Tag Archives: belgium

Friday 11th November 2016 – I’VE ONLY BEEN …

… out of the building twice today.

Once was to the supermarket for my baguette this morning, and the second time was to go back out to the supermarket tonight for a black plastic storage crate that I saw in the rubbish. Unfortunately I’d forgotten about it so it was rather too late when I went out there, and it had already disappeared.

Ahhh well!

And it’s Wapenstilstand – Armistice day today so most of the shops were closed. Even though it was only 08:45 when I went for my baguette, there were only three left. That was pretty good timing, I reckon.

Apart from that, I’ve been talking to friends on the laptop, spent some time working on my web pages about the Coasts of Labrador, and … errr … had a little doze too.

Tea was the rest of last night’s kidney bean whatsit with pasta followed by one of these soya-based coconut dessert things.

Last night though I had something of a disturbed night, although my bed is quite comfortable and I’m reasonably-well installed here. And I was on my own for breakfast which makes a nice change. But it’s quite noisy now as a group of people has just arrived.

I hope that I have a good night’s sleep tonight then.

Thursday 10th November2016 – I HAD RATHER A …

… restless night last night. It took me ages to drop off to sleep. And then I was awake long before the alarm went off.

Nevertheless, I hadn’t had to leave my bed during the night and no only that, I’d had a busy night being away on my travels. And, as usual these days, the whole lot disappeared the moment I awoke.

I was on my own at first for breakfast but I was soon joined by some others. I wasn’t that much alone. And back here afterwards, I couldn’t find the motivation to start on my website. Concentration and motivation seem to be lacking right now and I don’t know why after my successes just recently.

By the time 11:00 came round, I went off to Caliburn to sort out some of the stuff that i’ll need here for the next week, and then down to the Carrefour by the football ground to pick up some sandwich stuff.

On the way back here I went via Caliburn to pick up the stuff that I had sorted out, and found later on when I was making my tea that I had forgotten a storage container for the other half of tea for tomorrow.

After lunch I had a good chat with two or three people and I also crashed out for a while. And not only that, I did manage to do some kind of work on my website.I also went down to the bistro to pay for my lodgings but once more, there was no-one there.

For tea I made pasta, kidney beans, veg and tomato sauce thickened with boulghour. And there’s half left for tomorrow which I had to leave in the saucepan as I didn’t have anywhere else to leave it.

I also had a chat with the landlord of this place about my ongoing health problems. He might be able to work out a good deal for me if I stay here. And I might just accept it too because I don’t really know where else to go for the next three or four months that I might have to stay here.

I’ll have to think long and hard about this.

Wednesday 9th November 2016- AT LEAST THE WEATHER …

… didn’t let me down today.

I was expecting the sun to be out and that we would have brilliant weather today seeing as I was leaving Oostende today. But instead, it was pouring down and windy just like the rest of the time that I had spent here.

As soon as the alarm went off I was up and about, even before the reminder. And I’d had a really good night’s sleep too, with nothing to disturb me whatever. A long time since I’d had such a deep and satisfying sleep, even though there was only six and a half hours of it.

after a quick shower and a change of clothes, I was downstairs for breakfast. First yet again although I was soon joined by others. And once I’d finished, I was back upstairs, packed and out of the door by 08:40.

I had plenty of time to wait for my train at the station, although it was cold there in the temporary waiting room. I wasn’t half pleased to be on the train. It was bang on time too and really comfortable, so much so that I cracked on with the work that I’ve been doing on my website.

It was still pouring down when I arrived in Leuven, and after gathering my wits I went off to Caliburn to drop off the stuff that I don’t need, and that was a long walk in the rain. And one thing that I did was to find the fleece lining for my rain jacket. I’d been freezing in Oostende.

Bang on time at the hospital, and I was quickly organised. They plugged a catheter in and took a blood sample. And my blood count is stable, as is my protein loss. That’s a surprise. I only wish that the blood was stable at 12.2, not 9.7.

And then – they forgot me yet again. And after reminding them, they finally got back to me at 17:45. It seems, in what can only be really bad news, they need to take two-weekly controls of my urine and kidneys for the next … errr … three months at least. And that’s before we start talking about the blood situation – for which I have an appointment next week.

You’ve no idea just how dismayed I am by all of this.

At least there’s a room free at the hostel and so I’m now back there for a week. And who knows? I might even be able to go home again after my appointment next week if there’s a fortnightly pause. But I want a place of my own. I can’t go on like this living out of a suitcase in a hostel room.

Alison came round later and we went out for a meal and a coffee. And a guided tour of Leuven as a new one-way system that’s been installed led us everywhere except where we wanted to go.

Now I’m off to bed. Thoroughly depressed, thoroughly fed up.

and if my next blog is from Mars or Uranus or somewhere like that, don’t be surprised. What is happening in the western world has filled me full of dismay for the last twenty years and the news this morning has made me want to emigrate to another planet somewhere.

Whatever is the world coming to?

Tuesday 8th November 2016 – I HAD A BIT …

… of a bad day today.

Not the night though. I had a really good sleep and knew nothing whatever about anything at all.

I was up and about before the second alarm went off, and after a shower and a shave I was down at breakfast even before opening time. A few minutes later I was joined by a crew of workers who seem to be staying here. It disturbed my solitude considerably.

I was back up here soon enough and then I started to have a little crisis. Nothing serious, but I couldn’t concentrate and I couldn’t focus on what I wanted to do. This might not seem significant, especially if I were to say that it’s rather like I’ve been for the last year or so, but it’s a considerable step back from the more dynamic me that has resurfaced over the past week or so.

I had a phone call too. They want to change my medication so we can do that tomorrow.

At 10:30, I struggled out of my room and went right across time to the Delhaize for my baguette and some grapes, and then a walk back along the promenade. I was tempted to go into one of these holiday letting agencies to see if they had any studios to let at a decent price. But I ruled that out when I saw the prices. Even off-season in the middle of winter it’s cheaper to stay in this hotel, and staying at that hostel in Leuven is a bargain. It looks as if I might be stuck there for the foreseeable future if I have to stay in Leuven.

After lunch, I crashed out for a good hour or so – really out of it too – and in the middle of a conversation with a friend too. and it was a struggle to bring myself round. And I certainly didn’t feel like going out for my afternoon coffee. And that’s how it’s been all day.

This evening, I had a major disappointment. That pizza place I visited on Sunday was advertising pasta dishes and they looked absolutely wonderful. I’d set my heart on one of them and I’d saved it for tonight as a farewell to Oostende. How I was looking forward it too and so I went round there tonight for my pasta … and it was closed.

Drat and double-drat!

I ended up with a salad bap and a bag of chips instead and it’s nothing like the same.

So now, being fed up and disappointed and not too well, I’m off to bed. I hope that I feel better tomorrow for I’m hitting the road for Leuven tomorrow.

I wonder what will happen at the hospital?

Monday 7th November 2016 – I WASN’T …

… the first down at breakfast this morning.

Just for a change, I had a good sleep with just one trip down the corridor, and was still asleep when the alarm went off. I’d been a-travelling too, but once again, don’t ask me where I went to because once again, it all disappeared immediately after I awoke.

Plenty of time for a quick shower and shave and then downstairs for breakfast bang on 07:30, to find that while I was the only person in there, several of the tables,including my favourite, were littered with dirty crockery and cutlery. I had to sit somewhere else

At about 10:30 I went out into town for my daily baguette. And as I came to the pedestrian zone, this sign caught my eye. It lists everything that you are not allowed to do in the city, as far as local by-laws go, and the penalties that you can incur.

So “use of alcohol in a public place”, “leaving litter”, “urinating” and “letting your dog foul the street” can cost you between €59 to €250.

“Being drunk in public”, “Being under the influence of drugs”, “fighting” and “the bearing of arms” will result in a court appearance.

And so you have been warned.

Americans like to brag that they invented the shopping mall – undercover shopping galleries – but that’s far from the truth.

The first undercover shopping gallery dates from the Middle Ages and is in Brussels – we’ve visited it on several occasions during the past. And here’s another Belgian shopping gallery, in Oostende. You never saw an American shopping mall looking as nice as this.

And why is shopping in North America so boring? Well, when you’ve seen one bunch of shops you’ve seen a mall.

I walked all the way down the pedestrian street to the docks to see what was happening down here. But never mind that for a moment – have you noticed the sky? We have a pile of blue sky there and not a cloud in the sky.

And do you remember that pile-driver that we saw in the pedestrian street on Saturday? Going past it this morning, I noticed that it had grown a little higher and there were a few extra bits attached. It’s now a crane.

Crossing over the road, I took a photo of the docks looking the other way. The sea is down there.

Also down there is the station building, although the trains don’t stop there now. They pull up about 50 yards short – you can see the modern roof of the train shed on the right-hand edge of the photo.

The building was also the interchange for the cross-channel boats. Oostende was formerly a very important cross-channel ferry port and in the period 1846-1997 all of the passengers passed through the 1913 building there or through a previous building on the site.

Having been to the Delhaize to buy a baguette and some grapes, I went for a walk along the promenade again.

When I was here in 2014 there was a great deal of building work being undertaken hereon the beach. And now, they seem to have finished it. They have erected a huge new sea wall here as you can see on the left of the photo. There was a walkway along it and so I reckoned that I would go for a walk down to the end.

From halfway down the walkway on top of the new sea wall, there was a really good view of the sea front.

I first came to Oostende in the mid-1970s and anyone who hasn’t been here since those days won’t recognise it at all. It’s changed quite considerably since the 1980s when I spent several happy weeks here with Nerina and again when I was driving coaches for Shearings. Almost all of the places that I knew have been swept away.

The port of Oostende had declined considerably over the last 20 years. The port down there used to be heaving with ships and there was always something going on.

However ferries no longer leave here for the UK since Transmanche Ferries went into liquidation in 2013 and the port installations are slowly declining. There’s just the odd cruise ship that calls here now – we saw one of those in 2014 – and there’s the odd ship laid up in there every now and again.

This is really all that you can hope to see today unless you are very lucky. It looks as if it’s a fishing boat, heading out of the port on its way to the North Sea.

Fishing is quite an important part of the way of life of Oostende and a great deal of fish are landed here. I talked about the fishmarket here when we went for a walk around the town on Saturday. It’s one of the major attractions of the town.

Here’s another shot of the sea front here at Oostende. Again, it’s all totally different from 20 years ago.

There’s a monument there – a huge one of a sailor looking out to sea and is a memorial to all of those who set out to sea and never came back. As for what are hidden by the orange covers, I really have no idea. I imagine that I’ll have to come back in the summer for a better look.

But you can see what Oostende is so popular with holidaymakers and tourists. The beaches really are magnificent.

The new sea wall, upon which i’m standing, will shelter this beach, hopefully from the wind and definitely from the rough waves, and this will encourage more tourists to visit here.

By the way, the entrance to the port is just there to the left, with the harbour entrance light on the end.

Here’s the new harbour entrance, with the new sea wall just here where I’m standing and on the other side of the entrance is a nice, new harbour entrance light that looks as if it’s made of concrete.

The entrance looks rather narrow to me and I suppose that it’s a good job that ferries and large ships no longer sail into the port. It doesn’t make for comfortable manoeuvring

So here I am, right down at the end of the harbour. I can’t go any farther than here and so i’ll have tu turn back.

But you’ve noticed in one of the earlier photos we had a beautiful-ish blue sky, and you will also notice that the further around we have walked, the more the weather has closed in.

As I was out here at the end of the sea wall, the weather finally broke and it started to rain heavily. That put an end to my walk and I headed back to the hotel. I’d been out for two hours, which is pretty good going just recently.

By the time I returned to the hotel I was soaked and thoroughly fed up. I’m not having the best of the weather. I made my butty and then attacked the next stage of my website – to write up what happened on my trips around the Trans-Labrador Highway in 2014 and 2015 – and hoping that I might be able to make another trip in 2017 if I can to see what further changes have been made since my previous visit.

But that wasn’t all I did – or didn’t, as the case may be. I ended up crashing out for half an hour too, as well as having a chat with Liz on the internet.

I went out for coffee at 17:00 but do you know – not a single cafe on the front in the vicinity of the hotel was open. Well – one was open but the barman said that it was closed. I had a coffee in the lounge in here instead.

For tea, I went to a falafel place that I had discovered while I was on my travels. It was pretty good too although, like everywhere else in Oostende, it’s more expensive than in Leuven.

So now, I’ll have an early night. Tomorrow is my last full day here and I have things to do.

Sunday 6th November 2016 – HOW MANY …

… Epichalls do you see in this photograph?

The lift here in the hotel is lined with mirrors and you can make some quite interesting images using all of the reflections if you feel like it. I mean, I’m always feeling like it and so I went to take a photo as I was going out for a walk.

I went out early for a loaf of bread. There is a boulanger in the vicinity but as you might expect, it’s closed for the holidays. But the Spar supermarket in the town centre is open and I could buy a baguette in there.

I’d had a really good night’s sleep last night. I had to leave the bed just once and how I wished that I didn’t have to leave it at all. I’d had some exciting travels too but just like all the time recently, everything disappeared as soon as the alarm went off.

I had a lie-in too. The alarm was set for 07:00 and a repeat at 07:15 as usual, but I set the snooze function for an extra 10 minutes. I was still first downstairs for breakfast too, and excellent it was yet again.

I said that I was out for a walk this morning, but it wasn’t a walk that I had, but some exercise. Get it out of the way early. A brief 50-yard dash down the promenade after my cap which had blown off in the gale-force winds. It was wicked out there today.

You can probably tell that, not only from the waves out there but also for the lack of people on the promenade. It was deserted this morning.

The sun came out while I was out there in the wind, and so I ended up going for a walk on the beach. Hardly a soul about as you can see, but there was something exciting going on out there offshore.

I’ve no idea what it was, but there was an orange rescue launch out there together with some kind of tug or similar boat that was spraying water everywhere. Maybe it was some kind of fire-fighting exercise, I dunno. But the camera on the phone is no good for this kind of thing in this kind of weather.

I carried on along the beach which was deserted despite the sunshine. The kiosks were locked up, as you might expect.

But just there further down on the left are the Royal Galleries. They were built at the turn of the 20th Century on the orders of King Leopold II during the Golden Years of the Belgian state and was intended to be part of a royal palace. Nowadays though, the complex is a luxury hotel, a room in which is well out of the pocket of people such as you and me.

Ther’s also the huge skyscraper block of apartments down there, and how I would love to have a studio right at the top of it.

I’ve had a busy, and successful day on the website today. And now, there are five extra pages loaded, one, two, three, four and five, all about the final 40 kilometres of Highway 138 on the border between the Province of Quebec and the Province of Newfoundland and Labrador. It was quite an amount of work.

It’s a fairly controversial stretch of road, but nothing like as controversial as the 300 or so kilometres that the Quebec Government hasn’t built. You need to read what I’ve written to find out what is going on. It’s certainly a rather sad story.

I went back out later in the late afternoon for a coffee. Braving the howling gales and driving rain. It was definitely wicked out there this evening.

And to finish off the day, it’s Sunday so it’s pizza night. I found a tiny backstreet pizza place and I had a few slices of vegan cheese left. The pizza was delicious but once again, no-one in Belgium knows how to make a proper pizza base.

So now it’s early-night time. Only three more sleeps here and then it’s back to Leuven. And who knows where I’ll be after that.

Saturday 5th November 2016 – AND SO, WHAT WAS THE VERDICT?

While you admire the Kursaal Casino across the roads and the UFOs that are circling around it, I’l fill you in about the breakfast.

i was actually the first down this morning and they weren’t quite ready for me. But once it was organised, I ended up with muesli and fruit salad followed by fresh baguette, bread rolls and apricot jam. It goes without saying that there was as much coffee and orange juice as I cared to drink.

While you likewise admire the sea, which is 50 yards down there past the Ambassador hotel, I’ll reassure you about the breakfast, to say that what I had was just a small sample of what was on offer. The tables really were groaning under the weight of it all.

If it weren’t for this restrictive diet that I’m on, I wouldn’t need to eat for a week after all of what I could in theory have for breakfast.

All in all, here’s once very happy and contented bunny writing out his blog.

I had an excellent sleep last night once I’d dozed off. I had to leave the bed once and that’s all, and then I was wide awake at 06:40. I’d been on some exciting travels too but, true to force, the memory of them didn’t last all that long once I was awake.

By the tile the second alarm went off, I was in the shower having a good scrub – and then first down to the breakfast.

I went out and about somewhere round by 11:00. On shopping duty.

There’s a huge pedestrian street that runs right through the centre of the town and this is where you find all of the shops. I mentioned that this week is Toussaint, school half-term, and there are kids everywhere. It goes without saying that we have a fair here in the square. It brightens up the place, even though it isn’t a patch on the old Traction Engine Rallies at Bishop’s Castle.

The pedestrian centre was cut in two with diversions signposted apparently (I couldn’t see them). There’s some demolition going on, and this huge piledriver is here ready to do its stuff.

The diversion took me past the Hotel Cardiff, and I seem to recall having stayed here at one time about 30 years ago. Back in those days it was something of a dive but that was a long time ago. Judging by the reviews, it’s undergone a huge programme of renovation and it seems to be a popular place with loads of good reviews.

My ramble took me down to the harbour and through the market. And then I crossed the marina to the other side and the Delhaize supermarket.

From there, there’s a good view of the Onze Lieve Vrouwe College, the College of Our Beloved Lady. This would appear to be a High School of some description and judging by its name, is atached in some way to the Catholic Church in a similar way to the Sacré Coeur schools

I stocked up with salad stuff and a baguette for lunch, as well as a bag of really delicious red grapes, and then wandered around to the top end of the marina near the swing bridge to take a photograph of the scene.

But you can see the weather that we are having today. There are a pile of heavy grey clouds over there to the left of the photo. Even so, the view really is quite attractive

I walked back along the water front. It’s famous for the seafood market – you can’t move without tripping over a pile of fish and other items of edible sea stuff. I have no idea at all what wulloks are, and having stuck my head into the pot, I don’t really think that I want to know. I do know that I won’t be eating any.

But there have been loads of changes along here since I last visited. My favourite hotel has disappeared and been replaced by a block of flats. But I did check out a few other hotels instead just in case I ever need one in a hurry.

Round the corner from the canal onto the seafront. And almost immediately I was blown backwards by the wind. It really was wicked.

It’s hardly surprising that there weren’t so many people out there today, and those who were were having something of a struggle to walk along the front.

Cycling was difficult too, even for those who are eight to a machine like the people over there on the right of the photo.

By now, adding insult to injury, it started raining too. That was me thoroughly fed upso I headed back to my hotel, which you can see just down there.

They hadn’t made up my room, which was annoying, and so I decided to make my butties, having bought a knife while I was out. As soon as I had whipped out my baguette the cleaners turned up so I had to repair to the foyer, where the sofa was one of the nicest upon which I’ve sat.

But half an hour later my room was ready so I could go back and eat my butty. And to carry on with my web pages about the end of Highway 138 in Quebec. And the good news is that they are nearly finished.

At 17:00 I knocked off for the day and went onto the promenade to a cafe for a coffee. And the wind by now was violent and it was raining quite heavily. I was worried that the cafe might blow away.

One thing that annoyed me about it was that although it offered free wi-fi, it only applied for half an hour, which was a bit miserable.

And oooh!They joys of predictive text. I sent a message to Liz saying that I was “having a coffee in a cafe on the sea …” – and the predictive text suggested “… floor”. I know that the weather was bad, but not that bad.

On the way back, I was blown down the hill by the wind and found myself staring at the Kursaal Casino again. This time it’s all lit up and it looks rather nice from the outside. Not that I have any intention of going to see the inside.

Later on, I went out for tea to a falafel place that I had seen earlier when I was wandering around. The meal wasn’t too bad either and it wasn’t too expensive. And that makes a change.

Now I’m going to have another early night, and see if I can be first down at the breakfast again in the morning.

Friday 4th November 2016 – OOOH LOOK!

I’m at the station at Leuven again aren’t I? And I’m about to hit the rails.

I didn’t have to stagger very far from my hotel – just down the steps and into the tunnel. There’s a ticket machine there, and it wasn’t working so I had to go to the booking office and make my reservation. And then a quick dash round to my platform where the train for Kortrijk was just pulling in.

Mind you, I wasn’t going to Kortrijk – not at all.

I had something of a restless night again last night – woke up with the bedclothes all over the floor at one point. But a nice hot shower soon put me right.

A glance out of the window wasn’t all that promising. The weather looked rather miserable but never mind. No sense in hanging around. And so I made my excuses and left. Mind you, I do have to say that at €49:00 the Ibis Budget did all that it said that it would. The rooms are small and pokey of course but they are scrupulously clean and tidy and everything works like it should.

I have no complaints whatever and would happily stay there again

Here’s another train and it has ANTWERPEN CENTRAAL displayed in the headboard. But I’m not going to Antwerp either.

I alighted from my Kortrijk train at Ghent St Pieters station, crossed over to the next platform and stepped into the train that was waiting there, having just come in from Antwerp. And now here I am, taking a photograph of my train after we arrived at … Oostende.

I walked through the streets of Oostende to find my hotel, which is out by the Kursaal Casino.

And don’t you think that people are taking this craze of photographing and filming even the most banal and uneventful moments of their private lives to post on the internet is going far too far? And this craze for miniaturisation – can things go any smaller?

And personally, the way that the world is going, I’m surprised that it’s closed.

While you admire the beautiful sunny weather that we are having here in Oostende, let me tell you a little about my hotel.

It’s called the Hotel Imperial, quite an upmarket three-star hotel just 50 metres from the seafront. It’s quite an expensive place normally, and it looks it too, but it does have a few rooms usually reserved for coach parties (as I remember from my coach-driving days with Shearings) up in the garret – tiny but well-appointed and I negotiated a good deal – €300 for five nights, breakfast included.

The walk-in price for the room would have been … gulp … €160 per night.

and I’m lucky that there even was a room free too. It’s Toussaint, the Belgian schools’ half-term holidays and the town is pretty crowded, as you can tell by looking at the promenade here.

The hotel where I was hoping to stay, right on the edge of the docks, is fully-booked, as are many of the other places too.

But I’ll tell you much more about what the Hotel Imperial is like when I’ve had a good go at the breakfast tomorrow. The first breakfast is always a key moment in anyone’s holiday.

I went to grab a bag of chips and to join the crowds on the promenade for a walk in order to inhale the ozone. But the weather was quite nasty as you can see. There was a wind, a misty haze and light drizzle. I didn’t stick it out for long, as the old ecclesiastical gentleman once said to the thespian. I came back to my room.

I did some work on my website, fell asleep, chatted to a friend and all that kind of thing, and then went for tea. Food is much more expensive in Oostende rather than Leuven, and it’s nothing like as well prepared. I had a disappointing vegetarian durum tonight, and I’ll have to do much better than that tomorrow. I do recall complaining about the food last time that I was here.

So now it’s an early night in my comfortable bed. I’m looking forward to a good sleep and a first-class breakfast.

I’ll tell you tomorrow if I received it.

Thursday 3rd November 2016 – GRRRR!

Yes, you’ve guessed it. It’s not good news.

Last night was quite a disturbed night and I even sweated a great deal. Dunno whether it was concern about what today might bring me, but there we are. It was quite a struggle to leave the bed after the alarm went off and head off to breakfast, but there I was all the same. And by 07:30 I was out and on the road to the hospital.

The morning was a misty, foggy cold morning and so I walked briskly up to the hospital. By 07:50 I was at the registration desk and by 08:00 I was in the waiting room.

The wait was longer than it ought to have been but eventually I was seen and the blood pressure and blood samples were taken. and then I had another long wait until about 11:00 until the doctor saw me. He asked me all of the usual questions and I had the usual thorough examination, and then I had to wait again.

Lunch was the usual soup and bread, which didn’t take me too long to wolf down; And then I had to wait again.

The nephrologist saw me at 14:30. She said that the protein loss was slowly increasing, and they needed to make yet further tests. I had to go for another set of x-rays. And then I had to wait again.

By 17:30 I was fed up of waiting and so I asked what was going on. It appears that some nurse had told the nephrologist that I’d gone home. And so nothing had happened. The nephrologist told me eventually that she wanted me to come back in on … errr … Wednesday next week. So not even a week before my next appointment. How I’m fed up with all of this.

And my blood count? It’s down to 9.7. I’m pretty fed up of that as well.

I was fed up of all of the waiting too, but at least I was able to do tons of stuff on the web pages that I’m writing.

But it was far too late to do anything else so I booked a room at the Ibis Budget and went there via Caliburn to pick up some spare clothes. I had a good deal too at the Ibis.

After a shower, a shave and a change of clothes, Alison turned up and we went to the fritkot, for a meal and a good chin-wag.

Now I’m having an early night. For I have a cunning plan in the morning. Whatever it might be, you’ll have to wait and see.

Wednesday 2nd November 2016 – I’M MOVING ON …

… tomorrow, so I must organise myself quite rapidly today.

I had a bit of a bad night again last night and had something of a struggle to make it up to breakfast at 07:15. I was joined by the usual crowd of students who popped in, made some butties and then popped out again, and then I was back down here.

I had an hour or so working on the website again – the missing bit of Highway 138 in Quebec – and then I headed off to Kessel-Lo.

As luck would have it, and in a complete surprise, the Fortis Bank had my bank card ready and once they had reactivated it, it worked fine too. That’s even more of a surprise.

At Bio-Planet I picked up a baguette and then drove back. I prepared an envelope for the insurance claim form, picked some stuff for tea from the collection in the back of Caliburn, and then came back here. And here, I cracked on with the web-site.

after lunch, I phoned up the hospital to find out the time of my appointment. And I know that I had hoped for an early appointment but this is ridiculous. They want me there at 08:10 and it doesn’t come much earlier than this. I’ll have to change all of the alarms.

After lunch I went off to the Post Office and posted the claim form. That’s another job done. Then I came back and crashed out for a while.

I found the time to carry out an amendment to the website – I’m trying to update at least one page per day, although today’s amendment wasn’t anything considerable.

For tea I had a tin of vegetables with chick peas, tomato sauce and rice, to finish off a few bit that were lying around. And when the washing-up was done, I took everything down to Caliburn except for what I can take tomorrow to the hospital. And finally I had a shower.

Now I’m having an early night again, ready for tomorrow. And then we’ll see what happens. There are three choices – they could keep me in hospital. Or if I’m released for at least two weeks, I’ll be off home. But if it’s only for a week or so, I’m off to the seaside.

I can do with a holiday after all of this.

Tuesday 1st November 2016 – NOTHING OF ANY IMPORTANCE …

… went wrong today. But that’s quite probably because I didn’t really do anything.

All that you can point a finger at was when I went to the supermarket on the corner for my baguette this morning and there was a black plastic storage box in the rubbish pile by the waste bins. I went out tonight to recover it but it had gone, along with all of the rubbish. I can’t have been quick enough. The bin-men must have passed by and removed it all, something that surprised me seeing me as it’s a Bank Holiday in Belgium today.

I was up a couple of times during the night, first time that that has happened for a while, and I’d breakfasted and was back down here by 07:40. And apart from going out for my baguette at about 08:45, I’ve not done too much at all.

I spoke to Liz on the internet and also to a friend of mine for a while, and I’ve been working on my web-site too,. I’ve started on the pages for the Highway 138 extension from Blanc Sablon down to Old Fort right out at the far end of Quebec at the border with Labrador. I’d driven most of Highway 138 as far as possible during my voyages of 2010, 2011, 2012 and 2013, but this part of the road, cut off from the rest by 300 kilometres of Anglophone community, had escaped me until 2014.

Mind you, my heart hasn’t been in it all that much today. I’ve been drifting in and out of sleep (and I’m not sure why) and had a few distractions. And so I’ve not made the progress for which I was hoping. And I have a lot on for the next couple of days so I won’t be doing much then either.

I finished the second half of my curry tonight and had the disappointment about the plastic storage box. Now I’m taking things easy and I’ll be having an early night a little bit later.

Have to keep fighting fit, you know.

Monday 31st October 2016 – “SURELY NOTHING ELSE …

… can go wrong” I hear you say.

And I say they can. And it doesn’t just relate to Terry not having a socket to fit the wheel nuts on the trailer either. Ohhh no!

Instead, I drove all the way out to Kessel-Lo this morning to the Fortis Bank retrieve my bank card, only to be told that they don’t open the safe until Wednesday morning. So that was a total waste of time, wasn’t it? But at least the baguettes and free coffee in the Bio-Planet are worth having.

And getting back into my parking place here wasn’t easy either. They are doing building work in there and one of the builders had parked his vehicle across my parking space. I had to wait a while until he moved it.

Other bad news was that I had to pay for my week’s stay here. That’s left a hole in my pocket and no mistake. But at least they have a photocopier there, so I could photocopy my accident report form. I’ll send that off tomorrow.

And so what else (as if that isn’t enough)?

The good news, I suppose is that having gone to bed comparatively early last night, I actually managed to sleep right the way through until about 10 minutes before the alarm went off. It’s been quite a while since I had a decent sleep anything like that.

I’d been on my travels toolast night and they were rather vivid too. I’d been given several tasks to do and one of those was to go off any pay a bill to the Tax Office. When I finally arrived there it was someone whom I knew at the cash desk. I’d paid over the cheque, and so she asked me about the £2:2:0 administration fee for the cheque. I explained that the Government certainly insisted on its pound of flesh, didn’t it? She told me not to worry – seeing that she knew me she would pay it in on my behalf. And as well as that, she gave me some notes that had been rejected by the Tax Office – some Lei notes. Lei is of course the currency of Romania but during the night it was Czech money and these notes were of different size (which I knew to be a possibility) but they had been endorsed “wrong size” which I knew was quite probably wrong.
My next port of call was tomorrow at 15:00. I’d been asked by some friends whom I had known when I lived in Chester in the early-70s to appear in court on behalf of someone detained overnight who owed a sum of money and my task was to pay it so that he could be released. But I had suddenly acquired an urgent appointment of my own for that time which meant that I couldn’t go on behalf of this other person. I reckoned that I could go off to the court and pay the money in advance but that was across the town (I was in Macclesfield, but not a Macclesfield that I would ever know) so I walked down through the main street which had been pedestrianised and where there were some important buildings being built – but then I remembered that I had an appointment of my own at 15:00 this afternoon and if I attended it, I would be too late to go to the Court and pay this money. But if I went to the court and paid in the money I would be hours late for my appointment. And so with all of this confusion, what would I do?

But waking up solved that problem for me. I went off for an early breakfast instead.

Around everything else that I’ve been doing today, I’ve been working on my website. And by the time that I knocked off for tea tonight I’d organised all of the photos and text in Upper Quebec and Labrador that relate to the trans-Labrador Highway. They are all in the correct place now. And that wasn’t easy either because I must have had a bad day or two out there last year because I forgot in many instances to record the mileages of the photos that I’d taken. Not only that, where I had recorded the mileages, I had to convert the trip readings on two vehicles – the Dodge from 2014 and Strider the Ranger from 2015 to correspond with the mileages on the road.

later on though, I managed to put two revised pages on line – this one and this one. I ought to me making more of an effort to bring some of my earlier entries up-to-date with things that I have subsequently learnt.

And I managed not to crash out this afternoon either. That’s a rare occurrence these days, isn’t it?

Tea tonight was a chick pea curry with vegetables, rice and boulghour. The crowning ingredient of the curry was the stock cube of course. That makes a world of difference.

Nad now I’m planning on another early night once I’ve washed the dishes. I’ll see where I end up tonight.

Sunday 30th October 2016 – IT GOES FROM BAD …

… to worse.

Luckily, it’s something that hasn’t happened to me (except only indirectly) but I’m involved in this as much as anyone else.

Terry needed to move the mini-digger and asked me ages ago if he could borrow my Indespension plant trailer to do the job, to which I agreed. Then a day or two ago he told me that he would be round at my place this morning, but the penny didn’t drop.

Later this afternoon, I had a phone call. There’s a puncture on the trailer. Well, I had no idea that he was planning to move it today. And where is the puncture? Why, it’s about 200 miles away from home. I had no idea that he was going to go that far.

Of course, there’s no spare wheel. That was one of the things that I had intended to resolve over the winter, as well as fitting all of the rear lights that I had bought for it so that I could bin the trailer-board on the back, but as you know, I was otherwise occupied with my serious health issues and I’ve never been home since.

If you have insurance on your trailer you can call for assistance, but that’s another thing that never entered my mind seeing as how I am in no position to move it anywhere right now.

And of course, it’s Sunday, so now Terry is stranded. But luckily there’s a hotel near to where he is.

Tomorrow he needs to take the wheel off the trailer and take it to be repaired or replaced, but to do that, he needs to take the digger off the trailer. But there’s no diesel in the digger so he’ll have to go off and organise that first thing tomorrow. Except that he doesn’t have a fuel can.

As you can see, it’s another thing that has come to try us just now. When is all of this going to end?

I was asleep really early last night but my neighbours awoke me when they came in and they had the television on – not loud, I hasten to add, but I could hear it vaguely in the background. And once I did drop off, I had to go off twice down the corridor.

I’d been on my travels too, but I don’t have a clue about where I went or what I did. It all evaporated the moment that I awoke.

And wasn’t I organised today? Breakfasted, down to the boulangerie for my baguette and back here, all befor 07:45. that’s something of a new world record. But I spent most of the day drifting in and out of sleep. I had a good chat with Liz and Rosemary today and I’ve also been attacking the website. You remember that I travelled along the Trans-Labrador Highway when it was completed in 2010 and my account of that journey has been on line for a few years.

But as you recall, if you are a regular reader of this rubbish, that I’ve done the journey twice since, once in 2014 and again in 2015 – both time is the opposite direction from east to west. There have been so many changes to the route that I’m going to write another book about it. And so I’ve started to merge all of the reports and photos into one.

That’s going to take me a good while, I reckon. Not the work of five minutes, that’s for sure, so don’t expect to see daily updates on line. .

It’s Sunday and so for tea tonight I had a pizza. Spinach and mushrooms and it was delicious. Best that I’ve had.

But now, I’m going to try for an early night. My body clock will be up the spout because of the change of hour, so I hope that I’m not disturbed.

Saturday 29th October 2016 – IT NEVER RAINS …

… but it pours, doesn’t it?

I decided that in order to changer mes idées, as the French so aptly put it, I’d go out of town this lunchtime and do my shopping out at Kessel-LO, to give me a good opportunity to have a wander around.

And the net result of my external perambulations?

The Fortis Bank there has swallowed my bank card.

That’s all that I need, isn’t it? Lurching from one disaster to another while I’m here this last two or three weeks. I’m getting totally fed up of this. It’s about time that something went right with me for a change.

But at least I’d managed to go to Bio-Planet and buy some more vegan cheese and a beautiful baguette, as well as helping myself to the free samples and the complementary coffee. I bought some stuff (but nothing exciting) in Carrefour that I need to tide me over until Thursday when (hopefully) I’ll leave here and I had a good look around in Krefel to see what they had in the way of electrical appliances. But there was nothing that particularly excited me.

Last night, it didn’t take me long to go to sleep. And once I was asleep, I stayed asleep (except for one trip down the corridor). I awoke about 5 minutes before the alarm, and for once, I was washed and breakfasted and back in my room by 07:45.

My voyage last night was something of a strange parallel to real life. I was somewhere in north-west England, Lancaster or the like, and I had a few days spare. I was torn between going back home to Crewe for a short while or finding somewhere to stay up there. The idea of going to Silloth appealed to me, but I had a look at the map, which was in a holder up above my head in Caliburn and found the town of Oxenhope right on the coast not too far from where I was (and Oxenhope is of course miles away from the sea in real life) I could see that it was fairly large with a port and harbour, with a main street running along the front and so I reckoned that I would go there. But I couldn’t get Caliburn to start – and that was painful. We also had two children – rather like two kids that I know in real life – and they appeared on my voyages for some reason or other.

After breakfast, I had a little doze and did a few bits and pieces and round about 11:30 I wandered off down to Caliburn and out to Kessel-Lo.

Back here, it ended up being a late lunch and then I attacked the web site again. I’ve been working on it again and I’ve amended three web pages, this one, this one and this one. Stuff from my 2015 voyage needed to be added into the first two pages, and that led to adjustments on the third page.

I had a good chat with Liz and another one of my friends on the internet too. It’s certainly been a marvellous invention, hasn’t it?

Tonight, I finished off my curry from yesterday and now I’m planning on yet another early night. i’ll hopefully make the most of it because the clocks go back tonight. Back 100 years for those of you who voted for the Brexit.

But for me, it means that I might have an extra hour in bed asleep.

But I’ve heard all of that before.

Friday 28th October 2016 – I’VE HAD A BAD DAY TODAY

In fact, I’ve spent most of it asleep.

It all probably stems from last night. I told you that I was going to have an early night, and indeed I did. And I wasn’t awake long either. Soon away with the fairies.

The trouble was that it didn’t last long. I was awake after about an hour and with people coming and going throughout the house and talking in raised voices, I couldn’t go back to sleep again. I ended up working on two pages of my website, adding some stuff from 2015 – this one and this one.

I was eventually able to go off to sleep and I slept right through until the alarm went off. It was something of a stagger up to breakfast, and then back down here I lay on the bed and dozed.

I missed my little window to go and pay for my room, as I was fast asleep during the bistro’s lunchtime opening hours. But I did manage to make it to the supermarket on the corner to buy some stuff for lunch. So much for the mega-shop that I had planned, and so much for my trip to the footy ground to buy my ticket for tomorrow night (it’s an all-ticket match). I’ve missed the football for this weekend then.

I spoke a little to Liz this afternoon, and worked on another page of my website. This is astonishing, isn’t it? I dunno where this motivation is coming from.

But apart from that, I was back asleep for most of the afternoon. Until I had a rude awakening from the cleaner that is. Now I have clean bedding and a reasonably clean room.

The bistro was closed this evening when I went past – I went to Caliburn to pick up some food. For tea I had a mushroom curry with rice and it was so delicious. And there’s enough for tomorrow too. And tonight I had another doze too.

But now I’m off to bed. There are hordes of new arrivals this weekend so I hope that they all behave themselves.

EPIC HALL

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