Or, at least, I won’t be by the time that many of you read this – although most of you have been saying that I haven’t been all here for quite a long time.
No – I’m on my way to Brussels for what may well be, if it comes off, the defining moment in all of my efforts.
If you have been following my exploits you will know that I own what was formerly a pretty derelict apartment there, one that I bought as an investment and in which I lived in a form of camping-out style for a while.
Over the winter, as you know, my friends Liz and Terry helped me work finish the work (or they might well say that what actually happened was that I got in the way of them finishing off the work) and it was put up for sale. A buyer was quickly found, and the sale is planned to be completed on Monday.
That means that all of my hard work and effort over all of these past 32 years has finally borne fruit. While most of my friends were out living the high life, I was investing my cash in property with just this moment in mind, and I know in whose shoes I would rather be today.
But that is or course always assuming that it does in fact sell – never be sure of the bird on your plate until you have your fork stuck in it.
Mind you, assuming that it does, I can cancel piles of Standing Orders at the bank and that will free up another pile of cash each month and then I need to book my air ticket to Canada because Strawberry Moose and I are going to have a holiday.
You might remember that I bought some land over there, and we are going to buy a mobile home to put on it and we are going to install ourselves there for a month. And why not? We deserve it.
Having recorded our outstanding radio programme yesterday (that was really all that I did) everything else has been done.
We had another excellent drive and I was here in Brussels after just 8 hours and 30 minutes on the road – and that includes stopping to eat a pizza and to fuel up. That’s pretty impressive too, coming the “old way” via Auxerre, Troyes and CHalons-en-Champagne which, no matter what they call it these days, will always be knwwn by me as Chalons-sur-Marne.
And I wasn’t alone either during the route – and I’m not referring to Strawberry Moose. Somewhere on the road between Nevers and Varzy this absolutely beautiful rainbow suddenly appeared.
It’s the kind of thing that makes you pull over to the side of the road and take a photograph – that is, if you weren’t in a hurry. And even if you are in a hurry you can take a photograph anyway, especially when there’s no-one else about.
It’s not very often that you can see them so clearly and distinctly, and it’s even rarer that they come out well in a photograph.
And they weren’t the only stops that I made either.
Along the route between Chalons-sur-Marne and Charleville-Mezieres my path takes me over an escarpment that was the scene of very bitter fighting during World-War I and the area is littered with old remains and the vestiges of abandoned trenches and the like.
And we go past the Ossuary of Navarin. This is a memorial to the French soldiers who died in the various Battles of the Marne which took place around here and is where they keep the bones of soldiers discovered in more recent times.
Designed by Maxime Real del Sarte, it’s also a memorial to Quentin Roosevelt, son of the President Theodore Roosevelt (he of the “teddy bear” fame) who was killed in the vicinity. Last night was the first time that I had ever seen it illuminated and so it had to be worth a photograph.
As an aside, it’s also where the body of General Henri Joseph Eugène Gouraud lies. He led the soldiers here during the later period of the Battle of the Marne, having already lost an arm in the Dardanelles. When his weill was read, it was found that he had eschewed the traditional tomb in the Invalides Cemetery given to all heroes of the French Army, and expressed a wish to be buried in the Ossuary “alongside all of my soldiers who were more like friends to me”.
