Having worked to death the Crewe Bus Station toilets “Merry Christmas to all our readers” thing continuously over the past few years, we’ll talk about something else this year.

Like my Christmas dinner for example. Roast potatoes, boiled potatoes, carrots, chicory, leeks, seitan slices, onions, gravy and, of course, brussels sprouts. No Christmas meal is complete without them of course – properly cooked and not at all into a mush like most people cook them.

And it was absolutely delicious too, even if I had forgotten to add the garlic.

There was supposed to be Christmas pudding and soya custard for afters, but Alison had bought me a vegan chocolate Santa, and so that went down instead, washed down by a can of that alcohol-free raspberry beer.

Last night, we had the party at 05:00 but with my headphones on, I managed to avoid the worst of it. And it only lasted about half an hour anyway before boyfriend was escorted to the door.

And I was on my travels too. In some kind of Dragnet circumstance with two people, nominally police officers, but chauffeurs at where I worked. We had to go somewhere and we were told that we were to avoid a certain street which had now been converted into a dead end. So we set off, with me driving in an early 1950s Ford-type of sedan coloured a duck-egg blue and pale yellow. And sure enough, I missed the turning and ended up just where I’d been told where not to go. With two of us at the front and one at the rear, we picked up the car (which was now shaped like a canoe) and man-handled it through a tone-lined pond onto the main road. There, I pulled a bunch of weeds out of a garden there and was immediately confronted by the owner of the property who hadn’t wanted me to do that.

And so while you admire the rest of last night’s photographs, I can tell you that I was alone an breakfast, where there was nothing special arranged for the tenants.

And then down here, I unwrapped my Christmas presents.

Alison’s chocolate Santa I’ve already mentioned. But me, I bought myself a new laptop.

Actually, I bought it last year but what with one thing and another, I hadn’t opened it.

It’s another Acer, but a larger one with a numeric keypad and DVD player, and twice as much RAM as before.

You know that this one is not very good – it’s the slowest machine that I’ve ever used. It’s very lightweight and very economical, but the lack of speed was really getting on my nerves.

Transferring the files over is taking ages though. Not because it’s taking so much time (although it is) but I’m taking the opportunity to tidy up all of the directories while I’m about it.

It might be finished by tomorrow – who knows – and then I’ll have to start to clean up the storage issues that I have. I can save tons of space if I organise myself properly.

While I was making my butties at lunchtime (that’s a nice loaf that I have bought) I made the acquaintance of one of my housemates.

She’s a woman from Montreal, the Henri Bourassa area of the city, and so we had quite a lengthy chat (in French) about this and that. It was nice o remind myself of the city, seeing as how I’n not sure if i’ll ever be making it back there.

This afternoon I carried on with the new laptop and had a nice chat with Liz and her family on the laptop. Strawberry Moose joined in the discussion too, telling Dylan and Robyn how much he was looking forward to meeting up later next year.

And then, I went off to make my delicious tea.

Before I go off to bed for an early night, let me just tell you a little about something that I discovered last night.

Leuven is a really beautiful medieval Flemish city as you have probably seen, but 103 years ago, it was even more beautiful.

All of that changed in August 1914 when the Germans arrived, and in accordance with their policy of “Frightfulness” they set fire to the city centre, even burning the contents of the library that contained many of the oldest books in Europe.

And then in May 1940, they burnt it down again.

Many people, including, unfortunately, some of my acquaintances, criticise the French and the Belgian civilians for what they consider to be a “lack of resolution” in confronting the German Army

Leaving aside the fact that at least they were here, unlike the British Army that ran away across the Channel at Dunkirk, and the lack of resolution shown in the German occupied British territories such as the Channel Islands, where the civilian population sat it out with a German occupying force for 10 months after the War had passed them by, the British civilians never had to confront the issues that the French and Belgian citizens had to confront.

We’ve seen in the past the gravestones of civilians who died during both wars – gravestones marked “shot” or “executed” or “decapitated”. No British or American civilian ever had to confront that kind of treatment.

Here in the Grote Markt in Leuven is this plaque with a list of names carved thereupon. 16 names, all civilians who were deliberately killed by the Germans in August 1914 as they were setting fire to the buildings of the Square.

This is the kind of thing that you find all over Belgium and France. Never mind being casual, haphazard victims of a bombing campaign or artillery duel, these civilians were simply purposefully murdered while going about their normal day-to-day duties and was a risk that every citizen in Occupied Europe had to run.

There was no escape.

Anyway, on that note, I’m off to do my washing up and then I’m off to bed. Will I have a good night tonight?

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