Tag Archives: hospital

Friday 13th October 2017 – IF EVER I GET …

… my hands on the person who decided that it would be amusing to play his music at full volume at 04:40 this morning, he’ll be drinking soup through a straw for the foreseeable future.

Having a little party in one’s room at 01:30 was rather disturbing, but this was something else completely.

Mind you, it’s taught me a lesson, which is to make sure that all of the windows in my room are closed in future. The noise wasn’t half as bad once I had done that.

And this was all a shame because my room was quite pleasant and I was very comfortable in my bed. I shall look further into this hotel once I return home.

So wide awake, I attacked some stuff on the internet that needed doing. And found some more stuff about my grandmother Ivy Cooper performing in Winnipeg in January 1923. Hard to believe that just 33 months later, she was back in the UK, remarried and giving birth to my mother.

With not having paid for breakfast, I had bought some raisin buns and orange juice from the supermarket while I was out last night, and they made a very agreeable breakfast.

And so all of that was followed by a nice shower and shave (and it really was a nice shower too) and change of clothes, and then I packed everything up to go.

The owner was on duty at the Hotel Midi-Zuid. He apologised for yesterday too and let me put my suitcase in the cupboard as my room wasn’t ready (so what REALLY happened yesterday?)

I wandered off down to the Gare du Midi to buy my ticket to Leuven. And here I made something of a mistake. It was well before 10:00 when I bought them so I had to pay full price.

But it was a nice day anyway so I went early (falling asleep on the train) and sat on the Square outside the railway station, soaking in the sun and also supping a well-earned coffee.

Later on, despite still aching just about everywhere, I decided to walk right across the city to the hospital. It was market day down the main street so I fought my way through the crowds, stopping to admire the fruit and veg stall with its lovely collection of grapes, which were so irresistible.

The Loving Hut wasn’t open yet but nevertheless I blagged my way in to buy some more vegan cheese, seeing as I had forgotten to bring over any from Canada. And the manager gave me a couple of names of mail-order vegan suppliers who might help me out.

And here’s a thing. it’s been a while since we’ve featured an old car in these pages.

I didn’t really have the time or the inclination to do much around the USA. I need to catch up, and here by the merest chance happens to be an old Mini Traveller.

rare enough in the UK these days so I never expected to see one here in Leuven.

But then again, regular readers of this rubbish will recall that we saw a mini van here in Brussels a couple of years ago.

Calling at St Pieter’s Hospital for the usual morning reasons, I continued on my way only to bump into one of my former co_kottiers from the Hostel. He’s now managing the little bistro place that’s attached to the other hostel and he invited me in for a coffee and a chat.

Unfortunately I was obliged to decline, seeing asI had a prior appointment, but I made a note. And then pressed on to the hospital.

We had a new student nurse today, so it was a good job that I knew the routine. And when she told me to “move over to the far side of the bed”, I couldn’t help but reply “that’s the most exciting thing that I’ve had said to me for quite some considerable time”.

The news though isn’t so good. While the protein might be “stable”, whatever he means by that, the blood count not so. That’s dropped from 9.6 last time to 9.2 just now. And he reckons that there’s also a leaky valve in my heart.

None of this is anything that I particularly wanted to hear. Things aren’t sounding quite so good just now, so i’m glad that I took the opportunity to carry out all of the tasks on my “to-do” list when I was able to.

It took the doctor until 17:20 to come to tell me that I could go, and to give me my prescriptions. I have to come back on Thursday 14th December, but to go to a different department, and I don’t like the sound of that.

But now I’m horribly late. I was hoping to be gone from here hours ago. I have to run to the pharmacy to collect the prescriptions and, as usual, they are short of product.

And then run for the bus, which is in no hurry. No chance of going for that coffee now.

Luckily the trains to Brussels are quite regular and I don’t have to wait long. Mevertheless it’s 18:33 when we arrive. I have to run down to the hotel, register (why he wouldn’t let me do that this morning I really don’t know), leave my backpack, and run back to the station. And i’m on the platform southbound with just three minutes to spare.

Since I’vs topped going to see OH Leuven, they have been on an impressive run of form and are up there in 2nd place in the league. On the other hand, AFC Tubize are on a woeful run of form and are well adrift at the foot of the table.

There’s a football match played in each division on a Friday night, and by pure coincidence, tonight is AFC Tubize v OH Leuven. it’s just a handful of stops down the line from here, and I’m at a loose end.

Obviously a home banker then.

But we have a tragedy – i’ll tell you that. They’ve reorganised the times of the trains and the last one back is at 22:12. The 23:12 has been taken off. What that means in real money is that if I don’t want to walk back to Brussels, I’ll miss the last 20 minutes of the game.

But never mind. Grabbing a bag of chips from the fritkot across the road from the station, I set off to the ground.

It’s a modern stadium, but they ran out of money after doing just two sides.

And that’s hardly surprising because it’s another one of those places where they announce the crowd changes to the team.

I have a coffee, chat to a couple of people, and take my seat in the stand.

AFC Tubize aren’t all that bad. In fact they can match OH Leuven in most departments but you can immediately see the problem that they are having. Their centre-forward is ploughing a very lonely furrow up front, with no service and no support.

OH Leuven are on the attack from the kick-off and only a brilliant save from their keeper stops them going 1-0 down in the first 5 minutes.

But they are in front after half an hour with a brilliant glancing header from Casagolda from a free kick.

Tubize equalize in the second half and I start to have this rather uncomfortable feeling. But it can’t be helped – I need to be on my way.

Back at the hotel I find my room, and its quite comfortable too. One of the bigger ones. I learn that OH Leuven went on to win the match but it’s bed-time for me. It’s been a long day and it’s going to be another long one tomorrow.

Monday 14th August 2017 – AT THE HOSPITAL …

… the news is not so good.

While the blood count is up slightly at 9.6 from 9.5, something else in the body (and I’ve forgotten what it was) has plummeted by over 25% – from 39 parts to 29 parts.

This has caused a few raised eyebrows and they wanted me to come in again to see if it might be just an errant result.

But no chance of that! My flight to Montreal is at 15:20 and I intend to be on it – and I won’t be back until 12th October. So my appointment is on 13th whether they like it or not.

And here’s a thing – I asked the hotel manager whether it’s cheaper to book a room over the counter or over the internet by a booking agency. To my astonishment he replied “over the internet”.

That was the last thing that I was expecting because I know how much commission these booking agencies charge. But if that’s what he wants me to do, then that’s what I will do.

Despite being awake at about 06:00 or something, there was no chance of me moving. It took the alarm at 07:00 to shift me from my stinking pit. And after breakfast I came back here and attacked yesterday’s magnum opus.

That took me up to shower time, and then a slow meander down the road to the railway station.

And my luck was in too. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that the trains to Leuven run at peculiar times – there are three all at once and then nothing for 40 minutes.

And so no-one was more delighted than me when an Inter-City pulled in just as I arrived at the station.

It was a double-decker too. Very nice, comfortable and modern, so I went off to sit upstairs.

Of course, Brain of Britain had forgotten his book and so he had to sit there and admire the scenery for the whole route.

Not of course that he was complaining about that too much.

At Leuven we had a nightmare of queueing for a new travel ticket – mine is on the verge of running out. But once it was organised it was off on the bus to the hospital and my appointment with Destiny.

I walked back through the town, picking up some stuff for lunch tomorrow as well as a nice sorbet as a treat. I reckoned that I had earned it.

You know about the irregular running of the trains between Leuven and Brussels. But here again I was in luck.

The train to Knokke was running late so just as I arrived on the platform, so did the train. otherwise I would have had an uncomfortable wait for the train from Welkenraedt.

These trains are old, dirty and rattly but they are here and that’s the important bit. I was soon back here.

We had another disaster for tea tonight. I’d been saving my plate of lentils for tonight but after they had taken my order and having waited for 20 minutes, they told me that “lentils were finished” even though I’d seen a plate in the cooler.

I ended up with a bag of chips instead.

It seems that I’m fated to have bad luck with my meals this time round. And so I’m glad that I’ve bought some emergency supplies for the plane tomorrow, to go with the crisps that Alison gave me on Sunday and which I forgot to mention.

Saturday 24th June 2017 – I WAS UP …

… a good 10 minutes before the alarm this morning. And had I been bothered to leave my stinking pit, I could have been up a good hour before it too.

I’d been on my travels too, not sure where, but I ended up dating one of the nurses (I wish that I could remember which one) who had treated me while I had been in hospital. She was considerably younger than me (well, let’s face it – almost everyone in the world is these days!) and this excited a great deal of comment from all sorts of people.

Which of course just goes to show – I can still chase after the women, even if I can’t remember why.

We had the usual trip for the baguette and the lunchtime sitting-on-the-wall-overlooking-the-harbour too. The weather wasn’t quite as warm as it has been, but still too hot to be out there for long. And the tide is now almost fully-out which means that we aren’t going to be having any ships passing by for a while.

Even the Marité is conspicuous by her absence. She seems to have departed into the ether – Ships That Pass In The Night and all of that.

Tea was another attack on the European Tinned Food Mountain and with the addition of a few herbs and spices it was quite tasty. Just goes to show the difference that a few simple things can make.

So what have I been doing today then?

Some tidying up. Not much, but if I do a little every day (or nearly every day) it will slowly all go together nicely. And some cleaning too. I need to make an effort.

I had a phone call too from the maintenance people about the fridge. So I told them that it was now back working again so they hung up. And now it’s stopped again, hasn’t it?

I’ve also had a very unwelcome letter from the Treasury of that hospital in Verdun. It seems that once again my insurers are dragging their heels about paying (which they usually do) and I’ve been lumbered yet again. I’ll need to sort them out properly in early course.

Ingrid was on the phone too and we had a lengthy chat. Her health issues are finally moving, although in which direction it’s hard to tell. She’ll know more in early course. But it’s a good job that she rang, because I was … errr … resting at the time.

But most of the day has been organising the blog. I’ve finished November, done a few of December, skipped the rest because there’s a lot in there that needs editing, and now I’m well into January 2012. Only 289 entries to go before this cycle of amendments is completed. And then I’ll need to go back over it again to bring the earlier entries up to the current standard as well as tackling some of the more complicated entries.

In that vein, we are going pretty well too. I’ve done some more ad-hoc editing, removing unwanted tags, editing a couple of others, merging one or two as well and it’s not been taking me as long as I thought, especially as I’ve found a quick way of doing it.

So now I’m having a relax before bed-time. And I reckon that I deserve it too. It’s hard work, this sitting around doing not very much.

Monday 12th June 2017 – BACK …

… in 8 weeks.

It seems that my blood count has gone down from 9.8 to 9.5. It’s not down enough to bother them that much and they don’t intend to do anything about it, so having arrived at 10:30 I was out of the door and down the road by 12:30.

Down the road as far as the café anyway, where I watched the woman sitting opposite me drop half the contents of her butty down her more-than-ample cleavage. And gentleman that I am, I would ordinarily have offered to help her remove it, and indeed so would I, had she been 19 instead of 90. At that age, people would have worked out how to do it for themselves.

Sleeping here wasn’t too bad, and I was awake fairly early. After my tea last night I didn’t feel much like breakfast and even held out over a coffee until the hospital. It’s a brief walk from here to the bus stop and the buses are every 12 minutes so I didn’t have to wait long.

Leaving the hospital, I had to try several different chemists until I could assemble all of the pills that I needed, and then went off for some vegan cheese and a couple of pairs of the trousers that I like to wear. Still on special offer too!

And that coconut sorbet that I tried? Delicious!

Back here I crashed out for an hour or so and then headed off to meet Alison. The vegan restaurant had a special offer meal available so I treated her to it ad then we went for a coffee and to put the world to rights.

So it’s early to bed as I need to be on my best form for tomorrow. It’s a long way back home again.

But before I drop off into the arms of Morpheus, I’ll leave you with a little photo.

As you know, we’ve been running a little feature entitled ‘Only in Belgium”. And here’s the latest photo for our collection – I’ve forgotten what number it might be.

But I’m sure that you don’t need a translation to be able to work it out. It is pretty self-explanatory. And to be fair, I have seen similar in other parts of the world too.

Saturday 15th April 2017 – AFTER YESTERDAY’S EXCITEMENT …

… I had a very quiet day today.

And that’s hardly surprising either, seeing that I have my train tomorrow morning and I have a lot of travelling to do.

09:29 I need to catch it at the station here at Leuven, and so that means that I shall have to forego the delights of a Sunday morning lie-in and rely on the alarms to awaken me. After all, there’s a bit of cleaning and tidying to do around here.

I had another topsy-turvy morning with an awakening at some silly time but I did manage to go back to sleep to be awoken by the alarm. And after breakfast, I just loitered around for ages.

Lunch was toasted cheese sandwiches with tomato and lettuce, and there are still plenty left to make butties for my trip tomorrow, which is always good news.

I almost didn’t go out whatsoever but I remembered that I still had a prescription from the hospital to fill. And so I leapt into action and dashed outside, only to find that the chemists had all long-since closed. I hope that there will be one open on the station tomorrow. It probably would have been a good idea to have gone out earlier but

I forgot

I was … errr … somewhat indisposed

Tea was what was left over from my kidney bean whatsit the other night and like all good sauces it tasted even better the second time around.

And now I really am going to have an early night. What with my early start tomorrow and my excesses of yesterday, I have to be careful.

Wednesday 12th April 2017 – WELL, THAT’S THAT …

… for another EIGHT (yes, EIGHT) weeks!

Blood count is at 9.8, which is nowhere near as high as I would like and the protein count is at 1.77, which is still way above the norm, but they seem to think that I might be ready to try for 8 weeks.

And now I’m regretting that I didn’t come here in Caliburn, because he has his own little safe hidey-hole here, and given my accommodation issues just now, I could (and should) be on the next plane to Montreal – and I could go and have my accommodation issues over there.

What’s the difference?

Last night I had a good sleep even though the fridge rattles and the fan in the heater squeaks and groans. I was certainly well away, and for most of the night too. Awake at 05:45 and I’ve no idea why, but never mind.

Breakfast was the stuff that I had bought last night at the Colruyt, and I wasn’t really all that hungry, I suppose. And after a shower, I headed off to walk (about 100 miles) to the bus stop to catch the bus to the hospital.

But not before I had made a rather dismal discovery. I travel light, as you know, and don’t bring many clothes at all with me – I wash them in the shower as I go and leave them hanging to dry. But it seems that Bane of Britain here has bought two spare pairs of trousers and no spare tee-shirt. I was obliged to send Alison a message to tell her to make sure that she stands up-wind of me on Friday.

After the hospital I had a steady walk into town to buy food at Delhaize for tea, and then I went to pick up some Vegan cheese and ginger beer from the vegan place.

There was a glorious five minutes of bright sunshine and so I found a bench near to the big library where I could sit and drink my drink and admire the view in the gorgeous afternoon.

And, it has to be said, narrowly avoid being buttonholed by a Jehovah’s Witness handing out leaflets and wanting to chat to people. I waited until his back was turned and then nipped off, smartish-like.

But you do have to think about the Library here. Burnt to the ground by the Germans (along with the rest of Leuven) in 1914. And then again in 1940. So why is it that Belgium – and the whole of the rest of Europe – has more faith and confidence in Germany than it does in the UK?

Clearly the UK is doing something very wrong, and you wouldn’t expect a silly Brexiter to come up with the answer.

Back here, I made myself some cheese on toast and had a little relax. And then made up my mind to nip into the city to one of the cheap shops for a clean tee-shirt so that I could wash the one that I was wearing. Wibra had nothing cheap but Zeeman had a tee-shirt at €3:99 that would do the job.

On my return, I had a little … errr … relax for half an hour and then attacked the shower. Twice in one day, you might be thinking, but I needed to wake myself up and to wash my tee-shirt. And then I hit the town again.

I had a very pleasant evening with Sean and finally met his wife and daughter who are both lovely. Little Charlotte is 6 but she’s quite a character.

Now I’m set for bed, and I hope that I have as good a night’s sleep as I did last night.

Tuesday 14th March 2017 – YOU MIGHT …

… or, more likely, might not … be wondering where I’ve been for the last few days. Well, almost a week in fact.

The truth is that I have had a very (un)pleasant stay amid the local facilities of the town of Verdun.

No, not the Nick, Rhys, the local hospital.

I was rushed in there on Wednesday night/Thursday morning after the landlady of the Hotel du Tigre found me flaked out in my bed having had the most serious relapse to date. She promptly called for an ambulance.

There was no internet in the hospital and somehow my telephone had become damaged so I was out of touch.

Anyway, they threw me out this morning and a taxi took me back to the hotel.

I’m still not 100% fit – far from it, in fact – so I had a slow, steady drive southwards and ended up at Bar-le-Duc where I bought a baguette and made myself a butty.

On my way through the town I’d seen an “Orange” boutique and so when it opened after lunch I trotted off round there to see what they could do about my phone. I’d managed to clean it up and dry it out but the keyboard wasn’t working, so I hoped that they could do something about it.

Nothing that they could do on the spot so repair would involve sending it away, and the hourly charge was something rather ludicrous. However, my contract has only one month to go before renewal and on renewal I would be entitled to a new telephone at a discount price. One or two deft keystrokes and I suddenly found myself the owner of a brand-new Samsung Smartphone, for all of €44:00. About half the price of the postage and minimum repair charge.

Later on, I was back on the road and had a gentle drive across the northern Burgundy mountains as far as Auxerre. This is where the new telephone came in handy because a quick search on the internet told me where the Première Class Hotel was situated – it’s quite a way out of the city.

Hopefully I’ll have a good sleep and a decent breakfast and make myself ready for the next stage of my journey.

Monday 6th March 2017 – I PAID …

… for all of this effort over the last few days.

Despite the bad night and waking up at 06:00, I was down for breakfast at 07:00 feeling fairly okay. But coming back I was overwhelmed, as if the exercise was too much, and I had to go and lie down, aching all over and feeling really bad.

Nevertheless I made it down to pick up Hannah but I clearly wasn’t on form. We took the main-line train to the European Parliament where she went off for her guided tour. Being young, Canadian and still a student, she needs to make her CV as impressive and completely different from anyone else’s if she wants to have a good job, and so I pulled a few strings the other week and managed to organise a guided tour around the Parliament.

I wasn’t up to it and so I rode herd on the luggage and read a book.

When she returned, she noticed my distress and decided that we may as well go to the airport then rather than a couple of hours later. And so we walked up to Schuman, I picked up my bank cards, and then leapt on board the Express bus (with a certain amount of confusion about the pricing structure).

Once Hannah had disappeared into the bowels of the airport I headed back for the bus to Leuven. There are two per hour, at … errr … 33 minutes past and … errr … 35 minutes past. How about that for planning? And none of them goes via the hospital.

I ended up at the station and I nipped off to find the Ibis Budget, seeing as how I really was feeling bad. But for some reason or other it was … errr … €74 tonight. Why is that?

Instead, I took a bus up to the hospital, liberated my discharge papers, sorted out my medicines, and then headed for Caliburn. And we hit the road.

I’ve ended up in a B&B near Arlon on the Luxembourg border. It’s cheap but good. There’s no food in the vicinity so I had to drive about 100 miles to find a fritkot.

Now I’m off to bed. I deserve it. I hope that I feel better tomorrow.

Monday 27th February 2017 – NOW THAT’S WHAT I CALL …

… the Sleep of the Dead!

By about 21:30 I was totally out of it, what with all of my exertions over the weekend and my late night on Saturday. And with a hectic 10 days to come, there’s no point in pushing out the boundaries so I hit the sack. I vaguely remember at about 23:30 waking up to switch off the laptop, and that was absolutely that until the alarm went off at 07:00.

Totally painless, and I felt so much better for it.

I had company a breakfast – one of these Obsessive Compulsive Disorder people who spent 10 minutes washing a mug, and then 10 minutes washing a glass – that type of person. And then, inexplicably, he left his dirty knife in the sink – and told me not to wash it as he would do it later. Not that I was intending to of course – each to his own around here – but it was such a strange thing to do given how much time he had spent washing the rest of his stuff.

Hospital came next – and I had to get a move on because Bane of Britain had taken his hospital folder down to Caliburn last night and he needed it up there. It’s all keeping me fit anyway. And up there, the nurse who fitted my catheter into my catheter port did so with such skill and dexterity that I didn’t even realise that she had done it and taken the blood sample.

This led to the following fantastic exchange –
Our Hero – “you know, I’m so impressed. You did that so gently that I didn’t even realise it”
Nurse – “I was Belgian Ladies’ national darts champion in 1984 and 1986”

I had to wait ages to see the doctor, but in the meantime I saw Kaatje, my Social Welfare worker and Ingrid, the trick cyclist. Ingrid managed to wangle me a visit to see the Professor who is handling my case, and Kaatje conformed that absolutely everything is up-to-date as far as payments go, and she’ll find all of the required information that I need for my insurance by next week (I shall be passing by).

As far as my health goes, the news isn’t quite so good. Blood count is down, to 10.3 and I’m not very happy about that. The protein loss is stable, but it’s still way too high as we all know.

But the professor didn’t give me much encouragement. I have renal failure – well, we’ve all guessed that with the protein loss didn’t we, so no surprise there. But I have a rare disease as you all know and according to the Professor, “it’s not responding like it should”.

She thinks that moving house is a good idea, because hauling wood and water is not such a good idea, but as to whether I need to go into a care home, rent a property or buy something else, she recommends renting. Apparently I’m
well enough right now that I don’t need a care home, but if I rent somewhere rather than buying it, I can escape from that commitment much easier than a purchased accommodation. She can’t say whether I’m good for &5 years, or good for 10 years, and when you add up all of that, it doesn’t sound too healthy, does it?

On the way back, I went to buy some bread for lunch, and had a goodbye kiss from the girl in the supermarket on the corner. That cheered me up no end, I’ll say!

After lunch, I carried on packing and moving stuff down to Caliburn. But I had a brief moment of distraction ringing up my bank. There’s an “issue” with a payment on my account, for no reason whatsoever, and it’s the monthly payment that i need to make to my Storage company in Montreal – the ones with whom I’ve had all of these issues just now.

“Unusual spending patterns” is the issue so I phoned them up – with a French mobile from Belgium to the UK, explained this to the girl on the phone, who promptly put me on hold for 8 minutes. By the time that I was reconnected I was steaming. The discussion that we had was … errr … rather heated, and in the end they put the phone down on me before I had quite finished telling them exactly what I thought of them and their bank.

But at least the payment has been made and I hope that this will be the last of it. But I’ml getting rather sick of it all.

For tea I had sausage, mash and frozen veg for tea, followed by vegan ice-cream and peach halves. That’s most of my food from here finished, and whatever is left is left.

Another four loads of stuff down to Caliburn, and I even found time to go for a coffee with Sean, the guy who used to live here. I quite enjoy his company, until he starts on about the EU. He really has a bee in his bonnet about it and he isn’t ever going to change my opinion, so I don’t know why he wants to start a discussion about it – unless it’s something to do with the two or three beers I suppose.

And I had a weird experience on the way back. Some French van with three men in it, were stopping at each girl that they saw in the Kapucijnenvoer and asking them a question. It didn’t seem quite right to me, especially when they almost stopped at the same girl twice, realised that it was she and drove off rapidly. I’ve taken the vehicle the registration number of the van just in case, because I can smell a rat from here, never mind from there.

Ad so now I’m totally exhausted, so I’m just about to go off to bed. My last ever night here in this hostel (I hope) and I’m exhausted. I’ve had a really busy day and I need to relax.

Let’s hope that the weather improves.

Monday 20th February 2017 – I’M BACK …

… in the bad sleep rhythm again unfortunately. Last night was one of those like I was havong a few nights ago, tossing, turning, waking up, unable to go back to sleep.

MInd you, I was asleep enought to go on my travels. To Tibet, I told myself, but it was actually Nepal where I was – with no Chinese soldiers about. I was crossing the country and in the centre was some guy who was restoring these three-wheeled motorcycle things that had a motorcycle front and a flatbed at the back for the carriage of goods. They had all kinds of weird vehicles there and I was really keen to buy something unusual to take home, so I had quite a chat with this guy. But I was in a hurry to be on my way so I continued on my trip. Later that evening I was looking for a hotel but I realised that I had left the country and that was a shame – I hadn’t thought about it at the time but it would have been a good idea and a feather in my cap to have stayed for a night in Nepal/Tibet and add it to the list of countries where I had stayed.

My Dutch/Russian friend was at breakfast and so was the other guy, so they talked amongst themselves and left me to it. But the other guy is leaving today so the Dutch guy and I tomorrow are going to empty all of the fridges, clean them, and throw away everything that doesn’t belong to us.

Later that morning I went up to the hospital to see the Welfare girl. I need a prognostic of my condition because it’s possible that if they acknowledge that my health will deteriorate, I might be able to claim an extra allowance for home help, and that will be nice. But she wasn’t so hopeful that this kind of thing will be possible.

After lunch I got on the phone to the people in Evaux les Bains. Caliburn still has his bump in the rear and the insurance company says that this garage can fix it for me. You remember that I visited there in December for an inspection of Caliburn. He’s booked in for Monday 13th March and they will let me have a rental vehicle while Caliburn is being fixed. They’ll also be dealing with the rust issues on the nearside sill.

As usual, I had a crash out and then I went up to make tea. Oven chips, beans and veggie burgers, followed by the last of the pineapples and vegan ice cream.

I’ll be having an early night now and getting ready for yet another day out tomorrow.

Sunday 19th February 2017 – WHAT A NICE …

… meal that was!

Alison took me to the Indian restaurant on the Grote Markt for a birthday treat. I had a lentil curry which was delicious. not as good as mine and certainly nothing like as good as you might find in a restaurant in Stoke on Trent, but for an Indian restaurant in mainland Europe it was excellent.

Just for a change I had an excellent night’s sleep. Well away with the fairies right until the alarm went off. And I was on my travels too. Back to the hotel that bore a startling resemblance to the place in the Ardennes where I stayed in November. I was there with some people, one of whom was a disagreeable person with whom I worked at that weird American company where I spent 12 of the most bizarre months of my working life. She was complaining (as usual) about something or other and I had to go down to sort it out. This involved descending (at breakneck speed) a set of stairs with two different doors at the bottom. One of them was the door into the main area but the other one would take me round the back down a long dark alley, and that was the route that I decided to take.

Alone again at breakfast, which suits me fine of course, and then back down here where I had some work to do. I have a meeting on Monday and I need to be up-to-date with my paperwork. So I went throught and sorted it all out yet again. And I now have much more of an idea as to what I need to know for tomorrow at 11:00.

I had a nice chat on the internet with some nice friends of mine and then went for lunch. Nothing to go on my butties, but I had the other half-uncooked demi-baguette from yesterday (they come in packs of two and I used one for my garlic bread last night) so I baked that and used some more of the packet soup that I had bought from LeClerc when I was in Sedan.

Alison came onto the internet – she was going to the English shop and would I like to go? Well, do bears go for picnics in the woods? I went for a quick shower and a shave too look pretty, and Alison picked me up and off we trotted. I bought some more Dandelion and Burdock, more Bombay mix, some vegan burgers and a big bag of oven chips. Now I have all of my food (except the lunch stuff) until I leave here, and there’s even tons of stuff left that I haven’t used. And that’s a surprise.

We passed by here where I could dump everything in the freezer compartment of the fridge, and then off we shot into town for coffee, the Indian meal and a very lengthy chat.

Back here, seeing as how I’ve started to celebrate my birthday early, I opened a packet of mint sweets that I had brought back from Canada. Just a few – the rest are for later.

And now it’s early night time – I’m busy tomorrow.

Thursday 16th February 2017 – WHILE YOU ADMIRE …

… the photos from my little perambulation this afternoon, I can tell you something about the events of today, because we’ve had another one of these days that has been a quite busy work-in.

I had something of an early night again and this time I wasn’t awake all that long before dropping to sleep. And we had another session of awakening at 06:00 and then again at 06:30 before my alarm went off as usual at 07:00

and once that had sounded, I wandered upstairs for my breakfast.

I was alone for breakfast, and just for a change just recently we had everything supplied for us. But then again, I’m in one of these moods where I’m not eating so much as I did, so it wasn’t necessarily that important as long as I had my orange juice.

And so having dealt with those issues, I came back down here and had to crack on with some work that needed doing – and there was plenty of it to do

First task that needed doing was to pay my web domain fees, otherwise I’d risk being up a creek without a paddle. Luckily, I’d just received my new bank card and so I could crack on with that.

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Having dealt with the issues surrounding my domain, the next step was to make a couple more appointments for people whom I need to see here in Leuven before I head off back into the sunset or whatever.

I have some hospital fees to pay, and I’ll be needing a letter from the hospital in respect of my future treatment and so on, something that I can hand to my medical insurance people.

I’m seeing the insurance folk tomorrow and they’ll tell me precisely what is required, and so I made an appointment for Monday with Kaatje at the Social Services section of the hospital.

She’ll have all of the bills ready for me, and if I tell her what the insurance people want, she can have the letter ready for me when I go back there for my final appointment.

And then the trick cyclist has been on and on about seeing me again as you know. So I contacted her and told her when I plan to leave the hospital, and she’s arranged an appointment with me on that day so that she can tell me what the score is.

All that remained after that was some kind of long-distance business.

You know that my credit card expired a while ago, which was rather inconvenient because I have a standing order from that account to pay for my little storage unit in Montreal where I keep my camping gear. When I was in Montreal back in early September I went round there and paid them off a lump sum to get ahead while I sorted something out.

My lump sum has now expired and so I needed to set up a new payment regime. I was expecting this to be quite complicated, but nothing of the sort, especially as they have set up some kind of on-line accounting service.

I mailed them for a password, they sent it (and I changed it to the standard one that I use), I set up an account, and that was that.

I’ve run out of tomatoes, and seeing as I’m going to be away tomorrow and Saturday, and I’m out on Sunday too, no point in buying foodstuffs that I’ll only need once before Monday.

I had most of a baguette left over from yesterday too, and when I was shopping in the LeClerc in Sedan in November, I’d bought half a dozen packet soups.

This seemed like the right kind of occasion to make myself some packet tomato soup for lunch, and I mopped it up with my baguette. Just the job!

It was a really beautiful afternoon today once more, and as I hadn’t any fruit, I decided to go out to the fruit shop for a pear and apple, and then walk down the Handbooghof along the river Dijle by what remains of the city walls and then back here through the alleys.

My time in Leuven is (hopefully) coming to an end, and I’ve been very lax with my photographs of places where I’ve been. I need to bring the record up-to-date.

If things go according to plan, I’ll only be back here from day to day. I’ll come in on the train, spent the night before and the night after my check-ups in the IBIS Budget by the station, and then go back again.

But of course, as we all know, it won’t work out like this. It never does!

Back here, I made myself a coffee and then I crashed out for half an hour, really tired. The walk had taken quite a bit out of me and I can’t do much about that right now.

But I’m going to have to do much better than this. And quickly too. I have plans for the very near future as you know, and I need to be right on form.

This evening I had a shower, a shave and some clean clothes, including one of my new pairs of trousers. I have to go out tomorrow so I need to be looking my very best.

And while I was under there, I washed the pair of trousers that I had been wearing. I have to keep on top of things like that these days, otherwise I’d run out like I did the other day.

Following all of that, I went for tea. More of the tomato and kidney bean stuff with pasta and, of course, olives. All followed by pineapple slices and the vegan sorbet. And as I have said before, the kidney-bean whatsit tastes even better the longer it all stews.

So now it’s a good early night as I’m on the road all day tomorrow. I need to be at my best.

Monday 30th January 2017 – WHAT A WONDERFUL …

… meal that was.

Pizza with fresh vegetables with garlic bread, followed by pineapple rings with lemon sorbet. There’s no doubt that having defrosted the freezer cabinets in the fridges here the other week has certainly expanded my culinary whatsits, and I can’t wait to have a decent little kitchen with small freezer. I shall be well away, that’s for sure.

Last night I forgot to watch a film, so I dozed on and off for hours before dropping asleep. And I was disturbed during the night by a noise that awoke me at some point, although I did manage to go back to sleep until the alarm went off.

But never mind that for a moment, I was away with the fairies during the night. I was having some kind of issues about plants and I’d had to pick up some packs of compost – three sacks I wanted. I couldn’t find any to buy so I had to order it for delivery. The girl at reception wrote down the phone number for me on her note pad so that I could phone it and order what I needed. Outside, I was discussing push-bikes with someone and we made the point that up until about 10 years ago, the average age of pushbikes on the street was probably about 30 years old, but recently of course, buying new bikes seems to be the thing, and this would have brought the average age of bikes down to a much-more reasonable figure.
Meanwhile, my sacks of compost hadn’t come and I needed to remind the company. I was driving past the offices of this place and could have called in to pick them up but I was driving a school bus with kids and it wasn’t quite the right thing to do. I couldn’t find the secretary who had given me the phone number, and I couldn’t see it on her notepad so I wondered what she had done with it. This was getting confusing.
A little later, I’d gone for a manicure of my finger and toe nails. Who should be doing the manicure but “The One That Got Away”. As an aside, I have to say that just recently in real life I’ve been taking better care of my finger and toe-nails and this came through in the dream. Although they were cut very short and irregular, it was clear that I’d been taking care of them, and she was impressed. She said that she liked a man who took good care of himself. Then I made a comment about how warm it was in there, to which she replied that warmth always made her more amorous, and she gave me a big smile.

It would be at that moment that the alarm went off – had I known that I was ensconced in a tiny studio on the verge of a close encounter with her, I would have had a lie-in.

They had forgotten us yet again at breakfast and it was a struggle to find stuff to eat. And drink too because the juice supply was exhausted. When this afternoon I saw the guy who does the stocks, I had a good moan at him about that.

And then we had the hospital.

Walking that distance to the hospital hardly affected me at all – I was feeling quite cheerful on my way up there despite the light drizzle. And then we had the good news. Blood count stable at 11.8 and protein loss at 1.97 – still far too high but stable.

They offered me a six-week absence before the next visit, but I insisted on four weeks. That takes me up nicely to the end of my rental period here and if it’s still stable then, I can negotiate a six-week absence and disappear off to wherever it is that I’m going.

This afternoon was quite relaxing. I didn’t do too much. And now it’s bed-time yet again. A quiet day is called for tomorrow and then I’ll have to start to make plans.

Monday 2nd January 2017 – THE FIRST SNOWS OF WINTER …

… has covered our land during the night.

It might not be much by Canadian standards, or by German standards or even by Auvergnat standards, but it’s the first snows all the came and at least it made me smile. I was wondering whether I might miss out this year, but here we are.

I thought that it was cold last night.

And I had another bit of a bad night too. It took me ages to drop off to sleep and then we had party-time again for an hour or so round about 01:00.

During the night I’d been on my travels too. I’d been fixing a van (but not Calibuen – a big white Iveco-type) and I’d gone out for a test drive in it, even though it only had three wheels and the fourth corner was propped up on a trolley jack. When the van came back to the garage the trolley jack was still there under the van but in a different place. There was a girl featuring in this dream too but I’ve no idea who she was. But she was quite familiar.

The alarm went off at 07:00 and I was quickly upstairs for breakfast. And I wasn’t alone either – there was a middle-aged couple breakfasting there and I didn’t recognise them at all.

But there will not be too much of any of this tonight though, because unless I’m very much mistaken I’m here on my own tonight. It’s 22:20 and there’s not one other person in the building. The noisy neighbours have definitely gone (the cleaner was doing heir room this afternoon), but they don’t seem to have informed the boy who comes to see them because he was knocking on their door just now.

After breakfast I had a shower and then walked up to the hospital. And I felt sorry for the wildlife as their lake is all frozen over and the poor birds don’t know what to do. Yes, it was that cold.

I was early-ish in the reception, and quickly dealt with. They soon packed me off downstairs to the waiting room.

And wait I did, because they forgot me, and it was not until 11:15 – 45 minutes after my appointment time – that I was seen.

And the long and the short of it is that I don’t have to come back for, would you believe, four weeks. My protein count is up slightly to 2.04 but my blood count has rocketed up to 11.7, all on its own and after the low figures for the last couple of visits, that figure can’t be right. But they think it is, and hence the attempt to try me for four weeks without a visit.

I’m not going to go home though, even though I would like too. It costs me €400-odd at least to make a trip home and back, and then there’s the fatigue and the inconvenience in the middle of winter. I’ve paid to stay here until the end of February and it’s warm-ish in here, there’s breakfast provided and it’s convenient. I don’t need to go very far from here.

All in all, it’s a good idea to stay and so here I’ll sit. It’s a shame but there we are. No sense in throwing good money after bad.

For tea tonight I had the leftover vegetables with a tin of couscous vegetables and a bit of tomato sauce. Followed by Christmas pudding and custard. Now I’m ready for an early night.

if I do end up on my own tonight, i’ll hope to have a good night’s sleep. And then I need to think of a cunning plan for the next few weeks.

Tuesday 20th December 2016 – I MADE SURE …

… that I dropped off early to sleep last night.

What I did was to do something that I hadn’t done for quite a while, and that was that I got into bed and started to watch a film on the laptop. Sure enough, after only about 10 minutes or so, I was off.

But if I ever lay my hands on whoever it was who left the building at 02:40 this morning, slamming the door behind them, they they will know about it. Because I didn’t go back to sleep afterwards.

And it was just as well because the girl in the room next door was up and about at 06:00 and she wasn’t exactly quiet either. But then you can’t pick your housemates, can you?

Anyway, I was in at breakfast at 07:00 and out by 07:30 and back down here at work.

Meanwhile, I forgot to tell you about a couple of things that happened to me at the hospital yesterday.

For the benefit of those who don’t speak French, the sign on the back of the Fiat van says “Please don’t park within 3 metres …” of the rear doors, to allow the rear doors to open to admit a wheelchair.

And so the car behind is parked within 1 metre of it – right outside the entrance to a hospital.

I went up to the driver and asked him if a sign has to be written in both official languages (French and Flemish) to be legal, but as you might expect, my comment went clear over his head.

As Alfred Hitchcock once said to Kenneth Williams “it’s a waste of time telling jokes to foreigners”, and reminds me of the spoof Open University course on “Understanding Irony”, which actually received several applicants.

But it’s a sad reflection of the selfish attitude of many Belgians, isn’t it?

But the second thing was even more unnerving.

I walked up to the reception desk and the woman looked at me and said “ahh, Mr Hall …” Yes, I’m even being recognised by the clerical staff in the hospital now. This is uncomfortable, isn’t it?

Another thing that I have forgotten to do is to post the photo of the stuff that I bought on Sunday at the English shop.

Working clockwise around, we have Linda McCartney vegan pies, a vegan Christmas pudding, Bisto vegan gravy browning, a bottle of ginger beer, a bottle of dandelion and burdock, a bag of Bombay mix, some custard powder and, pride of place, two boxes of vegan mince pies.

Now I’m all set up for Christmas.

Later this morning I went down to Caliburn to sort out some stuff to bring up here and then went down to the Carrefour. I came back with a baguette and some tomatoes, some seitan slices (for Christmas dinner), some potatoes, some carrots and some leeks as well as a couple of pots of fresh spices.

That was because, for tea, I had boiled potatoes with fresh mint, carrots with fresh rosemary, leeks and Linda McCartney vegan pie covered in thick Bisto gravy. It made such a change from my usual fare and it was absolutely delicious. It all worked out fine too, much better than my pizza did. I shall be doing more of this, as well as looking at the possibility of baked potatoes in the microwave here.

High time that I was organised.

This afternoon I crashed out for a while and also did some work on my web pages.

Another thing that I did was to walk into the (unlocked) bathroom just as my nubile next-door neighbour was wrapping herself in a towel after her shower. Serves her right for not closing the door!

So now we’ll have another go at an early night. And I’ll hope for better luck too.

EPIC HALL

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