… the alarm for 08:00 this morning, I promptly slept right through it. it was 09:00 when I finally awoke and so i had to get a move on. Alison would be here at 10:30.

First job was to listen to the dictaphone to see where I’d been during the night.

We were in some kind of really posh hotel last night, a whole group of us in the USA and to get to where we were going we had to walk through these labyriths of corridors, up abd down stairs, everything like that. Someone had left a parel in my room soI opened it. There were all letters in there, a cardigan, and they were for my friend June and as well as that there was a robot-type doll child who was also for June as well so we set off through this hotel labyrinth thig to find June to give her all of her things and this doll. This doll took off and ran off down this pathway and climbed down these stairs as if it knew exactly where it was going and there wasn’t really much that I could doas I wasn’t able really to run after it and catch it.It certainly had a most ungainly way of walking.
The I had to go and fetch Liz and Terry. They were asleep in their van and it was freezing outside so I went and woke them up. Terry came out and he was dressed like Nanook of the North, quilted jackets with newspaper round him, and a hat and balaclava helmet as if he was sleeping at the North Pole. He eventually got out of his van. The frost was really deep, it was a really cold night. I said about going in to get some food. I could see that for some reason they weren’t all that concerned.
Later on I started driving for a taxi firm in Crewe. They had apparently taken over my business and were getting themselves organised and I’d started to drive for them. They were giving me all information and I’d sorted out some leaflets. I could see my old driver’s badge that they had and the plate off the car that I had. They were going on “if anyone ever gives you any trouble you’d better give them one of these leaflets and explain that you are a driver. I said “that’s not a problem because my badge is here and I can hand that out”. So off I went to get into my car. The woman from the place and a few of her friends were outside drinking coffee and I went to get into the car that hey would let me drive for the night. But in this yard there were all kinds of old cars, a Singer Gazelle, other kinds of cars there, obviously derelict and I thought that it must have been quite an unusual taxi company in the past if these were the cars that they were driving.

By now it was time to leave so I grabbed some toast and jam and headed to the door Alison was waiting on the corner so we headed off towards Aachen. We had to go via Liège instead of taking the short cut through the Netherlands because of the virus controls. But we were soon in Aachen and parked the car;

if there’s anywhere more dead than a German city on a Sunday, it’s a German city on a Sunday when the Sunday is a Bank Holiday.

And when the Sunday Bank Holiday comes in the middle of a pandemic lock-down, things are yet more dead.

We had to tramp for miles until we came to a café that was open. This is the Cafe Extrablatt on the Markt overlooking the Rathaus, which I think is a wonderful name for the headquarters of Local Gevernment.

Here I had a big monster coffee while we sat and listened to some woman bashing out the arias of an opera while stading on the steps across the way. i was surprised that it wasn’t pelting down with all of that going on. The packed crowd of about 8 people listening to her must obviously have enjoyed it, but everyone else (not very many else, that’s for sure) kept a decent distance away.

Next stop was to find some food.

Our Great Trek took us through the Munsterplatz and past the fountain that was destroyed during the war and which was rebuilt in 1951. We wouldn’t normally come this way, except that our favourite restaurant was closed and, once more, we had to tramp for miles before we found another that was open and which offered vegan food.

Eventually we found a suitable place, whose name I have forgotten, down by the Spa. I can’t remember now what Alison had but I had a bown of falafel and salad which was certainly delicious and well worth the money

After our meal we planned to goto the Cathedral so we retraced our steps;

There are some beautiful old houses in the Cathedral close that are always well worth a good inspection and a photograph is always worthwhile. No photos of the interior of the cathedral though. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that despite the immense wealth of the Church in general they actually employ people to go round and physically prohibit people from taking photos and we have encountered them before.

If you want to photograph the interior of the Cathedral you have to buy a permit to do so and there is no chance of that.

If they are short of a few bob here and there, they can always start by selling off some of the opulent treasures that are there. “Give all that thou hast to the Poor!”. Bah! Humbug!

We then went for yet another coffee and then headed back towards the car via the Square at the back of the Rathaus

The rear of the aforementioned building is not very often photographed so I thought that I would do the honours. You’ve seen a few of my photos of the front in the past.

It dates from the first decade of the 14th Century and is on the site of a much earlier building. There’s a kind-of grid that you can peer down to see the old stonework from the building that was here in Charlemagne’s time and when I come back with the NIKON D500 instead of the NIKON 1 J5 I’ll take a photo and show you just what I mean.

And shame that it is that I am obliged to say it, when I poured heaps of scorn onto the PLANNERS OF THE EXTENSION and said that it was some kind of mess that only a British architect could make.

So, before I go off and eat some humble pie, let me show you the Charlemagne Centre – a museum dedicated to the memory of Charlemagne whose capital Aachen was.

This Square is surrounded by the cathedral on the eouth side, the Rathaus on the north side, some nice early medieval stone houses opposite on the east side and a beautiful medieval stone meeting hall next door.

And the best that the modern planners can come up with to showase all of those is this God-awful monstrosity. I despair.

But at least, despite the best that the RAF and the USAAF could throw at it, Aachen’s cathedral remains pretty much intact, not like that did at Coventry where the planner did for the bits of cathedral that the Luftwaffe couldn’t destroy.

Said to be one of the largest and one of the oldest religious edifices north of the Alps, it started off life in 793 as the chapel of Charlemagne’s court and is where he was buried in 814. His remains are still in the Cathedral although there is dispute as to where they might be.

Charlemagne had been made Holy Roman Emperor by the Pope in 800 and from then on until 1531 almost every successive Holy Roman Emperor and German King, 31 of them to be precise (and 12 Queens) was crowned there

On that note we headed back to the car and drove home. Alison came in and had a coffee and a chat and after she had gone I switched on the laptop.

“An upgrade is taking place” it informed me. “Do not switch off”. So I didn’t and by 23:30 it was on 20% completed. So I gave it up as a bad job and went to bed.