Tag Archives: belgium

Tuesday 15th March 2011 – Well, I’m off!

Yes, and in news that will surprise, if not stagger, every single (and even the married) readers of this blog, yesterday I was up, breakfasted and working long before the alarm went off. And by choice as well!

We took the sofa and the mattress downstairs to Caliburn and they went off to the tip. Terry came to help so it didn’t take long. And after fuelling up at the garage where the old man moans like hell if you spill any diesel, we came home and carried on emptying.

mobalpa kitchen avenue de l'exposition jette brissels belgiumThe Estate Agent came and spent an hour poking around. She fell in love with the kitchen, which I knew she would, after all Marianne who chose it for me has excellent taste. And I mean – what with Liz whose taste is just as good, who can possibly go wrong?

Once that was done we loaded both vans, thoroughly cleaned up, hitched up the trailer to Caliburn and then fought our way through the rush-hour traffic to the motorway (well, it was 17:20 when we set off). Terry and Liz went home at their own pace while Caliburn and I pulled the 2000E on the trailer over the Ardennes and then over the Monts de la Bourgogne, so it was a long night for us.

But having towed all kinds of trailers with all kinds of cars on them, this trailer that Terry bought to move his tractor and the scaffolding is the best that I have ever used and it is well-worth the money. I’m seriously impressed with that.

I had a few hours sleep on the N7 between Nevers and Moulins as I didn’t want to arrive here in the dark. Reversing the trailer in the pitch-black with no marker lights is not my idea of fun.

But talking of crashing, the concierge of the apartments came over to chat to me while we were loading the van.
“While you were taking your old car out of the garage downstairs, you didn’t see anyone trying to break into the garage opposite? There’s a huge dent in the door as if someone has driven right into it trying to break it down“
“To be honest, Mme Rascar, while Terry and I were down there getting the car out, we didn’t see anyone else at all“
Isn’t that bizarre?

What is even more bizarre though is that in the past, if anything in the building had gone slightly wrong, people would always come round to blame me for it, even if I hadn’t been there for a month. But they can’t say anything to me right now because they know what to expect. After the issues about my LDV being parked there for a while and the fuss that they made about it, there are two vehicles even more abandoned than the LDV parked there right now. And the first word that anyone says to me about anything and they know exactly what response they will receive.

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Monday 14th March 2011 – After all that happened yesterday …

… I was out like a light until 07:30.

My swollen face has gone down quite a bit today which is just as well as I had to go out shopping for more supplies.

ford cortina 2000E jette brussels belgiumBut almost everything is done, a good deal of the furniture and so on is downstairs ready for loading, and the Cortina is now on the trailer. That was exciting, moving that, and I’ll tell you more about it at a later date when all of the fuss has died down.

The good news though is that it may well be that with the Estate Agent coming tomorrow and valuing the place, and then finishing off and tidying up, we might even be away by tomorrow night if we are lucky. That would be exciting if it happens. Otherwise it will be Wednesday when we set sail for home.

And not before time either. The hotel plan has fallen through because with everything that we’ve been doing, the place is clean and tidy enough and we can simply retreat out of the apartment dragging the vacuum cleaner behind us. That will save us a good day or two anyway and I can’t say that I’m sorry.

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Sunday 13th March 2011 – The things I do …

…to get out of working on a Sunday!

The toothache kept me awake all through Saturday night and so in the end I tracked down the Dentiste du Garde and booked an appointment. Earliest that I could get was 10:00. Ahh well! When Liz came into the kitchen she took one look at my face and burst out laughing – the left side had swollen up like a balloon.

Anyway, off to the dentist’s I went. All the way to the back of Ixelles. I was there by 09:40 (no traffic on the roads) and I was out at 10:00. He cut open the tooth (no anaesthetic but it made no difference as the tooth is thoroughly dead and I didn’t feel a thing), pulled out the infected root, and that was that. Of course, with the emergency dentists there is no finesse or subtlety – it’s pretty much production-line dentistry but it was better than nothing.

Back home and with no pain at all, relatively speaking, I crashed out for an hour or two while Terry and Liz painted the woodwork in the new bedroom. I woke up at about 14:00 and pottered around to help out for a couple of hours, and then crashed out again. 20:00 that was,

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Saturday 12th March 2011 – I’ve had the raging toothache all day

And I’m probably going to have it all night too, which is a shame. But never mind, at least it’s Sunday so when I do eventually go to sleep I don’t have to wake up so early.

But today for just a change we worked a full day. The bedroom ceiling that we painted looked really good and it has come out well. And so then I did the back wall of the rear terrace and that’s good too. Terry busied himself by starting to move the furniture out, and that’s a good sign.

After Liz and I had painted the bedroom walls and let it dry, we did a quick inspection. And that’s pretty good too and ordinarily we would have knocked off then and there. But with the bedroom looking so good we took an executive decision and decided to paint the woodwork in there too. And that was where the time went.

Tonight the staff clamoured for a pizza and so we went to La Carrettera in Jette. I could only manage a pasta in home-made garlic sauce as I’m having a bit of difficulty chewing things right now. I hope I’ll feel better tomorrow.

Tomorrow should be a day of rest but I have a sneaky feeling that Liz will want to put the second coat of gloss onto the woodwork in the bedroom.

Ahhh well.

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Friday 11th March 2011 – I’m going to be having an early night this evening.

And I’m not the only one either. Terry and Liz are quite exhausted too, and I’m not surprised as we’ve been working really hard again.

I emptied out my bedroom and then Terry and I tidied the garage downstairs so that we could move all of the stuff down there. We also loaded Caliburn with some stuff for the dechetterie, whenever it will be that we will go there. But that’s not going to be for a few days yet as most of the furniture that remains will be going with it.

I came back upstairs and put the second coat of paint on the door frame and the first coat of paint on the wall of the back terrace while Terry finished the walls in the hall. During all of this, Liz was cleaning the bedroom.

While Terry redid the walls in the hall, Liz and I set about the bedroom. What with Liz on the paintbrush and me on the roller we had two coats on the ceiling and one on the wall in no time flat. We even took the radiator off (that’s all of the radiators that have been off now) to do behind it.

We then went out onto the front terrace and scrubbed down the guard rails and the new tiles, and that is looking quite pretty now. And while I went off to buy more paint (we are getting through that rather quickly) Terry and Liz finished off cleaning and waxing the floor in the living room.

No wonder we are all exhausted.

So the plan now is –

  • tomorrow the second coats of paint on the back terrace wall and in the bedroom, and cleaning and waxing the floor in the hall.
  • Monday will be doing everything else that we have forgotten.
  • Tuesday morning will be emptying the apartment of absolutely everything and me going to the dechetterie. But I have to be back at 11:00 as that is when the estate agent is coming.
  • Once he has gone we will be taking up residence in a hotel for two nights and using Tuesday afternoon and Wednesday to clean the place from top to bottom, and then loading up the two vans.
  • Thursday morning will see the Cortina on the trailer and then it’s off back home. I’ve decided to take the Cortina regardless and come back for the Minerva. It’s easier to do it that way round.

But back home on Thursday?

Can I remember the way?

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Thursday 10th March 2011 – I have to go to rescue my Minerva.

If you are fairly new to these pages I bet you don’t know that I own a Minerva. It’s something I bought years ago while I was on the lookout for an old Land Rover for hauling logs around the farm. Ever since then it’s been in storage near Antwerp but I received an e-mail today to say that the storage facilities are closing down and I need to move it.

Luckily we are here with Terry’s big trailer, and I reckon that the Minerva will fit on it. It’s rather a shame in a way because I was hoping to be able to move the Cortina 2000E estate and get that down to the farm, but it will still be nice to recover the Minerva after all  these years. Ahhh well.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, I’ve painted the door frame to the apartment and I’ve also prepared the wall at the back of the terrace. But when I went out to paint that, the wind blew me back inside again. It was rough out there, and so that will have to wait until another day.

This afternoon I cleaned all of the paintwork in the hall and then painted the ceiling in there.

Terry carried on with the odd jobs such as repapering part of the kitchen and fixing a few electrical items while Liz carried on with her marathon floor-waxing, with the help of Terry once the little jobs were finished. Once the floor was something like, we moved the living room back into where it ought to be and I’ve moved my bed and computer into this room while Terry and Liz started to paint the walls in the hallway.

Tomorrow I have to empty out my room of what is left there and then give it a good clean, put the second coat of paint on the door frame and paint the terrace wall if the wind will let me. Terry and Liz will finish the walls in the hallway and then paint my bedroom. The second coat for the hall and bedroom is planned for Saturday morning, and then all that will remain will be touching up in the blue bedroom where Terry and Liz are sleeping.

And that, dear reader, will be that. We’ll empty the place on Monday morning, have an estate agent round on Monday afternoon and then adjourn to a hotel for a couple of days so that the place will be completely empty so that we can do the touching up.

Such is the plan. And so you just watch something happen to upset it all.

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Wednesday 9th March 2011 – The situation here now is …

 that Terry and I have started on the odd jobs. It seems that major tasks for the two of us have finished.

I didn’t paint my doors today for the simple reason that the paint that I bought is nothing like the correct colour and so we decided that just the one coat (that which I put on yesterday) would be enough. And so I spent all morning scrubbing the floor in the cupboard and then mopping it out.

This afternoon I scrubbed the wall at the back of the terrace at the back of the apartment. It’s come up really clean and ready for a nice coat of white stone paint. Just the thing to set off the black tiles that we put on the floor. To finish off the day, I sanded down the doorframe of the front door – outside in the hallway. That will have a coat of gleaming white gloss first thing tomorrow – it’ll be the first thing that prospective purchasers will see so it needs to look good.

Terry was busy too, doing all kinds of things around and about. He’s also hung the curtains in the living room, taken another huge pile of stuff down to the garage, and been moving stuff around in the living room.

Liz though has been extremely busy. She’s been scrubbing the parquet floor in the living room, sanding it down with an electric sander, spreading about some liquid wax that I found in the garage, and then polishing it up with Terry’s electric car polisher. And do you know what? The results are quite impressive. It’s flaming hard work though and she was exhausted afterwards and so to save everyone’s energy I took everyone to the fritkot for tea. The food there is really quite good and I thoroughly recommend it.

In other news, I’ve posted on the internet a trial page of my Trans-Labrador Highway tour from last autumn. It’s the page where I visit Red Bay, the site of the 16th Century Basque whaling station. Have a read of it and let me know what you think as I have a cunning plan involving this page and so it needs to be good.

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Tuesday 8th March 2011 – I’m going to have another early night this evening as well.

It’s hard work at the moment doing all of this. Terry has been grouting the tiles on the terraces and then sealing all of the concrete, followed by painting the metal guard rails out there. Liz has been painting the ceiling and the woodwork in the living room, and I have been rubbing down the rest of the doors in the hall and then putting on the first coat of paint.

But I’ve run out of paint and so that called for a shopping expedition to Brico, only to discover that the paint that I’ve been using and which I bought in about 2004, has been discontinued. I’ve found some that looks near enough but I hope it’s going to be okay. I don’t want to repaint all of the woodwork in the hall. There are seven doors for a start.

We had some excitement coming back from Brico this evening. I pulled past a parking space, put Caliburn into reverse, the reversing lights came on brightly (as it was pitch dark outside) and as I set off backwards, some kid on a pushbike decided to cycle behind the van. I almost got him as well, and if he tries a stupid stunt like that next time, I’ll flaming well get him too and shan’t spare a moment of regret about it either.

What with crazy kids on pushbikes, old women with dogs tearing down our safety barrier to take the short cut to the grass while we are manoeuvring large, thick and heavy tiles six stories directly above their heads, I’m convinced that everyone here is totally off their heads. I’m not going to be sorry to get back home

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Monday 7th March 2011 – I’m going to have an early night just now.

I didn’t sleep very well last night and so I’m hopefully going to make up for it. And I deserve it as well as we’ve had yet another day of hard work. What is even more exciting is that we seem to be on the downhill slope.

While Liz carried on painting the woodwork in the living room and I carried on painting the cupboard, Terry started to empty the place of all of the tiling gear and the tools and material that we won’t be using again. Now that is major progress without a doubt, beginning to empty the place.

And when the cupboard was finished I dismantled all of the shelving in my office. Terry took it downstairs while I joined Liz in the living room and put the second coat of paint on the wall. And once that was done we tidied up the plastic sheets protecting the floor and had a good sweep up.

Liz carried on with the woodwork afterwards and Terry grouted the main terrace but I’ve made a start in the hall sticking down the loose wallpaper and scrubbing the outside of the front door to clean it. Yes, cleaning and tidying – these are all positive signs.

Tomorrow I have to sand down the outside of the bathroom door and the outside of the living room door and then I can paint those along with the outside of the cupboard door. Liz will have finished the woodwork by then and Terry the grouting on the back terrace, and then we can get on with the cleaning and tidying and touching up.

It’s all looking a lot more positive here now.

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Sunday 6th March 2011 – Today was exciting.

Manure Knighted were well and truly stuffed by the Bin Dippers this afternoon. Seeing them have a good stuffing is something that always cheers me up and I always feel better afterwards. Even if it is Sunday and I’ve had a decent sleep for a change.

And so a leisurely morning listening to Terry cheering on the Barmy Army also made quite a change.

belgium brussels park chateau robinson ferryLater on Liz and I went round to Marianne’s and ended up going for a walk in the park. We took the ferry over to the island (cost €1:00 – no wonder the Flemish are good swimmers) where I had the coldest cup of coffee I have ever had in a restaurant while Marianne and Liz had the poorest excuse for a cappuccino that I have ever seen.

And all for €8:50 as well, plus the fare on the ferry to cross over to the island. It’s not been a very good afternoon from that point of view.

Marianne came back to the apartment where Liz cooked another one of her specialities – spicy Shepherd’s Pie (made with real shepherds, so I am assured) and then I ran Marianne home again.

In other news, in writing up my epic voyage around Canada I am just about to have my first glimpse of the sea and of Newfoundland. It’s getting to the climax and the tension is unbearable. I need to make quicker progress as the suspense is killing me. I must know what happens next.

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Saturday 5th March 2011 – We went for a Mexican this evening

But before that, we went to Chi-Chi’s for some food. It was Terry’s idea – as soon as I mentioned going out, he volunteered the Mexican restaurant. And as soon as we got there it was “oooh look, there’s deep-fried ice cream on the menu this evening”. So now we know.

We all had a good meal and the dining was accompanied by Manuel Labour and his mate on the guitars. It makes quite a nice change to have a musical evening.

And Terry and Liz deserved their meal. Terry has finished tiling both balconies and there is only the grouting to do on there, as well as a small amount of cementing. Liz finished emulsioning the walls and has started on the woodwork. I scrubbed the floor in the cupboard again and painted the woodwork in there too. We’ve been working hard just now so it’s nice to go out and relax.

And I’m off to bed in a minute. I had a bad night last night and I’m thoroughly tired out. I’m getting old and I can’t last the pace.

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Friday 4th March 2011 – We had a lovely lunch too.

There’s more than enough food in an Indian meal, even for a gannet like me, and so we had a tapas-kind of affair with a table groaning under the weight of Indian leftovers and so on. Absolutely gorgeous.

But the highlight of the day was Terry’s new toy. It really is superb and cut the terrace tiles with no effort at all. Terry also had a play with it and found that he could even cut strips of tile just 5mm wide. That is impressive. And if you work out how much you lose on broken tiles and how much you lose because you can’t cut slivers of tile, then this machine will pay for itself in a matter of months in the hands of a regular tile fitter, simply on the grounds of reduced wastage.

So while Terry was tiling the balcony (with an occasional hand from youts truly) Liz carried on wallpapering the living room and I got stuck into the cupboard under the stairs. The aforementioned living room is now wallpapered and has had the first coat of paint, and the cupboard has been repainted and the filthy paint-stained floor has been scrubbed.

The two  most time-consuming parts of the work are the living room and the terraces and they should be finished early next week. All that then remains is to tidy up and touch up the rest.

MInd you, I’ve said things like this before.

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Thursday 3rd March 2011 – I’ve just had a gorgeous tea ;-)

A vegetable massala with rice and garlic naam. Terry had a chickem korma and liz had a vegetable biryani. Poppadoms, other naams, all kinds of stuff as well. A real Indian banquet from the takeaway in … errr … Folkestone. No point in letting a flying (or tunneling, even) visit to the UK go to waste.

caliburn eurotunnel channel shuttle calais france folkestone UKSo a nice early start to the Eurotunnel depot, blagging my way onto an earlier shuttle and I was in the Sainsbury’s with a plate of beans and chips before 09:00 UK time.

As soon as Screwfix opened, I was there. Only half of the mastic we needed, one of the saws wasn’t in stock, most of everything else was there, but “the tile saw is only available on 7-day order. Come back next week”

And so a frantic call to Terry back in Belgium and he tracked down an even more powerful tile cutter for just £20 more – in Crawley! So seeing as I was halfway there, what’s another 80 miles between friends?

It took three of us (me and the two guys in the shop) to load this machine into Caliburn.

hastings sea front derelict pier burnt down sussex UKOnce I’d organised that, I went to the seaside for lunch. A nice bag of chips (and malt vinegar) on the seafront at Hastings overlooking the ruins of the pier.

After lunch, back to Ashford and the Tesco’s there for the pile of food shopping (you didn’t REALLY think that I had just come all this way for an industrial tile cutter and nothing else, did you?) and then to the Sainsbury’s at Folkestone again for whatever I couldn’t get at Tesco.

Final job was the Indian takeaway and it’s a good job that the staff arrived early, otherwise I would have been pushing it to catch my train back. They cooked while I babysat their kids (the things I have to do to keep my staff happy) and then a thrash through the traffic onto the train, and a thrash back home.

708 kilometres, a mere trifle you might think. It’s about the same distance as going back home again. But it was a lovely day out though, and the meal put the icing on the cake as it were.

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Wednesday 2nd March 2011 – I’m off to bed in a minute

And it’s only 20:31 too!

I’ve had a hectic few days, as I said yesterday, and it’s going to be continuing tomorrow too.

I managed about 5 hours or so at the side of the road and after yet another uneventful drive I ended up being back here in time for lunch.

This afternoon we carried on working but we have hit a logistics issue. Our little tile cutter isn’t good enough to cut the tiles for the terraces. We need a professional one and to hire one for three days, it’s €250!!! Exactly the same machine is on offer at Screwfix for £199.99 and the Eurotunnel have day trips for €90 just at the moment.

Hence yours truly is up at 07:00 tomorrow and he’s booked on the 10:45 crossing to Folkestone, where there is a Screwfix depot.

I’m not half getting about these days. Rather like the sailor who joined the navy to see the world. Except that in my case, I joined the navy to let the world see me.

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Tuesday 1st March 2011 – AND NOW I’M NOT!

I’m back on the road again heading to Brussels. I’ve had a hectic few days just recently and it isn’t going to stop either any time soon.

This morning I woke up in the cold to a typical Combraille-type hanging cloud (isn’t it good to be home?) and after a somewhat late start I emptied Caliburn of everything that I had taken down to the farm. It’s all stacked in the barn now and I’ll tidy it up in due course. Following a doze for an hour or so, I went to this CREFAD meeting at St Gervais where I was one of the guest speakers.

I met a new English couple there and their daughter. They haven’t long been in the Auverne, having moved from near Haltwhistle. What attracted them to the area was that it looked “just like home” and I can echo that. “I wanted a stone house” said the wife. “I’m a true border reiver and stone doesn’t burn”.

That of course brought back memories of my former connections with the border and Archie Fisher’s album Windward Away – “every time I think of you I see a border reiver”. That of course leads on to the story of the 9 year-old boy who knew how to make a marriage work – “you tell your wife that she is beautiful, even if she looks like a truck”. And of course from there we have “every time I think of you I see a Leyland Reiver”.

Once the meeting was over, I shot off straight back to Brussels. I didn’t make it all the way back (which is only to be expected seeing as how late it was when I left). I made it as far as St Florentin which is between Auxerre and Troyes, where I crashed out in the big lay-by there at the side of the road.

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