, I remembered waking up then – just for a brief moment. It was 10:15 when I finally rose from my stinking pit.

I’d been on my travels too – rambled for miles and miles, but I don’t remember too much about it. All that I can remember was that I was in the trenches in the front line in World War I. I went to put my suitcase in the store, which caused my colonel to burst out laughing and he told me to take my rifle out of it – I’ll need it. He was right too because later on, there was a huge attack by the enemy – dressed in early 19th-Century uniforms. They came in several parallel point formations, really powerful, deep and strong. We were told initially to retreat but then to regroup and fight off the enemy. The point that was attacking where I was stationed was led by a soldier in his 20s with big round spectacles. We fired into the group but it had little effect and the leader, who had bayoneted several of my colleagues, ended up bayoneting me too.I wasn’t seriously wounded at all, and the attack line swept over me. Then it went calm and I was wondering whether to surrender or to try to creep back to wherever my lines might be, once it had gone dark.

First thing I did was to go to the supermarket downstairs and buy some stuff for breakfast. But surprisingly, I didn’t feel all that hungry so I didn’t eat it. And back here I carried on with some work that I needed to do. I even managed to miss out on lunch.

Round about 14:00 I started to sort out my belongings and packed everything into my suitcase that I won’t be needing tomorrow in the hospital. Once this was organised I set off for a long walk. All the way out to Caliburn in fact.

As I was passing by the Hema, I popped in. I’d seen a really decent wok in there, much better and heavier than the old one that I had been using back at home. I’d decided while I was in Canada that I would treat myself to that, but I also picked up a new small frying pan of the same model, and as well as that a new saucepan – a nice small heavy-duty one.

The Bank was the next port of call and I checked my bank accounts. Everything seemed to be in order there, especially as two payments had been made in without anything being withdrawn. That’s always nice to see.

And I also encountered something about which I had completely forgotten, and it didn’t half bring back many memories of when I was Roxanne’s stepfather for those three years.

That’s right, Rhys. Forget all about your school buses. In Belgium they have the school crocodile. Three or four parents and groups of the kids of the school, each group with its own route and dropping off the kids at their house or apartment. How environmentally-friendly is this?

Caliburn was a little sluggish to start – no surprise after being laid upf or almost seven weeks. And it was good to be behind the wheel with a proper steering wheel, a clutch and a real manual gearbox. We all enjoyed ourselves – just like old times. There was a parking place just opposite the hotel, which is a real surprise as you know. And so I picked up my suitcase, heaved it into the back of Caliburn and then drove him back to his parking. Strawberry Moose quickly installed himself in his habitual place and then I set off back to my room.

On the way back, I noticed a shoe sale in a really good-quality sports shop. My shoes are falling to bits and the boots that I have back home aren’t much better. And so I nipped in. And nipped out again with a really good pair of all-weather mud and snow leather walking boots at just €60:00 and a pair of high-quality trainers reduced to a final reduction price of €20:00. And these are the most comfortable shoes that I have worn for years.

There’s a glorious art-deco building in the pedestrian street. It’s a library and community centre with a café-restaurant in the basement. I felt that after my exertions today I deserved a coffee.

But you just have to love Flanders and the Flemish language. I don’t know about you, but I’m always up for a bit of a taart, especially if there’s a slagroom available. And at €4:00 a go – well, it makes me wish that I was a few years younger.

After the coffee, I headed back to the hotel and went for a shower. Now, where are my clean clothes? Where’s my razor?

Ohh I know – I don’t need them in hospital. They are … errr … in my suitcase that I had just taken right across town to Caliburn.

I just about made it to Zeeman in time before closing. Now I have some razors and undies and the like and I could have my shower and shave. And having showered and shaved I headed off into town to meet Alison, because we had agreed to meet up for a chat and a meal.

There’s a new vegan restaurant opened in the city and so we headed off there. The food was rather expensive (or, rather, there wasn’t a lot of it for your money) but it was delicious.

And that wasn’t all either because there’s a shop there. And that sold vegan cheese at the cheapest price that I have seen in Belgium, and some spray-on vegan cream. That is now in a paper bag by my bed ready to be taken up to the hospital (the cheese that is, not the cream) in case I am detained.

That’s right – I’m back at the hospital tomorrow.

We went to a couple of cafés for some stuff to drink and to continue our chat, and then Alison dropped me off back here. Now, I’m organising myself ready for tomorrow and my appointment with destiny. How did I do after six weeks without medical treatment?

Did I survive?

I suppose that I don’t really want to know.

Thursday 22nd September 2016 – WHAT A HORRIBLE NIGHT!

There I was, lying in bed trying to go to sleep, and time was drawing on. I remember 02:30 and I remember 02:45 and I hadn’t been to sleep at all. I’m not sure when I finally dropped off.

When the alarm went off at 06:00 as usual, I was wasted. It was a good job that there was a repeater at 06:15 and that was almost as bad. But nevertheless I crawled out of bed and ended up chatting away to a friend of mine on the internet.

I managed a shower and that was excellent, especially the shampoo which was the best that I have ever used, and then I hit the streets.
Before I left the hotel, I went down to the end of the drive and took a photo. The town of Miramichi is on the Miramichi River, one of the longest in New Brunswick, and it flows by on the other side of the road from where the Fundy Line Motel is.

It was such a nice day too as you can tell from the photos.

Having handed in the key I headed off to Tim Horton’s down the road – the first time that I’ve been to a Tim Horton’s this year. I treated myself to a coffee and a couple of cinnamon and raisin bagels, and then went out to face the world, still not feeling too much like it.

First stop was only a mile or so up the road towards town. This chimney here had attracted my attention and so I pulled up for a butcher’s.

There was a park here, called the French Fort Cove and I didn’t remember this at all when I was here before. But that was easily explained – it wasn’t here.

Where we are is in a former quarry that was mined, and there were also iron workings here (hence the chimney) with all of the output being loaded onto ships just down there at the cove. These workings eventually closed down and the land was given to the town in 2002, being subsequently developed as the park.

While I was here, I heard in the distance the familiar wail of a diesel locomotive. No idea where it was, which was a shame, otherwise I might have gone a-chasing after it.

Instead, I continued on into the town to find a parking place by the river where I might be able to have a good shot of the bridge across the Miramichi river.

And if you are thinking that the bridge looks familiar, we have seen something like this before. The Seal Island bridge on Cape Breton Island over which we have driven on several occasions was built to the same design.

This is the Centennial Bridge, so called because it was opened in 1967, the centennial of the formation of the Confederation of Canada in 1867. Previously, there was a ferry, latterly the Romeo and Juliet, that plied its trade across the river here.

I suppose that I must have travelled over the bridge when I came here in 2003 but I really don’t remember it. And do I decided that I would put that right today, and to take a photograph to prove it.

And so off I went, onto the highway and across the bridge. And when I reached the other side, I turned round and came back, with Strawberry Moosetaking a fine photograph of the view from the top.

But coming back wasn’t as easy as it might have been. Half of the population of Miramichi was in Tim Horton’s, and the other half was driving across the end of the road where I was trying to turn round.

Having done that, I headed off down the coast for a nice leisurely drive to the sea, seeing as it was such a beautiful day

Round about 13:00 I stopped for my butties at Tracadie. I found a really nice spec at the side of the river where I could sit in comfort and read my book.

And it was such a nice day that I closed my eyes for a couple of minutes to relax in the sun. And there I was, gone, for a good half-hour. In fact, it took me quite a while to sort myself out. And that’s not a surprise seeing as how I’d had such a bad night previously.

But I was eventually back on the road continuing my drive along the Acadian Trail, and took the deviation out towards Shippegan. After all, if there’s anything to do with deviation, then in the words of the late, great Bob Doney “I’m your man!”.

The road down to Shippegan leaves the main highway near a beautiful church situated on the banks of a large river and the scene was certainly quite photogenic.

We’ve noted before that Canada seems to be littered with old Jaguars and we keep on stumbling across them. It did occur to me that we haven’t noticed one yet this year and so here’s the first, at Saint Simon, with a boat painted in the “Star of Acadia” in the background.

We can’t miss out an opportunity to photograph it – just to prove the point that, as I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … at one time the UK was selling its cars all over the world. 20 years later, it couldn’t sell a single car in its own country.

The collapse of the British motor industry is a spectacular example of the decline and fall of the United Kingdom, and those Brexiters hoping to bask in the glory of the United Kingdom’s future in a free market economy are are heading for an extremely nasty shock.

From here, I headed off to the coast and Caraquet. I’ve found another cheap motel, the Motel Bel Air, and I’ll be staying here for the night. No microwave unfortunately, so I’ll have to eat out tonight, but apart from that the room looks as if it’s another one of these “good value for money” places.

I hope that I can have a good sleep tonight.

Wednesday 7th September 2016 – WHAT A GOOD DECISION …

… that was, to book into that hotel at the back of the coach station.

I was stark out as soon as I laid down my weary head. We did have an interruption at about 23:45 when a baby started to cry, but that can happen in the best of places and it was a thing of five minutes. And then I needed to make a trip down to the corridor at about 03:00. I finally came to my senses, such as they are, at 04:45, having had a good night’s sleep in this extremely comfortable bed. The night porter’s call at 05:00 was therefore rather superfluous but it was nice to know that it was available and that it works.

But I’ll tell you this – $30-odd less per night than sleeping out at an airport hotel and while the comfort is rather less, I don’t need most of the difference. For the time and money that I save and for the convenience of being in the city centre, if I do ever make it back to Montreal I’ll be coming here, even if it does involve a 500-metre drag of the suitcase. And remember – when I stayed in Lille the other year I dragged it farther than that – and uphill too!

Let’s face it. It’s seen better days, this hotel, but I had a good shower, a really comfortable sleep, and no-one stole my boots. What more do you need?

I was too early for breakfast of course, but that can’t be helped. My bus was more important. I was at the coach station in no time flat and a friendly security guard unlocked the door to the left-luggage room and took my voucher so that I could recover my suitcase and Strawberry Moose, and we took our place in the queue, chatting to a guy who said he was a scouser, although he sounded more Northern Irish to me.

The trip to Sainte-Foy, on the edge of the city of Quebec, took just under three hours and I spent the time in half-asleep mode. After all, it was quite early in the morning. And it’s a good job that I didn’t go to sleep (or is it?) because this bus apparently goes right out to Sept Iles, somewhere else where we’ve been before and where I can catch a train to Labrador.

But when we reached our destination – Sainte Foy, not Sept Iles – a couple of mugs of coffee and a few rounds of toast and jam revived my spirits somewhat, although I’m not sure that you really need to say more than once that you don’t want butter on your toast.

But what’s this all about? That chewing gum was disgusting – $2:00 for three slices and it tasted of nothing but rubber. As for the viagra however, I tried that once many years ago whilst in the company of the much – maligned Percy Penguin, who didn’t appear in these pages anything like as often as she deserved to back in those days. And I clearly didn’t swallow the viagra quickly enough – I had a stiff neck for a week.

And you all know that the wish that I have about my departure is to go suddenly while in the arms of a nubile nymphet a third of my age. Were I to be lucky enough to find a willing volunteer, the viagra would come in handy in those circumstances. But it would take them three days before they could put the lid on the coffin.

Coming over the Pont Pierre Laporte, which we’ve visited before, there was a ship a-sailing … "a-dieseling, you mean" – ed … by, up the river towards Montreal. It’s too far away to see what it is, but it’s the only likely candidate for today’s Ship of the Day and so we’ll include it in here.

We’ll see if we can identify it at a later date when I can access the record of the Port of Montreal … "he couldn’t" – ed.

But on the subject of Pierre Laporte, the whole world is currently up in arms about what they perceive as brown-skinned terrorism, but never forget that Pierre Laporte, a leading Canadian politician, was kidnapped and brutally murdered in cold blood by white-skinned Catholic terrrorists during a major terrorism in Canada – and some of the perpetrators of the crise d’Octobre were given a free passage to Cuba by the craven Canadian Government.

And not only that, some modern-day Quebec politician proposed to erect a plaque in their honour. Yes, and the Canadians complain about brown-skinned terrorists. You couldn’t make this up, could you?

But now the bus is in, and it’s two hours from Sainte-Foy to Riviere du Loup.

So feeling a bit more like it after the coffee, I did a pile of paperwork on the laptop and listened to some good music to pass the time. I’m in Traffic mode right now and I had a good listen to Sometimes I Feel So Uninspired from the magnificent On The Road album, because that’s just how I’m feeling right now. And if he can play a lead guitar solo like the last four minutes of that track when he’s feeling do uninspired, whatever could he do if he were to have some inspiration?

By the time I got to Phoe … errr … Riviere du Loup I wasn’t all that far behind where I wanted to be. But we were late and the connecting bus was already in so I had no chance to buy something to eat and drink. Luckily, I still had a packet of the vegan crisps that Alison had bought for me in Belgium and which had survived the voyage across the Atlantic. They didn’t survive the voyage down to Edmunston anyway.

And our Holland Hurricane has internet available and I can actually configure it to work. All I need now is a few people on line to talk to, but as soon as all of my friends see me come on line, they all clear off rather smartish-like.

We had a 15-minute stop at Edmundston (it’s nice to be back in New Brunswick anyway. Home Sweet Home, an hour in front of Quebec time of course) which was plenty of time to visit the gentleman’s rest room and to pick up a coffee. That’s me organised now for the two hour journey that remains.

Much to my – and everyone else’s – surprise, the bus was bang on time to the minute on its arrival at Florenceville. Rachel, my niece, was already there and waiting and so that was ideal. She had a few errands to perform and then it was off to Centreville and the tyre depot. Rachel went on to do some more errands and I came back here with Darren and Amber.

First task was to sort out Strider. He’s been in his little hidey-hole since last October and needed to see the light of day. Even though the battery had had the odd trickle-charge it was a little flaky so that will need to be replaced, and the tyres were down. And not just that, but some creature or other had made a nest with the soundproofing from underneath the bonnet. But it’s good to be back behind the wheel of Strider again – just like old times and as soon as I can resolve this continuing insurance issue we’ll be in business.

Darren and I had quite a chat but I eventually called it a night. It’s far too much for me these days. It’s amazing just how tired you become doing nothing but sitting around all day on a bus.

And it’s nice to see some friendly faces, but a couple of weeks with me will soon take care of all of that.

Sunday 4th September 2016 – WELL, I NEVER THOUGHT THAT I’D EVER …

… get back here again, but here I am all the same.

And it was really no surprise where I was going, was it? Hands up if you REALLY didn’t guess.

And I’m glad that I’m here because it really was miserable this morning! And I’m not talking about me either. I had a reasonable night’s sleep for a change – just two trips down the corridor, and I ended up awake round about 06:45. But you would never have guessed what time it was – it looked as it if was 04:00 outside – totally dark, grey and miserable. How glad I am to be getting out of this.

No breakfast at the hotel either. It seems to have tightened up considerably on its efficiency from what I saw last night and I reckon that the breakfast cards that I still have from my time as a chauffeur all these years ago might be disallowed these days. But having anticipated this move, I did have some supplies with me – Strawberry Moose hadn’t eaten all of them – and so we had breakfast in my room. The complementary coffee plus the crackers, banana and satsumas out of my suitcase.

After breakfast I had a shower – and the door to the shower cubicle promptly fell off the runners – evidently the previous honeymmoning couple had been far too energetic in the bathroom – and there was no soap in the dispenser in the shower cubicle either. It was clearly not my night in the Comfort Inn, was it?

The shuttle back to the airport was fairly straightforward, although these days they only go to Terminal 2 and you need to take the internal tram-shuttle round to there. And then of course I had to enquire of the direction to the aeroplanes, never having been this way before.

We had all fun and games at the baggage check-in. First of all, my luggage weighed a mere 17.1 kilograms. I’m definitely losing my touch, aren’t I? And then the girl at the check-in dropped my passport into the conveyor. That brought Terminal Three to its knees for a good half an hour. Who needs machine guns and dynamite to paralyse a transport network when Strawberry Moose and Yours Truly are on the loose?

As for the security control, that was the most painless that I have ever encountered. Straight in, straight through and straight out without even a hint of inconvenience and aggression. Quite the reverse in fact – the couple of young people working there actually had a sense of humour and a laugh and joke with the passengers. Other airports and border crossings should take not of this. If every other passage through "Security" was as pleasant as this, every journey would be a pleasure instead of being so stressful.

I’ve complained bitterly about airport security in the past so it’s only correct to give credit when it deserves it;

The aeroplane was late, as you might expect, and we had to be bussed out across the hardstanding because it’s Air Transat again and they can’t afford the full terminal fees. And I know that I said that I would never ever fly Air Transat again but this year, what with my incredibly late booking, the cost of a flagship flight across the Atlantic was well into four figures. With Air Transat it was less than €500 and that’s the cheapest price that I’ve ever had across to Canada in modern times. It might be easier for a lion to swallow his pride than it is for me to do so, but I can do it whenever there’s some of the folding stuff involved.

But Air Transat is going downhill. There wasn’t even a hint of anything on the in-flight entertainment that I wanted to watch, even as a captive viewer. In fact under the heading "Classic Films" there were just three – and they dated from the turn of the century. Hardly what I would call "classic". I ended up listening to music on my phone instead.

The in-flight catering was absolute rubbish too. I’ve never ever eaten so badly on a long-haul flight in all my life. Just a hot wrap of grilled vegetables for lunch and a sort-of pizza slice for tea, and that’s your lot. Mind you, I had been warned about this by someone who actually works for Air Transat, and that was the reason for the extra baguette and butties that I made yesterday.

You may remember – or long term readers of this rubbish my remember – the Air Transat flight from a few years ago with the full-length mirror in the gentleman’s rest-room. And so we had another one on this flight too – which is what looks to be a reasonably-modern Airbus A330 by the way.

There’s clearly a purpose for these mirrors, and I’m sure you come up with your own ideas. For me, all you need is a paintbrush and a pot of varnish and then I can gloss over all of my shortcomings.

And so we headed out well across the Atlantic, our arrival becoming later and later as the headwinds kept pushing us backwards.Our estimatedtimeof arrival, which should have been 13:14 had we taken off on time, became 14:15 aswe left, and ended up at 14:27

Now, reading the notes that I’ve been typing about Air Transat, you might be thinking that I’m pretty well-disillusioned about the airline. But nothing could be further from the truth. Had I had this level of service on a Swissair or Lufthansa flight at €1335, I would have been beyond furious. But just let me remind you that I’ve paid a little more than a third of the price to do the same trip with Air Transat (and that’s not strictly true as Lufthansa wanted me to go via Dusseldorf). Given the situation, I’ve had my money’s worth from Air Transat and I don’t want anyone to think otherwise.

At least it’s not as bad as the legendary Air Fungus flight that set off from Ballyhoo to Montreal – a flight of 2200 miles – and when the pilot discovered after 1800 miles in the air that he didn’t have enough fuel for the remaining 400 miles, he turned round and flew back towards Ballyhoo.

We eventually arrived, and at a real air terminal too, and I was able to take a photo of the aeroplane. It’s not very good, mainly because I was using the phone camera and I had the sun in my eyes, and you can’t see the serial number of the machine either. But it’s the best that was available.

The queue into Canada was nothing like as bad as last time – only about four perpendicular lines, and with 9 immigration staff on duty we were done and dusted inside half an hour. I took advantage of the pause by emptying my rucksack of all prohibited food items – Canada seems to be becoming more and more keen on this sort of thing. But I was clearly observed nibbling on a forbidden orange or somthing because I was quizzed for a few minutes about any food that might be in my possession and a red cross was put on my entry form.

Whoops!

Next stop was the bus ticket machine. I’m here for three days now, having messed up over this Labour Day thing. I was supposed to do all of my errands tomorrow and move on tomorrow night but it’s Labour Day and so everywhere will be closed down. I can’t do anything now until Tuesday and so I’ll need an extra night at the hotel for a start. A three-day ticket costs $18 and that even includes travel from the airport into the city as often as I would like, and if that’s not good value I don’t know what is.

And I shall have to stop talking to myself too. Someone loitering near the ticket machine came over to me. He said that he was glad to hear another English-speaker and could I sort out a ticket for him. Americans are so lost outside their normal environment and so I was glad to help him.

And what goes around comes around too because they have changed all of the hotel shuttles too. The gate has moved to upstairs and you need now to phone up for yourbus – there are no longer any tourneés.This was going to be a problem, as I predicted, because my Canadian phone charger doesn’t work and the battery is flat, but a kind man at the information desk lent me his phone and that was quickly organised.

I didn’t have to wait very long either, and the man who picked me up was the same man who has picked me up a few times now so we had a very interesting chat about old times on the drive down here. It’s good to be amongst friends.

The hotel is only 5 minutes away from the airport and so I was here in no time flat. I booked my room for an extra night, so much for the best-laid plans of mice and men, andin a change to the advertised programme I’ve also booked a room for the night before I leave Canada.

Ordinarily I wouldn’t bother and I’d go straight through off the overnight bus onto the overnight plane, but I have to remember that I’m ill and while I might be okay right now, whatever am I going to be like in five weeks time? This is no time for playing fast and loose with my health.

Having done all of the necessary, I went up to my room, liberated Strawberry Moose from his confinement in the suitcase and had a nice relax for a couple of hours, something which involved a couple of cups of coffee.

And then I hit the town. There’s a bus stop right outside the hotel here and having observed from my window the times of the buses that pass by, I didn’t have long to wait. The 202 bus goes past the hotel every half an hour at about 05 and 35, and there’s a bus stop right outside the building.

This is why you always buy your bus ticket at the airport. The hotels along the Côte de Liesse are quite handy for the public transport, but you need to have a ticket handy when you leap on board.

The bus goes down to the DuCollege metro station and that’s about about 30 minutes drive away. Here, you can take the underground into the city centre, or anywhere else that takes your fancy.

Ordinarily I’d go down to the Snowdon metro station and chanhe trains for the Côte des Nieges because there’s my little falafel place and even an excellent Indian restaurant but tonight, as it was early, I had a change of plan. I did change trains but I went all the way to the Jean Talon station instead.

Just down the road is the legendary wholesale vegetable market and it’s a stunning place, full of traders and people and the most astonishing vegetables. But everywhere was closing down by the time that I arrived and there were just the private citizens buying up the leftovers. But it’s still a really exciting place to be even at that time of the evening.

From here, I walked down towads the Parc Metro station – the old Canadian Pacific railway terminus that i’ve shown you before. A Metro supermarket came up with a big bottle of epinette, the spruce beer that I love (and I have a fridge in my hotel room too) and I could organise some vegan cheese because it’s Sunday – pizza night.

At the side of the underground station is a pizza place that has always been very good to me in the past. Here I ordered my pizza as well as a bottle of root beer (after all, we are in Canada now) and then I was ready for home. And I didn’t have to wait too long for the bus at DuCollege either which certainly makes a change.

Coming back can be something of an issue because it isn’t easy to reach the hotel – there’s a motorway in between the hotel and the return bus route. However a friendly driver can usually be persuaded to stop at the overpass about 800 metres up the road and although it’s a bit of a walk back, it’s much quicker than doing the circular tour.

I was back here by 20:45 and by 21:15 I was cleaned, showered, clothes washed and in this beautifully comfortable bed. And here I’m staying until my name changes to Rip van Eric.

Saturday 3rd September 2016 – ONE OF THE THINGS …

… that is pretty much guaranteed to get my goat is the general unco-operative spirit of people who seem to deliberately set out to obstruct and inconvenience every single one of their fellow human-beings. And I had one of those on the train today from Leuven to Brussels. Here I was, struggling with my mammoth suitcase and there was a family, with pushchairs and all kind of encombrances blocking the passageway, and they simply sat there and watched as I struggled my way down the aisle.

You can tell that I’m leaving Leuven and heading closer to Brussels, on the first leg of my voyage elsewhere.

Despite being thoroughly exhausted after my walk around the city yesterday – so much so that I had an early night, and despite two trips down the corridor, I was awake quite early – round about 06:20 or thereabouts. And I’d been on my travels during the night too – but then again you don’t want to know too much about this seeing as how you are probably eating your breakfast.

After breakfast I packed up and sorted everything out. By the time that I had done this, it was midday and so I went and fetched Caliburn. Strawberry Moose had quite a surprise as I stuffed him into his suitcase, and then I took that up to my room and took down everything that I don’t need. I then took Caliburn back to his little hidey-hole and walked back.

On the way back I bought two baguettes – two being necessary because there is no other way of my obtaining any food tomorrow during the next leg of my journey so I have to make butties. I had lunch and made the butties for tomorrow and then packed my suitcase and sorted out everything that I need.

And here I have had a disaster – I don’t have the charger for my other telephone. Well, I do, but there are two of them and one doesn’t work and it’s the one that doesn’t work that I have managed to bring with me. So this is going to cause a major problem tomorrow late afternoon.

I’d also forgotten the saucepan. I had to wash that and then walk back to Caliburn with it, otherwise I would only forget it. I know that it’s not much good, but it’s the only one that I have at the moment.

And another thing – I’ve solved the mystery of why I always seem to pick up an infection, a heavy cold or cough (or both) when I’m in my room, which goes almost as soon as I leave. The reason for this is that there is about 6 feet of dust and fluff underneath my bed. This cleaner-person just seems to clean where he can see and that’s your lot. No wonder it’s affected me so much.

But, as I have said before, I’m not complaining. I had an important reduction on the room rate due to the time that I was spending there and the price of less than €26 per night, breakfast included, was an excellent deal.

By 16:30 I was ready to leave and so I hit the streets. Dragging the monster suitcase behind me I made it to the bus stop and then on the bus to the station. And despite the difficulties I made it to Brussels all the same. And I got lost in Bruxelles-Midi – it’s all changed since I was last here and what with repairs and renovations and bits closed off, it took me an age to find my way around to the Thalys lounge.

It was 17:15 when I arrived and my train was due to depart at 19:15, and we could board it half an hour earlier, which seemed like a good idea to me. I sat around for a while and then went off in search of food because there won’t be any at all where I’m going tonight. I ended up with a veggie burger and chips and a bottle of pop, quite over-priced (which is only to be expected when you have a captive audience) but wasn’t as disgusting as I was fearing.

Just for a change, I was a mere third on the train and my suitcase, with His Nibs inside, was first on the luggage rack. That’s much more like it than the mad scramble that occurs at Lyon Part-Dieu (which is where this train is heading, incidentally).

Not that it made much difference though, because there was hardly anyone on it. I’ve never been on such an empty TGV – or have I? The one that I took from Lille to Charles de Gaulle a couple of years ago was quite empty, so I recall. It didn’t fill up much more at Lille and we shot off into the sunset from there still pretty-much empty.

At the airport (yes, I’m at the airport) we had the usual half-hour wait for the shuttle bus, and when I finally arrived at my hotel, the hotel had no trace of my booking, even though I had the agency’s confirmation. This led to a very interesting 30 minutes at the reception desk, but luckily the bridal suite hadn’t been booked and so I’m spending the night in 5-Star luxury in an emperor-sized bed. And you can’t say fairer than that, can you?

So an early start tomorrow, and we are off on our travels again. See you soon!

Monday 9th May 2016 – WA-HEYYYYYYY!

Yes, folks, I’m free!

I’ve been expelled from the hospital this evening, and I definitely heard at least one nurse say “if he comes back, I’m leaving!”.

Apparently everything is as it should be (but I forgot to ask about the blood count)and there’s no reason now for me to stay. I promptly gathered up my things and cleared off. You’ve no idea just how pleased Caliburn and Strawberry Moose were to see me, and we all quickly headed off into the sunset (well, it wasn’t THAT late, but it’s a nice piece of prose).

Earlier on in the day when I’d gone down to make my cheese butty, I went to the reception desk. Seeing that I was trailing a perfusion drip machine behind me, these seemed like a good time to go and negotiate the car-park situation – no-one could doubt my bona fides with all of that – and sure enough, I was given a free pass.

But when our Three Mustgetbeers went to use it at the exit barrier we succeeded in jamming up the machine completely. And by the time that someone came to unjam it (I had beaten a hasty retreat by this time) there was a queue a mile long at the barrier. Ahh well!

I nipped to Sint Pieters for the stuff that I had left behind and ended up having something of a “discussion” with the woman in reception. I’d parked Caliburn on the ramp outside the door of the hospital and my intention was to mention it to the receptionist in case she was wondering whose it was, and to say that I would be back in two minutes.

As simple as that, hey? But as you know, in anything in which I am involved, the facts are quite often different and the explanations that I was forced to give (all in Flemish too) took a darn sight longer than two minutes. It would have been quicker to have said nothing at all.

And it was all a waste of time too because they had cleared out my part of the fridge and everything had long-since been binned, including about €20-worth of sliced vegan cheese! I’m furious about all of this!

I did however stop at a huge supermarket on the edge of Leuven for a pile of shopping, including at long last, a decent pair of headphones instead of these rubbishy in-ear ones that are falling to pieces already, and then I made my way out (and I do mean “out”) of town into the countryside to the campus at Pellenberg where I’m staying until Friday.

But let’s return to the events since the last time I spoke to you all. I’ll tell you all about Pellenberg tomorrow after I’ve had a good prowl around.

When I went back into my romm last night it was absolutely stifling in there. So much so that I came back out here and watched a film on the laptop until about 22:30. And by then, it was much better back in the bedroom.
Memo to self – close sunblind first thing in the morning to keep out the heat

I slept a little better too, although the night was full of awakenings. Nothing like the previous one though, thank heavens, and I don’t recall the night-nurse (except for one occasion but I was awake anyway so that doesn’t really count).

I’d had some mega-rambles too and some of these (the bits that I remember anyway) are quite impressive.
Further memo to self – remember to charge up the dictaphone

I started off with a Sherlock Holmes adventure and it really was an adventure too. Nothing at all like Conan Doyle’s books but a huge Gothic horror ramble too that took us through the by-wys and alleyways of London, haunted houses in the countryside, graveyards and the like. Something very much akin to”Sherlock Holmes meets the Son of Dracula”. It was loosely based on a Sherlock Holmes story something like “The Engineer’s Thumb” but I don’t now recall exactly which one it was.
From here, we went on to have another cameo appearance from my Greek friend Maria. I was in Northampton, in a fourth-floor apartment looking out over a T-junction and one of the roads, the road to the right, was labelled something like “take this road to a better future”. This inspired me somewhat so off I set. But when I arrived down at the junction, the traffic lights changed to red. “This is an auspicious start” I thought to myself. But eventually I could continue along my way and I did notice that the road looked no different than any other street heading out of town. We did however come to a kind of sales room where there was an auction taking place. I arrived just as the last lot was being sold off – a 1940s-type of motorcycle and there were only two bidders. The price wasn’t all that high either but as usual, I had come totally unprepared, with no money or anything and so I had to pass up the opportunity. I did make a mental note, though, that I’d be back with plenty of cash if this is the kind of thing that goes on around here. And it was here that Maria put in an appearance too. It’s been … ohhh … 14 years since I’ve seen her in real life (but only about 2 weeks on here, I reckon) so we had plenty to discuss and tons of news to exchange.
But by now I was back home (wherever that might have been) in a rural environment with Nerina. We had an appointment in half an hour and I’d been working so I was dirty, and this is when I discovered that the hot water had been turned off, so no bath. I had to light the boiler and hope that 15 minutes would be enough to at least heat it up so that I could have a quick plunge. But that didn’t work out as it should so we cancelled that, and I missed the appointment in the end. But then I started to tidy up outside the house – trimming the edges of the driveway and in the end the place looked beautiful out there (I wish that I could do this at my house) so I carried on inside. There were all kinds of weeds and the like growing on the floor of the bedroom so I attacked those too and by the time that I had finished, the bedroom floor was so clean and shiny with nice brown parquet floor. It looked so beautiful. Even Nerina and a third person (I can’t remember who he was now) who was with us passed a comment and I felt so proud.

That took me up until 06:00, and by 06:45 I’d polished off the orange left over from yesterday, drunk some water and performed my toilet. And at 07:00 I was in the comfy chair in the day room, beating the sun by a good 10 minutes. Now that I’ve worked out how to make the comfy chairs recline, it was my intention to stay there until either the laptop battery or the coffee machine ran dry, whichever was the first, but I had failed to take into account the persistence of the nurses who did everything in their power to disturb me, such as giving me medication, changing my perfusion, taking my temperature and blood pressure, taking my weight (I’ve gained 1kg, by the way).

That’s not all either.

The doctor and the professor came in for a lengthy chat with me and this was followed by the girl from the Social Services department to discuss accommodation for me. It seems that a place has been found for me at Pellenberg until Friday morning for when I leave here, which (as you have seen already, I did today).

Later on, I was told that I had to go for an ear examination. The appointment had been arranged at 13:30 but was at Sint Rafaël across town so I needed to go there. This meant being picked up by the shuttle at 12:30. So at 13:00 I boarded the shuttle, having been pushed in a wheelchair about 20 miles around the campus here, had my appointment at 14:00 (and I have a hearing loss in the treble ranges of my left ear and telling jokes to foreigners, as Kenneth Williams and Alfred Hitchcock once said, is indeed “a total waste of time” because the doctor sat there pasty-faced when I explained that that was probably why I play bass guitar) and then had to wait for the shuttle at … errr … 15:00.

All in all, it was 15:45 by the time that I arrived and had they been more organised, told me earlier that I could leave, and disconnected me from the pipes and tubes, I could have waked there and back in half the time.

But the examination itself was horrible. I had all kinds of stuff including, at one stage, a camera, stuffed up my nose and in my ear and I felt dreadful.

And upon my return, I found that I had a new room-mate too. So it’s a good job that I was leaving, wasn’t it?

It was on this note, starving to death and totally fed up, that I went off to make myself a cheese butty. And you know the rest of the story.

Thursday 24th March 2016 – BACK IN THE NETHERLANDS

That’s right – I’ve left my comfy little spec at Paul’s Hotel this morning and headed east – in the driving rain.

But while we’re on the subject of the hotel, the breakfast that I had this morning was excellent. The coffee was beautiful for a start, and so was the bread and jam. I even had a comfy hour or so in the lounge while I did some work on the laptop that needed doing. In other words, I thoroughly enjoyed my stay here and although it was expensive, I had my money’s worth.

I’d travelled miles while I’d been asleep. Having been awoken by attack after attack after attack of cramp (which I’m very sad to see has returned after all this time), we started off with a sporting hero – a motorcycle racer or someone. He had an agent and also a manager. He was doing some business with his manager that involved making payments and he always made those payments promptly and always in cash with no problems whatever. One day he was in a rush to go somewhere and so he ordered a sandwich so the manager arranged to buy it. It came to €6:99 so the hero searched through his pockets to try to find something so the agent put down €7:00. The manager said that he would give back the €0:01 next time they would see each other. But the motorcyclist then went out to race, but was killed. This gave rise to the legend about him that his manager gave nothing and took everything, whereas the motorcyclist gave €0:01 and also gave his life.
So valiantly fighting off another attack of cramp, I was out in Labrador City, but it wasn’t Labrador City but a kind of linear village in the High Arctic, all along some kind of track. We’d gone there to take the supplies and the girl with whom I had gone, she had gone in front in an open-topped bulldozer-type vehicle to clear the route and I was in the closed-up vehicle bring the supplies behind because the girl said that it would be warmer. When we arrived, we were besieged by people who were after their stuff. We were talking to a woman there who was telling us about Pingu the Penguin who was some kind of local hero – everyone watched him on television. It turned out that an old girlfriend of mine, Robina, was living out there and I thought that that would be nice – I’ve not seen her for forty years. I hoped that she would come for her supplies. However, she didn’t come. Loads of others did so though – people with children and they were all talking about Pingu the Penguin. There was also a soap opera broadcast twice a day – 06:00 and 18:00, all about young people falling in love and I suddenly remembered something that I had written about this subject – a fictional story. I thought that it might possibly have been a script for this programme. We all had quite a chat about that too. One of the small boys asked me where I lived and I told him about my house – Hankelow Hall, although I called it something else. How we squatted there although I was in one of the outbuildings. We moved on from the town and ended up in the graveyard. Someone had been stealing one of the bulldozers on a regular basis and flattening the graves. One grave was an expensive grave for a person who had founded the Hobey’s (whoever they might be) chain of whatever and this grave was a particular target, having been flattened a few times and graffiti drawn in the soil such as “I used to work at Hobey’s”. Everyone in the town was disturbed by this and they had been unable to catch the culprit and stop them flattening this cemetery again and again.
Having managed to avoid another attack of cramp, I was back in Virlet, but it wasn’t Virlet as I know it. There were lots of ruined, abandoned houses all together. I was there with mine and Liz was there with hers and we were talking about selling and going off somewhere else. We went to an estate agent, who turned out to be Lieneke, to try to sell our properties for us. We had had all kinds of people coming to visit and they had asked all kinds of stupid questions so I reckoned that I ought to open a “stupid questions” file. I had to contact the mayor, who was in fact Rebecca from the OU, and find out all of the answers to these stupid questions. That would save everyone so much time. We were having quite a chat about this on the telephone and Lieneke went away. It was pretty close to Easter at this point and suddenly three or four caravans turned up and parked on some land at an abandoned house. Loads and loads of hippies arrived and installed themselves there, about 100 yards from my house. Lieneke asked me what I thought about all of these hippies. I said that I had nothing against them and they were entitled to their own lifestyle and it was sometimes a good thing because they can bring new ideas and new ways of thinking into a stagnant region, but they can saturate an area. I didn’t want 100 hippies living in an area like this. There was a programme on TV and I had been wanting to see it for quite some weeks, which is not like me. The village café had a bar so I had arranged to meet Liz somewhere so we had agreed on the café and I went there way earlier to watch this programme. I was sitting on a chair with a coffee watching this when I local turned up and sat down by me. He started to discuss this programme with me, which is what I didn’t want to do, and to my surprise, this person had some really intelligent points to make about it. And it was only something boring, like a quiz game.
Once more, after another disturbance, I was back in my house, which resembled something like my old apartment at Reyers, with someone who might have been June. Someone had arrived during the night and was ill and so had been put into one of the spare bedrooms (I didn’t even have one bedroom in Reyers – it was a studio!). This person needed me to help him recover and so I took him a breakfast tray and went to see how he was. It took ages to find the door into the room – I don’t know why – and so I knocked on the window to let him know I was there, and then tried again to find the door. It took a while to do that but eventually there I was. I said to the guy that I hoped that I hadn’t disturbed him too early but he laughed and pointed out that it was now just after 16:00 – I’d slept all that time! I sat down by the man and asked him about himself, but he apologised for wasting my time – it turned out to be only a simple headache and now he was feeling much better and didn’t need my services. At this point, June said that a weekend’s rest would do him good – why didn’t he come down to her place with a group of her people and play in a scrabble tournament? He liked the idea but the stakes (they were gambling – so much per point) were quite elevated and it ruled me out. But something that he said had made my ears prick up. It was quite a disreputable project so June wasn’t at all keen and quite rightly so, but hidden away underneath a fairground carousel was one of the very first Citroen 2CVs and that was the prize. But it was all weighing heavily down on me. I was 60 and I should have retired back in February and it was now the month of May. I needed to get away so I told June that I was going to see Stevie Smith, my old boss from way back, and tell him that I was leaving in three weeks time. She thought that I was being crazy, especially seeing that I was still being paid.

Back on the road, and we’ve started off with a major tragedy too. The battery in the Nikon D5000 seems to have died a death.

It was pretty flaky yesterday, I noticed, even though it had been fully-charged. And today, it just wouldn’t work at all – keeping on telling me that it’s flat. Which it isn’t of course because 2 minutes in the charger and the “fully-charged” light comes on.

The camera itself has never been the same since I dropped it in Quebec in 2012 and so I suspect that half of the problem is not with the battery but with the camera – maybe the contacts are slightly bent out of shape. But anyway, now (or, at least, when I return home) is the moment to upgrade the camera – something that I have been threatening to do for quite a while.

You’ll have to make do with some photos taken on the camera phone, such as this one.

The area where we are is an open shoreline with miles of flat land behind it, and has easy access to the port of Antwerp. It’s therefore quite heavily-fortified to protect it from invasion from the sea or from the Netherlands border and the fortifications still remain even today, like all over this coastline.

I’d bought a baguette, which was one of the nicest that I have ever eaten, but also one of the most expensive too. And I headed off via Cadzand to Breskens to sit on the estuary to eat my butty.

This is exactly the same spot where I ate my butty yesterday, but you can see the difference in the weather.

It really is wet, grey and miserable today and the wind is fairly strong. And you still can’t see very much through the fog. I’d love to tell you more about the ship that’s sailing past but I can’t make it out.

There are probably 1000 other ships out there too, but I don’t have a chance of seeing them.

After lunch, I headed off and found the bored tunnel under the Scheldt. It cosy €5:00 to go through, which I don’t suppose is too bad seeing as it’s 6.6kms long, and Strawberry Moose, Caliburn and I sang a few songs and played a game of hide and seek with the tunnel in order to cheer it up.

The weather brightened up on Walcheren and wasn’t too bad at all by the time I arrived at Zoutelande. I quickly found a hotel, the price of which for five days bed and breakfast would have bought a hotel in France. But there’s parking here for Caliburn (it’s expensive to leave it on the street), I was tired and about ready to crash out. And it is Easter weekend anyway and the town is crowded.

After an hour’s sleep I went for a walk – in the rain because it was heaving down. There doesn’t seem to be a fritkot here either but at least there are a couple of pizza places and I have some vegan cheese.

I won’t need much rocking tonight, that’s for sure.

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.

On 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.

Firstly, 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.

And 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

Ironically, 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.

Sunday 20th March 2016 – JUST IN CASE ANYONE IS WONDERING …

… the big patch of oil right by where I park Caliburn is due to the fact that I didn’t notice that there was a hole in the filler neck of my oil container when I was topping him up this morning. I seem to have ended up with more oil on the floor than in Caliburn’s engine. But he’s been topped up with water too, windscreen wiper liquid, all kinds of things.

I also washed and scrubbed all of the camping gear too so that that’s all ready. And apart from the coffee, I also seem to have forgotten the matches too. But at least I can buy them en route somewhere, I suppose.

So after a memorable night, memorable in the sense that I don’t remember anything about it, except for somewhere there was a girl of about 4 or 5 and another one, dressed in red and white, aged about 12 in it somewhere, that’s my lot. I was up yet again before the alarm clock and after breakfast, prepared myself, Caliburn and Strawberry Moose for the departure. All of my paperwork is on board as well, and I’ll let the new doctor sort out what he wants from all of this.

And after lunch, which was more home-made mushroom soup (made of real home-made mushrooms of course), we set off into the mist, rather like the boy who took his girlfriend out into the fog and mist.

. Letting The Lady Who Lives In The SatNav do her work, we followed a merry, mazy ramble through the Auvergne countryside towards the expressway at Montmarault, passing by the Chateau de Puy Guillon at Vernusse, somewhere that I have certainly never seen before.

Impressive it certainly is and well-worth a photo even if the battery in the Nikon D5000 was flat so that I had to use the camera on the phone.

And you can see what I mean about the mist as well.

Once I joined the expressway, the rest of the route was without a problem and everything went according to plan, although having left the SatNav on “shortest distance” rather than changing it to “quickest route” did show me parts of Fontainebleu that I have certainly never seen before. I fuelled up as usual at the cheap fuel station at Melun and then took the Francilienne as far as the N2 where I headed off in the direction of Soissons.

This was where the fun started because, having determined not to stop until I’d passed the rear of Charles de Gaulle airport, I then couldn’t find a hotel, astonishing as it might seem. That’s not quite correct – I drove three times around Villers-Cotterets following signs to hotels that clearly only existed in the minds of the signwriters, and found a place that was nominally a three-star hotel but looked like a chateau and would have been outside my price range.

Soissons wasn’t much better either. I found all of the post hotels, like the Campanile and so on, but nothing in my price range at all but a few miles outside the town, in a place called Crouy, I found a modern type of hotel, the New Access Hotel, advertising rooms at €35:00 plus breakfast €5:00. Full of foreboding, but tired and fed up and in the dark, I went and signed in.

As I feared, it was an old Formule One, clearly sold off by Accor as it needed renovation and wasn’t worth the money spending on it, and now run by an Indian family, as most of these places all over the western world seem to be. We discussed meals and it seemed that there was a pizza delivery service nearby, so I placed my order (there was a microwave so adding my own cheese would be no problem) and went to my room.

Despite half an hour trying, I couldn’t get the heating to work and it was cold. And then the plug was so tight up against the wall that I couldn’t plug in the laptop or the battery charger for the Nikon D5000. And then I realised that I’d been there an hour and my pizza hadn’t come.

So off I trotted downstairs and saw the daughter of the hotel owners. I told her about the pizza, so she asked me if I wanted to call them to remind them. I had a better idea. “You call them and cancel it. I’ll go and find something else” – having passed a kebab and pizza place just down the road.

I passed the pizza delivery driver on the access road but it was too late by then – my tail was up. And I had the last laugh too because it turned out that where I went to was the same place as where the pizza had been ordered from, and there was a free salad included to all take-away customers, and the salad would have made a meal on its own.

So back at Ice-Station Zebra and I refused a shower in the communal facilities. I ate my pizza and salad and with no electricity to charge up the laptop (I should have done that in Caliburn on the way up) I crawled fully-clothed under the covers, kicked out the bed-bugs and settled down for the night.

Saturday 12th March 2016 – BLIMEY! WHAT A NIGHT!

I don’t know what it was that they put in all of those injections that they gave me yesterday, but saying that I had a disturbed night last night was something of an understatement. In fact, when the alarm went off, I found that all of the bed clothes were all over the floor. And in trying to get out of bed, I fell right on my nether regions. Clearly, something was going on.

And despite being crashed out in bed long before 20:15, I didn’t need to make a trip down the corridor despite having such a fitful night. Instead, I was off on some of the most astonishing voyages that I have had to date. I’m sure that all of these injections and medicaments that I’m taking are responsible for the greater part of what is going on in my head during the night.

We started off back in Crewe, in West Street yet again but at the town end by the Jet garage. Someone had sent me a panoramic photo of the area and you could see just how bad the area was, with abandoned houses and demolition sites all around, particularly in the area between West Street and Richard Moon Street. It goes to show just what a horrible place Crewe is – something ironically that I had been discussing with Terry and Liz during the evening. I was down at that end of town because I’d had a message from Cecile that contained a file but my telephone wouldn’t open it, so I went down there because she had a flat down there where she lived with her mother. So walking down the street, I came across Cecile and I went in to see them and we had a good chat, not about anything in particular. Cecile had been given some money by her mother, some of which was Belgian money including a 20-franc piece which she had put on one side to make an emergency phone call if necessary if she needed help, which just goes to show how far behind the times Cecile’s mother was because you couldn’t even buy a cup of coffee with that in Belgium these days. But it turned out that Cecile’s mum hadn’t given just a couple of hundred Belgian francs in notes to Cecile, but also a couple of hundred Euros in notes too. I had a brief glance and it looked to me as if there were at least 500 Euros in there. Cecile’s mum had a huge stuffed gorilla which she was cuddling. I made the remark that I should have brought Strawberry Moose around for her to cuddle because he was missing her. Or maybe, they should both come round to my house to see him because Strawberry Moose is missing Cecile’s mother. Cecile’s mother interjected to say “well, give him a big kiss from me” and that sort of thing. At that point, I left the apartment to continue my travels.
These took me to the far north of Alaska or Canada with someone who started out to be Rachel (but it wasn’t her) and we were off driving somewhere and ended up in this town. Where we parked was on some kind of concrete quayside by a river that was running through an open culvert and which was a non-fishing river, and another car pulled up alongside up. In this car was a family consisting of a man and presumably his wife, with a daughter in her early teens and an older son. This “Rachel” girl and I had gone there to do a few shady deals which involved a couple of people belonging to the local ethnic group and these people had now spiked our guns, so we needed to be much more discreet. These native people needed to leave us and travel into the centre of the town, and so chose to travel by canoe down this river, their canoe being was fitted with an outrigger. It was important that this family didn’t see the canoe with its occupants, but the boy saw them. He started to say something about them not having the right to be in there, seeing as how it’s a non-fishing river, but the father tried to reassure him, saying that maybe they were just voyagers, but the boy thought that this was strange. He made the point that dawn was only just breaking and so if they had set out from a neighbouring village, they would have had to have set out in the pitch-darkness and that would have been impossible down the river in the canoe. This led to something of an argument. I ended up going for a walk with the mother of this party and we went for a good stroll around. she told me about the issues that she was having with her son – he was 18 and at college but was bone-idle. We were trying to access the internet but we couldn’t make a connection – all we had was a long length of telephone cable instead of an ethernet connection. Plugging in the telephone cable, we couldn’t make a connection. This was annoying the boy who complained that he needed to access the internet, but I asked him how he expected to access the internet without the correct cable. Despite that, he still carried on complaining. This woman was saying that he really was a spoilt child. At this moment, the girl appeared. There was a little bit of sun and so she went out to sit in it in a short-sleeved tee-shirt and jeans. We had a laugh, and said that we expected her to be in a bikini in a minute or two. The woman and I then set off to walk back to the car, through a crowd of people that were milling around on the pavement. One of them was one of my niece’s daughters. She wasn’t expecting me to be there so as I walked past, I gave her a cheeky wave, causing her to burst out laughing. She started to call me “dad” and say things like “how’s my son?” We had quite a laugh about that. But this woman was still going on about her son. I had half a mind to say that this is what happens when you spoil your son far too much and don’t impose any controls on him. Kids should be taught to fight for what they want, not to be given everything regardless. But I didn’t want to hurt her feelings.
By now, I was back at Montreal airport, employed as a taxi driver, although I was living in Rope Lane in Shavington. We had been having huge discussions about how quickly we should be moving passengers on from there, how to recognise quickly the ones who are looking for a taxi and so on. We needed one full-time driver from 06:00 to 18:00 and another from 18:00 until 06:00, with others coming on for 12-hour shifts at 07:00, 07:30 and every half hour until about 10:00, and then part-timers taking over for short shifts until the very early hours when the airport quietened down. People who are on their own or clearly looking lost, we need to approach them and at least find out their names and find out if they are waiting for anyone, and at least rule them out of our work. It would help to identify our potential customers so much quicker. The daughter of my niece was still with us and this is one thing that we had notice about her – she was waiting for a fare and there were a couple of people loitering around, so we asked her who they were (“I don’t know”) and what they wanted (“I don’t know”). It was these kinds of situations that we needed to avoid. And so the next morning, it was time for work. I was in the airport waiting for a fare and a big man came up, wearing a kind-of cowboy hat rather like the fat bad-tempered man on Carry On Cruising. He wanted to go to the brewery in Montreal so we walked round to where I had parked my car, but it wasn’t there! We tried another two or three places of where I might possible have parked it and it wasn’t there either. I had to go back to the house to find the other driver and get him to take this fare. All of this had made a total nonsense of my ideas about being quickly away from the airport. Now I had to go to look for my car. The other driver had parked his car in the marketplace but I was sure that I had looked in there for mine, but nevertheless I had to go back there and look. All of these fine plans that I had had about improving our business, and I couldn’t even find my own car.
I then went off to a railway station somewhere – a private railway station on one of these council-funded lines. We were waiting for a train and there was chronic under-funding as you might expect with anything involving British Rail and Local Government. The Flying Scotsman was there, not only pulling freight trains but then going off to do some shunting in the absence of any British Rail shunter or any more-suitable locomotive in the yard.

The alarm broke the spell of all of this and I ended up downstairs via the bedroom floor.

I spent most of the morning typing up the notes of last night’s voyages – all … gulp … 1572 words of it. And then after lunch I carried on with merging in the blog notes to the voyage around North America in September 2015. I say “North America” because I’m now in the USA, Burlington, Vermont, to be precise, where I was in early September.

And apart from that, I’ve not done anything at all. Just taken it easy.

And thinking about life and all of that as I reflect on the news that someone so gifted and talented in his life as Keith Emerson was should find something so wrong in his life that he should choose to end it by a gunshot to the head. If that’s not enough to make anyone ban the sale of firearms, I don’t know what is.

Thursday 31st December 2015 – I HAVE SPENT NEW YEAR’S EVE …

… in some strange places, but this evening will be about the strangest. I’m back in Montlucon, back in the hospital and in the casualty department connected up to a couple of pochettes of blood.

This morning I had the usual blood test and at 17:15 I had the phone call. Apparently my blood count has collapsed and it’s down to 7.2, which means that in 4 days I’ve lost 15% of my haemoglobin. There’s no Day Hospital tomorrow (yes, I now know the reason why I have blood tests on Mondays and Thursdays – that’s because the Day Hospital is usually open from Monday to Friday, Bank Holidays excepted of course, and they can call me in the next day if the results are bad) and so it has to be done in Casualty.

And so I rode off into a rather symbolic sunset – symbolic in many senses in that it’s the final sunset of 2015, bringing down the night onto the end of a rather significant year for me, and that I have a rather uncomfortable feeling that it’s bringing down the night onto a significant chapter in my life and that whatever happens to me once a new dawn breaks will be completely different to that which I’ve experienced to date.

Nevertheless, at the Site Ornithologique just outside St Gervais, one of my favourite photography spots, I stopped to take a photo of the sun dipping down under the horizon.

And I wasn’t alone here either. Liz was here too. She was on her way back from the airport at Limoges, having taken her family back for their aeroplane to East Midlands, and she was impressed by the view too. We had a little chat and then I was on my way.

Evening meal for me, my “special treat” for New Year’s Eve, was a large packet of crisps, a packet of biscuits and a banana. There wasn’t any time to prepare any food back at Liz and Terry’s because the hospital wanted me in and out before the midnight rush of drunks began, and so I had to pick up what I could find en route.

At the hospital, I was lucky enough to find a parking space for Caliburn close to the casualty entrance, and once I was inside, I was whisked straight into the casualty ward and prepared for transfusion, with the second-most-painful insertion of a drain. And this is when I discovered that the claim, on the telephone earlier, that “the blood has already been ordered” was somewhat economical with the truth. It didn’t arrive until 21:30 in fact.

And in the meantime, I was in a small room right by the entrance to the Casualty Department. Ambulances, with blue flashing lights and sometimes sirens, were pulling up right outside my window and the electric door into the Department was right next to the door to my room, which was open. Each time I closed my eyes, an ambulance would pull up, the electric door would open, and I’d be wide awake. And then I’d close my eyes again ready to doze off and the procedure would be repeated. And as New Years Eve approached and the stream became a flood, I gave it up as a bad job and asked for a coffee.

Yes, some let the New Year in with a glass of champagne. I let it in with a plastic beaker of coffee.

By 01:30 they had finished with me, and they offered me a bed for the night in the ward at the back of the Casualty Department. I didn’t really feel too much like the drive back to Liz and Terry’s and in any case they would be well asleep by the time that I returned, so I gladly accepted the offer.

And here I’m staying until tomorrow.

Mind you, it’s hardly surprising that I wasn’t up to the drive back. I’d done quite enough driving last night on my nocturnal travels.

I’m not sure now exactly how I started out on my travels but I was definitely in my chocolate-brown Cortina 2000E, TNY143M, that has featured quite a few times just recently on my nocturnal voyages and I’m not sure why. But as our story unfolds, there was a huge argument in a car park that abutted, albeit about 20 feet higher up, onto the street where I was parked. It concerned some kind of illicit behaviour involving a taxi company or two, something that would be of great interest to me of course, being in the taxi business, and a girl was having a huge argument with the driver of a big black saloon car parked on the edge of this car park. The net result of this argument was that she grabbed hold of the driver’s briefcase and flung it high into the air. The case landed at my feet with the papers scattered everywhere so I quickly gathered up the papers, half-expecting the driver to come charging down the bank after his possessions. Instead, he got into his car and cleared off quickly leaving me holding all of the evidence, which would make good reading in the taxi licensing office. I walked back up the hill to the pizza place on the corner of the main road and ordered, inexplicably, a chicken pizza. While it was being prepared, I reckoned that I had better go and recover the Cortina and bring it up outside the pizza place where I could keep a better eye on it and its contents. So back in the pizza place and the server asked me if I wanted ham and some other meat on it – they hadn’t even finished preparing it, never mind cooked it. I had a feeling that this would go on for ever and I didn’t have the time to spare.
So never mind – I’d planned to go to the cinema that evening but I could go earlier and I could watch the film twice. But this meant going on the bus so off I went. And at the end of the first showing, it meant going back on the bus again, doing a round trip and then back to the cinema. And here on the bus this time around I met a girl, someone who had made a couple of cameo appearances in my travels during the autumn. The bus took us on a guided tour of the town and stopped at a big desolate area of waste land, with the driver telling us that this was formerly the old medieval centre of the town which had been demolished and a modern town centre built elsewhere. We were being asked all kinds of quiz questions about street names and the like too.
After the cinema I took this girl home with me, which I realised too late was probably not a good thing to do, because before going out I’d emptied out the van and having nowhere to store the stuff, I’d stacked it, all kinds of rubbish too, into the living room so there was hardly anywhere to sit. My Aunt Doreen (she who hanged herself almost 20 years ago) had been there and so I asked the girl if she would write a note of appreciation to Doreen. However, we couldn’t find a single blank page in any of the notebooks in which we looked. Clearly we weren’t doing so well here. I also asked someone else, who was present at the time, to take out a pile of vehicle hubcaps and dump them in the bin, but then I had a change of mind, thinking that they all might come in useful at some time.
From here I drove back to the family pile in Shavington, followed by my father and my brother (no idea how come they have appeared on my travels). And near the top of Gresty Bank before the corner where Dubberley’s farm used to be, in the road in the southbound lane was a woman with a trestle table doing the washing up. We had to wait until she had finished but she took so long to arrange her crockery that I emptied her washing-up bowl for her. However, the woman in the car immediately behind me was so close that I couldn’t reverse my car enough to go around this obstacle, so the car and I had to duck under the table.
Back at the family pile, I was horrified to see not only the state of the place but the fact that the house was stinking hot with the electric heating going full blast – so hot in fact that all of the windows had been opened despite the heaters being on. There was so much waste and untidiness (and the untidiness must have been bad if it upset me) that I reckoned that my father would be appalled when he arrived. But it was my brother who appeared first, so I challenged him about it, but he replied that our father wouldn’t be coming – he had gone elsewhere. In the hallway there was cat food all over the place but he said that it was the fault of my cat, who wouldn’t eat any of it.

The alarm went off at this point and after a few minutes spent gathering my wits (it doesn’t take very long as there aren’t too many of those) I came downstairs to wait for the nurse and the prise de sang.

Once he had gone, I could have breakfast but I’d run out of muesli so I had to borrow some of Terry’s. And then we had the confusion as all of our visitors prepared to leave. I had a few big hugs, which was nice as I don’t have too many of those these days, and it goes without saying that Strawberry Moose had quite a few too.

Once everyone had left, Terry and I had a coffee and a relax and then I went off to St Gervais with a shopping list from Liz. I try my best to do some shopping here once a week – it’s the least that I can do to recompense Liz and Terry for all of the effort they are making in looking after me. Mind you, I did manage to buy the wrong milk and so I rather blotted my copy-book here.

Vegan cheese on toast for lunch (I’m becoming quite partial to this these days) and then I sat down to alternately have a little doze, drink a coffee and to continue to write up my notes from my voyage around Canada in the Autumn.

And this was when I received “the call” …

Wednesday 30th December 2015 – AND THE ANSWER IS …

… Wrexham.

The question, for the benefit of those of you who did not read yesterday’s rubbish, was “I wonder where I’ll end up during the night?” – which was, of course, last night.

To cut a long story short … "thank you" – ed … I was in Nantwich, Pillory Street to be precise (although it wasn’t Nantwich last night) looking after Laurel and Hardy. I had to make a radio programme about them and so I had the idea of spending a day with them and just letting a tape recorder turn, so that we could crop certain highlights from the recording and make a programme from them. But the producer handed me back the tape recorder telling me that the recorder was no good and we needed to do it again. This was where the idea came in to pile them both into a car and head to Hardy’s birthplace in Wrexham, to encourage him to open out more. But all of this degenerated into something else quite unpleasant, including a scene where a couple of small boys were being chased by a group of larger lads with chain whips – something to do with an issue involving some library books. I wasn’t sorry to wake up while all of this was going on.

This morning after all of the injections and breakfast and so on, we watched the English cricket team quickly wrap up the First Test against South Africa, and then we didn’t do a great deal. I do recall an exciting game of hide-and-seek involving the two kids, Liz and Strawberry Moose, who is a keen participant in these kinds of games.

Another item on the agenda very popular with His Nibs is Story Time. There’s been no lack of that kind of entertainment here this last week or so, and here’s some more.

Everyone is clearly enjoying himself here as you can see. Even Kate, who has drawn the short straw this morning as chief reader.

After lunch, everyone went out for a long walk but I stayed in and carried on with my 3D stuff, not making a great deal of progress. I’m still not up to much unfortunately.

For tea tonight we finished off the leftovers from the last couple of days. But because the children had been especially good and had drawn some lovely pictures of Strawberry Moose, I unveiled the vegan Christmas cake and shared it out amongst the assembled multitudes.

And it will come as no surprise to any of you to learn that it tastes even better than it looks. Liz has really done me proud this Christmas and I am grateful for that.

So now I’m off to bed. A blood test in the morning so I need to be à jeun. It’s a good job that I’m totally stuffed.

But I’ve had news today to the effect that on 4th January I have to go to see the surgeon to discuss the removal of my spleen. On the 12th January I have to see the anaesthetist and sometime in mid-March I have to see the doctor for a post-operation report. This implies that the operation will take place sometime round about the end of January or the beginning of February. And the post-op appointment means that they at least expect me to survive it.

I suppose that that’s good news for me, but not for you lot. There will be loads more of this rubbish to come.

Tuesday 29th December 2015 – AND IF YOU THOUGHT …

… that last night’s voyage was something impressive, you ain’t seen nuffink yet! No wonder I’m exhausted. I can see me having another 20:45 bedtime at this rate.

Last night, after going to bed at such a ridiculously early night, I was straight out – like a light in fact. And then we were off on a nocturnal ramble that, even though I can’t remember all of it, has to be the farthest that I’ve gone for quite a while.

Last night I was talking on the internet to the wife of a friend of mine. She’d been for a walk around Nantwich and ended up going past my old Grammar School and so it goes without saying that I went out on my travels to inspect it. I spent a couple of happy hours patrolling the corridors and apart from the fact that there were many more pupils there than I remembered it, it looked completely the same as it did back then, despite all the changes that have taken place since I was there. I didn’t see anyone I that I recognised – until I saw Joanna walking down the corridor. I had quite a crush on her at one time at school and we did become friends for a short while (although nothing like as friendly as I would have liked) but anyway I digress. Back at the ranch, Joanna walked down the corridor past me and I noticed a double-take as she briefly paused, looked at me with a puzzled expression on her face, and then walked on again. I ended up outside in the school farm looking at the animals.

At this point in the evening I had to leave the comfort and safety of my stinking pit for the usual reasons that anyone of my age would understand, and then I was back at school again. Not my old school this time though, but a High School in the USA. A big old Gothic building too, very tall and compact. I was here, having sneaked in for a wander around and to use the showers, and that had worked out fine. Next day, I was there for much longer, having a much fuller exploration. I’d found the bathroom – full of individual bathtubs where you had to put a token or a coin into a machine to have the hot water to fill your tub, and also the refectory where I was intending to have a meal. However, while I was on the stairs, I received two messages on my phone – one from the Director of the High School asking me to report to her immediately, and the second from a friend of mine asking me to phone her and then to go to see the Director. I was wondering how come everyone had been able to obtain the number of my mobile phone. I know that it was written on the side of Caliburn, which was parked up in the school car park, but how had they been able to tie up Caliburn with me? Was it merely a speculative phone call? I’m sure that I hadn’t been recognised as an “outsider”.

I never had the chance to answer these questions because I was off again down the corridor (it makes a total nonsense of this idea of having nothing to drink in the evening and I was a long way yet from finishing). And back in the comfort and safety of my stinking pit I was off yet again, this time to Brussels (or, at least, I think that it was Brussels). Here I met a family with a girl of 7 or so (but she looked older than that) and her favourite pastime was boxing – in fact she boxed at a gym there in her spare time. I remembered that Dylan, who is the same age, also enjoyed boxing so I arranged a boxing match between the two kids. I didn’t actually see the match but I remember being there at the end of Round 1 with Dylan’s mother saying that the girl (whose name I can’t remember) would not be doing a lap of honour if she won, so Dylan replied that he would have to concentrate on his jab. And the net result was that Dylan won the match by one point, which I thought was rather unfair.

Down the corridor yet again, and then I was off somewhere else. This time it might have been back to the USA, but a completely different USA than earlier in the evening, more like the Wild West. And there were two big houses close together and the occupants of these houses were at war with each other rather like the situation in A Fistful of Dollars. The house where I was had been attacked twice by fire-raisers and we were definitely on the defensive, and when the third attack came, we found ourselves out of ammunition. The person in charge told us to hold the fort while he rode off to fetch the sheriff and a posse, but I wondered how that would work bearing in mind that we were probably just as guilty as the others, and how we could hold out in the meantime with just wooden stakes with embedded nails, and pointing empty guns and shouting “bang”. We did our best to dislodge the people who were surrounding our house but we were soon overwhelmed and with no sign of relief we came to realise that this story about “fetching the sheriff” was just a ruse for the leader of our party to make good his getaway. And so here we were, all prisoners, and it all started to become rather ugly. It was just as well that I awoke (for yet another trip down the corridor) at this point.

As I say, I wish that my real life was as exciting as all of this that goes on in the evening. I Don’t know what it is that Liz is putting in the cooking that is causing all of this – or maybe it’s something in the injections that I have to have.

Having survived the morning round of injections and having had breakfast, this was another day where I did precisely nothing. The morning was spent with Terry watching the cricket but then round about midday everyone cleared off to Montlucon and the swimming baths. I stayed behind and carried on with my 3D program and made myself some toasted cheese for lunch.

Everyone was back as it went dark. No shipwrecks and no-body drownding, in fact nothing to laugh at at all in the Centre Aqualudique although Dylan loved the big water slide. I was regaled with a blow-by-blow account of this afternoon’s activities.

We had time before tea to watch the video. Tonight’s film – or films, should I say – were the Wallace & Gromit – The Complete Collection, a particular favourite of Robyn’s.

And it goes without saying that Strawberry Moose enjoyed the film too, as did mummy and daddy.

And so that was that for today. Falafel and chips for tea followed by vegan Black Forest Gateau. There’s no more room for anything else. I’ll watch a bit of the football tonight and then I’ll be off to bed.

I wonder where I’ll end up during the night?

But here’s a thing. Do you remember a few weeks ago back at my house when one morning I discovered a trail of blood leading to the beichstuhl, and on inspecting my appendages, it seemed that I’d banged my little toe on my left foot really hard against the door frame and not noticed? This morning when I was dressing, I noticed that the nail on that toe has become detached, hanging on in there by a thread.

I must have banged it much harder than I thought – and somehow never felt a thing.

Friday 25th December 2015 – MERRY CHRISTMAS!

I was going to say “Merry Christmas to all my readers” and to refer you to the old tale about Crewe Bus Station – the one that I have recounted before. Every year, in fact, or so it seems, so I’ll give you a rest this year.

Instead, I’ll simply refer you to my nocturnal rambles, such as they were and, more importantly, such as I remember because one thing that I’ve learnt this last evening was that it doesn’t matter whether I do have anything to drink or not during the evening, I still have to leave the comfort of my stinking pit on several occasions, something that breaks up my rhythm of sleep and, more often than not, causes all memory of my nocturnal rambles to disappear.

What I do remember about last night was struggling up Gresty Road past the football ground, dragging two huge suitcases with me. I was heading for a cheap hotel and I knew that there were rooms available at my price range in a dingy hotel down on the east side of Mill Street (in the days before that whole area was wiped away in the slum clearances) but much nearer to where I was going was the Royal Hotel up on Nantwich Road. And while this was a much more expensive hotel, there were a few rooms available at just £20:00 and I’d stayed in one of them once before. So hoping that there was still something of that nature available, in I went. Struggling through the door was one thing, navigating my way through the dining room and all of the false partition walls was another thing entirely. And when I did finally find the reception desk, people kept on pushing in front of me and there I was, worrying that if there were any rooms at £20:00, they would be all long gone by the time that I was seen to.
Somehow we wandered on past there into Nantwich and there I encountered a girl who had lived close to where we lived as kids in Shavington and who went to the same school as me. In real life she was a “big” girl, and I DO mean big, but last night she was a quarter of the size, with different-coloured hair and a very different personality – a completely different girl in fact. But seeing as how I never ever thought for a moment about her at the time, then how come, over 40 years later, she suddenly appeared last night? That’s probably the most bizarre thing about all of this

There was much more to it than that too, but that’s long since gone out of the window.

Anyway, there I was, crawling out of bed some time (but not much) after 07:45 and having my morning injection. Breakfast consisted of speciality bread (I had fig, nut and raisin bread rolls) and a huge home-made fruit salad that was absolutely delicious.

No need for me to tell you what happened next.

With a couple of young kids in the house we had Christmas-present-opening. Father Christmas had been and left piles of presents around the tree. And even Strawberry Moose entered into the festive spirit of events by supplying presents to all of the people present, such a friendly and generous moose that he is.

Everyone had a great time opening their presents and then we stopped for food

We decided that there would not be a big meal as such, but instead we would eat at intervals throughout the day. 12:30 saw us tucking into the starters, which was a kind of running buffet of all kinds of different nibbles. Raw vegetables in France prepared ready for eating are called crudités which is highly appropriate considering that I am here. After all, if you want crudities, then no-one is more qualified than Yours Truly.

There was a great deal of chatting to friends on the laptop too, although I didn’t have much to say to anyone. Most of my friends have their own family lives and Christmas is, after all, a time for families.

We had our main course at about 16:30. A real Christmas dinner with all of the correct veg including roast potatoes, and brussels sprouts cooked to perfection. I had a big slice of nut roast that went down a treat.

Dessert was at 18:30 and, unfortunately, no Christmas pudding. No-one but me likes it around here. Instead, there was a couple of bûches de Noël and for me, a Black Forest gateau, made of home-made vegan chocolate cake and home-made ice cream in a very large coupe and topped off with soya cream.

But one thing that was astonishing this evening was the moon. It’s full moon today, the first time that it’s been full moon on Christmas Day since 1977. And a huge moon that it was too.

Unfortunately, the camera on my mobile ‘phone isn’t up to as much as I would like it to be and so it can’t reproduce the moon as it was, but it’s the best that I can manage.

And so that was Christmas. Nothing much happened from my point of view but that’s not important. In a house with young kids, the most exciting part of it all is watching the delight on their faces as they see what Santa has brought them. That was certainly very much to the fore today. It’s all about kids and all about families, and I can have my own private Christmas another time.

Thursday 24th December 2015 – IT’S CHRISTMAS EVE

And I hope that you are all ready for the festive season. I know that I’m not.

In fact, I’ve never felt less festive in my life, which is hardly surprising. It’s not the illness and it’s not the thought of major surgery but this relentless 07:45 start that’s doing my head in. Especially today because it’s blood test day so I have to be à jeune – no breakfast for me until he’s been.

And I had the results too this evening thanks to this e-mail subscription thing. My blood count has gone up, but a mere 0.4 to 8.1. When it was that low 2 weeks ago, they called me in for a transfusion and it went up to 9.0. I’m dismayed that my count only went up that little bit, I really was. Hence the lack of festive spirit from that point of view.

I was on my travels last night too. I was in Canada, although a more un-Canada-like Canada I have ever seen. I was with George, a former employee of the tyre depot and we were driving around looking for something in the middle of winter with bright sunlight everywhere and not a trace of snow to be seen. We were trying to make for a town that we could see in the distance and as we approached, we ended up in a different town and this necessitated a hard-left turn right in the town centre. George told me where to turn and, much to my surprise, it was a turning into a field, right in this town centre. There were hordes of pedestrians walking along this footpath and in a complete departure from tradition, a policeman stopped the pedestrians so I could drive into this field. Here, I misjudged the entrance and ended up clouting the right-hand wing of the vehicle, which was actually a right-hand drive Hillman Imp, dark green in colour. I made the excuse that I must have slipped into some cart ruts that had pulled me out of position.

So after starving myself until the nurse had been, I had a leisurely morning – in fact a leisurely day doing very little except write up my notes from Canada.

I was alone, though, in not doing very much today. Everyone else was at it, and in spades too.

The trampoline is still outside and so the kids and mummy went to play on it. And, surprise surprise, Strawberry Moose went to join in all of the fun. A very gregarious moose, His Nibs has loads of fun outside playing with the youngsters and also with Violet and Sebastian, the sock-sloths. It’s all one big happy family here and everyone is enjoying himself as much as possible.

In fact, Strawberry Moose was quite exhausted when he came back in.

After tea it was bedtime for the little ones, ready for when Father Christmas comes with the parcels. Of course we had to lay out some stuff for him – milk and mince pies, together with a carrot and some reindeer food.

But no bedtime is complete without a good story, especially on Christmas Eve.

Liz read “A Night Before Christmas” to everyone, including Strawberry Moose who enjoys a good story as much as anyone else.

Of course he’ll be up and about waiting for the arrival of the reindeer, but for reasons of his own which are entirely different from those of everyone else.

And so now he and I have some work to do, but we are not going to be up for long. Regardless of whatever time it might be, he and I (especially me) are wasted and I for one will be having an early night. It doesn’t matter what time I go to bed, I still have to get up flaming well early at blasted 07:45.

EPIC HALL

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

Tag Archives: strawberry moose

Wednesday 12th October 2016 – AT 03:45 …

Thursday 22nd September 2016 – WHAT A HORRIBLE NIGHT!

Wednesday 7th September 2016 – WHAT A GOOD DECISION …

Sunday 4th September 2016 – WELL, I NEVER THOUGHT THAT I’D EVER …

Saturday 3rd September 2016 – ONE OF THE THINGS …

Monday 9th May 2016 – WA-HEYYYYYYY!

Thursday 24th March 2016 – BACK IN THE NETHERLANDS

Wednesday 23rd March 2016 – BACK ON THE ROAD

Sunday 20th March 2016 – JUST IN CASE ANYONE IS WONDERING …

Saturday 12th March 2016 – BLIMEY! WHAT A NIGHT!

Thursday 31st December 2015 – I HAVE SPENT NEW YEAR’S EVE …

Wednesday 30th December 2015 – AND THE ANSWER IS …

Tuesday 29th December 2015 – AND IF YOU THOUGHT …

Friday 25th December 2015 – MERRY CHRISTMAS!

Thursday 24th December 2015 – IT’S CHRISTMAS EVE

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