Tag Archives: avenue Jeanne

Monday 4th November 2013 – THE DEED IS DONE

Marianne’s apartment has now been sold and her estate liquidated. And when I see just the amounts to which everyone seems to have helped himself, there isn’t much of it left. “Vultures picking over the bones of a corpse” is what immediately springs to mind, and the metaphor seems to be quite apt. “Give everything that is left to the poor” said Marianne, and that’s what I will do, but I can’t help feeling that the poor are going to be rather disillusioned with the Vultures of Belgium.

First thing this morning was to roll up the mattress and bedding and have that ready to go. Second thing was to go to the DiY shop and purchase a new rubber gasket for the sink waste pipe outlet. I’ve fitted that and now the sink drains much better. Everything else that was hanging around went into the last cardboard box and the waste bin, and I put all of that outside along with the plants while I vacuumed everywhere.

The next-to-last thing that I did was to have a shower and to clean the bathroom and to pack up the suitcase of clothes. That went outside along with the shower curtain, and the final task was to read all of the meters.

Fetching Caliburn, I loaded all of the stuff up, and there wasn’t much room for anything else after that. I’d judged it quite fine. It’s a good job I wasn’t intending to take the plants with me – they are decorating the hall of the building now for people to do what they will with them.

I found a quiet nook and settled down with a good book until the relevant moment, and that was that. And I do recall saying to my lawyer as we left the building at the end “I won’t say a definitive goodbye to you, because I said that a couple of years ago and I still ended up coming back, but maybe we shall meet agin, a long time before Philippi”

I still have a few things to do in Brussels, not the least of which being to cancel the standing order about the payments to the apartment and also some things for Marianne, but that will have to wait for another time as I’ve rather lost interest in it all for now. I was on the motorway and out of that accursed nation.

At Melun, I stopped for fuel as usual but my friendly neighbourhood kebab house was closed. That was a disaster. However Dominos Pizza place was open and I ended up with yet another pizza vegetariana. And goodbye to the vegan cheese because I forgot to nip over the road earlier and buy some more.

But back on the motorway, round about midnight I was just overwhelmed with sleep and I’ve no idea why. I can’t keep going like I used to. Nothing for it but to pull off the highway and have a kip. I’m getting old.

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Sunday 3rd November 2013 – AND IN A CHANGE OF PLAN …

… I’ve been working today. Or, rather, what remained of today by the time that I got up. I wasn’t in much of a rush seeing as it’s Sunday.

Today was the day that absolutely everything that remained in the apartment, with the exception of what I want tomorrow morning, can be packed up and made ready to go. And not just that either – no-one came for the video and audio cassettes so I bagged them up into rubbish sacks and stuck the video cassettes in with the rubbish downstairs. The audio cassettes I put outside on the pavement with the broken clothes drier and, true to form, they disappeared during the course of the day.

The bed I dismantled – I’ll be sleeping on the mattress on the floor tonight, and the coffee and dining room tables I dismantled and wrapped in clingfilm – I can see the uses of this stuf during furniture removals.

So with all of that done, I bought myself a pizza (I shan’t be cooking again in here) and sat down to watch some gridiron until the late evening when it all went quiet. Then I went off down the road to rescue Caliburn and started descending all of the boxes in the lift (there were 7 lift-loads in all and I was hoping for no more than 5). It was at that moment that the concierge started to wash the hallway floor – 23:00 hours. He wasn’t pleased about me blocking the hallway, just as I wasn’t pleased about him washing the hallway at that time of night. He told me to put my stuff outside. Well, like I’m really going to do that in the pouring rain so I told him in no uncertain terms what he coud do with his broom handle and this led to yet another contretemps (long-term readers of this rubbish will know only to well that this is not the first contretemps that I have had with this ignorant peasant, but I digress)

So Caliburn is now almost fully-loaded, with more stuff that I was hoping to take back but there you are, and tomorrow is the final day, but we haven’t quite finished yet. The sink in the kitchen has now totally blocked up and there was no way of emptying it. Dropping my tea into the sink twice last week hadn’t helped. Taking the drain plug out of the elbow didn’t improve matters very much and so I bit the bullet and dismantled the entire system from the sink down to the main drain. And here was the culprit. Just in the downpipe from the sink, everything was all clogged up with a sub-human mass of congealed whatever that must have been there for a hundred years and Yours Truly was there for a good half hour chiselling it out.

So having finally dealt with what was left of Quatermass’s Experiment and seeing that the water was now draining out a hundred times better, I reassembled everything only to find that I’ve torn the rubber gasket that connects the downpipe to the sink and there’s quite a leak.

Ahh well – off to the DiY shop in the morning, I suppose. I could have done without this.

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Friday 1st November 2013 – IT’S A BANK HOLIDAY HERE TODAY.

But not for me – I have work to do.

Now that the cleaner has finished, I can review the packing situation, especially as, on my travels yesterday to buy my bread, I liberated a pile of wooden boxes.

Everything was unpacked from the cardboard boxes and repacked in the wooden or plastic ones. There are two types of boxes – those that are wanted as soon as I get home, and those that can wait for whenever. The idea is that the least urgent stuff will be crammed right down at the far end of Caliburn and the more urgent stuff put closer to the doors. That way it will all be to hand.

You’ve no idea how long it took to do all of this – much longer than I thought – and then of course I had to dismantle the empty cardboard boxes. But at least now there’s plenty of space available in the apartment and it looks more like a furniture removal job.

For tea I had the last of the aubergine casserole that I had made earlier. Then, having washed the pot and the plates, they all went into a box. Tomorrow I’m out and Sunday I’ll have a pizza that I can eat out of a box with my fingers. I’ve officially finished cooking.

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Thursday 31st October 2013 – THE CLEANER …

… came round this morning right on time and was here for about 4 hours. I did what I could to help, but that wasn’t all that much and it was clear that I was in the way and so I skulked off to my little room and stayed there, just occasionally giving advice and assisitance.

I can’t say that I’m too impressed with what she did, to be honest. I was expecting a much more thorough job that this, but she did more in four hours than I would have been able to do in four years and so I can’t complain too much.

The purchaser turned up with a workman later. He wants to have the parquet floor sanded and polished, and needed an estimate. I didn’t have any good reason not to let them in and so in they came. It rather disrupted my plans a little, but that’s what plans are for, of course. And after they went, I cleaned a few of the more obvious places that the cleaner had missed.

There wasn’t much time left after that and so I had tea and called it a night. An early night with a good book is always a good idea every so often.

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Wednesday 30th October 2013 – IT WAS THE TURN OF THE TROC …

… to come around this morning. They were earlier than anticipated, something that took me very much by surprise, and I wasn’t really ready, but I wasn’t going to send them away. Of course not! Two of them, there were, and they worked quite rapidly to empty the place. It didn’t take them too long to dismantle the big wall unit either, and that soon disappeared into the back of their van.

What impressed me though was how they managed to move the wardrobe in the cellar. It was a little rickety and I was half-expecting them to dismantle it, but no – they had a huge roll of clingfilm and they wrapped it in that. You’ve no idea just how rigid that made it, and when I expressed my admiration, they gave me what remained of the roll, which was an unexpected bonus. 40 years and more I’ve been furniture-removing – I wish I had thought of this before.

After they had gone, I needed to arrange a cleaner. The estate agents had given me a phone number and in the end I was put in touch with a woman who would come at 09:00 tomorrow. Perfect timing, of course, and so I didn’t hesitate. That’s one more job crossed off the list of things to do.

Back to the cellar and that had a thorough going-over. I can forget about that from now on. I went back upstairs and took down all the curtains. The cleaner will need to be able to get to the windows.

But the apartment is now fairly empty, and when I talk out loud to myself I can hear an echo echo echo.

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Tuesday 29th October 2013 – ST VINCENT DE PAUL …

… came around today. Not the Saint in person, but some members of his charitable association. They took away the stuff that the Troc didn’t want and which hadn’t sold on the internet. They were quite pleased with what they had won, which made me quite happy because I was quite pleased to let them have it. I did ask them what Vincent’s sister Lynsey was up to these days but that went clean over their heads. No sense of humour, these Belgians.

It had taken me all morning to sort out the stuff for them and make sure that it was properly packed and boxed – we don’t want all of the stuff falling out all over the place and down the stairs. And now at least the place is looking a little emptier now and I can start to move things around and try to sort out the cleaning. It isn’t that easy when the place is overwhelmed with all kinds of stuff.

Now that I have nowhere to sit I’ve had to make a little kind-of studio in the smallest bedroom. Sitting on the bed and a plant across a box on top of the coffee table to make a raised table. But that was not without its problems either. I didn’t realise that the coffee table had a drawer in it until I turned it on its side to pass it through the door into the bedroom.And there was I in barefeet too. I’ve done myself a serious mischief now – toenail all broken and the big toe all various shades of red and black and I’m in agony with this.

I’ve also been down in the cellar. The wardrobe out of here needs to go and so the cellar needs to be emptied. Having seen the hoops that one has to go through in order to get the local council to come and take the stuff away I simply bought a pile of white sacks and spent a happy hour or two crusing up rubbish and filling the sacks. There’s a huge load of them and that will upset the concierge when he has to put them out for the bin men tomorrow morning, but that’s what he’s paid for, after all.

But at least the only thing in the cellar that doesn’t need to be there is this wardrobe, and that will hopefully be going tomorrow.

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Monday – 28th October 2013 – MORE OF THE SAME

Yes, back to work today. And to carry on from where I left off on Saturday, and every other day (apart from Sunday) since I’ve been here, I was up long before the alarm went off.

The washing machine is going on Wednesday and so I’ve sent most of the day doing a mega-wash of clothes and the like, making sure that everything is clean. All that hasn’t been washed is the stuff that is going to the clothing bins, and also the curtains, because it’s very hard to do those when you have builders not 6 feet away from where you are trying to work.

I’ve reaired a few pieces of furniture too – stuff that is also being collected by the guy from the Troc on Wednesday. The better it is and the better the condition in which it finds itself, the more money I’ll receive for it.

The notaire has also been on the telephone with a list of things to do, and a eadline by which I need to do them. I’ve totally forgotten that it’s a bank holiday here on Friday, so that’s one less day that I have to do stuff. This is all closing in on me rather rapidly.

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Friday 25th October 2013 – I’VE FINALLY FOUND …

… the Acte de Base, or title deeds, to the apartment here. And a few people are going to be in for something of a surprise because, if you remember from a while back when I had a run-in with the Syndic of the building about one or two matters, I find that I am completely correct in my assumptions and it seems, to my legally-untutored eye, that the Syndic has been ripping off poor Marianne for years. I shall have to look further into this, itemise where I think that there are problems, and invite an explanation.

It might be, of course, that I have simply misunderstood things. On the other hand, there might be five fingers. But it does prove the value of tidying up. Maybe I should do it more often.

Apart from that, I’ve binned another pile of papers that I was keepig on Marianne’s behalf. All that remains is some stuff that relates to an incident in her life that dates from 1996 and which I shall have to look into in due course, and some insurance details which I am 99.9% sure are of no value whatever but nevertheless need to be followed up.

So, what else? Not much. I’ve been fairly busy but I’ve not really accomplished all that much. I need to get a move on.

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Friday 23rd August 2013 – CHOMP CHOMP CHOMP

Yes folks, it’s me again. Eating humble pie once more, ad we aren’t talking Steve Marriott and Peter Frampton either. Cécile made it back to Nantes by 18:30 which, seeing as how she had her mother with her, she was fully-loaded, she didn’t know the route and she had to pass via Paris, that’s pretty impressive going for all of 700-odd kilometres. Take a bow, Cécile.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, I spent most of the day tidying and cleaning, apart from lunch when I went to the Place Flagey for lunch with Esi and her boyfriend. Esi and I had a good chat about people that we had met during our time at Uni together and about what we were doing these days. After that tough, we all went back to my pied-à-terre in the city because their plans up to date were that they were staying with friends until Sunday and then having to book a hotel for the rest of their stay – a silly idea if you ask me with Marianne’s apartment standing empty and needing some kind of presence.

So having shown them around and explained things, they cleared off and I carried on with the cleaning. But not quite for in one of those “100 things that only Eric can do”, I managed to switch on the coffee machine to make the drink for my flask, and not put the bowl underneath it, so I ended up with a kitchen awash with coffee.

But anyway, as 19:00 came around I fetched Caliburn and loaded him up, and now I’m off to the Place Flagey to give Esi the keys.

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Thursday 22nd August 2013 – I’M HERE ON MY …

… own now. Cécile and her mum were up and about and wide-awake quite early and we were on the road for 8:45. I took Cécile to the motorway and pointed her in the right direction for Paris, but I’ve had no news since. She’s on course to turn up in Berlin some time in 2017.

I’ve been catching up with some paperwork (and not by any means with all of it) and that took me until well after midday and then I had to end up drawing a ground plan of the basement seeing as how there isn’t one ad we still need to sort out the cellar. And so armed with that, I went off to the notaires where we finally signed the compromis – meanig of course that a potential purchaser of the apartment is now locked in. Only a major catastrophe can release him from his commitment ow, but I’m not under any illusions as, what with one thing and another, I know all about catastrophes following my recent experiences.

Back home I crashed out for a hour or two and I’m not surprised. I’ve had a stressful week or two.

This evening though, I have done something that I haven’t done for years and years and years, and that is that I sat down and watched television. Belgian TV was broadcasting The Good, The Bad, And The Aardvark. That’s a film that ought to be in the top 10 of anyone’s film collection – one of the greatest films of all time – and not only do I own a copy I have watched it time and time again and in dozens of different edits. But I have to say that I have never seen this edit before, and it contains sequences that I have never ever seen. Furthermore, the added scenes go a long way to filling in the numerous holes in the story – holes that have always puzzled me.

Yes, I was fascinated by this, from start to finish.

But there are still holes in the story, and one day someone might get around to releasing the full unedited version.

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Wednesday 21st August 2013 – Cécile’s car …

… is ow fully-loaded ready for the off ad by the time may of you read this (like tomorrow mornig) she ad her mum will be well on their way.

Caliburn is still fully-loaded but with a different load aboard. This morning we went off to deliver a table to a woman who had bought it over the internet. That freed up a good deal of space inside the van and with the dosh we went off to the Bois de la Cambre and the Chateau Robinson to spend our ill-gotten gains.

ferry chateau robinson lake bois de la cambreYou’ve see loads of photos of the Chateau Robinson, from my other visits there in the past and so that you kow that it’s on an island and reached by a ferry, such as the one in this photo, across the lake.

Even keener readers will recall that some time over Christmas 2011 I had a chat with none other than the present King of the Belgians, and if that little bit of shameless name-dropping doesn’t earn me any Brownie Points then there is no justice in this world.

cecile desmarest fabienne desmarest bois de la cambre brusselsCecile’s mum had never been on the ferry, of course, and as she is a keen boatsperson, she was quite enthusiastic about the trip, and who can blame her?

Back here, the apartment is even more empty as the divan and easy chair have disappeared inside Caliburn. Cécile is having them for her new house, wherever that may be.

And that is that. Things are winding down here. It won’t be long before I’m going as well.

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Tuesday 20th August 2013 – I’M WHACKED

Cécile and I have just finished loading Caliburn and he’s now parked up back in his little spec down the road. Julie’s bookcase is in there, and so are Clare’s wicker objects and Cécile’s dismantled desk. There are piles of boxes too, some for Liz.

I had another dream last night. I don’t remember much about it but I was in a scrapyard looking for a car battery and they had a white battery that they were using to check out all of the electrical equipment. For some reason it was that battery that interested me more than any other and so I insisted on having it. They were obliged to check it and test it in front of me before I paid them the money.

Anyway this morning I went and reserved my voyage to Canada and then to Greece. I bitterly regret that the branch of my travel agents that used to be up at IKEA has closed down – instead, I went to the one just around the corner and that was a mistake. Up there, they were always competent but here they don’t have the same esprit and during one attempt to do my booking, the girl had me arriving back at Paris on 7th October in order to take a aeroplane out to Greece on the previous day. And then, of course, the computer system crashed, didn’t it? That just was’t my morning. Unfortuately I’m having to fly Air Transat – the equivalent of long-distance Ryanair – and that is something that I vowed that I would ever do again after my voyage of 2011 but havig left my booking so late and having lost the benefit of my half-price voucher (it expired when I was here helping Marianne), flying by Air France was not an option (and I’ve just realised that I haven’t ordered my special meal).

Back here in the afternoon we sorted out all of the books and took four boxes to the second-hand bookshop. He chose about 25 out of them, and gave me €45 for those. Now I wasn’t half impressed with that – if I had received that for all of them I would have been well-impressed – and so with no further ado, the rest went to Oxfam.

And back here, we packed up and loaded.

It’s much more empty now and we can move around. But there’s still far too much stuff here for my liking and the sooner it all goes, the better.

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Monday 19th August 2013 – WE MADE IT …

AFRICAN MUSEUM MUSEE AFRICAIN TERVUREN BELGIUM… to the African Museum this evening. That’s situated a good 7 or so miles outside Brussels in the village of Tervuren.

We didn’t mean to be there – in fact we had only set out for a short walk but we decided to go via the clothing bank and dispose of a pile of clothing that no-one wanted. That meant fetching Caliburn and once we were all esconced inside him, well, we just set off and went for a little drive. There’s no point in Cécile and her mum being here if they aren’t going to be getting around a little.

We stopped off to admire the big elephant sculpture on the car park and then went for a walk around the grounds. As you might expect, the Museum itself was closed. Still, it was a very pleasant evening out, with the fine weather and all of that.

Apart from that, almost everything for sale has been put on the internet now and the cellar is empty apart from a wardrobe and two boxes of rubbish. Of course, we had everything all over the floor this afternoon going right through it and just as we were up to our ears in paperwork, the valuer came round, with the prospective purchaser, to value the property. Absolutely impeccable timing I don’t think.

Anyway, now the place is looking a little more like it and tomorrow we are planning to take the books down to the second hand book shop for sale. That will make even more space and from there it’s all (hopefully) downhill. I just hope that some more of this furniture goes.

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Friday 16th August 2013 – I HAD A REALLY EXCITING DREAM …

… last night, but when I woke up, it completely disappeared and I can’t remember a thing about it now. Ahh Well.

And so I had another really good session on the computer, did some “granny-sitting” while Cécile went to the shops, and did sme more emptying of the cellar. Tons of stuff gone out of there now and it looks a little more respectable. Up here though, it’s total chaos. MArianne has kept tons of stuff, some of which is , quite frankly, rubbish (and if you hear me say that then you know that it really is) whereas some of the stuff is quite crucial and I don’t understand at all why iy’s been filed as loose paper in the cellar when it’s clearly of some quite import. I have also found a photograph, that asks more questions than it answers. In fact it makes me feel like Nansen the Polar explorer …“and where are you going to find Nansen the Polar explorer at this time of night?” – ed … who famously said in his book In Northern Mists "… the more extensive my studies became, the more riddles I perceived – riddle after riddle led to new riddles and this drew me on …".

Most things are now photographed and I’ll be having a day putting everything on line. That will give people a Sunday to come and look at them and see what they think. I hope that I can get rid of some more stuff – I’m being plagued with people making derisory offers right now and that is getting on my wick.

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Thursday 15th August 2013 – I KNOW THAT I PROMISED YOU …

…that I wouldn’t discuss the question of parking any more, but I’m a bigger liar than Barack Obama when he promised to close the Concentration Camp at Guantanamo Bay.

sensible parking avenue jeanne ixelles 1050 brussels belgiumI have in fact been obliged to continue my discussion and to post a photograph, because here is someone who actually did it properly.

I can certainly say that there was nothing in front of him – he could have advanced another 3 or 4 metres if he had so desired, and not only that, he actually looked out of his car door, saw where the line was and reversed back another foot or so to make sure that he was on the limit.

It goes without saying that the driver wasn’t a Belgian. He was of oriental extraction – East Asian or something like that. But anyway he did it properly.

So this morning I was up again early and while Cécile and her mum were sleeping I dashed off a huge pile of amendments to my web site, adding the “like” and “share” buttons, correcting the layout of a few headings, and also adding on some stuff about cookies. In case you are wondering, I haven’t coded any cookies knowingly into my website. The only ones that you might find are those embedded into third-party plug-ins;

Eventually Cécile and her mum were ready and so I sent them off out to the shops but they were back inside half an hour. It’s “Ascension”, isn’t it? And Belgians don’t need too many excuses for having a day off.

This afternoon we attacked the cellar and I can’t blame Cécile for losing interest half-way through because it’s a desperate job. I’ve no idea why Marianne tore up so much paper – letters and stuff – as she did and then put it all down in her cellar. I’ve sorted out most of that stuff but we’ll need to finish it off tomorrow if Cécile can pluck up the courage;

There’s much more stuff photographed and I’ve put a good pile of iton the web page as well as on the Deuxième main web site. There’s already someone in after the washing machine and I hope that the rest goes soon. Another day on this and everything should be on it, I hope.

But sorry about the parking again.

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