… my hands on the person who decided that it would be amusing to play his music at full volume at 04:40 this morning, he’ll be drinking soup through a straw for the foreseeable future.
Having a little party in one’s room at 01:30 was rather disturbing, but this was something else completely.
Mind you, it’s taught me a lesson, which is to make sure that all of the windows in my room are closed in future. The noise wasn’t half as bad once I had done that.
And this was all a shame because my room was quite pleasant and I was very comfortable in my bed. I shall look further into this hotel once I return home.
So wide awake, I attacked some stuff on the internet that needed doing. And found some more stuff about my grandmother Ivy Cooper performing in Winnipeg in January 1923. Hard to believe that just 33 months later, she was back in the UK, remarried and giving birth to my mother.
With not having paid for breakfast, I had bought some raisin buns and orange juice from the supermarket while I was out last night, and they made a very agreeable breakfast.
And so all of that was followed by a nice shower and shave (and it really was a nice shower too) and change of clothes, and then I packed everything up to go.
The owner was on duty at the Hotel Midi-Zuid. He apologised for yesterday too and let me put my suitcase in the cupboard as my room wasn’t ready (so what REALLY happened yesterday?)
I wandered off down to the Gare du Midi to buy my ticket to Leuven. And here I made something of a mistake. It was well before 10:00 when I bought them so I had to pay full price.
But it was a nice day anyway so I went early (falling asleep on the train) and sat on the Square outside the railway station, soaking in the sun and also supping a well-earned coffee.
Later on, despite still aching just about everywhere, I decided to walk right across the city to the hospital. It was market day down the main street so I fought my way through the crowds, stopping to admire the fruit and veg stall with its lovely collection of grapes, which were so irresistible.
The Loving Hut wasn’t open yet but nevertheless I blagged my way in to buy some more vegan cheese, seeing as I had forgotten to bring over any from Canada. And the manager gave me a couple of names of mail-order vegan suppliers who might help me out.
And here’s a thing. it’s been a while since we’ve featured an old car in these pages.
I didn’t really have the time or the inclination to do much around the USA. I need to catch up, and here by the merest chance happens to be an old Mini Traveller.
rare enough in the UK these days so I never expected to see one here in Leuven.
But then again, regular readers of this rubbish will recall that we saw a mini van here in Brussels a couple of years ago.
Calling at St Pieter’s Hospital for the usual morning reasons, I continued on my way only to bump into one of my former co_kottiers from the Hostel. He’s now managing the little bistro place that’s attached to the other hostel and he invited me in for a coffee and a chat.
Unfortunately I was obliged to decline, seeing asI had a prior appointment, but I made a note. And then pressed on to the hospital.
We had a new student nurse today, so it was a good job that I knew the routine. And when she told me to “move over to the far side of the bed”, I couldn’t help but reply “that’s the most exciting thing that I’ve had said to me for quite some considerable time”.
The news though isn’t so good. While the protein might be “stable”, whatever he means by that, the blood count not so. That’s dropped from 9.6 last time to 9.2 just now. And he reckons that there’s also a leaky valve in my heart.
None of this is anything that I particularly wanted to hear. Things aren’t sounding quite so good just now, so i’m glad that I took the opportunity to carry out all of the tasks on my “to-do” list when I was able to.
It took the doctor until 17:20 to come to tell me that I could go, and to give me my prescriptions. I have to come back on Thursday 14th December, but to go to a different department, and I don’t like the sound of that.
But now I’m horribly late. I was hoping to be gone from here hours ago. I have to run to the pharmacy to collect the prescriptions and, as usual, they are short of product.
And then run for the bus, which is in no hurry. No chance of going for that coffee now.
Luckily the trains to Brussels are quite regular and I don’t have to wait long. Mevertheless it’s 18:33 when we arrive. I have to run down to the hotel, register (why he wouldn’t let me do that this morning I really don’t know), leave my backpack, and run back to the station. And i’m on the platform southbound with just three minutes to spare.
Since I’vs topped going to see OH Leuven, they have been on an impressive run of form and are up there in 2nd place in the league. On the other hand, AFC Tubize are on a woeful run of form and are well adrift at the foot of the table.
There’s a football match played in each division on a Friday night, and by pure coincidence, tonight is AFC Tubize v OH Leuven. it’s just a handful of stops down the line from here, and I’m at a loose end.
Obviously a home banker then.
But we have a tragedy – i’ll tell you that. They’ve reorganised the times of the trains and the last one back is at 22:12. The 23:12 has been taken off. What that means in real money is that if I don’t want to walk back to Brussels, I’ll miss the last 20 minutes of the game.
But never mind. Grabbing a bag of chips from the fritkot across the road from the station, I set off to the ground.
It’s a modern stadium, but they ran out of money after doing just two sides.
And that’s hardly surprising because it’s another one of those places where they announce the crowd changes to the team.
I have a coffee, chat to a couple of people, and take my seat in the stand.
AFC Tubize aren’t all that bad. In fact they can match OH Leuven in most departments but you can immediately see the problem that they are having. Their centre-forward is ploughing a very lonely furrow up front, with no service and no support.
OH Leuven are on the attack from the kick-off and only a brilliant save from their keeper stops them going 1-0 down in the first 5 minutes.
But they are in front after half an hour with a brilliant glancing header from Casagolda from a free kick.
Tubize equalize in the second half and I start to have this rather uncomfortable feeling. But it can’t be helped – I need to be on my way.
Back at the hotel I find my room, and its quite comfortable too. One of the bigger ones. I learn that OH Leuven went on to win the match but it’s bed-time for me. It’s been a long day and it’s going to be another long one tomorrow.
