Tag Archives: blog

Saturday 2nd July 2016 – SO WHAT ARE THE NEW DIGS LIKE THEN?

The first answer is “noisy”. The room that I’m in for the first 10 days is right next to the bathroom, the head of the stairs, the lounge and the kitchen. And furthermore, the outlet for the sink and the dishwasher (yes, we have a dishwasher) is behind a wall right at the head of the bed. Consequently, you can hear everything.

And there’s a rock concert on this weekend down the road at Werchter and there are quite a few people staying here who are visiting it. And when they come back the whole building knows about it.

It’s tired too, and so is the decor and furniture, and the tenants don’t do very much to help keep it clean and tidy – neither do they wash up after themselves in the main. As a result, the place might be clean at 10:00 but by 10:30 it isn’t, and it goes downhill from there.

But as for the breakfast, you just go in when you please and help yourself to as much as you want – I’m on the muesli, toast, jam, coffee and orange juice and plenty of it – and everything is topped up ready for the next day. The bathroom is clean and tidy and well-appointed, and my little sofa is really nice. While the mattress in my room here might have likewise seen better days, it’s a huge advance on the last place and once everyone had settled down for the night, I was well away and it was lovely.

And I was well-away too. I had a green car – it might have been an early Ford Cortina mark 111 estate – and my brother was thinking of painting it, helped by my father. I told them to not even imagine doing it if the masking off was anything less than perfect, but at that moment I had a huge load of concrete delivered and I needed to deal with it. First shovel stuck in it and I broke the handle in two – that led to me storming off in a sulk and that was that.

But it goes to show you what a decent bed can do.

But going back to my place, you really can’t believe this, that I’ve done it again. In North America I usually end up camping by a railway line and have sirens and hooters going off all over the place because I’ve forgotten to check the surroundings. Here in Europe, it’s churches. And there’s a church just across the road of which bells start up at 07:00 – so that was that for a lie-in.

But all in all, it’s less than €26 per night and I’m well-pleased with everything at that price.

What was even more exciting was that I had someone coming bursting into my room this morning by mistake – she’s in the same room as this but downstairs. I wouldn’t have minded so much except that I was just putting on my underpants and … errr … adjusting my dress.

After breakfast I tidied up in here and got everything shipshape as if I intend to be here a while – start as you mean to finish and that’s not like me, is it?

I Went into town (not that it’s very far) at 12:00 to buy the food for lunch for the next few days and to pick up some olives from the market. And I was halfway down the road when the heavens opened and I got the lot. To make matters worse, when I was at the olive stall, the assistant decided to shake the roof to clear off the water that was collecting on the top. And you can guess where the water went, can’t you? I got the lot.

This afternoon I’ve been on the blog again – it’s a slow procedure right now – and then went out to buy my curry. I’m not sure what I had now because I can’t remember but it had chick peas in it and it nearly blew my wig off.

Now, I’m going to have a quiet evening and then have an early night in my comfortable bed. I started to watch a film last night and fell asleep halfway through it. I’ll try to watch the rest tonight.

Thursday 30th June 2016 – MY LAST NIGHT …

… here in my little garret under the eaves. So I intend to make the most of it by doing nothing at all. Actually, there isn’t much to do anything about, as you well know.

But while I was out buying my baguette at lunchtime (I just went to the boulangerie down the road rather than spending reckless money in the Delhaize) I went to check on my new place. It’s still there and not burnt down, and I was able to pick up all of the details about it.

During my stay (of 77 days, I have to say) I will have to change rooms twice, so I’m not complaining too much about that. I just hope that it will be more comfortable than here, and that the facilities are better. From what I saw of a room when I went to visit, it looks okay. I hope that it lives up to first impressions.

Last night’s sleep was much more reasonable. Although I was up and about a couple of times, it was 07:25 when I awoke definitively and I was downstairs eating my breakfast when my alarm went off.

I was going to have a shower today but we seem to be back on the cold water again so I’ll have to wait. See what it’s like tomorrow or else christen my new place accordingly.

Tea was vegetables for couscous with a handful of chick peas, some mushrooms, some boulghour and rice, followed by sliced spicy cake and soya yoghurt. Delicious it was too.

It was rather slow progress on the blog updating today, and I’ve reached as far as 11th September 2010. The reason for this slow progress is that half a dozen pages, just written quickly late at night at the appropriate moment, merited an enormous amount of research and subsequent expansion as well as the addition of piles of photos to improve the illustration. All of this has taken a considerable amount of time but it’s well-worth it.

And, of course, we’ve had the rain today, haven’t we?

So I’ll be off to bed in a few moments to make the most of the last night on the floor on this very tired and sad mattress. See if I can have a good sleep.

But I’ll tell you one thing – and that is that I won’t be sorry to be somewhere else. I don’t regret coming here because it served its purpose when I was practically homeless, and it was only €11 or so per night. but it has really tried my patience and I can’t wait to get into a real bed.

I hope that it lives up to it

Monday 27th June 2016 – THERE’S NO IMPROVEMENT …

… in anything that I mentioned the other day. I still have sleep issues, I’m still plagued by this water retention issue and the weather is still absolutely miserable. I postponed my trip to the shops again today because the weather was so awful but in the end I had to go out – and was soaked for my pains – but I needed the stuff. And while I didn’t buy any olives for my butty, they had some white pickled onions on special offer – a jar at €0:39 – and so for a change I bought a bottle of those.

I suppose that in all honesty sleep was a little better. Although it took me until long after midnight and I was up and down during the night, it was 06:15 when I awoke and I did feel slightly better. I lounged around for a while and it was 09:10 when I went down for breakfast. But then again, I wasn’t in any hurry.

The water retention though – I’m not going to say too much about that. but I’m in the hospital on Wednesday so I shall make a point to mention it to someone. But this is really getting on my nerves.

During the day I’ve been hard at my blog again and I’m now in the middle of July. As I have said before, it’s not as if I have anything else to do with my time right now. And who knows? I might even finish it off sometime in the near future. Only about 450 entries to do.

I had company for tea. There were crowds of us in the kitchen. I had rice, chick peas, veg, boulghour and a vegetable stock cube. And delicious it was too. There was plenty of it and I must have worms because I’ve been nibbling away at stuff since I came back up here.

And so an early night, and probably another restless night too. I’m fed up of all of this but I dunno what else that I can do.

Sunday 26th June 2016 – I’M DISAPPOINTED …

… with that pizza place that I’ve been using. I had an under-cooked pizza a couple of weeks ago, I seem to remember, and tonight’s was even worse. What was even more depressing about it was that while a few weeks ago he might have had a valid excuse, seeing as how the place was packed out, but tonight I was the only customer in there at the time that I ordered.

And so I shan’t be going to that place again – not that it’s a big deal because there’s another pizza place just round the corner from where my new place is and I’ll give that a try. I still have plenty of my sliced vegan cheese left.

Talking of vegan cheese, I had a cheese butty today. There wasn’t enough hummus left for a decent butty, especially as with it being Sunday it was a big baguette from the boulangerie down the road. But with a good supply of vegan cheese, a big tomato and a pile of salad (and a couple of olives) it was delicious.

Mind you, I’ll have to do a big “shop” tomorrow as I’ve now run out of lunchtime stuff.

Last night was a slightly better night as far as I was concerned. I was late dropping off to sleep – long after midnight – and awake early – 05:20 in fact – despite having been up once or twice during the night. But after the 05:20 trip downstairs, I went back to bed, back to sleep and it was 08:20 when I awoke.

I’d been on my travels during the night too – with the mother of a girl who has featured a couple of times in these pages. We were in Marcillat en Combraille and I had to take her home, which involved going into the town square and back out the other side. However she told me of a shorter way through the town that missed out going round the square. It was puzzling to me how come I didn’t know this particular way.

Straight after breakfast, which did include my two bread rolls, I went down to the boulangerie. Although the bad news is that the jam had gone off. I managed to salvage some of it but the rest went into the bin. It’s already been salvaged once so it’s no big deal. I’ll have to buy some more if there’s none supplied in this new place.

Sunday was shower day too, so now I’m nice and clean. But it was touch and go because the water wasn’t very hot. I don’t know what has happened there. I had to make the most of the cool water. It wasn’t very pleasant but still …

As far as the blog goes, I’ve now finished the month of June. Tomorrow, I’ll be starting on July if I have the opportunity. I want to see how my water retention issues go because if there is no improvement I’m going to try to blag my way back into the hospital.

Not that I want to of course, but I can’t go on like this.

Friday 24th June 2016 – THAT WAS A BAD NIGHT

And I’m not talking about the thunderstorm either, which was wicked and I do mean “wicked”. There’s a leak around my window as I may have said before, and there was something of a puddle on the floor when I awoke this morning.

But “awoke” is a big word to use because I don’t remember going to sleep for very long at all. I was tossing and turning right through the night and didn’t manage to settle down at all. If I did manage to find any sleep at all last night, it wouldn’t have been much.

After a few hours updating the blog (I’m well into June 2010) I went into town to do today’s shopping. My route took me as usual past the River Leie on the edge of the city centre and so I went for a butcher’s to see what the thunderstorm had done to the depth of the river.

As you can see, we really did have a pelting last night. There’s almost as much water in the river as fell into my little attic room last night.

You might not believe it, but that is actually a bridge, and underneath it you can usually paddle your own canoe or whatever you might have. But there’s not much chance of that today.

It wasn’t just the depth that was impressive but also the volume of the water. It was a raging torrent and I wouldn’t have liked to have fallen in there. The crowds of people loitering around and photographing the scene were just as impressed as I was

After lunch I carried on with the blog – rather half-heartedly admittedly as my heart isn’t in it, what with the weather and the uncomfortable surroundings.

And I’m not allowing myself anything to drink either, which is agony for me in this hot and oppressive atmosphere. I’m having serious water retention problems and I’m sitting here all day from morning to night in my shoes because if I don’t put them on first thing in the morning, I can’t put them on at all. My legs are swollen right up into the thighs. And not only that, my left arm is swelling up too. I’m really in a bad way right now.

And as for the other major news of the day, you doubtless already know it. How can a nation be so completely stupid? It seems that the Brexiters were taken completely by surprise by their victory as they started backpedalling within an hour or two of the results being declared. That doesn’t look very comforting, does it?

Even worse, the British economy has collapsed, just as everyone predicted that it would.

And it will become worse too. Just you wait and see.

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Tuesday 21st June 2016 – YOU WOULDN’T BELIEVE …

… that it’s the Summer Solstice today. It’s been a cold, miserable, grey wet day today from start to finish, just like a grim February day.

Well, that’s not quite true. The rain did ease off for an hour or so round about midday – just the right time for me to nip out and buy my baguette and a few other bits and pieces for lunch. I wasn’t back all that long before the heavens opened again and that’s how it stayed. Many people have asked why I don’t get out and about and go for much more of an exploration, but in this weather, who can blame me?

I had a bad night again. It was well after midnight before I managed to doze off, despite how tired I must have been after walking to and from the hospital. And I had the odd trip down the corridor too but I was wide-awake by 05:40. I did manage to stay in bed until about 07:00 before I made my start to the day, and I’ve had a little crash-out this afternoon.

So what have I been doing today then.

The short (and the long) answer to this is that I’ve spent most of the day working on my blog, doing a lot of the updating. I’m well into the month of May 2010 and I’m finding that the weather back then was just the same as it is right now – to wit cold and wet. We even had a snowstorm on 5th May 2010 when we were all on our way home from Clermont Ferrand.

For tea tonight I’ve been finishing off the mixture of stuff that I had left over from Friday night.It tasted just as peculiar tonight as it did then, but it wasn’t unpleasant.

The Vietnamese girl was in the kitchen too so I had a good chat to her. Unfortunately, she didn’t seem to be too interested in talking about life in Vietnam and that was what I really wanted to know. People of my generation were brought up with all kinds of tales about life there either in the Communist North or the corrupt American-backed South,and the unification of the country stopped our habitual flow of news. I was keen to have an up-to-date opinion, but it looks as if it won’t be any time soon.

And so tomorrow, I’m off gallivanting again. June and her husband are passing by on their way back to Germany and I’ve invited them to the fritkot for lunch. You can’t pass by Belgium and not visit a fritkot, can you?

Thursday 9th June 2016 – I WAS RIGHT …

… about my return to my bad old sleeping habits. I was awake for hours after I’d finished watching a film, and then I was passing in and out of sleep for the rest of the night. I’d been on my travels too but once I’d finally awoken (at 07:07 for those of you who are interested), I couldn’t remember a single thing.

We’ve had a day of nothing in the way of excitement. I went out to the Delhaize for my baguette and salad, noticing that, once more, the patisserie is still closed.

Apart from that, I’ve been working on the blog, doing some more updating of the older parts of it, and having a little crash out as well, which is hardly any surprise because once the sunshine came round into my room, it was beautiful.

For tea tonight, I had pasta, mixed vegetable and chick peas mixed up with more of the spicy tomato sauce (loads of protein in that) followed by the usual pudding of spicy cake, soya vanilla custard substitute and some mixed fruit in syrup.

Tomorrow, I’ll be off to the big Carrefour for a pile of shopping. I think that I have found a place to stay until the end of the month and so I need to lay a few supplies in. I’ll be having to leave Caliburn parked up while I’m staying there so I’ll need to do a major shop beforehand to make sure that I have everything that I need.

Monday 30th May 2016 – ONE THING THAT I’VE LEARNT TODAY …

… is that I won’t be having my next chemotherapy session for quite a while.

It seems that in the opinion of the hospital, I’m far to ill right now to go through all of the stresses that chemotherapy will provide and they think that I ought to recover first.

I have to say that I don’t like the sound of that one little bit. As far as I’m concerned, being ill doesn’t make the slightest difference. I don’t see an issue about chemotherapy making me any more ill – I’ll be suffering just the same and the quicker the treatment starts, the quicker it will be over and the quicker I’ll start to recover. Waiting until I’m feeling better and then making me ill again is just in my opinion absurd. I only want to be ill once.

And if I don’t improve, then I won’t ever have the chemotherapy and then I’ll be back where I started all of these months ago and that’s really defeating the purpose of my coming here.

As you can tell, I’ve had a visit from the doctor this afternoon. She didn’t stay long and didn’t even give me a check-over – she just came to give me the news.

I had a really bad night again last night. I took ages to go off to sleep, mainly due to the fact that I had a really bad pain right across the right side of my chest. It just wouldn’t go away and I just couldn’t find a comfortable position. It was so bad that I felt like calling for some emergency help (now that’s not like me, is it?) but I managed to hang on.

And then once I did drop off, I kept on waking up time after time after time. I really can’t sleep properly at all in this place. But drop off I must have done, because I was off on my travels again.

I was in a house that I owned, in Nantwich down by Crewe Road end but it wasn’t a terraced house such as is there but a modern semi-detached property. I’d had the morning off work and was due to go in for the afternoon but all kinds of delays were holding me up. eventually, I’d sorted out my pushbike, found my heavy blue-grey overcoat, decided what cap I was going to wear (because it was teeming down outside) and eventually I set off. But it was freezing cold too and I decided that I needed my gloves so had to turn back. And this made me wonder whether it was worth setting out again as the office would be closed by the time that I arrived. But as I reached back home I noticed my red Ford Cortina estate, XCL 465X, in the drive and it had been driven in instead of reversed in, as I always do without fail when I’m parking. That took me completely by surprise.
And a little later we were at a huge Open University Students Association (OUSA) meeting and there were hundreds of us in attendance. I found my way in, nearly last (not like me) and struggled into a corner where there were several people whom I knew, including a girl called Jane who was in my class at school (what she was doing at an OUSA meeting is anyone’s guess). We were having a chat about old times when the meeting abruptly started. The first speaker, a woman we knew, started to talk but went so quick that we couldn’t make notes and everyone bellowed at her in unison to slow down and start again – which she did, but after a couple of minutes started to roar off again and we found it impossible to keep track of what we were saying.

The doctor wasn’t the only visitor that I had either. I had a hospital visitor come to chat with me for a couple of minutes and that was quite a break from my routine. She didn’t have much to say, which was no surprise, but she tried her best to cheer me up and encourage my morale and you can never criticise someone for that.

But while I was talking to her, I somehow managed to put my back out of joint and that hurt for ages. I’m definitely breaking up, aren’t I?

The rest of the day has been quite quiet. I’ve sat in the day room and, for a change, done some work (I need to keep myself properly organised and properly focused), and that’s really my lot. As you know, there’s not really a lot else that I can be doing right now. I need to exert myself a little but it’s not easy. Even if I were to find the motivation, there ust aren’t the opportunities just now.

Still, maybe I’ll cheer up tomorrow.

Wednesday 18th May 2016 – I WAS UP …

… and breakfasting long before the alarm went off this morning. 07:10 if my memory serves me well.

Mind you, I’d been up (and down) on several occasions during the night – I blame the drink that I had drunk while I was making my tea but who knows? And I was struggling on several occasions with the cramp again. It looks as if that has come back too.

I was off on my travels during the night. I was living in North America playing in a rock group and the other members of the group had seen a map of Europe and were intrigued by some of the literal (and not very correct) translations of European place-names and so we were keen to go and tour them. This involved registering with the European police in order to obtain a permit to travel, and in the end there were six groups registered, who could either tour individually, in pairs or all six together. So off we set and our first port of call was at an open-air music festival. We’d arrived during the night and set up camp in a big tent, all four of us sleeping in a large double bed. But next morning we awoke and went for a prowl around. Our attention was drawn to a huge “bigfoot” type of vehicle, so tall that two other vehicles were parked underneath it. It had a huge canopy over the right-hand side too, for sheltering passengers climbing up into the vehicle. We thought that it was a Duesenberg at first but closer examination revealed that it had the Chevrolet “bow tie” insignia on the front radiator grille.

But after breakfast, I’ve not done very much at all. I’ve not even been out of the house. I’ve spent some time catching up with the blog and that’s really about all. I’m still feeling the effects of the cork that I did yesterday and I’ve crashed out twice – once this morning and once this afternoon. And I’ve been cold too. I’ve not been warm since I’ve been back, but today was even worse.

And so I’m off to bed very shortly. I’m having a day out tomorrow and I need to be on form so I’ll call it a day and go to listen to the radio programmes. As I said before, I just can’t keep it up these days, can I?

Monday 16th May 2016 – NOW, THAT’S MORE LIKE IT!

I crawled off to bed at something silly last night like 20:45 or thereabouts. I know that it was still light but I didn’t really care too much because all that I was intending to do was to listen to the radio programmes that I’ve downloaded onto my laptop.

Sometime shortly afterwards, I drifted off and apart from a couple of trips down the corridor during the night, I remember almost nothing until the alarm went off at 07:45. And I could have turned right over and gone back to sleep too. But that’s just the kind of sleep that I’ve been hoping to have for quite a while.

During the night, I was flying off to Canada too. A big wide-bodied jet and I was sitting in one of the seats in the middle,and next to me was quite an attractive lady with black hair and a black dress. She got up to use the facilities and a couple of minutes later, this big black dog (on an aeroplane!) came and sat on the empty seat next to me. I gave it a stroke but I was really hoping that it would go so that the woman would come back but the dog stayed and stayed, and that was that. On arrival in Canada we docked at gate 37, the very farthest gate away from the terminal, but we all ran to the immigration desk and found that we were the first people there. There were three desks, two of which had about 12 people each and the third which had just two or three. I was wondering about this – suppose that I went to the one with the fewest people there and found that it was reserved for something special and was turned away, I’d lose the benefit of having been one of the first to have arrived at the immigration desks.

I had a good day today too. It started off (and finished) by me cracking on with the blog. All of March 2011 is done, as is the bits of April 2011 that I seem to have missed at some time or other, and I’m well into May 2011. I’ll really be catching myself up soon at this rate.

I’ve also had a good go at Caliburn. The back has been emptied, tidied, a load of stuff consigned to the bin and then I’ve sorted out the stuff that I’m leaving behind and the stuff that I’m taking back. You might be wondering why I didn’t take the leaving stuff up to my house, but the answer to that is that it’s a Bank Holiday and there are other tasks that I need to perform that depend upon places being open so I’m combining all of the trips tomorrow.

But the amount of stuff that I’ve taken out of Caliburn means that he’ll go a good 5kph faster on the way back to Belgium on Saturday.

Another thing of note for recent times is that I managed not to crash out this afternoon. Despite the odd wave of fatigue I kept going for the whole day and so now I’m ready for a really early night. I’ll be listening to the radio again in bed until I fall asleep and then I’ll see where I end up tonight.

Sunday 15th May 2016 – A GOOD, SOLID, UNINTERRUPTED SLEEP

That was what i was hoping for yesterday. And did I get it?

I was in bed by 22:00 and fell asleep listening to some of the radio programmes that I recorded years ago from www.archive.org. Something awoke me rather dramatically an hour or so later and although I don’t know what it was, I did notice that Liz had been trying to speak to me on the internet. I replied to her but ended up going right back to sleep in the middle of the discussion. I really can’t last the pace these days, can I?

There was the usual trip down the corridor at some time during the night, and I was awake again at 06:30. But badger that for a game of soldiers, I turned over and went back to sleep. Next thing that I remember was at 07:30 and then I really couldn’t go back to sleep. By 07:45 I was up and about, preparing breakfast and looking for my medication which I seem to have left behind me in Pellenberg. Ahhh well!

At least it was a nice, sunny start to the day. The sun has followed me down here, so it seems, and just after breakfast it was streaming down the back of my neck for a while. And that was extremely pleasant.

As for today, I’ve been torn between three stools.

I’ve done two machine-loads of washing. All of the stuff that I had in Belgium with me plus all of the washing that was hanging around back at my house. There’s still plenty left over to do, but I’ll do another load just before I leave, and then everything will be up to date for when I return, whenever that might be.
I’ve been cracking on with the blog, bringing it up to to date. I’ve finished all of February 2011 and now I’m well stuck into March. If I’m not careful, I’ll be catching myself up
I’ve been drifting in and out of sleep too. I’m nothing like as young as I used to be and my health is still quite fragile as you know. It’s hardly surprising that I haven’t caught up with myself yet but I hope that I have done by this evening as I have a lot to do starting tomorrow

Liz had left me a ginger cake that she had made, and a slice of that went down a treat with my afternoon coffee. But there was no garlic – I ended up having to make garlic bread with a shallot and that’s not the same thing. I must buy some garlic if I want to do some cooking here.

So now, I’m going off for yet another early night and I’ll see how I get on. Tomorrow, I have to go back to chez moi and start my plans.

Tidying up Caliburn is the first item on the agenda.

Saturday 14th May – NOW …

… that was much more like it. That was the most comfortable sleep that I have had for weeks. It was a shame though that my room was on the ground floor on the outside of the building at the foot of the stairs because I was kept awake for ages by some family group chatting at the foot of the stairs before they went their separate ways, and badger me if it wasn’t them again in the morning waking me up again.

But when I was gone, I was really gone.

I was away with the fairies during the night too. The first part concerned one of these reality TV shows and in this case it was a group of people who were setting up a garage – how they had to clear out some derelict and abandoned place, sort out the stuff inside, secure some stock-in-trade and set themselves up to do some work. They had three or four front-ends of minis, complete with subframes and engines, up on a ramp leading to the upper floor. All of this seemed to be so familiar and I wondered if I’ve been here before on another one of my nocturnal rambles just recently.
A little later, I was interviewing some woman. She was a single mother who worked as a school bus driver out in the Macclesfield area and had been transferred to a different route which went higher up on the moors on the Derbyshire border and in the snow. I was interested to see how she was doing with the difference in driving conditions, but she said that she hadn’t noticed the difference.

Breakfast cost me €5:00 and I had my money’s worth too. And then afterwards, I had an hour on the blog doing some more updating – I need to keep on at it.

The journey down to here was uneventful, apart from the weather. Yesterday I was having 28.6°C in Leuven and its surroundings. This morning it was a mere 12.6°C at Melun and the weather gradually deteriorated. We had fog, hanging clouds, rain, all kinds of stuff and the temperature dropped as low as 9°C. Definitely not the summer weather we should be having.

I called in at the Carrefour at Moulins to do a pile of shopping – some tins to take back to Belgium next weekend and also some food to eat while I’m down here. I can’t nibble away at Liz and Terry’s supplies.

My house is totally overgrown with weeds and the like and it was a struggle to get in there. I really must do something about that sometime (although I’m not sure when). I had a scrounge around and rescued all of the washing which I’ll do tomorrow and give it time to dry out before I go back. I’m going back to chez moi a couple of times during the week to tidy out Caliburn and get him organised for the next round of visits.

While I was there, I sorted out the post. No bank card yet, but there was a nasty bill that my insurance should have paid but it seems that they haven’t. On Monday, I’ll have to get on the case.

In St Gervais d’Auvergne I bought the last loaf of bread in France and then came back here narrowly avoiding squashing a team of motorcycle scramblers out for a run around, and then crashed out for a couple of hours (no surprise here).

For tea, I’ve had baked potatoes, baked beans and veggie-burgers and it was gorgeous. Now I’m going to crash out again and I hope that I’ll stay in bed until Monday. I need a good, solid uninterrupted sleep.

Thursday 12th May 2016 – HA HA HA!

Who was it who said something about “an early night” last night then?

For not only having stayed awake to watch a Mr Moto film (starring Peter Lorre in the title role), I stayed awake and awake and awake, and I was still tossing and turning at 03:45 this morning. So much for my predictions.

But I did manage to drop off to sleep at some point, and I was back at my old school, with a pile of girls, climbing up (not down) a rope of sheets trying to get in through a window or onto a balcony. And as for why I might be doing this, I’m afraid that I don’t have the foggiest. It’s gone clean out of my mind.

For the first time in ages I slept right through until the alarm went off and, resisting the temptation to turn over and go back to sleep, I went off for breakfast. Mind you, I paid for it later on in the day, crashing out at about 17:00 for an hour or so.

After breakfast, I went off on a prowl with the intention of exploring this famous bio shop in the Tiensestraat in Bierbeek about which I had heard so much. I’d driven past it the other evening but I didn’t have time to stop.

It’s certainly good at what it does, that’s for sure, but for me it was a little disappointing because there was none of the vegan cheese that I like. There was some – a kind of spreading mozzarella substitute – so I bought a couple of packs to see how it goes

I also bought a beautiful seeded baguette for lunch (which tasted delicious) and a couple of raisin buns, but I’ll be passing on the Knacker diabolique vegan sausages though. No matter how nice they looked, I couldn’t cope with the name.

But here’s another example of me having to change my national stereotypes. This shop, the Bio Planet, is another establishment that offers free coffee to customers, and there are a few broken biscuits to sample too, so I’ve added it to my ever-increasing list.

Things are definitely looking up here in Belgium.

And that’s not all either.

Just across the road is a Krefel electrical appliance shop so I went over there for a butcher’s. And I was astonished – really astonished. When have you EVER seen a standard-size domestic fridge that has a rated annual consumption of just 64 kilowatts per year? That is amazing.

And if you think that the fridge next to it, the one with freezer compartment, is equally astonishing at 98 kilowatts per year, there was one further down the row that had a rated consumption of just 93 kilowatts per year

And if that isn’t enough, the best is yet to come. Here in the shop was a standard-size freezer with an annual consumption of 101 kilowatts per annum.

This figure, and the one of 64 kw/A for the fridge, are figures that I have never ever seen for these appliances and had I been in a better place in my life right now, the fridge and freeze would be coming back home with me.

The fridge actually uses much less energy than the little 12-volt fridge that I have, and the freezer would go nicely in the barn running off the solar panels and wind turbine in there. I’d be set up for life with this lot.

You may remember the other day that I was moaning that my vegan cheese had been “tidied away” from the fridge at Sint Pieters. I knew that I wouldn’t have time to go back to Brussels for more and how I’d be stuck for my next series of travels.

But no longer, because here in the Carrefour – a mainstream supermarket – they are now selling vegan cheese slices too, and at about two-thirds the price of anywhere else over here. I was equally as astonished by this.

Yes, things are definitely looking up in Belgium right now.

Back here, I’ve pushed on with updating the older bits of the blog. In a mad fit of enthusiasm I’ve done all of January 2011 and I’m stuck well into February. But I won’t be going much further than this for now because I’m leaving here tomorrow as you know. I’m going to have a check-up and then I’m hitting the road.

I did mention that I crashed out this afternoon, and I had a strange occurrence when I awoke. I had a dizzy spell and was staggering around in here for five minutes until I sat down and gathered my wits (it doesn’t take me very long these days).

And for tea, I had pasta and ratatouille followed by spicy loaf and soya cream for pudding. Now I’m off to bed and I shan’t say anything more because I don’t want to tempt fate.

Wednesday 11th May 2016 – JUST FOR A CHANGE …

… I had something of a better night last night, falling asleep in the middle of a film at 22:15 and managing just one wander down the alleyway. I’d done some tossing and turning while I was in bed but nothing like as much as recently, and by 05:45 I was pretty much awake. 07:00 saw me with a coffee and a laptop, doing some work, and when was the previous time that you had ever heard of this?

It gave me an opportunity to write down where I’d been during the night before I forgot most of it (an experience that has been far too common this last week or so), and here we go.

There was a bunch of us in the Lion and Swan (the Boddingtons pub in West Street, Crewe) and it was after hours so all of the doors were locked. There was a banging from the window and someone from outside asking “I’m looking for a job. Is there any work available?”. The landlady went out to see and it turned out that it was some man, an Irish guy, who was doing the rounds trying to find work. The landlady made a few enquiries and found out that this person was under some kind of obligation to stay in Ireland and she was wondering whether the relevant people knew that he was now turning up in Crewe looking for work as if he intended to stay here.
From there, I rambled off into some James Bond-esque kind of adventure (we’ve been doing a bit of this just recently) involving some person who had gone missing. This involved a search of several places, some of which were quite impressive houses of the type that you would only find in Mayfair, but searched they were just the same. One of these houses was occupied by some kind of dowager-type of woman who dressed in keeping with her status and property and she allowed the search to take place but at one point, she simply disappeared. The hero made an inspection and discovered that there seemed to be a false panel in the wall and he reasoned that she had slipped behind it. He simply loitered in the vicinity because he was sure that she would reappear. And sure enough, she slipped out from behind the panel (where there was a stairway leading to a secret part of the house). As her head came into view he hit her so had in the face that the term “a glass jaw” was never ever more appropriate because you could hear the crash and tinkle right the way through the house.

While I was down at the kettle making my coffee, I noticed that we seem to have had a bird-strike during the night. I don’t remember seeing this outline on the window yesterday. And this looks very much owl-like if you ask me, poor thing.

But this brings me back to something else that I have been saying for 20 years. There are some foolish, misguided people who object to wind turbines on the grounds that birds fly into the blades and die. And there are other foolish and misguided people who object to wind turbines on the grounds that they make too much noise. But I’ve always wondered about if they make so much noise, why do birds fly into them? One would have thought that the birds would have heard the noise (and felt the turbulence too). But here, we have “living” proof that glass window panes are very harmful to the health of birds. Do these people then refuse to fit glass windows into their houses, or are they the typical, usual NIMBY hypocrites?

I think we should be told.

Once breakfast was out of the way, I needed to go off and organise my baguette for lunch. This involved, as usual, a trek of about 100 miles to the Spar shop at Lubbeek because there doesn’t appear to be anywhere closer

This is the baguette here, and those of you with eagle eyes will notice the weight of the baguette on the label because it’s going to be quite important in a very short minute.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that Belgium is “special” and Belgian maths are no different in this respect.

And so here’s a question – if a whole baguette weighs 250 grams, how much do you think half a baguette weighs?

And now check your answer with the weight shown in this photo just here and see if you are correct according to Belgian mathematics. How did you get on?

And so apart from that, I’ve been bashing out the blog – or, at least, the month of April 2011 – to make it conform to the new in-house standards. This has been quite a complicated month to do, and for a couple of reasons too.

Firstly I had to completely revise several entries for that month. Some entries were done in haste and would benefit from a complete revision. Not only that, a couple of them were quite important, if not significant, and so it was quite important that they were as complete and coherent as possible with as many photos as possible too.

Secondly, some blog entries didn’t exist. Back in the older days of this blog, if I were on the road I would blog whenever I had the opportunity, incorporating two, three, or sometimes many, many days into one entry. More recently though, I’ve been blogging every night (or sometimes, first thing the following morning) and if there was no internet access , I’d save them as text files and add them individually at the next opportunity. This is how I want my blog to be and so I’ve had to revise a pile of entries in order to reflect the “day-to-day” nature of the blog.

All of that has taken me all of the day, believe it or not, and I’ve not long finished. I did however have a little cheat and crashed out for over an hour at 16:00. And while I was “away”, I was watching a film, Carry on Christmas (and I don’t mean the cameo TV programmes but what passed as a real full-length feature film) in the company of the girl who has been described on these pages as “the one that got away”.

I spoke to Liz on the internet for ages too, and had a repeat of the delicious tea that I had last night – and it tasted even better too.

So tonight I’ll have an early night, watch a film, and prepare for an early start again tomorrow.

Nighty-night!

Tuesday 10th May 2016 – SO, WHAT ARE THE NEW DIGS LIKE, THEN?

First of all, it made a pleasant change to wake up and hear the birds singing. For the last few weeks I’ve been waking up to hear the birds coughing.

My room looks out towards the west, away from the campus, and I have the sun streaming in here towards the end of the afternoon and all of that is quite nice.

And that, I’m afraid, is about that.

Firstly, there’s no private toilet. I have to wander off down the corridor which, three or four times during the night, is going to be rather inconvenient to say the least.

Having had a bad night’s sleep yet again (I just can’t get comfy these days) and totally forgetting a dream that I was having, I staggered off in search of breakfast only to be told that … errr … there isn’t any. It’s not supplied.

Neither is coffee. And there’s nothing to cook on, no water fountain, no laundry room, no absolutely nothing.

The building itself is fairly modern – 1960s or 1970s I reckon, and has the air of being some kind of isolation hospital. And in the 50 or whatever years since it’s been built, I reckon that it hasn’t seen a lick of paint or an ounce of modernisation in the areas that I saw.

However, you can’t argue with the setting and if it’s peace and quiet that you want, then you can’t go far wrong here because there isn’t going to be anything to disturb you.

It’s set in huge grounds that have the appearance of having once been landscaped, and on peering through the trees there’s a really impressive chateau down there surrounded by a lake – or moat even.

I was tempted to go for a good browse around and to see what gives at the chateau but it was raining quite heavily on and off and so I’ve taken a rain-check on that and I’ll be looking into this at a later date.

So the first thing to do was to sort out some food for breakfast.

Alison had given me some dry-toasted biscuits and I had some strawberry jam. There was some grapefruit juice that I had bought last night and I had fetched some coffee from home. So that was breakfast all properly organised.

As for lunch; I nipped out in Caliburn to look for a baguette and ended up having to drive about a hundred blasted miles to Lubbeek before I found anywhere. And there wasn’t a single fritkot or cheapo fast food place anywhere on the way.

So what did I do for tea then?

Well, there’s a camping stove, some water, a saucepan, some pasta, some tins of mushrooms, some tins of mixed veg and a few jars of tomato sauce and so I cooked in the back of Caliburn like I did in France two years ago when I was in those digs in Rennes-les-Bains where there was no restaurant open. Some slices of that spicy cake with soya cream and I had a meal for for a King.

The secret of all of these matters is “preparation”. If you prepare for the problems, they don’t become problems, do they?

And how have I occupied my time?

Apart from tiptoeing through the tulip … errr … raindrops, I’ve been working on the blog again bringing it further up-to-date. I’ve probably done another 10 days today so I’m making a fair bit of progress.

And I’ve been on the phone to the bank (which took me about an hour and I shudder to thing how much that will cost me) for I’ve mislaid my bank card. I can’t find it anywhere at the moment and I need to order it because if I do go back home for a week, it needs to be there when I’m there so that I can bring it back with me.

My plans of finding a little studio or flat have come to nothing too. It seems that no-one will consider a lease for less than a year, so a four-month lease is out of the question for me. Good job that I have a Plan C, as well a plan B.

So now, I’m going to have an early night and see if I can remember what happens while I’m on my travels. I’m rather letting the side down right at the moment.

EPIC HALL

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