… get my hands on whoever it was who telephoned me this morning at 07:02, they’ll be eating soup through a straw for the next three month.
It’s always the case though – you can absolutely rely on it. Whenever I plan on having a lie-in, someone always comes along to disturb it. Regular readers of this rubbish in one of its previous incarnations will recall that my bank, not having contacted me for several years, once rang me up a good few years ago at 05:00 when I was fast asleep in a motel somewhere in North Carolina.
What was worse was that I’d left my phone downstairs and by the time that I was down there, whoever it was rang off.
Nevertheless, I went back to bed where I stayed until about 09:10.
While i was having a coffee, I listened to the dictaphone. I had walked for miles and miles last night but I can’t remember anything about it now hardly. Except that we were out in the countryside somewhere near Barthomley way and the group had had a huge row and I was sulking for some reason or other. Someone was talking about all of this, the past, showing us photos, all kinds of stuff. One of the photos came across what looked like some kind of farm building. There was an old coach there and drawings showing hos they wanted to extend this farm building to make a garage for the coach. It turned out that one of the guys said “oh yes can you imagine – while you lot were doing whatever it was that you were doing in the early 70s I was living in this coach. We all said “wow that’s amazing”. he said “yes my BMW was behind the hedge here”. it turned out that he was a famous rock star from the period when he was living in the Crewe area. We were talking about all the goings-on in that particular area and how there was someone who hired out wedding cars and how the place would be decorated when there was a wedding. Then he mentioned a name and it immediately rang a bell with me . He played in a rock group from Nantwich and they had an LP out. This album bombed spectacularly so I asked “do you have any idea where I can get in touch with this guy?” “Ohh, he’s still around. Why are you interested?”. I said “I want to get my hands on their LP because I want to broadcast it on the radio”. H replied “I have a copy”. I asked “I don’t suppose that I could borrow it so that I could record it and play it?”. He seemed to be quite enthusiastic at the idea and one or two other people started to become interested in it.
Strangely enough, there was a rock group from Nantwich, a group called Strife. They fitted the bill and there was a musician in this group who actually had the same name as the one last night. And even more of a coincidence, I have in fact during my daylight hours, I have been trying to track down a copy of their album – and for years to – for just that reason.
No success as yet, but I live in hope.
This morning I’ve been doing some housework on the laptop. I have several files that have been duplicated and I’ve been going through a few of them and merging them in together. Plenty to do though, and that reminds me that there is a whole raft (like 4TBs worth) of this to do on the backup drive that I created earlier this year.
In fact I was trying to do something with the trip that I had on board Spirit of Conrad but it seems that I don’t have the edited photos with me and I can’t remember the numbering sequence.
After lunch I decided to go for a nice long walk to stretch my legs
While I was out on my travels yesterday I noticed that a house down the end of the street in the neighbourhood was having its roof ripped off. I thought that I may as well go into town that way and see what was going on.
And they are certainly making a really good job of it – going flat out at it and making a completely thorough job of it. Obviously, with the house being in Dekenstraat -Blanket Street – it’s having a new blanket.
There was nothing exciting in FNAC, nor Wibra, nor Kruidvat, nor Zeeman, nor Hema. But in Sports Direct I bought another couple of pairs of the trousers that I like seeing as they were on special offer. The ones that I’ve had for three or four years are starting to look pretty thin and I damaged a pair when I was in the Auvergne the other week.
After my little trip to the shops I went for a walk out of town.
In the past, regular readers of this rubbish have seen the sad state of the part of medieval city walls at the Handbooghof right by the River Dijle, and yesterday we saw that some renovation was about to be carried out. My trip around to the Handbooghof was to see what was happening there.
They’ve stuck up a sign to give a little hint as to what is going on. Only a little though because it doesn’t contain very much interesting information.
It doesn’t really help matters either that they have shrouded the work in this corrugated iron fence.
Even with the camera held high above my head I couldn’t really see over it to find out hos they were doing. But there were some big bags of rubble lying around so it looks as if they are dismantling them.
But whether they are going to rebuilt them is another matter. It certainly seems to be pointless if they are taking away some of the bricks that were used in its building. It won’t be the same at all with modern bricks.
While we’re on the subject of bricks … “well, one of us is” – ed … I went to look at that building that I mentioned yesterday – the one that has recently been exposed by the demolition of a more modern building in front ot it.
There is no evidence (like a date-carved lintel) to give an idea of the date, and while the bricks certainly look contemporary to the appropriate historical period, they look extremely clean and the pointwork looks to be extremely tidy.
Not at all what you’d expect from a building several hundred years old so you take your choice.
Regular readers of this rubbish will also recall that yesterday we went past that building in the Monseigneur Van Waeyenberglaan – the one that was stripped right out.
We’ve been keeping an eye on its renovation over the past while and today, purely by chance, I went past the estate agent’s office where the apartments are advertised for sale.
There seems to me to be little doubt that this is it, and if you have a close look at the asking prices you’ll see why I could never ever afford to come and live in Leuven. Some of the prices here are totally out of anyone’s reach.
One of the things that I intended to do was to go and take a few photos of the old St Rafael Hospital before anything happens to it, so after I’d been and bought my pepper I went round for a look.
The best view of the building is from down the Biezenstraat, and then it isn’t particularly good.
So dodging the school kids coming out of school I took a photo from this corner. At least it had the more modern part visible behind it, and there was a good view of the roof too. It’s green but it’s very unlikely to be copper.
The Kapucinenvoer, the street where the Sint Rafael is situated, is quite narrow and built up on both sides down its whole length so it’s not possible to step back and take a photo of all of it from face-on.
The only way that I could take another photograph is from further down the street on the opposite corner of the building, and it doesn’t look anything like as imposing from this angle.
It’s not really much better inside. I’ve had to go there on a couple of occasions and it’s really just a maze of corridors and tiny consulting rooms. At least – that’s what I saw of it. I didn’t go very far in there.
A little further along the street towards the Brusselsestraat by the Cuythoek, there’s a more modern extension.
It won’t be much of a loss to the community if that part of the building were to disappear. It seems to be nothing more than a typical early 20th Century Government building.
The only drawback would be whatever they would build in its place. We’ve seen PLENTY OF EXAMPLES in the past of modern buildings conjoined to older masterpieces, and all it seems to do is to show up the lack of skill and appreciation held by modern rchitects and builders.
On that depressing note I went around to the Brusselsestraat to see how they were getting on with the demolition of Sint Pieters Hospital.
When we were here in July, we saw a couple of large grabs at work, just like dinosaurs, nibbling away at the brickwork. But they don’t seem to be there any more. Instead, what we seem to have is someone inside the building on the top floor throwing material out of the window.
And if there’s any more pointless task than that, I really don’t know what is.
As I (and quite a crowd of other people) watched, more objcts, and then brickwork and the like, followed the first batch of stuff down to the ground.
And I really can’t see what is going on here at all. Surely, if they are demolishing the building, they’ll do it from the outside with machines like the big ones that we saw back in July. Whatever was still inside it would come down automatically with the rest of it.
It seems to be a waste of time and money to send someone up there like that. It’ll take them forever to knock down the building like that.
While I was there, I noticed that they had taken out a fence panel. That meant that I could approach that machine that I saw yesterday.
On a closer look at it, I could see that it isn’t a water atomiser as I had thought. It’s not powered by compressed air but by electricity (at least, there’s an electric cable attached to it) and the name that’s written on it – “Spray Stream” – seems to indicate that it’s nothing more than a water sprayer.
The huge fan at the back helps to disperse the water all over the rubble. But at least I was right about that – it’s to keep the dust down while they are knocking down the brickwork.
It was a good job that that fence panel was out, because while I was down there admiring the Spray Stream, my eyes alighted on something else.
The city is honeycombed by branches of the River Dijle, and we’ve seen quite a few of those in the past in all kinds of different places in the city.
But this is one that I haven’t noticed before. It’s been pretty well concealed underneath the Leistraat across the road and it isn’t shown on any maps.
There’s a medieval religious house here on the site that has been pretty much built over the river.
It’s the Sint Elizabeth Gasthuis, dating from about 1090 and was the city’s hospital from the 13th to the 17th Century. And when I worked out what it was, that rang a bell with me because I recall having read somewhere that it was the fashion to build hospitals over running water during the Medieval period.
It was something to do with hygene, if I remember correctly, and I’ll have to track down what it was that I read and remind myself.
Back here I had a few things to do, and then I had tea. Another falafel burger with the rest of the vegetables and some pasta with tomato sauce.
No possibility of going out for a walk right now because it was teeming down with rain, so I made a start on writing up my notes.
. The rain did ease up for a little moment so I nipped out to make the most of it.
Regular readers of this rubbish will recall having seen a few photos of where I stay taken during the day, but I can’t remember whether I’ve ever photographed it in the night. So here it is. My little room is down the little alleyway to the left just by where the tree is.
So having taken the photo I walked on around the block to run up the time on the fitbit to over 100%. I might have gone farther but I suddenly realised that I didn’t have my facemask with me so I’d better head back. Not for health reasons, but for fear of frightening the locals.
But now I’m off to bed. It’s a 5:30 start in the morning so I need to be on form.
and customer of my taxis is no longer with us. He would have had that building down in a twinkle of an eye and at much less cost too.
