Tag Archives: football

Sunday 5th February 2017 – NOW WHAT DO YOU THINK …

… these men are doing in here?

Yes, well done that man! This is indeed a public urinal and it’s the first one that I have ever seen that has glass doors – never mind glass doors from the outside so that everyone passing by can see what is going on inside. It’s the kind of thing that you will only ever see in Belgium.

Of course, I refrained from using it. I didn’t want to give everyone here at the Schiervelde an inferiority complex.

It made me think, which is a rare event of course. Do you remember the time that we were at a football match at Breda in the Netherlands and we encountered the P155-house? It seems that football clubs in the Low Countries have these eccentric arrangements.

And while we are on the subject of the Schiervelde, I wonder if you can guess what this apparatus is, out here on the car park.

I did ask on my social networking page and eventually someone, Josée in Montreal, came up with the answer. It’s a couple of bicycle racks. Bicycles are the big thing in Flanders and in the Netherlands (the idea that cycling in the Netherlands is so popular because it means that you don’t have to pay bus fare is totally wide of the mark) and the facilities for them are overwhelming.

And while we are on the subject of bicycles, I saw an electric unicycle with the rider perched thereupon. I wasn’t quick enough with the camera for that, which is a shame, but that has set the wheels in my mind going round and round. How easy would one of those be to carry on a bus, train or even an aeroplane?

having had my curiosity aroused, I had a look around on the internet for them, and I could be seriously tempted by one of these.

But let’s all start with last night. And this was one of the worst nights that I have had for a while. I went to sleep fairly early which was a surprise, but I kept on waking up, and for no good reason too. Just after 04:00, I had another sit-bolt-upright awakening, and couldn’t go back to sleep for ages after that.

I’d been on a lengthy travel too, and so being wide awake at that time of the morning, I switched on the laptop and typed it out. And when I came to read it later in the day, I had quite a difficult job of understanding the gibberish that I had written.

But here goes, and I hope that you can understand it all better than I can. I’d started off by being involved in quite a serious wrestling bout which went on for ages – and although no-one was hurt, it was quite intense and overpowering experience.
From here the action cuts to Percy Penguin who was going on and on about how she had to be in Italy today – a Friday. And then the penny dropped – there was a music concert taking place and I’d invited her to come with me. However I couldn’t go so I’d asked a friend to take her but I’m not sure he had remembered. However, in the end off she set. I couldn’t now remember where she had to go but it ended up being somewhere in the Plains of the USA (which looked to me as if it was right on the edge of the Denver plateau but that didn’t click with me at the time while I was asleep). Where she thought that she needed to go turned out to be a kind of small saloon with just a handful of people and no music concert either, so it was clearly the wrong place to be. My friend who took her couldn’t hang around and needed to be on his way but he couldn’t leave Percy Penguin there. While he was trying to resolve this issue in his own mind, he was hit on the head with a bottle. Nearby, Matt Dillon, the marshall from Dodge City in Gunsmoke (I’ve very recently downloaded all of the Gunsmoke radio episodes and been listening to them) was investigating and he suddenly realised that the venue where Percy Penguin needed to be was UNDERNEATH where she had been dropped her. He therefore had to get there to take her to the correct place but he was caught up in some kind of work of his own meaning he couldn’t go quite at that moment. And so in the meantime Percy Penguin was effectively on her own in this place.

And if you can make head or tail of all of this, then good luck to you.

After breakfast, I had a relaxing first part of the morning, and then hit the streets.

On Saturday there had been quite a bit of noise in the Kruisstraat round the side of the building and I’d been meaning to pop outside and see what they were up. But somehow I’d never got quite round to doing it.

But you can’t miss it now, can you? It’s a huge crane. And I wonder what it’s doing here. I suppose that I’ll have to wait until Monday to find out. I hope that they aren’t going to start pulling the roof of this building and leaving me out in the cold.

Once I’d organised the photograph I set off for the railway station at the other end of town, passing the electric unicycle (that I mentioned earlier) on the way.

At the station I picked up my ticket for Roeselare, and set out on my most adventurous SNCB rail trip to date. The first leg of my journey took me from Leuven to Brussels, and thence to the Gent St Pieters railway station.

It was a beautiful, comfortable modern train with carriages that are on lease from a railway company in Stuttgart, Germany. And the equipment puts British railways to shame. Rail travel is certainly the way to go in mainland Europe. I mean – it’s the popular Oostende train, and yet there were seats for everyone.

As we pulled into Gent we were held up by signals, and looking out of the window where we were stopped, I noticed a pile of people having an outdoor barbecue in the street.

This is the kind of thing that you can do in Europe (if you obtain a licence from the local council and you are brave enough to confront the weather) and this is why living in the real Europe is so attractive to me.

I couldn’t ever imagine returning to the UK, that’s for sure. If this ridiculous national suicide called “Brexit” starts to affect my residence position here, I’ll be applying for French nationality, that’s for sure.

I’ve been through Gent St Pieters on the train a few times, and changed trains here once too, but I’d never been outside to actually see the railway station building.

There was a brief 10 minutes before the Antwerp – De Panne train came in and so I went outside to take a photograph of the building. This is the best that I can do because I was in quite a rush as you can imagine, and in fact as I climbed back up to my platform, my train was already pulling in.

I’ll have to go back for a prowl around inside the building some other time

At Lichtervelde, as my train in, a train was pulling in at the opposite platform from the other direction. I knew that there was no time to waste here and so as the guard alighted from the train, I asker her is this was the train to Roosendaal. “Platform 5” she said – but I’m sure that that wasn’t right so we had quite an argument about it.

And while we were arguing, I noticed that the train was displaying a list of subsequent stops, one of which was mine. So not bothering to argue any loner, I leapt aboard and the train almost immediately set off.

There was a scrolling display inside the train too (it was a big, ultra-modern double-decker train) and there was my destination as clear as day. And so the guard came up to me, to presumably check my ticket.

“Look – there you are” I said. “This IS my train!”
She had a look at my ticket. “But you said Roosendaal, not Roeselare. Roosendaal is the Antwerp train”.

It’s a good job that there wasn’t a dining car on board – I would have ordered a portion of Humble Pie.

At the railway station, I noticed that there was a fritkot across the Square. I hadn’t had lunch and so a packet of fritjes sounded like a good plan. I could eat them as I trudged out to the football ground.

The football ground is miles outside the town, the opposite side to where the railway station is.

I peered through the doom and gloom of the rain as I walked. We have the usual walled, moated city with the walls all demolished and the moat mostly filled in, but there was some of what I imagined the moat to be, and it was on my way out to the ground.

It’s certainly impressive, and I wouldn’t mind one of the apartments over there overlooking the water. I could be quite happy there.

I eventually made it over to the football ground, and found myself at the Visitors’ end, which is the far end of the terrace over there.

I didn’t fancy that end, and so I had to carry on with my trudging because it’s quite a hike to reach the other side of the ground. It involved passing through the Exposition Centre’s car park and there was something going on in that building so there were hordes of people around

Hordes of people outside there might have been, but this was another ground where they ended up by announcing the crowd changes to the teams before the kick-off.

And the ground brings back many happy memories of the 1970s in British football. The ground has only been party modernised and there are still a few open, uncovered standing terraces. But there was no-one on them, which is hardly a surprise in this weather.

The grandstand behind the goal, which was where I was going to sit, was a huge affair with plenty of room in there for a large crowd. Rather a waste of effort if you ask me – but never mind.

One corner of the stand was full of kids – aged between about 8 years old and 12 years old. It looked quite strange to me, but as the players left the field after the warm-up, the purpose of the presence of these kids became clear.

Once the footballers had left the field, the girls sitting in the corner of the grandstand took to the field. It seems that Lierse SK isn’t the only team in the Belgian Second Division to have cheerleaders. They have them here at KSV Roeselare too.

Not the sort that would drag me out halfway across Belgium of course, but I’m all in favour of engaging the youth of the community in activities of the local football club, and more teams should take advantage of the opportunities available, to provide entertainment for the fans and to engage with the kids.

And, much to my surprise, they could dance too!

That makes a change because cheerleading has gone right downhill since the halcyon days of American college sport in the 1950s and the standard of dancing has dropped dramatically. These girls here at Roeselare could give seven or eight years to college cheerleading teams in the USA back in those days, but they certainly wouldn’t be out of place or let themselves down.

The boys from the corner then put in an appearance on the field and formed up with the cheerleaders into a guard of honour to welcome the teams onto the field ready for the start of the match.

The players’ changing rooms by the way are underneath the grandstand where I was sitting.

In case you are wondering, by the way, KSV Roeselare play in black and white. OH Leuven were in their change strip of all red

KSV Roeselare have a mascot too, but I’m not quite sure of what he is supposed to be. I wasn’t sure whether or not he was a snow leopard. It felt cold enough for him to be out and about on the prowl.

Further enquiries of the locals revealed that he is in fact a snow tiger and he’s new to the club, having arrived in December. There’s a competition being run to give him a name, and I’m sure that many visiting supporters could think of a few that might be appropriate

So having dealt with all the preliminaries, we could then turn our attention to the football.

And this was yet another match that was really exciting. For the first 60 minutes OH Leuven were well on top and looked as if they would win this match at a canter. For once, their two wingers were creating havoc down the wings and the KSV Roeselare full-backs didn’t have much answer to them. With Kostovski ploughing his way through the centre of the defence like a tank, the result should never ever have been in doubt. Had the surface not been so slippery and had the wingers been able to keep their feet, we should have had a cricket score before half-time.

And so with all of the play being up in the KSV Roeselare half, it comes as no surprise to anyone to learn that it’s the home side that takes the lead.

A poor clearance from the new OH Leuven finds a KSV Roeselare attacker who traps the ball and volleys it back over the keeper into the net.

As simple as that.

But ten minutes later the OH Leuven side equalise. And as I predicted, it came from an attack down the wing and the ball played quickly into the centre, right into the path of the onrushing Kostovski. Kostovski completely mishit his shot, which is probably why the ball went into exactly the opposite corner of the goal towards which the KSV Roeselare goalkeeper was diving. But they all count.

At half-time, the boy and girls came out again- the girls dancing in the centre circle and the boys playing a 6-a-side football match. The snow tiger appeared on the pitch too, to go round and wave to the OH Leuven supporters.

I went off to have a coffee in the bar underneath the grandstand that runs down the side of the pitch.

And much to my surprise, it was pretty good coffee too. I’m not used to good coffee at a football match, that’s for sure.

The second half got back under way again and we were treated to more of the same – at least for the first 15 minutes or so. And then two substitutions swung the game around.

Firstly, for some reason that I have yet to understand, OH Leuven took off one of the wingers. And from then on, their attack became rather aimless.

Secondly, KSV Roeselare brought on a new striker. Judging by the reception that he received, he must have been something of a local folk-hero. And he lived up to his reputation too. We had a ball into the penalty area from the KSV Roeselare right-winger, a bit of football tennis in the OH Leuven penalty area between the attackers and the defenders, and this substitute guy stuck out a foot to poke it into the net.

And that’s how it stayed. The best that I have seen OH Leuven play, and still they manage to lose.

I don’t usually like to comment on the refereeing of a football match if I can help it, but in this match there were quite a few bizarre decisions (or non-decisions). And for once, OH Leuven was on the beneficial end of the majority.

We had a blatant push in the penalty area from an OH Leuven defender, we had a blatant back-pass to the OH Leuven goalkeeper that went unpunished, a throw-in that was clearly given the wrong way, a few dubious free-kicks awarded and all of that. And still they couldn’t win.

They can be very disappointed with that.

I trudged back through the driving rain to the railway station. And much to my surprise, I was early.

There was a direct train to Brussels (via Kortrijk) due imminently and so I decided to take it, even though the itinerary proposed by the SNCB was to go back the way I had come.

It was an old slow, uncomfortable train but at least I had a good seat where I could relax, read my book and listen to the music on my telephone.

There are four trains per hour out to Leuven from Brussels Gare du Midi on a Sunday night. They are at something like 56, 04, 12 and 14 minutes past the hour (don’t ask me why) and my train arrived at 16 minutes past. That meant a wait around of 40 minutes. I went off to the Carrefour and bought some raisin buns, a can of ginger beer and a pear for tea, and had an argument with a couple of young boys who were trying to push down the check-out queue.

When the train pulled into the station, I found that it was the train that I would have caught had I gone in the other direction from Roeselare to Lichtervelde – a nice clean and comfortable modern train – so I can see why it was preferred. My early train had saved me nothing.

I ate my bread and pear, and drank my ginger beer in comfort, and that took me all the way to Leuven where we were decanted into the rain.

As I walked back to the hostel in the pouring rain, I reflected on my journey today.

If you look at a map, you’ll see the distance that I travelled on the railway today. It’s a good half-way, if not more, across the country and the travelling (not the waiting) time was in the region of two and a half hours each way – 5 hours in total.

And if you look at the ticket, you’ll see the price that I paid for the privilege of my journey. €21:20 – or about £19:00. It makes a total mockery of the price that you have to pay to travel on British trains.

I couldn’t even make a saving just by buying diesel to travel by Caliburn out to Roeselare. No wonder that Caliburn has hardly moved since I came back here from France in December.

And so that’s your lot. I’m off to bed.

Now if you’ve made it right down to the end of what is easily a new world-record 3300 or so words of where I got to today, you deserve some kind of compensation. I’ve told you that I really enjoyed the excellent dancing of the young KSV Roeselare cheerleaders.

What I’ll do then is to post you a little video of them dancing so that you can enjoy it yourself. This is what real dancing is all about.

I’m pleased that the football club is engaging with the youth of the community, and encouraging the youth to engage with the spectators. Attach a kid to your football club and you have him or her for life.

Too many of these organisations forget that kids have different ideals and aspirations, and fail to engage with them. And when the old fogeys die out, they find that there is no-one to take their place.

How many times have we seen that in an organisation?

So hats off to KSV Roeselare for giving me a good day out, to the brats for giving me such entertainment, and to you for having read all of these 3330 words.

Saturday 4th February 2017 – YOU’RE PROBABLY WONDERING …

… how it is that I’m blogging so early tonight.

The answer is that I’m not that hungry and I don’t feel like eating anything. In fact, I left half my breakfast this morning, and also some of my lunch. I’m clearly not all that well again, and I can’t understand why, because I feel all right in myself.

I had a good sleep too, just for a change. So much so that I hadn’t switched off the laptop properly, and it took ages to reboot afterwards. And I haven’t been out shopping either because I don’t really need anything this weekend – not even a baguette.

For lunch, I had an invitation out. Or, rather, I invited someone out for lunch. Hans is on his travels back to Germany and was passing through this morning. He had a couple of hours to spare and so I invited him for a coffee. Then we went down to the Asian fast-food place for a quick curry.

Back here this afternoon, I had a crash out for half an hour, something that seems to be becoming a habit these days.

And that’s my lot.

But tomorrow, I’m off out for the day is the weather holds out. OH Leuven are playing away at Roeselare and they are a team that I’ve yet to see – and I haven’t been to Roeselare for 20 years at least. It’s a long way to the football ground from the town centre so I’ll be starting early and having a wander around the town instead.

That is – if the weather holds out.

So now I’m going to have a quiet evening and then an early night.

Sunday 29th January 2017 – WHAT A NICE …

… afternoon!

Alison sent me a message – “I’m going to the English Shop. Do you need anything?”

My reply was simple and to the point. “Why don’t I come with you?”

And so Alison came to pick meup and we went off to the shop. I came back with vegan sausages, vegan pies, dandelion and burdock pop and some Bombay mix. So that’s me set up for the next few weeks, isn’t it? The pies out there are delicious and go down well with spuds and veg. But I also have more kidney bean stuff and a pizza to eat too, so I’m not short of food.

After that, we went for a coffee and then for a meal. We tried a new fritkot as the usual one is undergoing renovation and … shock! horror! the guy in there knows me from somewhere. Dunno where, but he greeted me like a long-lost friend, and that’s uncomfortable. And he made a reference to where we had met but he spoke so fast that I didn’t understand it.

Last night, I had a good sleep – for a change. I tried the usual tactic of watching a Bulldog Drummond film in bed. And that was me stark out. I’d been on my travels too, to visit a couple that I know on the Wirral. But they had moved house and were living on the ground floor in a terraced house. It seemed that they only had one room – I asked about upstairs and they said that this was a different flat, and as for the other room, this was lived in by a girl who had some kind of unusual attachment to the male person in this couple. In fact, all-in-all, I know someone – or two people in fact – who would be very uncomfortable with the significance of this dream.

The trouble with going to bed early and crashing stark out is that you wake up early. And I was awake long before 06:00 too. but I didn’t go up for breakfast until the usual 07:00. I was on my own up there too.

And to my dismay I found that I’d forgotten my loaf yesterday. I had to go out and buy a baguette and even at 08:30 they had sold out. I had to have bread rolls instead.

But this morning has been busy. Editing a pile of photos and a few blog entries, discussing a few things with friends on the internet and watching a football match on the internet from yesterday.

So now, let’s try another Bulldog Drummond film. See if this sends me off to sleep. After all, it’s hospital tomorrow!

Saturday 28th January 2017 – PANIC AT THE SCOUT HUT!

Here I was, sitting in my little room this afternoon when I heard the sirens.

Two emergency ambulances in fact, one a proper full-sized thing and the other was one of these rapid response estate car things. And they came roaring up the Kruisstraat, the wrong way of course as you might expect, and shuddered to a halt at the scout hut, which is at the rear of this building.

There was some kind of commotion there, and then the big ambulance departed in a hurry, with the little one following on behind with its lights and siren switched off.

The wrong way up the Kruisstraat, of course.

I didn’t have much of a sleep last night and although I was away on my travels everything evaporated as soon as I awoke, which was long before the alarm went off. In other words, I was whacked this morning.

My German housemates were in there for breakfast and it’s a fact that I couldn’t eat mine. Half of it ended up in the bin. I don’t know what’s the matter with me these days. Can’t sleep, can’t eat, can’t do anything.

Seeing as I’m out tomorrow, I hope, I went for a shower and a shave and a change of clothes. I may as well, even if they haven’t been this week to change my linen despite the promise that they made on Monday. Can’t say that I’m too impressed with the housekeeping. But then again, the price that I’m paying to stay here, I’m not complaining.

The Carrefour was on the agenda too. I walked down there via Caliburn, giving him a start and a little warm-up for five minutes. I bought a few bits and pieces for lunch and for Sunday tea. No hummus though as I have a pile of vegan cheese. I’ll go for cheese butties instead.

My path down to the Carrefour took me past the Botanical Gardens in the Kapucijnenvoer. And I was arrested by this bizarre sight.

Although it is comparatively warm for the time of year right now, it’s been freezing for quite a few days. And the fountain by the entrance to the Botanic Gardens is still partly-frozen.

I should have come down to see it in the middle of the cold spell, I suppose, but it was still quite photogenic. I wasn’t the only person photographing it today.

This afternoon, in between a little snooze, someone “shared” a football match on their Social networking site. Caernarfon Town against Rhyl in the Welsh Cup. If they simply link to it, I can’t see it as there’s a block on transmission but “sharing” it means that I can watch it, which I did. That was a nice change.

For tea I had more of my kidney bean stuff with pasta. And it was just as delicious as Thursday too. It was followed by pineapple slices and sorbet, which was even nicer.

I’ll try now to have a good long sleep ready for tomorrow. I’m hoping to have an afternoon out tomorrow.

Friday 27th January 2017 – THAT WAS A …

… game of two halves and no mistake.

38 minutes gone and OH Leuven 0-3 down. And lucky to get nil too, I can say. It was embarrassing.

Mind you, the first goal was an absolute stunner and well-worth the price of the admission on its own. A quick ball into the penalty area (and how I’ve been going on and on about getting these balls in quicker) behind the front two attackers, but a superb overhead kick from the centre-forward put it into the top corner. It’s just not possible to defend against a goal like that.

The second goal was a breakaway up the field from an OH Leuven attack. Three Lierse SK attackers against two OH Leuven defenders, and the keeper dived at the feet of the overlapping attacker to block a shot not once but twice, but nothing that he could do about the third shot.

The third goal was silly. Everyone, including the goalkeeper, standing around watching the ball 15 yards out. The hoots of derision from the OH Leuven fan behind the goal as that went into the net could have been heard back in Lier.

We had a couple of substitutions at half-time, and quite rightly so if you ask me. On came a left-winger called Loemba and the enigmatic centre-forward Casagolda. But the second-half started as it ended – with all of the action up towards the OH Leuven goal, where we had a new keeper.

But as the match wore on, it became obvious that the wind was slowly starting to change. Loemba was having a superb game and Casagolda was playing like he sometimes does. And this seemed to breathe some life into the big Macedonian striker Kostovski and it looked as if we might have a game on our hands.

And sure enough, after about 60 minutes, we had a goal. And it was OH Leuven. Good play down the wing, an early ball right across the face of the goal and there running in at the far post was Loemba. A few minutes later, Van Hamel in the Lierse SK goal had to palm a fierce shot around the post.

With OH Leuven pressing, it was Lierse SK’s turn to break up the field and they did manage to put the ball into the net for a fourth. But after much debate, discussion and deliberation, and a lengthy consultation with the linesman, the goal was disallowed for offside.

Back up at the Lierse SK end, we had a goal from OH Leuven. Kostovski battled and barged his way into the goal area to sidefoot in, but that was ruled out for offside too – much to the uproar in the crowd. In fact there were several bizarre decisions in this match, none of which seemed to go OH Leuven’s way.

But deep into injury time, with OH Leuven pressing and pressing, we had an incident in the Lierse Sk penalty area where a defender fell on the ball. Did he fall? Was he pushed? Did his arm touch the ball? Was it intentional?

The referee decided on a penalty and Casagolda scored. And there was hardly time to restart the match before the final whistle blew. It’s a shame that OH Leuven hadn’t played for the whole match like they had played the final 30 minutes of this game.

But it’s a shame that I’d had such a bad night. Ages and ages to drop off to sleep again, and then I was off on my travels. Working in an office and I’d reached retirement age, but instead of leaving work, they gave me a new job, cutting the hedges, checking the trailers, all of that kind of thing. But I’d done nothing and it had all caught me up all at once with the hedge sprouting and budding and all of that, and I was starting to look rather silly.

I had my two German ladies with me for breakfast, and later on they said goodbye to me. Are they leaving? I dunno.

The morning was spent having a doze and doing some more research, reading my Finnish expedition notes and chatting on the internet. I had lunch and then carried on with my snooze and my reading.

At About 19:30 I headed off down to the footy, calling at the fritkot on the way. It’s Friday, not Saturday of course, and so the fritkot on the square down at the back here is open this evening.

However, it was a big mistake to be wearing my yellow and black clothes. Lierse SK play in yellow and black and as I made my way into the “home” end of the ground I was asked three times by OH Leuven officials if I was a Lierse SK supporter.

We had a minute’s silence too before the kick-off. I’m not quite sure why, but there we are anyway. And then the match kicked off.

I told you all about what happened earlier so I shan’t repeat it. But at least the crowd here is very friendly and that is always nice. It does me good to get out and about, and you are all always saying that I ought to get out more often.

On the way back here, I stopped off at Caliburn to pick up some soya milk and soft drinks, and now I’m having a late night.

I hope that I’ll sleep well too.

Saturday 2Ist January 2017 – PHEW!

I’m exhausted!

I’ve just seen the most exciting football match that I’ve seen for years!

So after yesterday, I had something of a disturbed night. But that’s really no surprise what with everything else that had been going around here just recently.

And it was disturbed for a variety of reasons, not the least being that I was off on my travels again. And for quite a while too.

I started off in Labrador but I don’t remember very much about what I was doing there.
But I do remember being back at my house in France and there was a huge queue of 4×4 quads passing up the track in front of my house making a great deal of noise. But a large tractor went out of control, demolished the stone wall at the back of my house and went bang into my wooden verandah. I went out to see what happened and to chat with the tractor driver who was sitting on a big old red tractor of the 1920s. The verandah was shaken but didn’t seem to be damaged, but the wall was in a state and it occurred to me that this damage made a convenient exit for me to go out there and load up the Escort van which I was still using. So while I wanted him to repair the wall, I didn’t want him to do it quite then.
From there I was back in the UK on the road between Whitchurch and Oswestry. I’d driven past some kind of tall cylindrical brick building like a water tower, followed by a huge brick blockhouse kind of place in a rhomboid shape flanked by two outer towers – used as a big ammunition store. It was set in a very dirty and untidy pig farm, which would prevent visits, that’s for sure. Just after this was a kind of bluff about 30 feet high with a house on the peak, and here I met Nerina. We had quite a lengthy discussion, which revolved around shopping. I asked her if she went to the market at Whitchurch or the market at Oswestry. She replied that the Whitchurch market had closed down and she went occasionally to Stoke on Trent on a Friday evening for her shopping. We ended up going for a walk around Oswestry to the shops and I was telling her about France – how LIDL had opened a branch in St Eloy and how it didn’t matter because at St Gervais (which was actually Commentry, but never mind) they had opened not just a LIDL but an ALDI so we still weren’t shopping in St Eloy, although not that that would matter too much to her because she had never been there anyway – I was confusing her last night with Laurence.

I struggled into breakfast where I had company for about 30 seconds – another lodger stuck his head around the door just long enough to gulp down a glass of orange juice – and then I came back down here to chill.

As the day brightened up, I decided to go for a walk to the shops. But this involved going down to Caliburn to pick up the shopping bags that I had left there by mistake the other day.

I could have gone on down to the Carrefour had I thought on, but instead I walked back towards the town in the freezing cold weather and headed towards the market and the Delhaize supermarket

Instead of going straight on down the Kapucijnenvoer and up the Brusselsestraat, I took the short cut through the maze of narrow streets, cutting off the corner.

There is a great deal of “Old Leuven” that either escaped the ravages of the German Army in 1914 and 1940, Allied bombing in 1944 and the extremes of modern architecture that did more damage to British cities than the Luftwaffe ever did.

As well as that, when the city was rebuilt after all of the damage, it was rebuilt in many cases as it used to be, not as modern architects thought that it ought to be.

Loads of little alleys, loads of little archways that really bring out the medieval flavour of the city. You can imagine just how this city must have been 120 years ago – how wonderful it must have looked.

It’s certainly a much more interesting way to come into the city centre than straight up the Brusselsestraat.

That’s the Brusselsestraat there – down the end of the Predikherenstraat there. And unfortunately, that’s not managed to escape the ravages of modern architects.

Luckily, when the architects and rebuilders turned to the Predikherenkerk, we had something that resembled very much what it was supposed to have been.

This is said to be the oldest Gothic church in the city and dates from 1234. It was originally the church of the Dominican order and the resting place of some of the Dukes of Brabant.

It was badly damaged during World War II, and restoration began in 1961. it wasn’t finally completed until 2008

My trek then took me down along the Oudlievevrouwstraat and over the bridge across the River Dyle. Unfortunately this area hasn’t escaped the ravages of the second half of the 20th Century and a huge pile of new apartments has sprung up overlooking the river.

I must admit that despite the rather bland appearance of the buildings, I wouldn’t mind a little apartment in a block just there, as long as there was a view of the river to comfort me.

Back here to warm up again, I had a coffee and a sit in front of the radiator for a while. And a brief search on the internet for nothing particular produced some astonishing results.

During the “unavailability” of my grandparents, my mother and her sister were boarded, when they were small, with a family in Palmers Green, London and later in Birchington, Kent during the 1930s. We’d kept in contact with them until they had died in the 1950s and 60s and even been to visit them as small children, although I don’t remember very much. My brother was actually named after one of the “cousins”.

It had come up in a discussion that I’d had the other day, and so in a fit of idleness I typed in the family name of one of these people. Much to my surprise, I found several pages on the internet that related to this family. Not only did this bring back many happy memories, I ended up having an on-line conversation with someone from those days.

The world is a surprisingly small place these days, isn’t it?

Another thing that I did, which I’ve been meaning to do for quite a while, is to go through all of the till receipts in my wallet. Some of them have been there since I was in Canada.

Amongst the things that I found were a couple of receipts for medication, and a €20 note. That cheered me up, and no mistake.

After my butties and a little chat with Liz on line, I walked up into town and to the railway station. I’m not going to sit around here and be miserable when I can be miserable somewhere else, and it’s usually football at weekend isn’t it?

And I remembered why I had packed an oversize pair of the sports trousers that I usually wear. They had been in my Canada stuff and I’d brought them back here for some reason or other.

Before setting out, I slipped them over the normal-sized pair of trousers that I usually wear. They fitted perfectly and I was comparatively warm, considering that it was minus 3°C

Loads of places that I would have wanted to visit, like Eupen playing in the First Division, or even Hasselt in the Third Division, but Belgian football has staggered kick-off times, and the bizarre thing about that is that all of the matches that I would have liked to have seen, even OH Leuven’s match at Royal Antwerp, finished too late for me to catch a train back home again.

It would have to be Lier and Lierse SK with their cheerleaders.

What a shame!

At the railway station at Lier were three locomotives parked up in a siding, so I went over to have a look at them.

The two on the right, 6291 and 6317, are two of a class of 136 lightweight diesel-electrics built to a style of my former employers, General Electric. They date from the early 1960s.

The one on the left, 7798, is one of a class of 170 heavy shunter-freight locomotives built in the early years of the 21st Century by the German company Vossloh.

I was there in plenty of time and so I went for a walk around the site of the old ramparts of the city.

They have long-been demolished and little remains now. Nothing whatever at the site of the Antwerpsepoort – the Antwerp Gate. But it was here on 5th October 1914 that the British Army’s rearguard, guarding the retreat to Antwerp, erected a barricade and held up the attacking Germans long enough. for the rest of the Army to escape

I was expecting much more of a crowd seeing that the visitors today were Cercle Brugge. But the popular side was packed out anyway, and they made a lot of noise that contributed to the tremendous atmosphere.

I was in my usual place to the left of the goal with all of the other old fogeys, where there was a good view of the cheerleaders. I mean, there have to be some compensations about coming all of the way to Lier in the freezing cold.

As the cheerleaders withdrew from the field they stopped for a moment at the foot of one of the stands so I was able to take a quick snap of them.

It’s all blurred and out-of focus but the camera on my phone isn’t really up to all that much in these kinds of half-light conditions when you are snapping away in haste. And of course, you can’t take DSLRs into public venues in Belgium so this photo will have to do.

Liz asked me how the cheerleaders performed – well, I couldn’t tell you that from first-hand experience but you can see some of their dancing in this video clip just here that should give you some idea.

Not the best cheerleaders that I have ever seen but I just appreciate the effort that Lierse SK has taken to entertain the fans. If for some reason I can’t get out to see OH Leuven I’ll gladly come here and spend my money and I’m sure that I’m not alone.

I can still chase after the women, even if I can’t remember why!

As for the football itself, the two teams were evenly matched. As the first half wore on, Lierse gradually grew in confidence and took control, but Cercle Brugge looked dangerous on the break, especially down the right wing. However, as I have said on many occasions at this level of football, the teams are far too slow to play the ball forward, dwelling on it for far too long and finding the brief opportunites closed down.

Half-time was 0-0 but Lierse had hit the post and the bar, and had a couple cleared off the line too. Cercle Brugge had missed a sitter, open goal from 5 yards out, right in front of where I was sitting. A no-score draw it was, but boring it was not.

After half-time, the teams came out with much more of a purpose and the battle raged from end to end. Everyone was sitting on the edge of their seats as the pendulum swung from one side to the other. The slippery, ice surface was a wild-card in the match too, with players losing their footing at vital moments.

And sure enough, we had a goal. And to the surprise of almost everyone except those who follow this rubbish, it was Cercle Brugge who took the lead. For once they played the ball in early from the wing and caught the Lierse SK defence flat-footed.

And if you think that the game had been exciting up to this point, the two teams upped a gear and we were pinned to our seat as the tension mounted. We probably had the best 30 minutes football that I had ever seen from this point on.

Lierse SK equalised with 15 minutes to go, and Cercle Brugge can consider themselves to be quite unlucky to concede this goal. A Lierse SK player went down on the edge of the penalty area, no more than about 15 metres from where I was sitting, and I had a clear view of it. To me, it looked clearly as if the player had slipped on the frosty surface but not only did the referee blow for a foul, he booked the Cercle Brugge defender. I had a good look, and the linesman certainly didn’t flag for a foul and he was closer to the action than I was too.

From the free kick, the ball went straight to the head of a Lierse SK attacker, totally unmarked at the far post, and he didn’t miss from there.

The final 15 minutes continued at this roaring pace and when the final whistle went, the teams received a standing ovation from some of the crowd. And quite right too because it really was that good a match. And it was a shame about the equaliser – it meant that I didn’t get to console any of the cheerleaders.

I came home in the sub-zero temperature and caught my train at Lier. It’s the Liege train that I catch and I have to change at Aarschot. The train is at 16 minutes past the hour and there are only a couple of weekends when the 20:16 train doesn’t run, aren’t there?

By the time that I returned, I was cold and tired. But I’d had a really good day out and I was feeling a little better than I was yesterday.

I’ll pay for this day out of course, but ask me if I care.

And you wouldn’t care either after having to sit here and read over 2360 words, you poor people.

Saturday 14th January 2017 – PHEW, I’M WHACKED!

I’ve had a really busy day today and I’m going to pay for it tomorrow. But ask me if I care!

I’ve always said that I’ll do what I have the opportunity to do whenever I have the opportunity to do it, and today was just like that.

Remember when I went shopping with Alison last weekend? She ended up not buying a ski suit but she did manage to pick one up during the week. But she decided that she would go to look for another one today – in Aachen, Germany, to be precise. Did I want to go?

Well, do bears go for picnics in the woods?

Last night was another typical bad night with an interruption in the small hours as usual. And that’s annoying me as you can imagine. But I made it into the kitchen for breakfast bang on time all the same.

Now here’s a thing that is more than unusual. it’s more than surprising too, and certainly extraordinary. And that is that I was down at the Delhaize in town, doing my shopping and back in my room afterwards for 09:00. When did that ever happen?

By 11:00 I’d showered, shaved, had clean clothes, all of that and gone outside where Alison was waiting for me.

And so, all aboard, we headed off eastwards down the motorway to Aachen. We farhn, fahrn, fahrn’d down the autobahn, in fact.

The weather could have been better though. It was cold, although not that cold, and grey and overcast with snow flurries throughout the day.

We arrived at Aachen where the snow had beaten us to it, and first stop was to sort out some clothing for Alison.

While Alison was searching around in the shops I went for a little wander around in the vicinity. Of course, when women are buying clothes, there’s plenty of time to do that, and even more so when people are in the queue for paying.

It seems that almost everyone in the city was shopping for ski-wear. After all, it’s Carnival quite soon and this is the traditional time for the kids to hit the slopes.

From there, we walked up the hill into town past some nice fairly-modern brick-built buildings that looked quite nice and blended quite well into the surroundings.

A coffee was next, and Alison knew a pretty good cafe. And I’ve drunk much worse coffee than that, I can tell you. I was surprised though, that there was no public toilet in there. I wonder what the EU would have to say about it.

But it does reinforce everything that I have said about the different attitudes that different countries have. Most countries agree to everything, and then have a very lax attitude about enforcing it. The UK fights tooth-and-nail, wasting everyone’s time, about various legislation, end then enforces it to the most ridiculous lengths. Remind me to tell you one day about the tip at Leek.

After the coffee we went off up the hill into the city centre, and while Alison went off in search of a woolly hat to go with her new ski jacket that she had bought, I went off for a wander around.

Luckily, Aachen was spared the worst excesses of the Allied terror-bombing of World War II so there is a great deal of the medieval city remaining, despite the American shelling and the SS demolition squads during its capture in October 1944.

And while it’s not the most attractive medieval city that I’ve ever visited, it certainly retains a lot of its charm.

The Town Hall, or Rathaus, which I always thought was a quite appropriate name for a town hall in any country or any language, was damaged during the capture of the city, but you would never ever think so from just looking at it.

And I don’t just mean the quality of the restoration either. The building could do with a really good clean for a start and it would look so much better if they were to take the time to do it.

One of the things that I did like about the Rathaus were the beautiful medieval wooden buildings – a pub so Alison told me, that were attached to the side, taking advantage of the stone wall of the Rathaus at the back.

It’s not the first time that we’ve seen this style of construction. There’s the same kind of construction in Belgium at a church near the Bourse that has wooden buildings constructed against it. It certainly saves on construction materials

Round the side of the central square was another small square tucked away out of sight. Alison told me that there was a restaurant there that had vegan food advertised on the menu, so that sounded like a good place to go for lunch.

It’s over there at the back, on the right, hidden by what look very much like historical remains. And I was intrigued to see these remains still standing – they look like the kind of remains that would have fallen down years ago.

Alison had a salmon steak and new potatoes, and my vegan ratatouille made with fresh vegetables of the day was even better. It was a little over-priced in my opinion, but it was still delicious and light years away from a bag of chips.

It too was served with sliced new potatoes and that worked so well that I’ll be trying this as soon as I can, now that I have a bag of spuds to play with.

But I didn’t think that the name of the restaurant was appropriate – fancy calling it the Living Room, which could be translated into Lebensraum, the project which concerned the Nazis invading Eastern Europe and exterminating its population.

And I shan’t say anything about setting the décor on fire either.

Outside the Living Room there was a view of the cathedral, to the right of the historic arches, and if you excuse the building work and the crane thing in the way.

It’s not the best view in the world but unfortunately, like many other well-preserved medieval cities, the cathedral is tightly hemmed in by buildings and it’s not possible to do any better than this.

If the RAF and the American artillery can’t clear the scene, neither can I

The cathedral itself is a magnificent pile and I expect that you are waiting with bated breath to see a whole raft of photos of the gorgeous interior, the tomb of Charlemagne, and all kinds of relics, including building materials such as marble that were sent by Pope Hadrian I to incorporate into the construction

Unfortunately there was a person loitering just inside the interior whose task it is to pounce upon anyone pointing a camera at anything, and demand a “licence fee” for the privilege of so doing.

Clearly the cathedral authorities have never ever heard of “Christian Charity” and don’t understand the concept of “sharing”. It’s not the first time that I’ve passed comment on the quality and value of the treasures contained in a church – something that goes totally against the concept of Jesus viz “give all thou hast to the poor”, but when it even comes down to naked exploitation and profiteering of the idea of sharing images of what the church possesses, then I’m convinced that there is something totally wrong with the church’s morality.

The oldest part of the Cathedral dates from 792 and is part of Charlemagne’s Palace – probably the only surviving part. And its rare octagonal shape is an indication of its age.

The stained glass therein is stunning too and all in all, it’s quite an impressive building. One day I shall go back – alone – and bring you back some photos to demonstrate what I mean.

The streets surrounding the cathedral are not without interest. Small, tight and cobbled – the very typical medieval street scenes that were swept away in the mid-20th Century in most cities in the UK

And this sculpture was quite exciting too. All of the models on it are mobile and can be manipulated around. It drew quite a crowd and I had to wait ages for a suitable opportunity to photograph it, when there was no-one else loitering in the vicinity.

Aachen is quite a historic city.

Settlement dates back to neolithic times and was settled by the Romans, attracted to the site by the warm sulphur springs. It was in fact on the frontier of the settled Roman area.

Excavations have taken place in the city from time to time and some of the discoveries are on display, like this site in one of the town squares that is surrounded by a glass case. I particularly liked the idea of the drainage channel just here in the foreground.

The warm springs are just lower down from where these ruins are located, and I went off for a taste. Very sulphuric, and quite warm too. The taste was disgusting, but I had to try it. No point in being here if you don’t do something like that.

There is no photograph of the springs, and no photograph of the plaques with the list of names of the notable personalities who came here to take the water. This was because at this moment we were engulfed in something of a snowstorm.

As the snow eased off we walked back to the car.

Parts of the town are still decorated for Christmas, and some of the shop windows are phenomenal. This was one of my favourites, with the snowmen and other winter scenes, but there were plenty of others too.

And I can’t get over the bakeries either. I love German bread – there is just so much of it and it’s all good, and Aachen is no exception. Thoughts such as working out where the railway station might be in connection with the railway line to Leuven started to run through my mind.

As it grew dark, we hit the highway and headed for home. The return journey was quite quick and I was back here by 18:15. Many thanks to Alison for a good day out.

My day wasn’t finished though. OH Leuven were playing at home against Tubize, kick-off 20:00, so I braved the snowstorm and the freezing cold to go down there, grabbing a bag of chips on the way.

For a change, I wasn’t behind the goal but high up in the stand along the touchline level with the edge of the penalty area. A grandstand view, especially of down there where I usually sit.

AFC Tubize looked the better side and they had a player, the n°97, who looked streets ahead of anyone else on the field. His name is Jae-Gun Lee and he’s a recent signing, aged just 19, from Korea.

He’ll go far in European football, that’s for sure. Remember that you heard his name first on here

But OH Leuven went into the dressing room 1-0 up at half-time, rather against the run of play, thanks to an audacious step-over in the penalty area that totally flat-footed the Tubize defence.

I said that there was still plenty of time for OH Leuven to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory, and how prophetic those words were. From the first attack of the second half, Tubize won a penalty and it went all downhill after that.

And so in the torrential snowstorm that we were having, OH Leuven’s hopes drifted away. Tubize ran out 3-1 winners, and ended with the crowd booing the home side and cheering on the visitors.

That was rather harsh because OH Leuven had tried very hard, but their final ball was always falling short of where it was supposed to go. Nevertheless, they had plenty of chances to equalise, if not to win. But it was one of those games where nothing at all went right.

I walked back, freezing cold, and I’m tired and ready for bed. And I know that I’ll pay for all of this effort in the morning.

I’ll leave you instead with about 2,000 words and hope that you enjoy it.

Sunday 8th January 2017 – WHAT A MATCH!

Absolutely!

Just two matches in Belgian professional football. Both involved travelling, but one involved a train, a metro, a tram and a long walk to a huge 60,000-seater with a crowd of about 1,500.

The second involved a train ride and a long walk to a compact modern stadium with a belting crowd, a belting atmosphere and CHEERLEADERS!

And I’m glad that I chose the match that I did, because it was one of the most exciting – not to mention the most bizarre – matches that I’ve ever seen. Not even Pionsat could conjure up a performance like the one that I saw this evening.

As far as sleeping went, I had issues yet again. It took me ages and several attempts to drop off, and when I finally did, I was awake again by 06:15. I’d been on my travels too, doing something with a group of children, trying to train them to perform office work and I was also supervising a group of former colleagues at one stage during the night.

For breakfast I was alone again, and that was how the morning went. I read through a pile of stuff on Labrador but there was nothing that caught my attention today, just for a change.

After lunch, I left the premises and walked down to Caliburn for my gloves, seeing as the weather is cold today. And once I’d done that, I walked off through the back streets taking the short cut to the railway station.

There was plenty of time before my train was due to leave, but I didn’t have to wait in the cold because it was sitting at the platform. And it was quite warm too.

And then we hit the rails and off we shot. Not to Antwerp and not to Aarschot either, but to Lier. The Herman Vanderpoortenstadion, the same football ground that we visited the other weekwhen OH Leuven was playing there.

The stadium is otherwise known as Het Lisp, and today, SK Lierse was playing Lommel United. Lommel United is a team in the Belgian Second Division that I have yet to see, and so with a choice of just two matches today, it seemed like the good choice.

A nice pleasant stroll through the thick fog took me to the ground and I warmed myself up in the pie hut under the stand with a nice hot coffee, much better than the usual football club rubbish where it’s more like coloured hot water.

But I’m clearly showing my age these days.There’s full security and searches at football grounds these days, and yet they took one look at me as I entered the ground and waved me straight on in.

I took my place in the cheap seats at the back of the stand with all of the other old fogeys, and we had the usual distraction of the cheerleaders performing on the field.

As I said last time, I’ve seen better cheerleaders than these, but at least they are here, and it gets me out of the house – and that’s quite important. I just wish I could find a seat closer to the action.

You’ll have to excuse the quality of the photos that are on here, and the fact that there are only one or two. But we were blanketed in a thick fog that was rolling across the pitch and at times, visibility was quite difficult.

And add to that the fact that the camera in the phone isn’t made for this kind of thing. It spent most of its times focusing on a fog bank rather than the action.

And so what can I tell you about the game? The fact is that both of the teams were quite evenly matched. But if anything, Lommel were much more composed on the ball and looked more confident.

And that’s what made the result so amazing.

The final score was 5-1 – in favour of … errr … Lierse SK. And that was absolutely astonishing.

I can do no more that itemise the goals that Lierse SK scored, and you’ll see exactly what I mean –

A free kick outside the area that was heading straight into the keeper’s arms with no problem or danger whatever – except a diving header at the near post at the last moment by a Lierse SK attacker
A penalty

All totally against the run of play.

I thought that the first goal in the second half would decide the match – and straight from the kick-off SK Lierse hit the post with the ball rolling along the goal-line and back into play just half an inch from the outstretched foot of an attacker.

And 30 seconds later –

A SK Lierse player runs into the penalty area with the ball. The keeper dives bravely at the attacker’s feet to block the ball, and the loose ball could have gone anywhere from here. It rolls free to an unmarked SK Lierse attacker

From there, it went from bad to worse for Lommel United.

Keeper makes a great block-cum-save from a fierce SK Lierse shot. he can’t hang on and the loose ball could go anywhere. It rolls free to an unmarked SK Lierse attacker
A shot on the volley from 35 yards that can go anywhere. It takes a vicious swerve right into the far corner of the net

Five of the luckiest goals that I have ever seen – you won’t see this kind of thing ever again. And there was still enough time for Lommel United to score a consolation goal.

But I was amazed.

On the way back I bought a bag of chips and then came back on a couple of crowded trains, changing at Aarschot.

A nice walk brought me back here and now I’m going to bed. And judging by the sounds, I have a new neighbour next door. I hope that whoever it is, he or she is quiet.

Saturday 24th December 2016 – WHILE YOU ADMIRE …

… the city of Leuven and its Christmas illuminations, I’ll tell you about the day that I’ve had today.

Most importantly, I went out for a walk this evening. It’s been quite a while since I’ve been for a stroll out at night – probably since I was in Montreal in October, and seeing as it’s Christmas Eve tonight, it seemed to be a good-enough opportunity.

One thing that I haven’t done since I’ve been in Leuven to show you where I’m staying.

It’s in the Brusselsestraat, which used to be the main way out of the city before the Motorway link road was built, and on the corner of the Kruisstraat. And that’s the building just down there on the left, on the corner after the third street light.

My room is on the first floor, on the left hand corner at the rear, with a window at the rear overlooking the garden.

And so as for last night – a total disaster.

Someone in here was “entertaining” and the beds creak like nobody’s business, as I might have mentioned before. I was all for giving them a round of applause but of course it’s impossible to clap with just one hand as you know.

And then we had the party.

About 02:00 they started, and it wasn’t until about 04:00 that they finished.

I’d been asleep, having had an early night until they started, and I gave up any idea of going back there once they had started. By 02:30 I was working on the laptop. I may as well make the most of all of my discomfort. No point in missing out on the time that I had unexpectedly been given

I went back to sleep shortly afterwards and that was that until the alarm went off. And rather petulantly, I didn’t turn off the alarm for quite a while. And likewise with the reminder. I let it ring for a few minutes

After breakfast I went and had a shower. I didn’t wait until everyone was awake like I usually do – I went straight in regardless of the noise that the shower makes in the bathroom.

I was in something of a bad mood, wasn’t I?

For much of the morning I was researching stuff again for my stuff on Labrador. And I came across some work by a certain Rudy Mauro, someone who had gone out (in a helicopter) to the site of where Leonidas Hubbard, about whom we’ve talked on many occasions, had died during his ridiculous “exploration” of Labrador’s interior where he had starved to death after being “out” for only a few weeks.

He also had amongst his papers some notes by Dillon Wallace, he who accompanied Hubbard and who went back to complete his work, and which were previously unpublished.

Later on I went out to the shops and to the market. I bought everything that I had written down on my list, but something that I had subsequently remembered that I needed, I even more subsequently forgot.

And worse was yet to come, because the vegan shop had sold out of the spray-on vegan cream. It means that I’m going to have to eat my mince pies “dry” and that’s a tragedy. I was rather looking forward to my special little treat.

I carried on working this afternoon, as well as having a little doze too (which I reckoned that I needed), as well as keeping up-to-date with Morton’s game with Queen of the South.

That all took me up to tea time when i finished off the last of my curry. But it was rather difficult making my tea tonight as my current lot of housemates don’t seem to understand the necessity of cleaning up and washing up after them.

The sooner I can find a place of my own the better.

But then I went off for my walk up town in the evening.

What surprised me was that there was no-one about. Well – that’s not necessarily true. What I mean was that in most other cities the centre would be heaving and there woud be all kinds of things going on – and that was what I was hoping – carol singers and all of that.

But as you can see from a photo of the Grote Markt – there are very few people wandering around here and nothing in the way of entertainment. It was all rather disappointing.

And so instead I came back home.

It’s now Christmas Day and I’m celebrating with a can of alcohol-free raspberry beer that I bought from Noz in Montlucon the other week.

And now I’m off to bed, if my housemates will let me, and I’ll show you the rest of my photos tomorrow.

Sunday 18th December 2016 – I’VE BEEN …

… out and about on my travels again this afternoon.

A little saunter up into town took me to the railway station and my train, but I wasn’t going to Aarschot and neither was I going to Antwerp Central railway station either, but seeing that it’s nearly Christmas, I’ve actually just been to Nazaret.

I consider that to be a highly appropriate place to visit at this time of year.

You’re probably wondering just where Nazaret might be, and what there might be to see in Nazaret to attract my attention.

The fact is that Nazaret can be reached by train from Leuven and a good brisk half-hour walk at the side of the railway line and then along the road in the direction of Lisp, and I’m sure that you think that I’m joking too.

But I’m not

What there actually is in Nazaret, or actually in Lisp because it’s apparently across the commune’s border, is the Herman Vanderpoortenstadion, otherwise known as Het Lisp, and that’s the home ground of Lierse SK, the football club of Lier.

That’s my destination for today, because OH Leuven are playing there today. Everyone tells me that I ought to get out more, and so going to watch OH Leuven fits into that plan.

The stadium is quite a modern stadium and there was a fair crowd in here today. The atmosphere was good – quite noisy, which makes a change from Tubize the other day.

I was sitting in the stand at the back of the goals with a pile of old men (somehow it seemed quite appropriate) and there can’t be anything more Belgian that sitting in a stand at a Second-Division football match clutching a bag of fritjes

It’s another place where there’s no fritkot between the station and the football ground and that’s a rather desperate state of affairs here in Belgium.

I’m glad that I arrived at the ground in plenty of time because one of the most exciting features of the game is the pre-match entertainment.

We actually had some cheerleaders out there dancing away. Something of a motley crew rather like the ones whom I saw in that diner on the Interstate near Bangor, Maine, a few years ago, but cheerleaders just the same.

It was a shame that their routine was rather sedate, but nevertheless it warmed me up a little.

We also had a parade and a triumphal arch with enormous flags to welcome out the players to the pitch. It reminded me like something of a Nuremburg Rally in the mid 1930s.

But I did have a little smile about the standard bearers. And I’m sure that you don’t need me to describe them because you can imagine them yourself, but I will do all the same.

They were all probably in their late 20s and 30s, large, overweight and wearing glasses and you’ll see them in every similar organisation carrying buckets and that kind of thing.

As for the match itself, it started slowly but gradually through the first half OH Leuven began to impose themselves.

The more pressure that OH Leuven applied, the more apparent it became that it was the Keystone Cops playing in the Lierse SK defence. If you thought that Pionsat’s defence was chaotic at times, you haven’t seen anything yet.

But if Lierse SK had the Keystone Cops in defence, OH Leuven had Laurel and Hardy playing up front. To give you just one example of many, Casagolda missed a free header into an empty net from three yards out and his striking partner, the big Macedonian striker Jovan Kostovski following up, shot into the side netting when it was far, far easier to score.

The only surprise was that it took OH Leuven to score. While two Lierse SK defenders dillied and dallied about clearing the ball, Kostovski stuck out a boot in between them and lifted the ball over the keeper into the net.

And as you might expect, we had two different teams out there in the second half. I was expecting OH Leuven to go out there and score three or four more but instead, sat right back and allowed Lierse SK to bring the game to them.

By about 60 minutes, Lierse SK started to play good attacking football and from then, they went on the rampage and it all began to look rather uncomfortable for OH Leuven.

We had a couple of penalty calls and despite some rather weird decisions that the officials had been calling, they had the penalty decisions just right.

The most controversial was a loose bouncing ball in the penalty area that Gillekens dived for and pushed away. There was a collision with a Lierse SK attacker but in my mind, there was no doubt whatever that Gillekens was playing the ball – in fact he had managed to have both hands to the ball in order to push it away – and the collision was after Gillekens had played the ball.

No doubt in my mind whatever that it was not a penalty, but he didn’t half receive some abuse from the crowd for the rest of the match, particularly when on two occasions he was over the goal line (but the ball wasn’t) when he caught the ball.

But it was inevitable that Lierse SK was going to score, with the amount of pressure that they had been applying.

Right on 90 minutes too and it was a penalty as you might expect. The ball definitely hit the arm of a defender from a cross on the goal line, and it did indeed divert the ball, but it was one of these harsh decisions where the player’s arm was right by his body and there was no intent whatever to play the ball with the arm.

A penalty, yes, but just sheer bad luck.

And so I walked back to the railway station at Lier in order to come back to Leuven.

And as I walked down the side of the railway line I noticed a train leaving the station. “I bet that that’s my train” I mused to myself, and when I arrived at the station, I found that it was too!

Ordinarliy I would have had to wait another 55 minutes for the next train but a friendly neighbourhood guard on another train told me how I could go to Leuven on the Liège train, changing at Aarschot.

And so what else have I been up to today? While you admire some more photos of the Christmas decorations at Leuven I’ll tell you about it.

Despite a somewhat-disturbed night that involved a trip down the corridor, I was fast-asleep when the alarm went off this morning.

But I’d been on my travels too, to the abandoned communities of Hebron and Okak on the day that they were being abandoned (which, or course, was not the same date but never mind). And I’d entered into a “relationship” with a young Inuit girl, just as many kablunas did when they arrived on the Coasts of Labrador.

And after breakfast, I had to get a wriggle on. Alison was planning to go to the English Shop after lunch and did I want to go?

It meant that I would be in a dreadful rush to catch my train and so I went for a walk uptown to the railway station so that I would have my ticket all ready for what I reckoned would be a dash to the train.

And on the way back, we had another one of these “Only in Belgium” moments.

Here in Belgium and in the Netherlands, we have what is called a bakfiets, a bicycle built to carry goods. And here we have a mother who has decided to go out for a bike ride with the kids on a Sunday morning, and what she has done is to simply chuck the kids into the bakfiets.

The barrel organ singer from yesterday was there too, but this morning he wasn’t singing – just turning the handle of the organ.

I had a good look at his barrel organ, and it’s one of these sheet music things where the sheets are rather solid and have punched holes so that the pegs that work the notes of the organ that are required to be played are operated by the holes in the sheets. Spring pressure keeps the pegs inoperable, but the holes allow the corresponding pegs to open, and that’s how the music was played.

Alison came round as arranged at 12:45 and by this time I was outside waiting for her – the quicker we get away, the quicker we come back.

It was quite crowded in the English Shop but there was a really good selection of products that had just come in and I was able to stock up with some very useful articles.

They are stored in Caliburn right now, and I’ll show you a photo of them after I’ve been to rescue them.

Shock! Horror!

The train was two minutes late, which is most unlike Belgium, and as we unloaded at Aarschot the train from Liège pulled in bang on time so we had to run to the next platform. This train was absolutely packed and I had to fight my way into a seat.

And I crashed out too for 10 minutes on the train. It had been a long walk.

But the train arrived back in Leuven bang on time and we had the usual tidal wave surge up the street into the town and passed the Christmas decorations that by now were all lit up.

It’s certainly much nicer here in the city centre with the illuminations, isn’t it? And as it wasn’t all that cold right now, I hung around to take a few photos.

As we’ve seen, the camera on the telephone is nothing like as good as the Nikon D5000 but as you know, we can’t take “professional” cameras into football grounds these days and so the phone is the best that I can do.

So having spent a good 20 minutes walking around the city centre and the lights, I came back to my little room in the hostel.

It’s Sunday night, and that means pizza. And with my little trip back home when I was able to pick up some more stuff, I’d come back with my pizza tray and in my new cooking mode, I decided to make my own pizza.

And having bought a packet of these half-baked half-baguettes, I made some garlic bread too.

But it didn’t work out too well. The oven here doesn’t seem to work – only the grill – and so my pizza was burnt on top and uncooked on the underside. I’ll have to rule this out.

The small table-top oven works reasonably well and I’ll have to use that the next time, although a pizza won’t fit into it. I’ll have to cook it in two halves.

After pizza, I had plenty of things to do, but I just crashed out.

I’d had a long, hard, busy day.

Saturday 3rd December 2016 – AND IF YOU THINK …

… that the last couple of nights were bad, you ain’t seen nuffink yet. Because there I was, it was 06:30, and I was still wide-awake. I just couldn’t drop off at all, and I’ve no idea why.

But I must have done shortly after that. And I heard the alarm go off at 07:00, and the next one at 07:15, but that was nothing like enough to make me leave my bed. Instead, I breakfasted at something like … errr … 10:30.

I was up in town a little later to buy some stuff for my butties. And here I had a big surprise.

There was a new van on there and it seemed to be advertising home bakery products, including bio, lactose-free, gluten-free and vegan products.

I had quite a chat with the owner and he pointed out to me the products that he had which were vegan. There were two varieties of cake that you buy by the slice and some biscuits too. That was so exciting.

He’s here every Saturday so I shall be frequenting him when I come back.

After lunch, I had a shower and a clean up ready for Alison coming round. We went down the road to the café for a coffee and a good chat about this and that, all that’s happened to us for the last couple of weeks.

Alison ran me down to the railway station afterwards where I bought my ticket.

OH Leuven are playing away tonight against AFC Tubize. Tubize is a town that I have never visted and of course I’ve certainly never seen the football club play. Apart from that, as I said to Alison, I ought to get out more often and connect with the real word every now and again, and going to the football is one way of doing it.

The ground is a good 20 minute stroll south of the railway station and, would you believe it, there’s no fritkot between the town centre and the ground that I could see. That meant that I had to do without my tea. But isn’t that astonishing?

The ground is a modern two-sided wonder with a couple of concrete stands with basic seat forms put on there. Underneath the stand where I’m sitting is a long hall with a pie hut inside and the players’ changing rooms and the like. It’s all very basic.

It cst me €15 for a seat which wasn’t so bad, but actually finding my place was something else. The security guards clearly didn’t know the stadium all that well and I was sent from pillar to post before I found the correct entrance.

I suppose that a good number of other people had difficulty finding the ground too, because I don’t think that I’ve ever seen such an empty stadium at this level of football. At a rough estimate of what I could see, there can’t have been 1500 people in the ground for this match. 100 away supporters if they were lucky.

The Kop for the home fans is a little standing area on the far side -capacity about 500 I suppose and maybe 120 people in it. They made a bit of noise I suppose, but it wasn’t anything to be worked up about.

There’s another small stand behind the goal, out of shot to the left. That maybe has room for 700 people I suppose but it was empty and closed off.

It’s not quite a one-sided wonder that you might find in Scottish lower-league football but it’s not far off. One of those places where they set out with the best intentions and then ran out of money.

As for the match itself, the first half was pretty uneventful. Both sides had their chances, including a shot from an AFC Tubize player that hit the post, rolled along the goal-line and back into play, with Gillekens in the Leuven goal totally flat-footed.

But there were a few strange decisions out there. The OH Leuven n°10 was being kicked, pushed, dragged and swatted off the ball by the defenders and never a foul was awarded despite how much protesting he did; It totally astonished me.

And when he was booked for complaining too much, I really did feel for him.

At half-time, I went down for a hot drink. I dunno what they flavoured my hot water with, but at €2:00 it was flaming expensive

The second half was a little more lively at first, and OH Leuven took the lead. They have a centre-forward called Casagolda who somehow has always flattered to deceive. But today, he had a really good game, living up to his promise. as a Tubize player dallied on the ball à la Pionsat defence, ha was harried out of it and Casagolda whacked it into the net.

The game them came alive and we had about 25 minutes of exciting football and it was a shame that the match couldn’t have been played like this all the time.

OH Leuven scored a second with about 15 minutes to go, and they hit the bar and had another cleared off the line too. As it finished, they thoroughly deserved the victory.

I walked back into town looking for a fritkot. I photo-bombed a group photo and so was invited to be formally included in it, which was good fun, and then carried on my search.

I walked past the really beautiful Church of St Gertrude and eventually came across a fritkot on the way out of town. a big bag of chips and garlic sauce was beautiful and as I sauntered back to the railway station I noticed that if I had come out of the station building via the second door, I would have been right by a fritkot.

GRRRRR!

The train brought me to Brussels-Midi and then we had more excitement as our train to Leuven via the Airport arrived at the wrong platform and we all had to run for it.

By 0045, freezing cold, I was back in my little room in my hostel. I’d had a lovely day out with good company, and now I’ll have a good night’s sleep ready for my trip tomorrow.

Thursday 1st December 2016 -I HAD A …

… very bad night last night.

Well, sort-of-ish anyway.

Remember yesterday when I told you about that good book that I downloaded yesterday? So there I was last night reading it and I happened to notice the time. 03:30 it was.

It’s been a long time since I’ve been so deeply engrossed in a book like that, I have to say. I was well-away. But anyway, I closed down the laptop, turned off the light, and went to sleep – or, at least, tried to.

I must have dozed off eventually because it was the alarm that awoke me. And surprisingly, I didn’t feel too bad just then. I’d been on my travels too, although I don’t remember anything about it right now.

After breakfast, I lay down here on the bed and closed my eyes for 5 minutes in order to build up my strength ready to face the morning. Next thing that I knew, it was 11:20. i’d been out if it for over three hours. And serve me right too.

I’d missed the bank to pay my lodging, so I mustn’t forget under any circumstances to do that tomorrow. Otherwise I’ll be out on my aspidistra. And coming back from the shower room, I walked into the wrong room. I knew that I would end up doing that sooner or later. Did I say that I’m in a different room here? It’s the cheapest in the house but I have negotiated a good deal so I’m not complaining. It’s just not my usual room and so it’ll take some time to become used to it.

After lunch I cracked on a little with my pages on Happy Valley-Goose Bay. It’s amazing the stuff that has come on line since the last time that I researched into this in early 2011. Tons of stuff and I’m spoilt for choice these days.

Something else that I did this afternoon has shaped my plans for next week. You know that Caliburn was hit in the rear a few weeks ago and needs to be examined. And I’ve also been keen to go home for some time, just for old time’s sake.

And so I rang up the insurance and made an appointment with their expert for Tuesday afternoon. and it’s at Evaux-les-Bains, and so that means that I have to go home. And that’s what I’m going to do. I’m seeing Alison on Saturday afternoon, and so on Sunday morning I shall hit the road and head back.

My plan is to stop on Sunday night at Meaux, and on Monday night at Montlucon – a Première Classe each time. And then go and have Caliburn sorted out on Tuesday and go back home for a few days.

For tea I made a kidney-bean whatsit, with enough for tomorrow night. And then I’ve been searching on the internet. OH Leuven are playing away on Saturday night at Tubize, just south of Brussels. There’s a reliable train service which is quite interesting, as so seeing as I have never really been to Tubize, I’m thinking of it.

Or as William Shakespeare might have said “Tubize or not Tubize? That is the question!”

Sunday 27th November 2016 – I FINALLY FOUND …

…some football this weekend, at my third attempt.

U S St Menges were down to play E S Vouziers this afternoon and not only did I manage to find the ground, the teams were actually out there warming up when I arrived, ready to play.

That makes a pleasant change from just recently, having missed all kinds of matches just now.

But what was really interesting was when I walked into the pie hut. The woman behind the counter took one look at me and asked “coffee?”. First time that I’ve been here too!

My fame must be spreading, that’s all that I can say.

So once the match kicked off, we all settled down to watch the game.

And in the words of the good old cliché, it really was a game of two halves too.

In the first half, it was a pretty even game. E S Vouziers – in the black-and-white – looked slightly the better team but that was failing to take into account two of the US St Menges players.

US St Menges had two attackers who looked streets ahead of anything that ES Vouziers could offer and they combined to make really good attacking play.

The St Menges n°7 and n°9 were really having a good first half and it was absolutely no surprise to anyone that the end of the first half found then 2-0 up. And they were really good value for that score too.

And so we all went off for a half-time coffee and a warm because it was freezing out there.

Now I’m not sure what each of the trainers put into the half-time cuppa because we had two different teams out there on the field for the second half.

The two US St Menges attackers had gone completely off the boil and were pretty much anonymous for the second half, whereas the ES Vouziers players came out full of beans.

Vouziers scored within two minutes of coming back on the field and at the end of the match they ran out 3-2 winners. In the second half, they were hardly troubled by US St Menges.

One of the most dramatic half-time turnarounds that I’ve seen for quite a bit.

We had a brief interruption – or, at least, the spectators did. It’s hunting season of course and we are right in the Ardennes here.

Consequently, we had the 21st-Century version of the Chasseurs Ardennais driving past the football ground, on quads, in pick-ups or on these 4×4 machines that you can see here in this photo

I hate hunters with a passion, as you all know, and I shan’t bore you by ranting on about them right now. You can take it as read.

Just across the river, in a tight meander of the River Meuse is the hamlet of Iges, part of the commune of Glaire since 1971. That’s the village church that you can see just here.

The village has a claim to fame in that it was in the Chateau de Bellevue that Napoleon III met Kaiser William during the signing of the surrender document to end this phase of the Franco-Prussian War after defeat at the Battle of Sedan in 1870.

The French soldiers were confined in the open air as prisoners of war, the meander serving as the boundary of the camp. Some were here for 10 days.

It’s also the site of one of the crossings of the Meuse by Guderian’s Panzer Armies in May 1940 in the early days of World War II.

Talking of World War II, you’ll remember on Friday when we went to see the spot just to the north of St Menges where Fairey Battle L-5581 from 88 Squadron RAF crashed into the trees and its crew, Sergeant FE Beames (observer), Sergeant WG Ross (pilot) and LAC JHK Gegg (wireless operator/air gunner) were killed.

I told you at the time that I’d try to track down the graves of the crew and my search led me to the communal cemetery of St Menges. It’s listed as a Commonwealth War Cemetery so I reckoned that it would be a good place to visit.

My search around the cemetery was rather like that of Tuco near the end of The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly but I eventually found the plot.

There’s no site book here, no Union Jack or anything, and the plot is rather small. I was told that just one coffin was used and that rather unfortunately tells us rather too much about the condition of the bodies when they were recovered.

But it is typical of many plots in may cemeteries in this part of Europe, as I said the other day. Three graves in a quiet corner – pilot, navigator, rear gunner – monuments to the absurdity of the Fairey Battle.

I had a bit of a bad night last night. Up and down a couple of times, couldn’t sleep, awake far too early. First down to breakfast, before the staff yet again. And then back to carry on with Happy Valley and Goose Bay.

Having hung my damp clothes from last night on hangers on the curtain rail over the radiator, they were dry by lunchtime too. That was impressive.

And so, off on the attack this afternoon.

I had my pizza tonight down in the village and now I’m off to my room. I’ll try my best to have an early night and a good sleep. My time here is quickly drawing to a close.

Saturday 26 November 2016 – IT’S NOT BEEN MY LUCKY DAY TODAY!

I went out for my bag of chips tonight as usual, only to find that the chip shop is closed for its annual holidays this weekend.

But no matter – I went off to Bohan. I’d heard that there was a football match on tonight at 20:00.

I arrived there at 19:30 and found a signpost to the football ground – exactly where I had expected it to be from a quick view of an aerial photograph. I could even see the floodlights too, which confirmed that a night match was eminently possible. But when I arrived, the place was in total darkness. and that’s how it stayed.

I went for a drive up along the river into France and toured around for half an hour, but on the way back I passed by the ground again and – still in darkness.

I went back to the centre of the town of Bohan and parked up Caliburn in order to go for a wander around and see what was going on. And I was surprised to find that, for such a small town, it was a thriving hive of industry.

There is a small Delhaize supermarket for a start, and then one or two other shops including a boulangerie, and more than half a dozen restaurants, including a pizzeria which was interesting to discover.

I made a good note of all of these. The supermarket is enough to entice me back on Monday to do some shopping instead of going to Alle – it’s about the same distance. And I’ll be able to see the town in the daylight too.

But my walk did take me to a cafe-type of place stuck in a corner of the square. This was a fast-food restaurant too and they served up some of the nicest chips that I have ever had – and that’s saying something. And so I had my chips after all.

A shame about the football but at least it brought me out of my cocoon and into a new situation and a new town with some good facilities. And as I said – I’ll be back in the daylight to have a better look. Just you wait to find out that Monday is its official day of closing. That’s what usually happens, isn’t it?

Once I had managed to drop off to sleep, I had a really good night. Well away in fact without a single disturbance.

I’d been on my travels too – off visiting my brother of all people and then I had to return because I was taking an exam which consisted of three subjects, for which I was not prepared at all. There were half a dozen of us and as we were glancing through the question paper I suddenly realised that I had left the notes that I needed, along with my house keys, in my jacket which I had left at my brother’s. I had to telephone him to arrange for him to bring them up, but it meant that I would have to leave the room in which case I would be disqualified and have to resit it. But if I didn’t have my notes I would fail, in which case I would have to resit it anyway.
Sometime later I was driving Claude and Françoise somewhere and dropped them off where they had to walk about 100 yards to wherever they were going. They told me how I could work my way back through the village to return to where I had come from, but I wondered why I couldn’t simply do a U-turn and go back the way that I came.

First down to breakfast, and before the staff yet again, and by the time I’d finished I was still alone. But at least the old man who waits on had a little chat to me, which made a change.

And apart from talking to Liz, I cracked well on with my web pages. I’ve arrived in Happy Valley-Goose Bay in Central Labrador and I reckon that I’ll be there for a good few days now. There’s tons of stuff to write about, including how two countries walked in to a third country and built a wharf and an airfield, without even a word to the country concerned.

Later on, I had a shower, washed my clothes for the last couple of days and put on some clean ones. And then seeing as the noxious brat had been let loose in the lounge, I hit the road for my appointment with destiny.

But well-fed and watered, I’m back here now. Another early night, I hope, Then we’ll see if I can have a really good night’s sleep again. I feel much better when I’ve had a decent sleep and I’ve already had a little crash out just now.

Sunday 20th November 2016 – I’VE HAD …

… a better day today.

Mind you, having been deep in the depths of despair yesterday, almost anything would have been a better day.

What helped matters greatly was that I had a really good sleep. In bed early and straight to sleep too. With a brief awakening to switch off the radio, I slept right through until 06:30 without a single interruption at all.

I managed a shower of sorts too, getting half of the water all over the floor as you might expect, and I washed some undies too. Don’t want to run out of them.

Breakfast starts at 08:00 and I was down there at 07:55 . But the place was locked up and they didn’t open it until 08:05. I was first in too, and first in by a long way too. That’s not like me, is it?

I was also first out too, and I went back upstairs and cracked on with the stuff that I’m writing about Labrador.

By about 10:30 I needed to change tack and start to attack Paradise River in Labrador. I’d found tons of stuff about that before, but it all went when I had that hard drive crash in May 2015 and so I had to start again.

Luckily, the internet was working and, furthermore, it kept on going for almost all of the day. The noxious brat seemed to have been confined to quarters and most people have left too, so I was pretty quiet in the lounge. I accomplished a pile of work and found tons of interesting stuff on the internet too.

I’d seen a football ground in the village of Sugny when I’d been on my travels the other day. It is the home of RCS Sugny and looked well-maintained and up-to-date so braving the wind and the driving rain I went out this afternoon to see if there was a match on.

If there’s any football played, it would be played this afternoon, I reckoned. But the ground was closed up and there was no-one about which was a shame, so I turned round and came back the pretty way.

With no-one else about, I carried on working on my Paradise River stuff and that kept me out of mischief.

With having some vegan cheese left, I went off into Vresse sur Semois and organised a pizza at the hotel down there. And quite good it was too. The staff there was very friendly and the customers were quite sociable too. I had quite a good evening down there.

And now back here, and the internet has gone again. Or, rather, it’s there, but there’s a “hidden network” that keeps on appearing, and when that appears, it keeps on pinching all of the limited bandwidth.

That’s a shame, because I was much more like it today and I’ve done tons of stuff quite comfortably on the big sofa in the lounge.

Fix the internet and keep the noxious brat under control and I’d be much happier here.

EPIC HALL

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