Tag Archives: netherlands

7th November 2020 – THIS WEEK IS …

… International Polar Bear Week apparently so I feel that I ought to join in the fun by posting a photo of a couple of mine.

In case you are wondering, this photo was taken last August in the North West Passage, in the Victoria Strait between the Royal Geographical Society islands and King William Island and is just one of the … gulp 2,500 or so exciting photos that I took while I was out there in the High Arctic and with which I shall regale you in due course.

That is, of course, my long-term project for the coming winter – to sort them all out, edit them and upload them to the internet. I’m hoping that once I clear out the arrears back to June, I can crack on with the High Arctic photos, although I’m not sure when all of that might happen.

At least, I didn’t actually fall behind even further today. Even if I slept through the three alarms and didn’t wake up until long after 10:00. It’s always like that when I return home, after all of the effort that I go through, and even more so when I didn’t return home until late.

Being in bed for as long as I was, there was plenty of time to go on several nocturnal rambles, and I must have travelled miles during the night.

I started off in the USA. I can’t remember exactly what we were doing but it involved my father and a whole group of other people whom I knew. There had been some big kind of political debate. Some politician had made a disgraceful affair and all the other politicians were standing up for him. Someone went to get into their car but found that the locks had been changed. This eveil politician had gone around changing everyone’s locks on everything. At that stage I became quite simply fed up and beat both of them into a pulp. I had to sell someone about something or other and I can’t remember what. It was to do with a car needing work or something. I got into my car which was a very new one. I managed to get in and drove away from the scene. As I came up to a set of traffic lights a police car pulled out of a side road right in front of me, blocked the road and put his stop lights on. When the traffic lights changed he went off presumably to drive round the block to come up behind me. But it was a really inconvenient place to stop. There was an abandoned fuel station just across the traffic lights so I pulled over there, of course bitterly regretting what was going to happen next – I was in no illusions. There were a couple of guys there getting petrol out of this abandoned fuel station. They said something about parking there. I said “that’s all right. I’m waiting here to be arrested”. They looked at me a bit wide-eyed so I said to 1 of them “yes the police are coming to arrest me”. He thought that he had better get a move on and do what he’s doing quickly and get out of the way. Just then I saw a group of my friends coming along. They were carrying an engine lift, tools and everything as if they were going to lift the engine out of a car somewhere after what I’d said to them. I thought “this policeman is taking his time isn’t he? I could nip off if I wanted to leave my car there.” But did I want to leave my car there? Did I want to nip off? Did I want to go? There was a cheap Honda Acty microvan things parked up and I was having a look at that.

Later on I was a kid, a teenager doing something with a house. We’d all been working on bits of it and I’d been painting the bedroom. The 1st coat hadn’t worked properly because some filling needed doing on it. I’d done most of that and painted what I’d already done. It hadn’t appeared too badly and I was reasonably pleased with it. Then the tutor came in and started to give me instructions about what he wanted me to do next but I reckoned that in view of the time factor it would be a good idea just to fill the rest of the wall where it needed filling and paint one coat over it to see where it was low. We could fill it again to make it up in the meantime and the coat of paint would be on it ready for the top coat. We had a lengthy discussion about that and in the end he agreed to let me do it as I wanted. He told me that I would have to put a curtain up somewhere over one part where the walls were uneven but I thought that that was going to be a silly idea – it would just draw people’s attention to it but he was pretty adamant so in the end we agreed that we would talk about this again. I did the calculations that by the time I had finished this room putting these coats and this filler on I would have had my A levels by then in which case no-one would be in a position to contradict me at all and I really could then do it as I liked.

There was something where I was doing something with a pile of musicians – it might have been a certain Welsh rock group friends of mine or something like that. We were just sitting around talking about drugs, all this kind of thing. One of them was saying that he hadn’t shot up for a whole 15 concerts but was quite busy taking the weed – the same with a few of the others. I said that I didn’t even know whereabouts to go to get it. I wouldn’t have a clue. They said “that girl who came to your party in your building. She sold us a bag”. I thought that was a bit if a shame because I liked her. Then we ended up at someone’s house after this – it might even have been this girl’s. It was a much nicer apartment than mine, on the floor below from where I was living. We were all getting ready to go places and were sorting through a pile of things and having to tidy everything up. I was sorting through these stones, I’ve no idea why. Some were precious and some weren’t and I was getting it all wrong. There were 3 gear lever knobs from a vehicle in there. It was a really confused thing that I had to sort through. Someone came over to give me a hand. He clearly knew what he was doing. I had to resort what i’d already done because it wasn’t right. I ended up going for a walk around and having a look at her garden which was really nice. On the way back I saw everyone else coming for a walk around the garden. I thought that I might as well have waited until they decided to come rather than go out on my own

Subsequently I was taping a concert of the aforementioned group, trying to get that organised but it was again something that I was only doing half-heartedly and missing most of the joins, thinking that I would have to go back and check it over again. The question of London came up, the question of a restaurant in the basement of a hotel that we go to near the railway station but it had moved down to South London. A girl I was with suggested that we should go there and have a meal. I thought ” that’s a long way to go for a meal and come back. It’s not as if it’s at the railway station where it used to be where we could be in and out in an evening. With this we have to hike most of the way across London to get to it and it’s not going to be the same, particularly with only another two weekends to go…

From there I was walking along Crewe Road into Sandbach and as I was passing the houses at the end of Park Lane I was thinking that I had to go to the bank. But the bank wasn’t where it is but in the street that runs about half a mile to the south, Hassall Road, so I had to find my way around like a deviation. In the end I got to 3rd Avenue and I remembered that I could walk through there that way. I walked down there – there were some kids playing netball in the school plating area there and a couple of boys playing football. I went on and came to a set of steps that I had to walk down. There were two young girls there who were rolling balls down it. Obviously whose ball rolled furthest down the most stairs won. They had a rake that they were using to pull the balls back up. One of them was pulling a ball back up and the rake swung back over her head and nearly impaled me as I was waling past so I made some kind of light hearted remark about it and they laughed. Then I noticed in one of the swimming pools in the back garden of a house round there was a skeleton so I asked “is that your last victim?”. They laughed again. By this time a woman had come down. She thought that it was funny as well so we had a chat. We got to the bottom and there was a really deep puddle. She was talking about the gypsies who lived in Sandbach and how they ahd sometimes washed their clothes in it. When we reached th bottom she said which way she was going, and I thought that this was the other direction so I said goodbye to her. I turned left and she went a little further on and she turned left too. We bumped into each other again. I said “I thought that you were going the other way”. She said “no, this way. I have to fetch some money from the bank”, a different bank. She started to ask “where shall we go from here?” so I said “hurry up and get your money” so she dashed inside the bank.
Later on I stepped back into this dream. I was walking back to the bus. I got on the bus by the centre door and for some reason I didn’t want to sit down at the front so I chose a seat right opposite the centre door where I didn’t have to go very far. Then this woman appeared, the one with whom I’d walked just now. I was hoping that she would get on the bus and come to sit next to me but that was when I awoke.

There was plenty of other stuff too but I can’t remember them. I know that at one time I caught myself dictating into my hand, but I can’t remember what it was that I was saying.

One thing that was rather disappointing was that I wasn’t joined by any of the usual suspects who I like to accompany me. With all of this and the distance that I travelled, I would have expected at least one of them to be there at some point. Instead, I end up with people from whom I spent 38 years trying to escape. It’s just my luck, isn’t it?

By now it was well into the early afternoon and so I ate the half-baguette that was left from yesterday evening. No chance of going out to the shops now – it was far too late.

Not having done much throughout the day, I reckoned that I ought at least to go out for a walk this afternoon.

But no matter how little I had done and how much I thought that I ought to be doing, I wasn’t going to emulate this woman down here on the beach at the foot of the steps in the Rue du Nord. As I watched her, she marched slowly out to the water’s edge, peeling off her outer garments one by one.

And then she looked for a safe place amongst the rocks where she could leave them and her towel.

Having done that, she continued on her way out to the water’s edge, bent doan and soaked herself in seawater.

Once she was thoroughly wet through, she took the plunge and dived into the water, swimming away from the shore and out to sea.

It’s not the kind of thing that I would want to do. Even on a hot day I’m not all that interested in going into the water, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, even if in the past I have been swimming in the Mediterranean in November. But I’ve no intention of going into the water around here at any time of the year.

So instead, once my water baby, I wandered off along the Rue du Nord.

With the number of people who were around, many more than I was expecting in the middle of a lockdown, I didn’t feel like showing myself up by breaking into a run. And it’s just as well because during my gentle walk, my eyes probing out to sea picked up something yellow bobbing about on the waves in the sea off the shore of Donville les Bains.

Closer examination reveals that there are in fact two of them, in a nice line across the bay. We’ve seen all kinds of buoys out there in the past, for all kinds of different reasons, and it’s not immediately clear exactly what their purpose is.

Further along the footpath under the walls, I had a look down onto the beach round by the Plat Gousset.

And amongst the people wandering around down there were three young people in something of a state of undress. It looks as if we have had a few more water babies this afternoon, but I was too late to actually see them in the water.

But one thing that I did notice was the absence of face masks on the people down there. I know that it’s the policy on the promenade for the compulsory wearing of face masks, and I would have thought that now, seeing as we are in lockdown, that the compulsory wearing of masks would have extended further out from where it was before

With crowds of people around, I wasn’t able to go for a run across the Square Maurice Marland this afternoon. Well – not with any sense of pride, at least.

But at the top of the Square I had a look at one of the houses in the Rue LeCarpentier. Just before I left, they had erected some scaffolding up around it. But now, the scaffolding is sheeted in a protected netting and it looks as if work has begun.

Interestingly, the company doing the work advertises itself as a “restorer of the country’s patrimoine – a word for which there is no obvious translation but which means basically the intrinsic cultural values and artefacts, whether it’s song, dance, old machinery and buildings, that kind of thing.

One thing that is of course a compulsory activity is to check on what’s happening down at the chantier navale, seeing as I’ve neglected it for over a week.

The yacht that we saw in there the last time we looked is still present and it’s been joined by another boat. It’s not easy to tell from here what kind of boat it is. I shall have to sneak out later tonight for a closer look.

It goes without saying though that the huge mountain of gravel that was on the quayside has gone, and likewise has Neptune, the gravel boat that came into port as I was leaving town. She fetched up a couple of days later in Whitstable where she unloaded, and the last that I heard of her she had picked up a load of something in Dordrecht in the Netherlands and was on her way to Ridham, just down the road from Whitstable.

Back here this evening there was football. TNS were away at Bala Town in the Welsh Premier League, first away at second. It was a good, exciting match and while TNS were clearly the better team, Bala looked extremely dangerous at times and hit the woodwork twice with the keeper beaten and had Chris Venables had a decent touch on a ball in front of goal with Paul Harrison well out of position, Bala could have taken the lead.

As it was, TNS went into the lead after about 75 minutes only for Bala to equalise 5 minutes later. 1-1 was how it ended, a result which was about right altogether.

Tea was pasta with a couple of the burgers that I brought back from Leuven, followed by pineapple rings with chocolate vegan ice cream. No chance of going for an evening walk as there is apparently a curfew and it’s too late now.

Tomorrow will be really busy. I have bread to make – both “normal bread” and banana bread, as that which remained from last time didn’t survive. I have some kefir to make too, and for that I’ll probably use oranges this time.

The sourdough will need reanimating and feeding too, and then next week I’ll have a go making sourdough bread. I can’t use it this time because, having been in the fridge for a week or more, it’s still asleep.

Just like I’m going to be in a few minutes, I reckon. It takes me a couple of days to recover from my efforts in Leuven and I have plenty of work to do.

Sunday 30th June 2019 – SO HERE WE ALL ARE …

… not exactly sitting in a rainbow but sitting in the bedroom of a relatively comfortable hotel in, would you believe, Aberdeen.

And how unhappy am I?

Having made a special enquiry, and had it specially confirmed, that there was a hotel shuttle bus, necessary in view of the amount of luggage that I have and the state of my knee, I telephoned the hotel when I arrived at the airport only to be told “we don’t have a driver on tonight”.

So I had to hobble, dragging my load behind me, for about a mile up the steep hill to the hotel.

On arrival, in quite some distress with my breathing problems and the like, I was given a room on the second floor (despite having asked for a low floor) – and there’s no lift. So I had to drag my load up two flights of stairs.

As you can see, despite the fact that this nice modern hotel could be such good value for money (very rare in the UK)if it were to have staff and management wh actually cared about the customers, here’s one very unhappy bunny.

And the UK? I have said (on many occasions) that I would never ever set foot in this accursed country again, but needs must when the devil drives.

With it being Sunday morning I was hoping to have my usual Sunday lie-in but after last night’s quite dramatic crashing-out, I shouldn’t have been surprised at all by sitting bolt-upright at 06:44. Not what I intended at all.

Plenty of time to go off on a nocturnal ramble.

I was doing a coach tour again last night, down in the South of France and I was picking up passengers all over the place. I couldn’t find the paperwork for the moment telling me who and where I was picking folk up. So I was doing as fast as I can, and ending up at the final stop I was one person short. So I wondered where on earth I’d got this one person short. While I was waiting I was chatting to people and some woman came up to me to ask me what I thought of the passengers – what I thought of this woman, what I thought of that man. Despite my being very non-committal which I always tried my best to be I was shaking my head and pulling a face at some of them. I certainly hadn’t intended to do that. Eventually I found the piece of paper and found that I had left three people behind at Dijon and that was over an hour back. I thought “how am I going to explain this?” because I’d have to ring up the company to say that I didn’t get them and if I had the paperwork I could have done that. But Dijon is this thing and I might have to go all the way back and upset all of the passengers before I’d even started. One woman pulled the voyage list that I had to read it and of course i had to pull it back before she could as passengers aren’t supposed to read the voyage list with everyone’s name and address on it.
Later on I’d been in Crewe last night with Margaret Armstrong’s old Ford Cortina and parked it up in Bedford Street. I’d walked through the alleyway round all the backs of the houses round the back of Chambers Street and Catherine Street and all of those places, walking for a while around there. There were all kinds of exciting things round there, round Gresty Road where My sister used to live it had all been transformed with some kind of building built onto the backs of the houses over the back yards, and a derelict house that I had once looked at, that was all derelict too and the roof and attic too of this “new build” extension. And some weird semi-detached houses, quite modern design all covered in ivy, and some older semi-detached houses derelict and bricked up. Unkempt gardens and all kinds of things like that. There was a girl there, walking in my direction back to the car, on the phone so I passed her once, she passed me and I passed her again. As I got to the car she came over to me “you’ve got the zodiacs, haven’t you?” I said that they are actually on board the ship and that’s off the coast of Scotland at the moment”. “Well I want to make the white cloth to throw over them” So I said that I would get the measurements the next time that I’m up there, which will be in a couple of weeks’ time..

Firstly though, I had to find my medication. But I’ve packed it so well that it remains well and truly packed and I probably shan’t find it until I return home, whenever that might be, because now that I have my French Carte de Sejour I’m not in any hurry to go home.

After breakfast I attacked yesterday’s blog and then went out to the station. Now 09:30 so Subway should be open to buy something for lunch, and to buy my rail ticket. But much to my surprise, Subway was closed. And none of my raisin buns in Carrefour either so instead I had to go back down into the bowels of the station to the Delhaize and that came up trumps with a vegan falafel salad, demi-baguette and a fruit mixture thing. The guy at the till even found me a plastic cutlery set to eat it with.

So on the way back out, Subway was just opening up. That’ll teach them!

Back at the hotel I collected up everything, organised myself, grabbed my stuff and went off to pay for my two breakfasts. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that I’ve paid the booking agency in advance for a couple of breakfasts in a couple of places, only for the hotel to have “no trace” of the breakfast payment. So now I pay on-site if I’m breakfasting.

Down to Brussels-Midi station in time to leap aboard a Nederlandse Spoorwegen train to Amsterdam via the airport. It threw me out here. And here I am, in the departure lounge of Brussels Zaventam Airport, waiting for an aeroplane. And I hope that the Big Old Jet Airliner will carry me far away.

I eventually found the flight desk, which was not yet open and so I had a lengthy wait, spent talking to a couple from Australia and a young guy who looked like a Pacific islander from Baltimore.

Check-in was quite straightforward and Security even more straightforward. If only it would be as simple as this in other airports. Now I’m sitting quietly waiting to find out which terminal my flight will dock at, and I’m clearly in Travelling Mode because I’m listening to Colosseum Liveand I’ll probably follow it up by listening to On The Road by Traffic. My two favourite travelling albums.

We we were eventually called to our aeroplane. It was now moored at gate A60 at the far end of the terminal from where I was so I had something of a hike, which will probably do me good anyway.

I didn’t have long to wait and much to my surprise we were very quick in boarding the ‘plane. There were only a handful of empty seats but it was only a small ‘plane. I asked the stewardess if it was a Fokker and she replied “no, it’s quite well-behaved”. But I made a note of its registration – PH-EXT. That tells me that It’s an Embraer 190.

The name of the stewardess was Suske so I asked her what she had done with Schanulleke. But as Kenneth Williams and Alfred Hitchcock once said, and as I have repeated on many occasions, “it’s a waste of time telling jokes to foreigners”.

Once the ‘plane took off I switched on the laptop, put it onto flight mode, and started to listen to “Lost Angeles” once more. But it was quite pointless because no sooner had it all fired up than I had to switch off because we had gone into the arrivals path. In fact, I think that we spent more time manoeuvring on the ground than we spent in the air.

It’s not all that far to Schiphol from Zaventem and I could have gone by TGV from Bruxelles-Midi but believe it or not, it would have worked out more expensive. And that’s something that I don’t understand.

And I’m pretty annoyed because I have to wait 5 hours or so for a connection. There was a flight that went my way that took off 5 minutes before we landed but, would you believe, it was delayed and I could in theory have gone on that had I realised and run for it.

So now I have to wait. I sat and ate my delicious falafel salad and bread.

To reach my flight I had to pass through passport control and for some reason I was grabbed for a security check. I always have bad experiences at Schiphol, as I remember from last time.

I was given the “works” and was preparing myself for the cavity search when they suddenly found what had drawn their attention to me. “No, those aren’t bullets in a magazine. They are AAA batteries in a battery holder”.

It was weird at the terminal. People were actually locked into their departure lounge and if you weren’t on that particular flight you were locked outside. I had to wait for ages until the departure lounge cleared and they tidied it up before I was allowed in.

In the meantime they had changed departure lounges without saying anything and I almost found myself going to Glasgow. I had to hurry along down the corridor.

The place to Aberdeen was packed, and it was a big plane too. PH-BGK, a Boeing 737 called Noordse Stormvogel . They asked for volunteers to send their hand luggage into the hold and I volunteered. Less to have to carry around.

And it seemed that everyone knew each other. Probably Shell oil workers flying back to the platforms after a weekend off.

We had to wait for 20 minutes too. There was a connection that arrived late and some of our passengers were on it. And then when they arrived, we had to wait again for a free slot. However, we arrived in Aberdeen only a few minutes late.

Immigration was relatively painless and our bags were already out when we arrived in the hall.

And then I had my issues with the hotel.

Once installed in my room I had a nice, welcome shower and washed my rather sweaty undies, and now I’m off to bed. I’ve had enough of today. And this might be the last you’ll hear from me for a while, so don’t be disappointed. Check back regularly until normal service will be resumed.

Sunday 26th August 2018 – HOMER SIMPSON …

… is alive and well, and visiting Brussels at the moment.

I saw his car parked up by the Gare du Midi this evening.

Actually, it’s probably not his, but probably the one belonging to Miss Hodge, because it’s a little-known fact that Homer Simpson was not the first to use the catchphrase. It first came to prominence in the 1940s in ITMA – “It’s That Man Again” when Miss Hodge used it all the time to express her exasperation at Tommy Handley’s antics.

For the first time for quite a while, and changing the habits of a lifestyle, I set an alarm for this morning. I’m off on my travels and I have plenty to do.

First thing was to make my butties. That’s the most important thing. I can’t starve when I’m on the road. And when the butties had been made, I could then clean down the worktops and the table.

The sink and the draining board looked pretty insalubrious too so I put everything away that I could, and then spent a good 10 minutes cleaning that.

Next task was to put out the rubbish. That had accumulated for a while and its presence had become quite evident, so that went the Way of the West too. I shall have to put the rubbish out much more often, especially in the summer.

Final task was to scrub the waste bin and then put bleach everywhere that needed disinfecting. Grabbing a packet of crackers for breakfast, I hit the streets.

I’ve made something of a miscalculation. It’s Sunday, and on Sunday there are no local buses. So I had to head off to the station on foot, dragging behing me my huge suitcase with Strawberry Moose in it.

But at least it meant that I could see a beautiful yacht come sailing … “dieseling” – ed … into the harbour.

she’s called “De Gallant”, and with a name like that I reckoned that she is probably Flemish or Dutch.

And I was right too. Originally called Jannete Margaretha, she was launched in 1916 in the middle of World War I in the neutral Netherlands.

She was originally a herring boat and later as a cargo vessel, but since 1987 she’s been a sail training vessel. Mind you, she was dieseling her way into the harbour today.

It seemed like a long, slow crawl up the hill with the suitcase and I had to stop a couple of times to catch my breath.

But in fact it was only 08:25 when I arrived. I would almost have had time to have gone to visit the brocante that was setting up in the streets outside.

The train was in so I grabbed a coffee and leapt aboard, settling myself down and having my breakfast. And being interrupted by the girl in front who wanted to borrow my phone charger.

In between reading my book and listening to the radio programmes on my laptop I had a good sleep for half an hour. And that did me some good too.

Barclay James Harvest once famously wrote I have been to a place where chaos rules. I used to think that they had been to an Open University Students Association Executive Committee Meeting but today I realised that they had in fact been alighting from a train on a Sunday lunchtime at Paris Vaugirard, because chaos it certainly was. Whole areas were roped off with hordes of people waiting to reboard the train. We had to fight our way through the queues.

They had even installed a one-way dual carriageway system on the platform down to the main station.

The metro was heaving too but I took up a place right at the front and not only was there plenty of room down there, I even managed to find a seat. But the heat was stifling, especially as I was wearing a fleece.

There seems to have been a change at the Gare du Nord too. Usually there’s a gate at the end of the platform that leads out to the main-line station but today I couldn’t find it and ended up being routed all the way through the bowels of the station.

I went outside and ate my butties, spending more time though fighting off the pigeons.

But I did notice this sign though on one of the doors outside. Crudely translated (and if there’s anything crude involved anywhere, then in the words of the late, great Bob Doney “I’m your man”) into the vernacular by Yours Truly, it means “p155 off elsewhere”.

So now you know.

The TGV was crowded too. I was lucky enough to be one of the first on so the big suitcase had a place on the luggage rack. I don’t know what would have happened had I been any later because there was only room for about four on there.

And they must have been cleaning the carriage because there was an overwhelming smell of cleanliness in there. So I settled in and plugged in my laptop. It was then that my neighbour arrived so I warned him not to trip over the cable.

Twice.

So he tripped over it

Twice.

Just by way of a change, I spent most of the journey asleep. The seats were quite comfortable. And so I can’t tell you anything about the journey. But when we arrived in Brussels it was like winter here. All of the good weather had disappeared.

I’m staying in the Hotel Midi-Zuid. I’ve stayed here a few times in the past. It’s an easy 5-minute walk from the station and although the area around here is depressing, this is a modern, clean hotel where rooms represent really good value for money seeing as you are at a vital traffic hub in Europe’s capital city and I have no complaints.

Esyllt rang me up. It’s been a couple of years since we last saw each other. She’s in Brussels right now so we arranged to meet at the Gare du Midi.

We ended up having a good walk around the city in the rain, even finding an open-air techno music exposition. But even more excitingly we found an Indian Restaurant, the Feux de Bengale.

Esi isn’t a big fan of Indian food, but I am. And there were a few banal foods on offer on the menu. And so we had one of the nicest meals that I have had for quite a while. My potato and cauliflower curry was delicious.

Interestingly, when I was going to look for the conveniences, the manager sidled up to me and whispered “we have rooms for the night or for the hour”. This kind of thing used to be quite common in Brussels but I was under the impression that it had pretty much died out.

But what use would I be, even for an hour? As I have said before … “and on many occasions too” – ed …I can still chase after the women – I just can’t remember why.

Last time any young lady asked me, when I was in bed, if I needed anything, I replied “a glass of wincarnis and a hot water bottle”.

We carried on with our walk afterwards and ended up in a bar. And one thing that we noticed was that despite there being quite a few people in there, and plenty of couples too, Esi was the only female in the place.

Eventually we arrived at Esi’s metro station so I put her on the train to the friend’s house where she was staying, and I walked back to my hotel.

Lots of changes in the city and the main road through the centre is now a pedestrian walkway. It’s much different from how it was when I first came to live here – 26 years ago now.

My hotel room is on the ground floor, and there’s quite a lot of noise coming from the reception area. I hope that I’ll be able to sleep tonight with all of this going on. But at least the room is well-appointed and I’m quite pleased with it.

I’m at the hospital tomorrow.

Saturday 7th July 2018 – ONE OF THESE DAYS …

… I’ll have a decent night.

But it wasn’t last night, that’s for sure. With all of the excitement following Belgium’s unexpected victory over Brazil there was chaos in the streets and enough noise to awaken the dead.

And so despite everything and all of my best intentions, it was hours before I managed to go off to sleep.

It was another morning too where I was awake long before the alarm went off. When I finally glanced at the time it was 05:47 and I was hoping for something rather better than that.

There had still been time to go on my travels though. Back driving a taxi and I’d been given a list of the regular clients which I was sure that I had memorised, and so I tore it up. And immediately there was a call over the radio “go to Nantwich and pick up so-and-so”. And I couldn’t remember where he or she lived. My notes were too badly torn to be able to be pieced together so I asked on the radio, but I couldn’t understand the reply which was rather garbled.
A little later I was in Eritrea (don’t ask me why) – an Eritrea that looked like nothing that I had ever seen of it. There was a military patrol walking down a road floating up observation balloons, many of which had fallen to earth and were littering the side of the road. Suddenly the patrol withdrew, leaving me isolated right out in front, a rather nervous place to be. Eventually I found a tourist guide who was selling tickets on a steam train ride. he was negotiating with someone and they agreed on a price of $50:00. The only thing that I could see in the brochure for a steam ride was at $130:00 so I asked about it. He replied that I needed to go to the railway station and book it there. He mentioned 13:30 but I didn’t understand if that was the time of departure or the time of return, and it was all so confusing.

So crawling out of bed I had my medication (now that I have some) but I still didn’t feel like any breakfast so I had a shower instead and cracked on with my paperwork.

The cleaner wanted to come in here at 11:00 but I told her to wait for a while as I was expecting a visitor.

And sure enough, just when I reckoned that I ought to go outside, I opened my door to see Alison pulling into the car park. Bang on cue.

Our first port of call was about 30 kms down the road in Welkenraedt.

Despite only having a population on 9,000 or so, it’s probably one of the most famous small towns in Belgium and it’s one that I’ve been dying to visit ever since I first came to Oostende over 45years ago

And for one of the strangest reasons too, because it’s not your usual run-of-the-mill tourist venue.

Back in the 1970s at the railway station in Oostende there would alwas be a train waiting to meet the ferries, and they would always be going to Welkenraedt.

It aroused my curiosity so I did a little research and found that it was a small town in the north of the Ardennes that didn’t look as if it had any significance at all, so I was puzzled as to why all of these trains would want to come here.

And when you look at the station, it’s a big, modern station that has plenty of facilities and it is all out of proportion to the size of the town

A little bit of research back in those days soon cleared up the question.

Welkenraedt is the closest railway station to the border between Germany and Belgium – in Germany until 1919 and in Belgium afterwards.

And when the railways were electrified, the German voltage system was different from that in Belgium until comparatively modern times. And until the Schengen agreement, there was a frontier post at the station.

So while the passengers were having their passports controlled, the train would be changing engines and then going on to Aachen or Cologne or maybe further still.

Welkenraedt is officially a German-speaking town but when it was transferred to Belgium by the Treaty of Versailles, the SNCB, the Belgian railway company, opened a locomotive depot here and transferred in a large number of French-speaking railway workers.

They flooded the town to such an extent that you will struggle to find German spoken here today. We saw a couple of signs in German but that was about that.

We went off to find something to eat as Alison was hungry, and I forced down a helping of overcooked chips. I’m clearly feeling better after my crisis of Thursday and Friday.

But you can’t cometo this region without going down the road to Moresnet.

For several reasons really, not the first of which is this absolutely gorgeous railway viaduct.

It’s not quite on a par with the Tracel de Cap Rouge of course, that’s rather exceptional, but it’s by far the best that you are likely to find around this part of Europe.

According to the information that I have found, it was built during the period 1915-1916. The pillars are fine examples of reinforced concrete of that period.

It’s just over 1100 metres long and at its highest, it’s about 60 metres above the velley of the River Gueule

That tells us a couple of things

There may well have been something here prior to that period that was demolished at the start of World War I
It escaped demolition during the fighting of World War II

Knowing my usual luck, we would ordinarily have had to wait for about three weeks to see a train pass over the viaduct, and then we would have missed it because we had gone for a coffee.

But that’s not the case here. This is the main railway line that runs between Aachen and Antwerpen, one of Europe’s busiest ports.

We’d hardly pulled into the village before a freight train went rattling by just above our heads.

So while you admire the village of Moresnet and Alison and I have gone for a coffee with the friendly young girl who runs the village café, let me tell you a little story.

At the end of the Napoleonic Wars the Treaty of the Limits in 1816 redefined the border between the Low Countries (because Belgium didn’t exist at that time) and the Kingdom of Prussia.

For various reasons, they couldn’t agree with what to do with the commune of Moresnet and so they planned to divide it between them.

Unfortunately, any logical dividing line ran right through a very important and valuable quarry and they couldn’t agree where the line should go so that each country would have half the value.

Eventually, they agreed that the quarry and a surrounding piece of land would be a neutral zone administered jointly by one official from the Low Countries (Belgium after 1830) and the Kingdom of Prussia (the German Empire after 1871).

And so you had Moresnet, Neu-Moresenet (the German bit) and Moresnet Neutre.

In 1914 Germany took all of it, so at the Treaty of Versailles Belgium was awarded all of it, so in 1940 Germany took it all back and in 1945 Belgium regained all of it.

There has been quite a lot of excitement in such a sleepy little Belgian village

But our conversation with the serving wench was quite exciting. being practically right on one of Belgium’s linguistic borders, our conversation drifted between French and German with hardly a pause.

Belgium is a fascinating country.

And if that’s not enough to be going on with, just up the road some time round about 1750 a miracle involving Mary the Mother of Jesus is said to have taken place

Pilgrims came to visit the site so a small chapel was built, followed by all of the usual facilities for the visitors, and the village of Moresnet-Chapelle developed.

A group of Franciscan Friars (and seeing as this is Belgium, they were probably chip monks) were sent from Aachen in 1875 to provide spiritual comfort to the visitors.

As a result, some substantial development took place.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that we’ve talked on several occasions about the Chemin de la Croix – 14 stages of Jesus on his way to his crucifixion, death and subsequent resurrection.

We’ve also been to see a a magnificent example of this at Cap de la Madeleine in Quebec.

In 1895 they decided that they would emulate it (the filthy beasts) right here.

In 1895 German benefactor provided some cash to purchase the land around the chapel and they set to work.

The work was completed in 1904 and today there are 14 grottoes made of puzzolane, each featuring one of the stages of the Chemin de la Croix.

The aim is to visit each one, purchase a candle to light in each (which must bring in a fortune) and say a prayer at each one, in order to be absolved of your sins.

Of course, I don’t need to, for regular readers of this rubbish in one of its previous guises will recall that I was granted absolution by the Pope, having passed through all of the Holy Doors in Rome during the Period of Grace in 2000.

I choose my friends carefully as you know.

The twelfth station, the Calvaire or Calvary, featuring the crucifiction, is always a good ‘un and there’s no exception here.

In fact, it was so popular at one time that they have installed benches here and occasionally hold open-air church services here.

But clearly not masses, because the place is pretty-much deserted today.

And I shan’t bore you all by repeating the story that a Frenchman delightfully told me, that they asked for a famous sculptor from each country to send in their impressions of how the Calvary should look, and the Belgian sculptor sent in a drawing of John Wayne on his horse.

Final stop (for now, anyway) on our day out was just a couple of miles up the road.

Here we have the Driehoek – or “Three Corners” – where the countries of the Netherlands, Belgium and Germany meet.

And when we had Moresnet-Neutre, it was a Vierhoek because that area had a bit of it too.

The girl in red is sitting half in the Netherlands and half in Germany, and the girl on the floor is half in the Netherlands and half in Belgium.

Not only that, the highest point in the Netherlands – the Vaalserberg – is only 100 metres or so from the border and so we had to pay that a visit too.

It’s all of 322.4 metres above sea level, or 1,058 feet for those of you still dealing in real money.

And in the background you can see an observation platform. Apart from the fact that it cost real money to go up there to the top, the number of steps that I saw was enough to put me off the idea.

So having been driven up the Vaal(serberg) our next stop was across in our third country of the day – Germany. And those silly Brits who voted to leave the EU just don’t understand the advantages of having Breakfast in Brussels, Lunch in Luxembourg, Tea in Turin, Supper in Sampdoria and Bed in Bari.

Aachen in fact was where we went, where Alison wanted to take me to a café that she had found. And even though we arrived 12 minutes before the advertised closing time of 18:00, they refused to serve us.

Consequently we nipped to Mullers for some of my white coconut chocolate, and then to the cat café that we had visited a while ago.

The cooking smelt delicious so Alison had some thick soup and I had hummus with raw vegetables and bread.

It’s not far back to Liège from Aachen, even though you pass through three countries to get there. and I was in time to see Russia defeated by Croatia. And I could tell by the way that the first Russian limped up to take his penalty, head bowed to the ground, that he was going to miss it.

Tomorrow I am on the move, and so an early night – if my neighbours let me. They are being just a little rowdy, but then you can’t win a coconut every time, can you?

-1

Wednesday 4th July 2018 – THERE HAS TO BE …

… something extraordinarily civilised sitting with a coffee on a terrace in a hotel with my feet almost in the Rhine looking at a car ferry loading up and crossing over to the other side.

It’s not like me at all is it, this “being civilised” bit?

And having had a really good sleep in a really comfortable bed and a really copious breakfast, all for €53:00 per night, then you can understand why this place will be added to my list of places to revisit.

And comfortable bed it was too, although I wasn’t in it for long. I’d taken a plane back to Crewe, and landed at the airport at Radway Green. But the 320 PMT bus didn’t come to the airport and so this meant a long walk with my baggage to the Alsager road. And with having to be back three hours before the flight departure the next day with no public transport, it meant that I would only have time to put my foot in the town before I would have to turn round and come back. And anyone who knows Crewe will realise what a good idea that is, although for some reason that I can’t understand, it bothered me more than it should have done.

And while I’ve been sitting here on the terrace, I’ve been watching the railway line across the river on the eastern bank of the Rhine.

I’ve counted one train every couple of minutes or so, the majority of which are freight trains.

I can’t see the railway line on the Western bank but I can hear it, and the trains seem to be just as frequent. It’s a big contrast to the UK isn’t it?

And it’s not just trains either.

We saw dozens of barges yesterday sailing … "dieseling" – ed … up and down the Rhine too and it didn’t look as if we were going to be disappointed today either.

This one seems to be a gas tanker, and there are even tankers full of sulphuric acid that use the Rhine – one of those sank off St Goar a few years ago.

Having completed another mound of paperwork we all loaded up Caliburn and headed across the road for the ferry.

And this gave us a good opportunity to admire the hotel.

As I said, the Hotel Rhein Inn might be a little old and tired, but on the value-for_money scale, which to me is quite important, it scores an easy 10 out of 10.

I haven’t had such a good sleep and a nice breakfast as that for quite some considerable time.

Just as we were boarding the ferry across the river, a canoeist went heading across our bows.

That’s rather a dangerous sport to do here, I reckon with all of the river traffic. There aren’t just barges but cruise ships, pleasure boats, speedboats and all that kind of thing.

And so shouldn’t go lighting a fire in your canoe. After all, we have been told for many years that you can’t have your kayak and heat it.

So off we set.

And the crossing was not as straightforward as you might think because we had to dodge and swerve around the barges that were heading up and down-stream.

They didn’t look as if they took any prisoners while they were on their travels. “Full steam ahead” without even a hint of “left hand down a bit” to swerve around the other traffic on the river.

Now that I’m on the eastern bank, the first stop has to be on the edge of the town of Erpel.

That over there is the western tower – the one that has been transformed into a museum by the then-mayor of Remagen and financed by the sale of the stones from the demolished central towers.

And despite the bridge being more-associated with the town of Remagen I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s better-seen from Erpel.

This is the eastern tower here in Erpel.

You’ll notice the slits in the brickwork here. The bases of the towers were designed to accommodate troops of infantry who would defend the bridge, and the slits were loopholes through which rifles and machine guns could be fired.

The accommodation in there has now been transformed into a Performing Arts centre.

Here on the eastern bank, the railway line that crossed the bridge disappeared into the railway tunnel halfway up the Erpeler Ley

This tunnel, almost 400 metres long, curved around to the right and joined up with a railway that connected to the line along the eastern bank.

It was hiding in this tunnel that the German engineers pressed the plunger that detonated the explosives that failed to go off correctly.

It was discovered later that an artillery shell had severed many of the cables that connected the individual charges.

There’s a good view of the town of Remagen from along here too.

The Rhine was at one time the frontier of the Roman Empire and here the Romans built a fort, which they called Rigomanus.

A town grew up around it and although the town was fought over and destroyed many times, each time it arose again from the ashes.

The church that you can see over there may well be the church of St Apollinaris.

The story goes that a ship loaded with Holy relics sailed from Milan to Cologne in the Middle Ages, but grounded at Remagen.

They unloaded some cargo to lighten the ship, and as soon as the relics of St Apollinaris were unloaded, the ship floated away.

His relics were then interred in the old Roman chapel here which was subsequently expanded into a church.

So if you are suffering from gout, epilepsy or venereal disease, this is the place to be.

Bad Hoffen up the road is also the place to be as far as I am concerned.

Here littered around a yard at an old factory was a whole collection of old commercial vehicles, one of which was this Oshkosk

Oshlosk is a company that is a builder of specialist vehicles in Appleton, Wisonsin, USA and was founded in 1917 to make severe-duty 4×4 vehicles

As for this lorry, I don’t have a clue what it might be, although rollers on the deck indicate that it might have been for use around a steel mill or something.

As for the car on the back, we all know what one of these is because we’ve seen one before. It’s a Cadillac Fleetwood and I reckon that it’s either a Series 7 or a Series 8, which puts in in the late 50s or early 60s

There was tons of stuff here and I didn’t really have much of an idea about what they might be.

There was even a “Whirlybirds” helicopter parked up here. Someone had had his chopper out.

I’ll have to do some research when I return home and I’ll update this page with a pile more photos so that you can see just what there was in here.

Not long after this, we had a little excitement.

It was grey and heavily overcast out over Bonn and I was sure that a storm was threatening.

We didn’t actually see any rain but I suddenly came across a patch of road that was soaking wet and you could smell the rain in the air.

It didn’t last long before we were in the dry again, but it really was bizarre. I learnt later that they had had a severe storm which, although it only lasted for a couple of minutes, was so severe that several houses had flooded.

We pushed on and as we drove past Bonn (which is on the western side) I noticed the ruins of a castle perched on a rock.

Ordinarily I would have gone to make further enquiries but I missed the turning to where it was situated and there was so much traffic that I wasn’t able to turn round easily enough.

And so we carried on

We eventually found a LIDL (you can never find one when you want one, and when you don’t need one you keep on tripping over dozens) where we were nearly squidged by a German drifting across the road in his car, mobile phone in one hand.

And having bought stuff for lunch, the next issue was trying to find a place to eat it. I must have driven down dozens of little alleys heading towards the river only to be disappointed with no parking.

Instead, I ended up crossing over the Rhine, just south of Cologne, thinking to myself that I’m glad that I’m not travelling eastwards.

I didn’t like the look of any of that at all.

Instead I pulled off the motorway at a very dirty unwelcoming service area and did my best to eat my food without noticing too much all of the rubbish that was littered around.

At Aachen I left the motorway to look for fuel and as luck would have it, the only petrol stations open were on the other side of the road and crossing over in all of the traffic was practically impossible.

So I pushed on, into the Netherlands and round by the winding road that goes across the highest point in the country, and into the Belgian Ardennes.

Still without finding any fuel.

I was now in that part of the Ardennes which had seen heavy fighting in the Battle of the Ardennes – or Battle of the Bulge.

The Germans launched a surprise attack on the American forces sheltering here, hoping to break through the lines and recapture Antwerp.

The attack failed but it caused heavy casualties. An American tank Corps based in Neufchatel was badly cut up by the attacking Germans and the citizens of the town, in partnership with the American Army, erected a memorial to the soldiers who had died.

So we carried on and eventually arrived in Liège. By now the fuel question was becoming rather desperate – Caliburn had done a record 840kms on three-quarters of a tank – so I pulled off at the big commercial shopping centre.

And wasn’t that a mistake?

We were now well and truly in the rush hour and it took ages to sort ourselves out. I took a little short-cut that I knew but to my dismay the motorway entrance was closed for repair so I had to go back and fight my way through the traffic.

I eventually reached the hotel, to find that Hans had beaten me by a good couple of hours.So I went for a quick shower and, shame as it is to admit it, crashed out on the bed for 20 minutes.

We ended up at Chi-Chi’s, one of the franchised Tex-Mex restaurants. They concocted a vegan meal for me which was totally delicious. But when was the last time that you ever heard of me leaving a table with food still upon it?

And not only that – Usually we spend our meal-times discussing the women and girls in the restaurant but today we ended up discussing our medication and bowel problems and the like.

Aren’t we getting old?

Back here, I couldn’t even keep my eyes open so I came back here and crashed out for good.

it had been a long day.

Saturday 17th February 2018 – I’M A MISERABLE PLEADER.

Yes, I’m definitely losing my touch.

Maybe it’s trying to do it in Flemish that’s the problem, but on the other hand being a miserable ignorant foreigner who has travelled for for no avail usually works wonders.

But retournons to our moutons as they say back home.

Yet another miserable night as my neighbours awoke me when they returned home at 02:00 and carried on their party until 04:00 or whatever. And as I have said before, it’s not really their noise that’s the issue – it’s more the fact that i’m a light sleeper and the walls are very thin.

I compensated by setting the alarms for 07:30 and 07:40 instead of the usual time one hour earlier. After the medication and breakfast, I had a shower and change of clothes and then attacked a few things that needed my attention.

Alison came through at 10:30. She was just about to leave home so that gave me 15 minutes to gather up my wits (it doesn’t usually take me that long these days as you know) and go to loiter on the corner at the end of the street.

She arrived on time and we hit the road for our day out. She had made several suggestions as to where to go (I always have this problem of people telling me where to go) but the one that stood out above all of the others was Aachen of course – in Germany.

The thing that I like about living in Belgium is that you have a choice of four countries – France, Luxembourg, Germany and the Netherlands – on your doorstep. Luxembourg at 100 minutes is the farthest away and the rest are a lot closer than that.

The weather wasn’t what I expected though. Considering that it was Germany in February I was hoping for sub-zero temperatures and several feet of snow. Instead, we had a glorious Spring day with a beautiful blue sky.

I felt rather disappointed.

Alison is off skiing in a few days so she wanted to look at some of the clothing in the big Sports shop on the edge of the city centre. So that was to be our first port of call

But we were distracted by a café that we hadn’t noticed before. It wasn’t the vegan options on offer but the fact that sitting in the window were four rather large cats.

This place is called the “Katzencafé” and the idea is that you can go in there for a coffee and cuddle a kitten. And on chatting to a few friends later I was told that there are these cat cafés springing up all over the place these days. I’m all in favour of that idea of course except that these cats were rather aloof.

Still never mind. The coffee was good and we enjoyed the company.

There was nothing that took Alison’s fancy in the Sports shop (at least, not at a reasonable price, that is) and so we went up the road to the Muller supermarket where I bought some more of that white vegan chocolate that I like

We found a square that we hadn’t noticed before where there was a good view of the rear of the town hall and the rear of the cathedral.

I’d not seen the town hall from this angle before, and I do have to say that it was quite impressive.

As an aside … "you’ll get used to this" – ed … the German for "Town Hall" is Rathaus, which is rather appropriate, as I’m sure you’ll all agree.

Our new little route took us on an exploration of the city in places that we hadn’t visited and past sites that I hadn’t previously seen. And that’s always good news.

And to my delight, I discovered a Bio shop that sold the very brand of vegan cheese that I like. They only had two packs of it though, and now they don’t have any at all.

I also discovered a huge model railway shop and we passed a good half-hour in there. I would love to have a little N-gauge layout back at home, but not at the prices they are asking. There was an HO/OOgauge Big Boyof the type that we all know and love and which was on sale at an astonishing €2599.

Passing via several other shops we made it to the Source where I had another drink of the hot sulphuric water. It tastes disgusting of course, but there’s no point in going to the Waters if you have no intention of taking them, even if you have been misinformed.

Unfortunately there wasn’t all that much of a photo opportunity seeing that the building was cluttered with pedestrians and street furniture and the like. I shall have to come along here at 05:00, and bring a Stihl Saw with me too.

The market stall that was selling those delicious fennel-flavoured sweets last time – that wasn’t here today which was bad news. And although our walk was quite interesting there wasn’t really all that much to see that was exciting.

And so, feeling the cold and the exhaustion and the hunger, we detained to the little restaurant that we know – the one by the Roman remains. Alison had a spicy chicken meal and I had the quinoa salad.

Being duly fed and watered, we set off for a slow wander back to the car. But Alison drew my attention to the rays of the early evening sun that were just catching the clock tower right by the town hall.

Alison reckoned that it was worth a photograph, and who was I to argue with that?

Back in the car we headed for Leuven in the early evening sunset – our journey being interrupted by the scenic tour of the roadworks halfway along the highway. And when I arrived back I had a coffee and a little … errr … relax.

Round about 19:30 I set off for the football ground. OH Leuven were playing KFCO Beerschot-Wilrijk, a team that I have yet to see, so I was quite looking forward to the match.

But hereby hangs a tale.

With there having been “certain incidents” in the past, the whole ground and surrounding streets were surrounded by police and admission was by prebooked ticket only. And no amount of pleading on my part would convince anyone at all – Police, admission booth, security staff, stadium management (yes, I got to see them all) would change their minds.

Of course, arguing with Belgian administration – particularly from a position of weakness – is a pointless argument as anyone who has ever tried it will tell you. But you have to go through the motions anyway – I don’t give up without a fight.

However in this case, I was singularly unsuccessful and repaired to a bar across the street where several other people, including someone who had come from Italy, in the same position as me were gathered to watch the match on television.

I’ve never understood the fascination for watching football on TV. Yes, fair enough if it’s the only way of seeing a game, but it’s nothing like watching the match in the flesh – nothing at all. There’s no atmosphere for a start, and the focus of the camera cuts out all of the interesting stuff going on in the background.

So at the final whistle, I headed back home again in the cold – to total silence next door. Perhaps they are out partying and they’ll be back at something silly like 03:00. So I’m going to bed quick and grab a couple of hours sleep.

Sunday 5th February 2017 – NOW WHAT DO YOU THINK …

… these men are doing in here?

Yes, well done that man! This is indeed a public urinal and it’s the first one that I have ever seen that has glass doors – never mind glass doors from the outside so that everyone passing by can see what is going on inside. It’s the kind of thing that you will only ever see in Belgium.

Of course, I refrained from using it. I didn’t want to give everyone here at the Schiervelde an inferiority complex.

It made me think, which is a rare event of course. Do you remember the time that we were at a football match at Breda in the Netherlands and we encountered the P155-house? It seems that football clubs in the Low Countries have these eccentric arrangements.

And while we are on the subject of the Schiervelde, I wonder if you can guess what this apparatus is, out here on the car park.

I did ask on my social networking page and eventually someone, Josée in Montreal, came up with the answer. It’s a couple of bicycle racks. Bicycles are the big thing in Flanders and in the Netherlands (the idea that cycling in the Netherlands is so popular because it means that you don’t have to pay bus fare is totally wide of the mark) and the facilities for them are overwhelming.

And while we are on the subject of bicycles, I saw an electric unicycle with the rider perched thereupon. I wasn’t quick enough with the camera for that, which is a shame, but that has set the wheels in my mind going round and round. How easy would one of those be to carry on a bus, train or even an aeroplane?

having had my curiosity aroused, I had a look around on the internet for them, and I could be seriously tempted by one of these.

But let’s all start with last night. And this was one of the worst nights that I have had for a while. I went to sleep fairly early which was a surprise, but I kept on waking up, and for no good reason too. Just after 04:00, I had another sit-bolt-upright awakening, and couldn’t go back to sleep for ages after that.

I’d been on a lengthy travel too, and so being wide awake at that time of the morning, I switched on the laptop and typed it out. And when I came to read it later in the day, I had quite a difficult job of understanding the gibberish that I had written.

But here goes, and I hope that you can understand it all better than I can. I’d started off by being involved in quite a serious wrestling bout which went on for ages – and although no-one was hurt, it was quite intense and overpowering experience.
From here the action cuts to Percy Penguin who was going on and on about how she had to be in Italy today – a Friday. And then the penny dropped – there was a music concert taking place and I’d invited her to come with me. However I couldn’t go so I’d asked a friend to take her but I’m not sure he had remembered. However, in the end off she set. I couldn’t now remember where she had to go but it ended up being somewhere in the Plains of the USA (which looked to me as if it was right on the edge of the Denver plateau but that didn’t click with me at the time while I was asleep). Where she thought that she needed to go turned out to be a kind of small saloon with just a handful of people and no music concert either, so it was clearly the wrong place to be. My friend who took her couldn’t hang around and needed to be on his way but he couldn’t leave Percy Penguin there. While he was trying to resolve this issue in his own mind, he was hit on the head with a bottle. Nearby, Matt Dillon, the marshall from Dodge City in Gunsmoke (I’ve very recently downloaded all of the Gunsmoke radio episodes and been listening to them) was investigating and he suddenly realised that the venue where Percy Penguin needed to be was UNDERNEATH where she had been dropped her. He therefore had to get there to take her to the correct place but he was caught up in some kind of work of his own meaning he couldn’t go quite at that moment. And so in the meantime Percy Penguin was effectively on her own in this place.

And if you can make head or tail of all of this, then good luck to you.

After breakfast, I had a relaxing first part of the morning, and then hit the streets.

On Saturday there had been quite a bit of noise in the Kruisstraat round the side of the building and I’d been meaning to pop outside and see what they were up. But somehow I’d never got quite round to doing it.

But you can’t miss it now, can you? It’s a huge crane. And I wonder what it’s doing here. I suppose that I’ll have to wait until Monday to find out. I hope that they aren’t going to start pulling the roof of this building and leaving me out in the cold.

Once I’d organised the photograph I set off for the railway station at the other end of town, passing the electric unicycle (that I mentioned earlier) on the way.

At the station I picked up my ticket for Roeselare, and set out on my most adventurous SNCB rail trip to date. The first leg of my journey took me from Leuven to Brussels, and thence to the Gent St Pieters railway station.

It was a beautiful, comfortable modern train with carriages that are on lease from a railway company in Stuttgart, Germany. And the equipment puts British railways to shame. Rail travel is certainly the way to go in mainland Europe. I mean – it’s the popular Oostende train, and yet there were seats for everyone.

As we pulled into Gent we were held up by signals, and looking out of the window where we were stopped, I noticed a pile of people having an outdoor barbecue in the street.

This is the kind of thing that you can do in Europe (if you obtain a licence from the local council and you are brave enough to confront the weather) and this is why living in the real Europe is so attractive to me.

I couldn’t ever imagine returning to the UK, that’s for sure. If this ridiculous national suicide called “Brexit” starts to affect my residence position here, I’ll be applying for French nationality, that’s for sure.

I’ve been through Gent St Pieters on the train a few times, and changed trains here once too, but I’d never been outside to actually see the railway station building.

There was a brief 10 minutes before the Antwerp – De Panne train came in and so I went outside to take a photograph of the building. This is the best that I can do because I was in quite a rush as you can imagine, and in fact as I climbed back up to my platform, my train was already pulling in.

I’ll have to go back for a prowl around inside the building some other time

At Lichtervelde, as my train in, a train was pulling in at the opposite platform from the other direction. I knew that there was no time to waste here and so as the guard alighted from the train, I asker her is this was the train to Roosendaal. “Platform 5” she said – but I’m sure that that wasn’t right so we had quite an argument about it.

And while we were arguing, I noticed that the train was displaying a list of subsequent stops, one of which was mine. So not bothering to argue any loner, I leapt aboard and the train almost immediately set off.

There was a scrolling display inside the train too (it was a big, ultra-modern double-decker train) and there was my destination as clear as day. And so the guard came up to me, to presumably check my ticket.

“Look – there you are” I said. “This IS my train!”
She had a look at my ticket. “But you said Roosendaal, not Roeselare. Roosendaal is the Antwerp train”.

It’s a good job that there wasn’t a dining car on board – I would have ordered a portion of Humble Pie.

At the railway station, I noticed that there was a fritkot across the Square. I hadn’t had lunch and so a packet of fritjes sounded like a good plan. I could eat them as I trudged out to the football ground.

The football ground is miles outside the town, the opposite side to where the railway station is.

I peered through the doom and gloom of the rain as I walked. We have the usual walled, moated city with the walls all demolished and the moat mostly filled in, but there was some of what I imagined the moat to be, and it was on my way out to the ground.

It’s certainly impressive, and I wouldn’t mind one of the apartments over there overlooking the water. I could be quite happy there.

I eventually made it over to the football ground, and found myself at the Visitors’ end, which is the far end of the terrace over there.

I didn’t fancy that end, and so I had to carry on with my trudging because it’s quite a hike to reach the other side of the ground. It involved passing through the Exposition Centre’s car park and there was something going on in that building so there were hordes of people around

Hordes of people outside there might have been, but this was another ground where they ended up by announcing the crowd changes to the teams before the kick-off.

And the ground brings back many happy memories of the 1970s in British football. The ground has only been party modernised and there are still a few open, uncovered standing terraces. But there was no-one on them, which is hardly a surprise in this weather.

The grandstand behind the goal, which was where I was going to sit, was a huge affair with plenty of room in there for a large crowd. Rather a waste of effort if you ask me – but never mind.

One corner of the stand was full of kids – aged between about 8 years old and 12 years old. It looked quite strange to me, but as the players left the field after the warm-up, the purpose of the presence of these kids became clear.

Once the footballers had left the field, the girls sitting in the corner of the grandstand took to the field. It seems that Lierse SK isn’t the only team in the Belgian Second Division to have cheerleaders. They have them here at KSV Roeselare too.

Not the sort that would drag me out halfway across Belgium of course, but I’m all in favour of engaging the youth of the community in activities of the local football club, and more teams should take advantage of the opportunities available, to provide entertainment for the fans and to engage with the kids.

And, much to my surprise, they could dance too!

That makes a change because cheerleading has gone right downhill since the halcyon days of American college sport in the 1950s and the standard of dancing has dropped dramatically. These girls here at Roeselare could give seven or eight years to college cheerleading teams in the USA back in those days, but they certainly wouldn’t be out of place or let themselves down.

The boys from the corner then put in an appearance on the field and formed up with the cheerleaders into a guard of honour to welcome the teams onto the field ready for the start of the match.

The players’ changing rooms by the way are underneath the grandstand where I was sitting.

In case you are wondering, by the way, KSV Roeselare play in black and white. OH Leuven were in their change strip of all red

KSV Roeselare have a mascot too, but I’m not quite sure of what he is supposed to be. I wasn’t sure whether or not he was a snow leopard. It felt cold enough for him to be out and about on the prowl.

Further enquiries of the locals revealed that he is in fact a snow tiger and he’s new to the club, having arrived in December. There’s a competition being run to give him a name, and I’m sure that many visiting supporters could think of a few that might be appropriate

So having dealt with all the preliminaries, we could then turn our attention to the football.

And this was yet another match that was really exciting. For the first 60 minutes OH Leuven were well on top and looked as if they would win this match at a canter. For once, their two wingers were creating havoc down the wings and the KSV Roeselare full-backs didn’t have much answer to them. With Kostovski ploughing his way through the centre of the defence like a tank, the result should never ever have been in doubt. Had the surface not been so slippery and had the wingers been able to keep their feet, we should have had a cricket score before half-time.

And so with all of the play being up in the KSV Roeselare half, it comes as no surprise to anyone to learn that it’s the home side that takes the lead.

A poor clearance from the new OH Leuven finds a KSV Roeselare attacker who traps the ball and volleys it back over the keeper into the net.

As simple as that.

But ten minutes later the OH Leuven side equalise. And as I predicted, it came from an attack down the wing and the ball played quickly into the centre, right into the path of the onrushing Kostovski. Kostovski completely mishit his shot, which is probably why the ball went into exactly the opposite corner of the goal towards which the KSV Roeselare goalkeeper was diving. But they all count.

At half-time, the boy and girls came out again- the girls dancing in the centre circle and the boys playing a 6-a-side football match. The snow tiger appeared on the pitch too, to go round and wave to the OH Leuven supporters.

I went off to have a coffee in the bar underneath the grandstand that runs down the side of the pitch.

And much to my surprise, it was pretty good coffee too. I’m not used to good coffee at a football match, that’s for sure.

The second half got back under way again and we were treated to more of the same – at least for the first 15 minutes or so. And then two substitutions swung the game around.

Firstly, for some reason that I have yet to understand, OH Leuven took off one of the wingers. And from then on, their attack became rather aimless.

Secondly, KSV Roeselare brought on a new striker. Judging by the reception that he received, he must have been something of a local folk-hero. And he lived up to his reputation too. We had a ball into the penalty area from the KSV Roeselare right-winger, a bit of football tennis in the OH Leuven penalty area between the attackers and the defenders, and this substitute guy stuck out a foot to poke it into the net.

And that’s how it stayed. The best that I have seen OH Leuven play, and still they manage to lose.

I don’t usually like to comment on the refereeing of a football match if I can help it, but in this match there were quite a few bizarre decisions (or non-decisions). And for once, OH Leuven was on the beneficial end of the majority.

We had a blatant push in the penalty area from an OH Leuven defender, we had a blatant back-pass to the OH Leuven goalkeeper that went unpunished, a throw-in that was clearly given the wrong way, a few dubious free-kicks awarded and all of that. And still they couldn’t win.

They can be very disappointed with that.

I trudged back through the driving rain to the railway station. And much to my surprise, I was early.

There was a direct train to Brussels (via Kortrijk) due imminently and so I decided to take it, even though the itinerary proposed by the SNCB was to go back the way I had come.

It was an old slow, uncomfortable train but at least I had a good seat where I could relax, read my book and listen to the music on my telephone.

There are four trains per hour out to Leuven from Brussels Gare du Midi on a Sunday night. They are at something like 56, 04, 12 and 14 minutes past the hour (don’t ask me why) and my train arrived at 16 minutes past. That meant a wait around of 40 minutes. I went off to the Carrefour and bought some raisin buns, a can of ginger beer and a pear for tea, and had an argument with a couple of young boys who were trying to push down the check-out queue.

When the train pulled into the station, I found that it was the train that I would have caught had I gone in the other direction from Roeselare to Lichtervelde – a nice clean and comfortable modern train – so I can see why it was preferred. My early train had saved me nothing.

I ate my bread and pear, and drank my ginger beer in comfort, and that took me all the way to Leuven where we were decanted into the rain.

As I walked back to the hostel in the pouring rain, I reflected on my journey today.

If you look at a map, you’ll see the distance that I travelled on the railway today. It’s a good half-way, if not more, across the country and the travelling (not the waiting) time was in the region of two and a half hours each way – 5 hours in total.

And if you look at the ticket, you’ll see the price that I paid for the privilege of my journey. €21:20 – or about £19:00. It makes a total mockery of the price that you have to pay to travel on British trains.

I couldn’t even make a saving just by buying diesel to travel by Caliburn out to Roeselare. No wonder that Caliburn has hardly moved since I came back here from France in December.

And so that’s your lot. I’m off to bed.

Now if you’ve made it right down to the end of what is easily a new world-record 3300 or so words of where I got to today, you deserve some kind of compensation. I’ve told you that I really enjoyed the excellent dancing of the young KSV Roeselare cheerleaders.

What I’ll do then is to post you a little video of them dancing so that you can enjoy it yourself. This is what real dancing is all about.

I’m pleased that the football club is engaging with the youth of the community, and encouraging the youth to engage with the spectators. Attach a kid to your football club and you have him or her for life.

Too many of these organisations forget that kids have different ideals and aspirations, and fail to engage with them. And when the old fogeys die out, they find that there is no-one to take their place.

How many times have we seen that in an organisation?

So hats off to KSV Roeselare for giving me a good day out, to the brats for giving me such entertainment, and to you for having read all of these 3330 words.

Wednesday 23rd November 2016 continued – BOUILLON

Rather than amend what I had written last night before going to bed, I reckoned that I would break with tradition and just quickly dash off a new page about Bouillon, for your entertainment and education.

You won’t see much in the photos because it was rather dark when I arrived and went darker still before I’d finished. But never mind.

Bouillon has a major claim to fame in that there is a huge castle, dating from the 10th Century with subsequent improvements, here in the town, up there behind those houses.

And I was so dismayed to see that the castle wasn’t illuminated. I would have expected to see it all brightly lit up, given its fame, especially as they have managed to illuminate those houses, But no such luck.

The castle is perched on a tall, prominent rock situated in a very tight meander of the River Semois and to reach it is quite a climb. It’s not for the faint-hearted and was an ideal defensive spot.

No-one is sure when the rock was first fortified, but a castle is definitely referred to in a letter in 988AD. It was slighted by Henry 111, Holy Roman Emperor, in 1045 but rebuilt shortly afterwards.

In 1082 it was inherited by its most famous owner, Godefroi de Bouillon.

However he sold it to the Prince-Bishops of Liège in 1095 for a sum believed to be 3 marks of gold and 1300 marks of silver in order that he would have funds to go off on the First Crusade.

And as we all know, went on to be the first ruler of the newly-conquered Jerusalem.

The castle, and the town which had grown up at its foot changed hands from then on, on occasions too numerous to list.

Its strategic position at the “entrance to the Ardennes” and “the gateway to France” had made it a key position on the ever-changing frontier in north-west Europe and it was never left in peace as marauding armies swarmed all over it.

It even fell into the hands of the La Tour d’Auvergne family from my neck of the woods on several occasions, but was almost always eventually restored to the Price-Bishops of Liège until their lands were definitely extinguished in 1795.

It was then absorbed by France, handed to the Netherlands by the Treaty of Paris of 1815 that ended the Napoleonic Wars in 1815, and became part of Belgium in the partition of 1830.

Its most famous modern inhabitant would be Leon Degrelle, a prominent and unrepentant Nazi collaborator who led a large body of Wallon Nazi collaborators and front-line SS troops during World War II and fled to Spain after the War.

It’s another one of these places that must have been absolutely magnificent 50 years ago, but cheap foreign travel has killed off much of the town like many other places in Northern Europe. There are several empty, abandoned hotels, shops and restaurants, and the good times have definitely gone.

But there’s still some kind of wealth here in the town with a few expensive hotels and restaurants that are way out of my reach.

But it did have a fritkot or three, one of which served falafel, so I was ok.

Wednesday 4th May 2016 – HAPPY STAR WARS DAY EVERYONE

May the fourth be with you.

Well, it’s certainly not with me because I’ve had yet another horrible day. Basically, just transpose everything, including the bad bits of it, onto today and you will have everything that you need to know.

There were however a couple of slight changes. Firstly, I was on my travels again, to the ear specialist for her to look inside my ear with this bubble thing that I have inside. It’s definitely a little water in the middle ear so they are going to give me a spray to hopefully clear it. But it’s sad that I’m not in that section of the hospital on a permanent basis because there are some nurses there who are stunners! Any one of them could soothe my fevered brow.

There’s a doctor who is the spitting image of Harry Potter in that section, but I don’t fancy the idea of him getting out his wand and waving about all over me.

Secondly, I ate a little today. Half a dozen dry biscuits of the sort that I bought in the Netherlands the other week. They slowed everything down, but unfortunately didn’t stop it. But still, I had to try it.

Thirdly, as I type this entry, I’m drinking a freezing cold (and I know that it is because it’s crammed full of ice cubes) lemonade drink. I probably shouldn’t, but the way I look at it, nothing else is staying in so there’s no reason why I shouldn’t try this. But I really had a craving (and no, Rhys, I’m not pregnant).

They are quite worried about me, so it seems. Not eating and drinking goes against their principles and I’ve been coupled up to a perfusion of a glucose-base to try to give me some nutrients and liquids. But, as you might have guessed …

Last night’s travels (because we seem to be back in it again) were quite interesting as they all revolved around transport. At one stage (and I’m not sure when and why) I was running (yes, running!) for a bus and it was one of those ultra-realistic moments that I found hard to understand wasn’t a dream when I awoke. But that must be a good sign if I feel like running, even in the dead of night.
My father put in an appearance too. It was winter and there was snow everywhere and his car had broken down but a friend had fixed it and he was now mobile. He came round to see me for something and we were go go out in my car, which was a blue and white Mark III Zodiac but for some reason it wouldn’t start. “I know a good mechanic” said father, but then we realised that it probably wouldn’t be a good idea for this guy was the police mechanic and we were up to stuff that we didn’t want the police to know.
I was also in Canada and a friend and I were working on a car. He told me of the dangers of lying on tools and things underneath cars but he lay down right on my keys, the snap-hook broke and the pointy bit pierced him in the thigh. I piled him (and his daughter and a friend of hers) into my car, a red Mark I Escort, and we had to reverse out of a tight corner of a cul-de-sac. I heard a bang, looked behind me and there was an old 1930s Austin 7 on the pavement. At first I thought that I had reversed into it, but then I saw that a dent that it had, marked in red paint, was a good few inches higher than the protruding bits of my car so I realised that it couldn’t have been me, I had just hit the kerb. And so I drove off but this road took me right through the middle of a street party. I had to slow right down and my passenger got out of the car to speak to people, as he is wont to do. He began to tell everyone what had gone on down at the end of the cul-de-sac and I rather wished that he hadn’t as I was absolutely convinced that it was nothing to do with me.

And the lemonade was delicious. I’ll tell you tomorrow if it was worth it.

Tuesday 29th March 2016 – THERE ARE JUST SO MANY …

… job opportunities these days.

Yes, I’ll be back in the Netherlands at some point giving them lessons in English spelling because somewhere along the line, they seem to have lost their way.

But the existence of this product explains quite a lot and answers many questions.It must have been on sale in the UK at one time or another, because I’ve overheard loads of people wandering around Tesco’s or Asda going “where’s the basterd sugar?”. And now I know why.

After my dreadful evening last night, I was first up and first into the breakfast room yet again, and I was in and out by 08:30. It didn’t take me too long to pack and arrange my affairs, and by 09:10 I was on my way.

But something very surprising happened as I was leaving. I’d handed my key to the chambermaid and as I was walking away from the hotel, the landlady came chasing after me. Not, as you might think, to accuse me of taking the towels away, but to shake my hand and wish me all the best in my forthcoming trials and tribulations. I thought that that was very poignant indeed.

Off to the supermarket and stocking up with Raak Campagne Pils and gelatine-free licorice-and-banana flavoured sweets, and then I went off for a drive along the coast.

Just down the road in the town of Westkapelle I stumbled upon a museum. This features exhibits relating to the polders and dykes around here and contains a few exhibits from the battles around here that liberated the islands in the Scheldt estuary in late 1944.

That up there on the top of the dyke is a Sherman tank of course. From the USA and the most popular of the USA light tanks in World War II

“Exhibits relating to the polders and dykes”, I just said. And this area of the coast is littered with shipwrecks, which is hardly surprising when you remember just how close to the shore the main shipping lane is.

It’s bad enough in a motor-powered ship but it must have been a nightmare in a sailing ship. There’s hardly any room at all in which to manoeuvre. This pile of metalwork has been gathered from off the shore over time and is part of the exhibits.

That’s not all either. This is a Landing Craft – Tank and was one of the key elements in amphibious warfare.

It’s the kind of thing that I would buy in a heartbeat if I were to live on my own island somewhere off the coast. Caliburn would fit in there quite nicely with a little modification (to the LCT) and t would be just the thing to keep us all mobile.

I would gladly have told you so much more about the exhibits but as you might expect, the museum is closed. No surprise here.

So I travelled on up the road for a while and found a lovely spec by the seashore where I could watch the ships sailing along the coast, and also have a little snooze for a couple of hours. You’ve no idea right now how much I’m feeling the exertions of my travels.

I stopped for a coffee on the way home, at a motorway service area just before the International Border, and then hit all of the traffic around Antwerp. And that’s just how it was, all the way back to Alison’s.

I didn’t hang around for long though. I have a long day ahead in Brussels and so I crawled upstairs for an early night.

There’s just about enough time for me to tell you about my travels though. Some British person had bought a piece of land in France, but it was more like on Barony Park in Nantwich, at the top end of the street where Helena and Ann used to live. He was laying down some huge amount of concrete hardstanding there in order to erect a block of flats. Someone had been working for him but had left the job half-way through and an arrangement had been made for me to go and pick up his wages. I had to be there at 17:00 but when I arrived at 17:01, everyone had already gone – in that minute that I was late. I had to find a place to park there, annoying all of the traffic whilst I was trying to squeeze into a parking place – access was really difficult. I had a good look around but I couldn’t find anyone, and ended up by talking to a man who had been interested in buying the small plot next to this large one. He had thought that with this first man ordering to much concrete, he could add whatever he wanted onto the neighbour’s order and pay pro-rata. They could lay his concrete together and he would return the labour on this person’s site. However, the first guy was not at all in favour. he told him to bring his tonne of aggregate, his tonne of sand and of cement and we’ll do it in five days. This made the second guy have second thoughts about buying this plot of land for if this was how it was going to be like in the beginning, how was it going to end up in the future when they were living next door to each other? From here, I had to go back to my bus (for I was driving a bus) and pick up Roxanne’s grand-parents on her father’s side. We had to go and pick up our mail which was delivered to the garage of a block of apartments somewhere that looked like a street I know in Evere and was put in galvanised metal buckets. There was nowhere to park, as usual, so I had to park in the street while they nipped out to pick up their buckets and pick up mine too. Of course, at this moment a great big bus pulled up behind me and of course he wasn’t very happy so I had to move. I had to drive about 50 yards down the road to where I had seen a parking place. But it was tight down there and I had knocked the mirror on the passenger side of my bus so I couldn’t see properly and had to inch my way down there and inch my way into this parking space and shunt myself in so that I was close enough to the kerb. But this bus wasn’t helping because every time I went forward, so did he, which meant that I couldn’t reverse back in, especially with no mirror on the passenger side (it was a RHD bus by the way), and I was on the point of getting out and giving him a piece of my mind.
I was with Liz and Terry somewhere around the Pinware River in Labrador. It was where they have built the new diversion but we were actually on the old road but this was all now industrialised and a big city environment with a railway line that ran up there and a yard where containers were loaded and stacked. The first thing that we noticed was a shipping container that had not detached from its trailer, so the crane had picked up the container and the trailer – and then dropped the lot! The whole right-hand side of the road had been devastated by fire and I wanted to photograph this, so I had to drive around to find a suitable place to park (I was in Strider, but a RHD Strider, by the way). There was nowhere really to park and I lost Liz and Terry while I was doing this. I’d gone higher up the hill, but on turning round and coming back, I noticed that there was a road that turned off to the right so I turned off to travel along it, but it was a one-way street and I ended up going the wrong way along it. People were flashing their lights at me and some youngish guy tried to get into my car with me and give me a lecture, something about “all of these tourists coming into our country and thinking that they know their way around when they really know absolutely nothing. They ought to be given proper qualified guides to accompany them”. My reply was that I was interested in seeing things that I was interested in, and seeing them through my own eyes, not anyone else’s. This led to quite a heated debate. He started speaking to me in a language that I didn’t recognise but, remembering where I was, I guessed that it was Innu, which he confirmed. It was all very unpleasant.
We were out walking by the river somewhere round by Farndon, that area. There was a girl, rather like Pamela Hayes or that girl whom I met on that ship out in the Gulf of St Lawrence who looked quite tall (although she was wearing high heels) and she was intending to throw herself in the river. We had a big discussion about it and I explained that this wasn’t the solution – there were people far worse off than she was, and all of this sort of thing. There were people up to their necks in water struggling to get out and so on. I introduced myself and told her that I was out looking for an apartment somewhere as I lived at home with my five siblings and my parents in a little two-bedroomed house. My mother was swimming in the river at this time (although it wasn’t my mother, it was the mother of Helen – a girlfriend from my school days). All of our family was into things to do with painting – my mother was a painter and my brother was a house painter. I was actually on my way to Halfords to buy a box of assorted tap washers to do some plumbing. I knew a girl who worked there, but she was in the department that sold tapestries. My mother then came out of the water and we all had a big chat and then went off to buy these washers; However, there was nothing really suitable – they had a multi-pack of washers there but these were just bits and pieces. At this moment, the Police turned up. There had apparently been some other kind of incident going on there and they had come in response to that, but we were all held and interviewed about what we knew.
This next bit is nothing like complete because after I woke up, I fell asleep again almost immediately and so didn’t dictate it “at the moment” as I would normally like to do. From what I remember, though, I was on a train that had left France and was heading down to the south of Europe. I’d boarded it at the departure point, Paris, and it was crammed with people like most wartime trains were. We’d boarded it right behind the engine and had to work our way backwards to find a seat. We must have travelled for miles and there was still no seat to be found. We kept bumping into the guard and he was telling us all kinds of stories about wartime travel and so on. I don’t remember too much more about it, although we did end up somewhere down by Yugoslavia and we were still standing. But on the subject of wartime, I was explaining to someone that French railways were liberated “all at once”. They were surprised by that but I pointed out that the railway staff was actually civilian in most cases and would just take orders from whoever was giving them. It made no difference whether they were French, German or whatever, whether they were giving the orders or receiving them. They would not, in by far the most cases, be considered as combatants. So once the head of the pyramid of command had been liberated, so would all of the rest of it.

Monday 28th March 2016 – I’VE NOT TAKEN …

… any photographs today. But that’s because my sorties outside have been few and far between.

The hurricane really hit us during the night and I’m sure that the roof of my little room was about to be torn off. I had a really bad night because of that, and this didn’t bode well for the daytime.

I managed to go off on a couple of nocturnal voyages though. We start off with a group of three men who had gone west, intending to settle somewhere out there. They had come across a town where they intended to settle but it turned out that the town was very conservative and the people there were very unwilling to accept new arrivals. The people were very set in their ways and any new arrival had to conform to the way of life of the existing inhabitants. In the end, these three people were effectively driven away. About 10 or 20 miles down the road was a ruined barn-type of place with living accommodation on some kind of abandoned farm and so they restored it to its original purpose and settled there. These people were hard-workers and so the place prospered. There was a river on the boundary of this property and this formed the border between a couple of States. As these three people prospered, the area slowly opened up and many more people came to the area to settle and a small road network was created. A short-cut of the road network was proposed, that would go right past their house and cross the river right there, making their site into a little gold mine when it came to redevelopment as a town site. This was good news for them and good news for people in the neighbourhood, but what they wanted was merely to live in peace and quiet and not become involved in politics of any kind. But this news about the road would affect the existing town, which would be by-passed, and the town would decline rapidly. Not only that, the long-time inhabitants had imposed some kind of two-tier society where they had much more say than the new arrivals and this too was causing a great deal of discontent. The people in the valley around this farm decided that they would organise a huge protest march against the townsfolk, and they all congregated at the farm to go into town to confront the townsfolk and this was the last thing that these three people wanted. He couldn’t extract himself from the protest, being swept along by the tide and found himself right at the front, leading the march, which was what he didn’t want to do. When he and this march arrived at the town, he found that one of his brothers, who had stayed behind at the town, had been forced to lead a counter-march of the town’s senior inhabitants. The two of them walked quickly to try to get ahead of their respective marching bodies to meet up and discuss the situation, and try to find a way out of the impasse before the two parties clashed.
Woken up by an extremely violent gust of wind, I then went back to a James Bond or Avengers situation with me as the hero and I had a female sidekick. We’d been trying to break up this gang of violent crooks for ages, and all of a sudden we’d had some kind of breakthrough. My sidekick had been captured by one of the gang, a leading female figure, at gunpoint and this had left a couple of men. I had one of the men cornered and I hit him with a pistol and he was flat out so I stuck him in my car and chased after the two women. The unconscious man slowly started to come round so I sloshed him again. In the meantime, I was overhearing some discussion about all of the evidence that we’d somehow overlooked and left behind at this place that we had just visited. As a result, I reluctantly abandoned the chase and went back to this house to collect all of the evidence. I completely lost the trail of these two women, but at least I had one guy and all of the evidence, and while I was there at the house, I captured the other guy. So the case was complete, except for the woman, so I took everything down to the police station where the men were formally charged. They were then ushered away from the charge room, giving me looks of hatred and anger as they walked past me. A couple of other people then asked me what I was going to do about my female companion. I replied that to be honest, what I was really hoping for was that they have both made their peace and are now quite happily in a relationship with each other and live happily ever after. That would be ideal. From here, I wandered back into Crewe town centre where this girl of mine had a flat and sure enough there was the girl’s mother and also Alfie Hall of the Clitheroe Kid. They were emptying out this apartment and packing up her stuff making it ready to be sent on. They asked me if I minded, and of course I didn’t mind at all. I was happy that things had turned out fine for her in the end. It was really nice to see this and I hoped that once they were settled, she would write to me to tell me where she was living, and I’d go round to see her in the summer.

I was up early this morning and was in fact the first in for breakfast. After that, I went for a walk to the supermarket while the housemaid made up my room. And the wind was astonishing. I’ve never seen anything like it – dustbins (and I’m proud that I could remember the Dutch for dustbin – it’s vuilnisbak – right off the cuff without any prompting at all) all over the place. I’ve stocked up with supplies (although I forgot the hummus) and Raak Campagne Pils, and I’ll be going there tomorrow on my way out because – booh hoo hoo! – I’m leaving ehre tomorrow morning.

Back at the hotel I crashed out. Firstly, the bad night had really disturbed me and secondly, I can feel myself going downhill little by little. In fact, my eyesight is starting to go now.

After lunch, and another crash out, I went for a walk and found out why the town was so full of people when I tried to stand up on the top of the dyke. I say “tried” because it was impossible in this wind and there was no-one else up there either.

The ice-cream parlour was a disappointment – there was no dairy-free ice cream on offer and I’m depressed about that, I’ll tell you.

Tonight, I had a pizza again and I’m now very low on vegan cheese. I hope that I can get into Brussels on Wednesday to find some more. But now I’m crashing out again. I really am feeling dreadful right now.

Sunday 27th March 2016 – MY POSTILION HAS BEEN STRUCK BY LIGHTNING

Well, not quite, but round about 16:30 this afternoon, in the middle of a thunderstorm and hailstone fusillade, there was a dull thud, the building shook a little and all of the power went off.

I went for a walk a little later and this was what I saw in the distance. Huge massing storm clouds over there, hanging over the North Sea.

In fact, we had heavy storm clouds all over the place and in the distance to the south (remember that Zoutelande is on the north-west coast of the Schelde estuary were some very clear thunder flashes. It is therefore very tempting to suggest that the hotel had been struck by lightning.

That wasn’t all that was going on either. I’d been for a walk earlier while the housemaid made up my room, and was lucky enough to see a ship sailing up towards Antwerp, just offshore.

And excuse the lack of focus on the image – the wind was terrific and blowing me around like nobody’s business. This was the best of the images that I took, and that doesn’t say much for the others.

But talking of the housemaid, we had a little chat this morning. And the only language that we had in common was Italian. Imagine that in the Netherlands!

But those storm clouds that we saw gathering off the coast yesterday early evening finally arrived during the night. They hit my little room with such a force that I was immediately woken up, and when I went back to sleep, then half an hour later I was awoken once more.

This accounts for the dreadful night’s sleep that I had last night, and also for the number and variety of my nocturnal rambles. And believe me, there were dozens, quite a few of which didn’t make it to the dictaphone because either I fell straight back to sleep or else by the time that I found the dictaphone, I’d forgotten where I’d been.

Anyway, from what I do remember, I was in XCL, my red Cortina, and back at school (or, rather, a school in France, not my old one). I was an adult by this time and I only went back to school very occasionally, because I was studying Geography and History in my own time, but I would call in to the lessons if ever I was going past the school because I wanted to take the school exams and I needed to make sure that I was in touch with the course. As a result, I didn’t really know any of the children there. One afternoon, I’d bought something – some new seat covers or something for XCL so they needed wrapping. I had my yellow rucksack with me, which had now transformed itself into a school satchel. I’d turned up at the school and I can’t remember now how I had arrived but as I arrived, I remembered that there was something that I wanted. I had to walk all the way back to the car in order to get what it was that I wanted. As I walked out of the class there were all of these kids hanging around the door like you find at a school. It was the afternoon so there was a triple-period, but it was only the final two lessons, a double-period, that were history lessons but I had plans to do something in the period immediately after lunch. As I walked out of the school towards my car, I was singing “Daydream Believer” or, at least, trying to because I couldn’t hit the notes. I was devastated because I was hoping to sing it really well and show these kids a thing or two, but I just couldn’t get the notes.
A little later, I was back playing cricket and our team had unfortunately been skittled out. I was the last batsman remaining and I had to survive the last over so that our team would win. But it was now pitch-black and you couldn’t see a thing, and the bowler was bowling from around the corner behind the wall. All that I could do was to put my bat in the way and hope that that would block the wicket. For the final over, we started to have some friendly banter and the bowler said that he was going to bowl underarm at me. He took up a position about a foot from my wicket ready to bowl. I had to explain to him that he couldn’t do that – it was a no-ball. He could bowl underarm at me as much as he likes and no-one will say a thing, least of all me, but you have to bowl from back at the other crease, 22 yards away, just as you would do for bowling any other kind of ball in a cricket match. But it took me ages to get this to sink into this flaming bowler’s head.
A little later, I was back at work driving my car about and I’d been summoned into the office – it was a Sunday morning – but there had been some war that had gone on and it had been won by we westerners. However, there had been a few bits and pieces of unpleasantness that had come out of it. I needed to go to use the bathroom but for some unknown reason I had forgotten all of the vocabulary so I said what I could remember. This didn’t, for some reason, go down very well so I thought “sod them! I’m doing the best that I can and no-one can do more than that and it’s their look-out if it doesn’t suit”. But it was a bright sunny day and so I went on my motor-bike from the north-west of the city and there had been a heavy rainstorm earlier that day and now everything was flooded out. Now I couldn’t come my usual way into work because of this and at one stage I was riding through a park and on a pavement and then down the wrong way in a one-way street with water up to the axles on the motorbike, following some kind of lorry that was tearing up the roadway in this park. I’d finally arrived at work, and found that my boss had been searching through my drawers for something. He found some of Roxanne’s clothing that I was keeping there and he was proudly displaying it all around. I asked him “is this all yours?” to which he replied with a ribald joke. I said to him that it was Roxanne’s and I would like to have it back so he eventually gave it back to me and I stuck it back in my drawer.
After the next bout of thunderstorms I was back at another place of former employment with someone who was formerly a very good friend of mine. We were visiting the richest farm in the UK, run by the richest UK farmer and his wife. There were some tunnels that had been discovered on this farm and having inspected them, we noticed that they had been lined and that there was electricity going right down there. I immediately thought of a tourist attraction and so I button-holed the woman when I saw her and asked her about them. She replied that the intention was indeed to make them into a tourist attraction and so I wanted to know more? Was it World War II? Was it the Vietnam War? She replied that from what she had been able to find out, they went back to the 5th Century, which immediately suggested the collapse of Roman Britain to me. I was immediately aroused by this and so I intended to be the first person to go down there. I asked her if she knew to where these tunnels led, but she didn’t. However, it was her intention to explore them one of these days, so I immediately pencilled myself in to go and explore these tunnels with her. We would travel miles and I would invite someone from the University – I’m not sure now if I mentioned the OU – to accompany us. To me, it was absolutely marvellous and exciting.
After a very brief return to the arms of Morpheus, I was awake again thanks to the storm. And I can recount that I had been to see the Queen. I’d taken this puppy, which was really the star of it all, although I’m not sure quite why and so we were going to do a stage show with it when the puppy would be presented to the Queen. We were hoping that this puppy would be house-trained and behave itself in view of all of the excitement and not let itself down. This led on to a debate about cleaning. Tourism was still in its infancy and no-one really seemed to know how to clean up a place properly (as if I’m any expert) except for a dustpan and brush. Everyone was hoping that everyone else would prove to be the expert on cleaning up the building.
But the final part of my night-time voyage was easily the most exciting and astonishing. You remember yesterday that I mentioned the navigator whose body is in the Commonwealth War Graves part of the local cemetery? Well, last night, whilst deep in the arms of Morpheus, I set out to find his pilot. The voyage, which started out to be simple enough, took me, and two Ministerial cars and assorted Government officials to a small urban cemetery in the East End of London (where, incidentally, the pilot was not buried and I knew this, yet my journey still took me there) despite the obstruction of a well-known London solicitor who had instructed the two members of his staff who were assisting me not to give me too much help in my enquiries because, as I was later to discover, he was interested in the case from a personal point of view. In fact, being early for a 13:00 appointment, I suddenly made a decision to divert to this small cemetery one more time as I had suddenly made a dramatic realisation. I ended up inspecting the paperwork of an old woman who had just been laid to rest there, and was just about to make an Executive decision (and executive decision is one where if it’s the wrong decision, the person making it is executed) when the alarm went off. And how frustrated was I?

But none of it was wasted because this morning while waiting for the weather to brighten up, I did manage to track down some further information. Flying Officer Angus Peter MacLeod (for it is he), service number 63376, was flying as navigator in Mosquito Night-Fighter II serial HJ935 for pilot, Flight Lieutenant Basil John Brachi when they were lost over the North Sea on 29th January 1944.

And now that I have found out the serial number of the aeroplane, I can tell you even more. The plane took off at 01:15, one of seven from West Raynham in Norfolk on a “Serrate” mission, which was to pick up the radar emissions of the German night-fighters’ “Lichtenstein” equipment, and then follow the emissions to the source (ie the night-fighter) and shoot it down. However, the starboard engine of the Mosquito failed and so Brachi turned for home. A short while later, the port engine failed and so Brachi and MacLeod bailed out. No trace was ever found of Brachi or of the aeroplane, but the body of MacLeod was washed ashore near here on 5th May 1944. And here he lies.

I’ve not done too much today – not even been for my mid-morning (or mid-afternoon) coffee. I didn’t have the courage to go outside very much. Mind you, this weather didn’t encourage me too much.

but I did go out this evening and one of the little restaurants here directed me to the fritkot which is now open. And I had fritjes for tea, just for a change. And tomorrow, the ice-cream parlour in the town opens up. Of course, I shall have to go to give it an official visit.

apart from that, I’ve had a shower today and washed my clothes. And depressingly, I find that I’ve only bought two polo shirts with me, not three. So I’m going to have to stay in this one while the other one dries. Let’s hope that that will be tomorrow.

And I know know why next-door neighbour’s 06:30 alarm didn’t wake me up this morning. The hour has changed, hasn’t it. I didn’t realise until this evening when I thought that it was quite light for 20:00 when i went out for my fritjes. My telephone is automatic, and so is my laptop, so they got on with the job of changing the hour without me knowing anything about it. No wonder I was rather tired this morning.

But now I’m off for an early night because I can’t keep up the pace. Only a few more days now before my second hospital appointment so I hope that they will have some news for me.

Saturday 26th March 2016 – I’VE NOT GONE OUT …

… for any tea tonight. I’m not feeling like it.

I had a good breakfast this morning and then went for a walk to the supermarket to buy the stuff for lunch. After a lunch (which was rather late as I wasn’t all that hungry) I went for a long walk along the prom southwards towards Vlissingen. That tired me out and so that was that.

I’d been on a good wander around during the night too and travelled miles. I started off being involved with a young English girl (and I know who she is but I just can’t think for the moment) who owned a jet aeroplane like a flight trainer that had been built in 1962. She had bought it at an Air Force liquidation sale with the aim of restoring it but she had fallen into the clutches of some evil English guy. Her aeroplane was stored in his hangar and the body had been taken off the chassis (it really is an astonishing aeroplane!) ready for restoration. He was annoyed intently with her because of the fact that she was now seeking her independence, but seeking her independence she was. We all thus dashed off to this hangar at this small airfield and managed to recover the chassis from the hangar and were pushing it onto the airstrip. As an aside, I was amazed at how corroded it was, especially around the body mounting points and I remember thinking that I wouldn’t want to go very far off the ground on that. But we had to – we had to bolt the body onto it and all clamber inside so that we could fly away. As we were moving the chassis, the man turned up. I was all for cracking on, doing everything for ourselves but he wanted to help us by holding open the gate while we pushed the chassis out. However the girl started to talk to the guy and began to discuss all of her future projects with him so he was there giving her all kinds of advice which was based on his own self-interest and not on anyone else’s. I could see that this girl was starting to waver again and I reckoned that we would never ever get away at this rate. The discussion then turned to stories about other planes that were lying abandoned on other airfields all over France and throughout the world and it soon became clear that this was how she had acquired this aeroplane. But we needed to hurry up before she swayed completely, but no matter what I said and how I encouraged her, I couldn’t get her to hurry. And I couldn’t get her to slip out of the clutches of this other guy. I could see her ending up by putting this chassis back into the hangar before much longer and going back off with him. How I wished that she would get a move on.
In this little bit we featured three girls, one of whom was my elder sister and another was my youngest sister. I was running some kind of Health-visiting team in Northern Austria and they had come to join it, working as Health visitors. It was very difficult work so I couldn’t understand why they had come, and my youngest sister had the worst round of them all. And then we had the 06:30 alarm of my neighbour in the next room and that, I’m afraid, was that.

But really, I’d had a bad night. it was like being back just after my operation and the severe compression in my chest that prevented me from settling down. I suppose that I should be worried about this but I’m not really. I’m not going to spend the rest of my life, no matter how long it might be, wrapped up in cotton wool.

I was about to go for an early breakfast when a friend of mine appeared on line for a chat. Consequently it was gone 09:00 when I made it down to breakfast and that may account in part for my lack of hunger this evening. As usual, we had an excellent breakfast with plenty of juice and coffee as well as some lovely Dutch bread and strawberry jam.

On the way to the supermarket (where the coffee machine is still “defekt”) I went past the cemetery and there is a Commonwealth War Grave in there.

I meant to go in to have a look at it on the way back, but what with the savage, biting wind that we were having, it slipped my mind.

It could be a victim of the Battle of the Schelde that liberated the area in November 1944, or a body washed up from the sea from maybe a naval operation or a downed aeroplane – or maybe even someone from the First World War – a victim of the sea or an internment victim (hundreds of British soldiers were interned in the Netherlands from 1914 to 1918, having fled there from the Germans after the Fall of Antwerp)

In fact, a search on the Commonwealth War Graves site discloses that it is the grave of a Flying Officer, a navigator of 239 Squadron RAFVR who was killed in January 1944.

239 Squadron was equipped with Mosquitos and flew night-time operations within the bomber stream to hunt down and attack German night-fighters that were targeting the bombe

It occurs to me that I haven’t yet posted a photo of my hotel, the Valkenhof. It’s a bit pricey as I’ve said before, but it is Easter weekend and the place is crowded.

My little room is one of the three in the annex to the side and it’s that window just there underneath the pointy roof. No, I have no real complaints about the place and as I have said before, you definitely win with the breakfasts.

Yesterday, I’d seen a strandcafé away in the distance to the south and so this afternoon I braved the savage wind to go for a good walk in that direction to see what the possibilities were.

It took me ages too because I wasn’t really up to much. This is definitely proving to be too much for me but I’ll gamely struggle on as the sea air will only do me good, and this is why I’m here.

One thing that I shouldn’t have done, I suppose, was to walk right up to the top of a huge sand-dune.

That certainly ook a lot out of me but it was well-worth the effort because the view from up here was absolutely stunning and I regretted not having the Nikon D5000 in working order. Away in the distance is the town of Zoutelande, so you can see how far I’ve walked, and you can also see the storm clouds gathering out there in the North Sea.

But there was a good reason for coming all the way up here and I’m glad that I did, because there are a couple of bunkers that relate to World War II, relics of the Atlantic Wall.

The big Commando raid on Dieppe in August 1942 was, from the British point of view, a huge fiasco but it had one very important side-effect in that it frightened the Germans to death. As a result, millions of Reichsmarks and tens of thousands of men and tens of thousands of tons of vital war materials were diverted from the German war effort in order to build huge concrete fortifications all along the Occupied coast from Norway to the Bay of Biscay between 1942 and 1944, and weren’t properly finished when the invasion took place.

Here, these two huge bunkers guard the entrance to the Wester-Schelde and the port of Antwerp and are now a museum, although it goes without saying that it was closed today.

I had my coffee, taking my time in case a ship came past (but I was out of luck) and then walked slowly back along the beach to my hotel.

One thing that caught my eye was this row of beach huts. From what I can tell, people rent (or own) them and store their beach material in them. Then they sit around their beach hut on deck chairs (even on a devastatingly-windy day like today) surrounded by windbreaks and sit and absorb whatever sunlight lught be about.

So now that’s all I’m doing. I’ll have another early night and try to have an early breakfasT

I hope that I feel better tomorrow.

Friday 25th March 2016 – NO COMPLAINTS FROM ME!

Yes, this hotel might be expensive but it is Easter weekend, my little room is quite comfortable and the breakfasts are superb. They certainly know how to make coffee in this place. The bread is superb too and if I were to eat animal products, there is enough meat and cheese on offer to satisfy the most energetic appetite.

I could wish for a more comfortable chair though, but that’s just a small complaint.

The bed is quite comfortable too, but I’m not very comfortable in it. I’m sensing that my blood count is going down, and I’m starting to have attacks of cramp again as I explained the other day.

It’s not stopping me going on my nocturnal rambles though. I had travelled to Australia last night to some kind of house where there was a father and a young son. There was only one bed in the house and they shared it, and I had to go and awaken them. I wasn’t able to do that and so I had the idea of switching on the printer and leaving messages everywhere for them. Whoever it was in charge of the printer said that this would never work and to leave it with him – he’d see to it. And so he pressed a combination of key characters on the printer and this caused the printer to emit a high-pitched whine. This succeeded in awakening these two people and they sat upright, puzzled by the noise (which we found quite funny). The discussion turned to this bed and how they each had their own side of the bed and each had their own way of sleeping. In fact, it was all very reminiscent of life 100-odd years ago where travellers would arrive at inns and not only be expected to share rooms, but to share beds with complete strangers. One of the Hercule Poirot short stories recounts how, even in the late 1930s, Japp and Hastings were obliged to share a bed in a hotel somewhere in rural England.
From here we became involved with Royalty with the future Charles IV and with Rebekah Wade, disgraced former editor of the former News of the World. it actually concerns the birth of the baby who would become Charles IV and how Wade was doing her best to suppress the news because it didn’t suit her newspaper’s agenda. There were all kinds of goings on, with places being set on fire, places where people lived who might give evidence in support of the existence of the the birth. Many people attributed these antics to Wade and her clique although she was making out that it was someone else behind it all (I think that I ought to stress that this is what happened in a dream that I am recounting and I make no accusation or allegation about anything that might or might not have happened or will subsequently happen in real life) – places which for the most part belonged to people who were trying to publicise this birth. While this was all going on, I was in a relationship with Lorna so I had all of that to contend with too. My transport at this time was a single-decker bus of the 1930s that I had borrowed from somewhere and was in a deplorable state, falling to bits, but nevertheless it was all that I had and so I had to drive it. There was only one way to drive it and that was with loads of revs and rapid gear-changes, just like a sports car. And I needed to as well, if I were to forestall what these opponents to the birth of Charles IV had in mind. We had to keep one step ahead of them and let them chase after us. It was all so thoroughly weird.

When I came back from breakfast, there was the maid making my room. I went for a walk while she finished but I didn’t go far as I had forgotten to pack my sou’wester, oilskins and waders. But there’s a small supermarket around the corner where I bought a baguette, some wheat biscuits and some more Raak Campagne Pils.

The weather did clear up later and so I went for a walk along the promenade. Like most places in the Netherlands, the coastline is protected by a very high embankment following the disastrous sea-floods of 31st January and 1st February 1953.

This area was quite badly affected by the floods and as a result, the sea wall is about 40 feet high on the landward side.

I’m going the other way though, heading north-west along the coast. I’ve seen a strandcafé – a beachside pie hut – in the distance and I reckon that that would be as good a place as any to stop for a pre-prandial coffee.

I need a coffee too because there’s a biting wind that is really uncomfortable. But at least, if you look to the far right of the photograph, you’ll see some blue sky being blown in from the north.

And as to why I’ve come to spend a few days at Zoutelande, then you need to look no further than this photo, taken from inside the strandcafé.

The deep shipping channel is only about 200 yards offshore and ships sailing up and down the Schelde pass this close to the shore. I was hoping to catch a 300,000 tonne oil tanker or maybe a 50,000 tonne container ship, but this will have to do for the present. We’ll see what happens at a later date.

From up here, there’s a good view of the town and you can see what I mean about the height of the sea defences. They really are impressive and it does bring home to you the fact that much of the Netherlands is actually below sea level.

But it’s a nice town and I discovered a big supermarket on the edge of the place where I stocked up with some more stuff, including some banana-flavoured Vitamin B12 drink and some gelatine-free spongy sweets. There was a coffee machine here too but it was marked “defekt”

There’s a football ground here too and so I made a note and dashed home to make enquiries about some footy this weekend. But no luck on that point – all of Dutch amateur football is postponed for the Easter weekend so I’ll have to go without yet again!

But it was a nice football ground, quite modern and clean. It would have been a good place to come to watch a match. Still, you can’t have everything.

You can’t feature anything about the Netherlands and not include a windmill in there.

There’s a beautiful windmill in the town and as I was going past it back to the hotel, my route took me past it. It was whizzing round like the clappers in the wind that we were having and I’ll post a little video of it in early course.

And just to add to the Dutch flavour in this photograph, you can see some tulips in the foreground too – or are they daffodils? I dunno, but it all looks very Dutch to me.

I went back to Caliburn after that, did some tidying up in the back, and then came back to eat my butty.

I crashed out for an hour or so and then went on with some paperwork. Later on in the evening, I went for a walk and found another pizza place where I had a mushroom pizza. I’ve still not found a fritkot in the town and I’ll be running out of vegan cheese at this rate.

Thursday 24th March 2016 – BACK IN THE NETHERLANDS

That’s right – I’ve left my comfy little spec at Paul’s Hotel this morning and headed east – in the driving rain.

But while we’re on the subject of the hotel, the breakfast that I had this morning was excellent. The coffee was beautiful for a start, and so was the bread and jam. I even had a comfy hour or so in the lounge while I did some work on the laptop that needed doing. In other words, I thoroughly enjoyed my stay here and although it was expensive, I had my money’s worth.

I’d travelled miles while I’d been asleep. Having been awoken by attack after attack after attack of cramp (which I’m very sad to see has returned after all this time), we started off with a sporting hero – a motorcycle racer or someone. He had an agent and also a manager. He was doing some business with his manager that involved making payments and he always made those payments promptly and always in cash with no problems whatever. One day he was in a rush to go somewhere and so he ordered a sandwich so the manager arranged to buy it. It came to €6:99 so the hero searched through his pockets to try to find something so the agent put down €7:00. The manager said that he would give back the €0:01 next time they would see each other. But the motorcyclist then went out to race, but was killed. This gave rise to the legend about him that his manager gave nothing and took everything, whereas the motorcyclist gave €0:01 and also gave his life.
So valiantly fighting off another attack of cramp, I was out in Labrador City, but it wasn’t Labrador City but a kind of linear village in the High Arctic, all along some kind of track. We’d gone there to take the supplies and the girl with whom I had gone, she had gone in front in an open-topped bulldozer-type vehicle to clear the route and I was in the closed-up vehicle bring the supplies behind because the girl said that it would be warmer. When we arrived, we were besieged by people who were after their stuff. We were talking to a woman there who was telling us about Pingu the Penguin who was some kind of local hero – everyone watched him on television. It turned out that an old girlfriend of mine, Robina, was living out there and I thought that that would be nice – I’ve not seen her for forty years. I hoped that she would come for her supplies. However, she didn’t come. Loads of others did so though – people with children and they were all talking about Pingu the Penguin. There was also a soap opera broadcast twice a day – 06:00 and 18:00, all about young people falling in love and I suddenly remembered something that I had written about this subject – a fictional story. I thought that it might possibly have been a script for this programme. We all had quite a chat about that too. One of the small boys asked me where I lived and I told him about my house – Hankelow Hall, although I called it something else. How we squatted there although I was in one of the outbuildings. We moved on from the town and ended up in the graveyard. Someone had been stealing one of the bulldozers on a regular basis and flattening the graves. One grave was an expensive grave for a person who had founded the Hobey’s (whoever they might be) chain of whatever and this grave was a particular target, having been flattened a few times and graffiti drawn in the soil such as “I used to work at Hobey’s”. Everyone in the town was disturbed by this and they had been unable to catch the culprit and stop them flattening this cemetery again and again.
Having managed to avoid another attack of cramp, I was back in Virlet, but it wasn’t Virlet as I know it. There were lots of ruined, abandoned houses all together. I was there with mine and Liz was there with hers and we were talking about selling and going off somewhere else. We went to an estate agent, who turned out to be Lieneke, to try to sell our properties for us. We had had all kinds of people coming to visit and they had asked all kinds of stupid questions so I reckoned that I ought to open a “stupid questions” file. I had to contact the mayor, who was in fact Rebecca from the OU, and find out all of the answers to these stupid questions. That would save everyone so much time. We were having quite a chat about this on the telephone and Lieneke went away. It was pretty close to Easter at this point and suddenly three or four caravans turned up and parked on some land at an abandoned house. Loads and loads of hippies arrived and installed themselves there, about 100 yards from my house. Lieneke asked me what I thought about all of these hippies. I said that I had nothing against them and they were entitled to their own lifestyle and it was sometimes a good thing because they can bring new ideas and new ways of thinking into a stagnant region, but they can saturate an area. I didn’t want 100 hippies living in an area like this. There was a programme on TV and I had been wanting to see it for quite some weeks, which is not like me. The village café had a bar so I had arranged to meet Liz somewhere so we had agreed on the café and I went there way earlier to watch this programme. I was sitting on a chair with a coffee watching this when I local turned up and sat down by me. He started to discuss this programme with me, which is what I didn’t want to do, and to my surprise, this person had some really intelligent points to make about it. And it was only something boring, like a quiz game.
Once more, after another disturbance, I was back in my house, which resembled something like my old apartment at Reyers, with someone who might have been June. Someone had arrived during the night and was ill and so had been put into one of the spare bedrooms (I didn’t even have one bedroom in Reyers – it was a studio!). This person needed me to help him recover and so I took him a breakfast tray and went to see how he was. It took ages to find the door into the room – I don’t know why – and so I knocked on the window to let him know I was there, and then tried again to find the door. It took a while to do that but eventually there I was. I said to the guy that I hoped that I hadn’t disturbed him too early but he laughed and pointed out that it was now just after 16:00 – I’d slept all that time! I sat down by the man and asked him about himself, but he apologised for wasting my time – it turned out to be only a simple headache and now he was feeling much better and didn’t need my services. At this point, June said that a weekend’s rest would do him good – why didn’t he come down to her place with a group of her people and play in a scrabble tournament? He liked the idea but the stakes (they were gambling – so much per point) were quite elevated and it ruled me out. But something that he said had made my ears prick up. It was quite a disreputable project so June wasn’t at all keen and quite rightly so, but hidden away underneath a fairground carousel was one of the very first Citroen 2CVs and that was the prize. But it was all weighing heavily down on me. I was 60 and I should have retired back in February and it was now the month of May. I needed to get away so I told June that I was going to see Stevie Smith, my old boss from way back, and tell him that I was leaving in three weeks time. She thought that I was being crazy, especially seeing that I was still being paid.

Back on the road, and we’ve started off with a major tragedy too. The battery in the Nikon D5000 seems to have died a death.

It was pretty flaky yesterday, I noticed, even though it had been fully-charged. And today, it just wouldn’t work at all – keeping on telling me that it’s flat. Which it isn’t of course because 2 minutes in the charger and the “fully-charged” light comes on.

The camera itself has never been the same since I dropped it in Quebec in 2012 and so I suspect that half of the problem is not with the battery but with the camera – maybe the contacts are slightly bent out of shape. But anyway, now (or, at least, when I return home) is the moment to upgrade the camera – something that I have been threatening to do for quite a while.

You’ll have to make do with some photos taken on the camera phone, such as this one.

The area where we are is an open shoreline with miles of flat land behind it, and has easy access to the port of Antwerp. It’s therefore quite heavily-fortified to protect it from invasion from the sea or from the Netherlands border and the fortifications still remain even today, like all over this coastline.

I’d bought a baguette, which was one of the nicest that I have ever eaten, but also one of the most expensive too. And I headed off via Cadzand to Breskens to sit on the estuary to eat my butty.

This is exactly the same spot where I ate my butty yesterday, but you can see the difference in the weather.

It really is wet, grey and miserable today and the wind is fairly strong. And you still can’t see very much through the fog. I’d love to tell you more about the ship that’s sailing past but I can’t make it out.

There are probably 1000 other ships out there too, but I don’t have a chance of seeing them.

After lunch, I headed off and found the bored tunnel under the Scheldt. It cosy €5:00 to go through, which I don’t suppose is too bad seeing as it’s 6.6kms long, and Strawberry Moose, Caliburn and I sang a few songs and played a game of hide and seek with the tunnel in order to cheer it up.

The weather brightened up on Walcheren and wasn’t too bad at all by the time I arrived at Zoutelande. I quickly found a hotel, the price of which for five days bed and breakfast would have bought a hotel in France. But there’s parking here for Caliburn (it’s expensive to leave it on the street), I was tired and about ready to crash out. And it is Easter weekend anyway and the town is crowded.

After an hour’s sleep I went for a walk – in the rain because it was heaving down. There doesn’t seem to be a fritkot here either but at least there are a couple of pizza places and I have some vegan cheese.

I won’t need much rocking tonight, that’s for sure.

EPIC HALL

The Poisoned Pen (or Poisoned Chalice, more like) – or my relentless struggle against reality

Tag Archives: netherlands

7th November 2020 – THIS WEEK IS …

Sunday 30th June 2019 – SO HERE WE ALL ARE …

Sunday 26th August 2018 – HOMER SIMPSON …

Saturday 7th July 2018 – ONE OF THESE DAYS …

Wednesday 4th July 2018 – THERE HAS TO BE …

Saturday 17th February 2018 – I’M A MISERABLE PLEADER.

Sunday 5th February 2017 – NOW WHAT DO YOU THINK …

Wednesday 23rd November 2016 continued – BOUILLON

Wednesday 4th May 2016 – HAPPY STAR WARS DAY EVERYONE

Tuesday 29th March 2016 – THERE ARE JUST SO MANY …

Monday 28th March 2016 – I’VE NOT TAKEN …

Sunday 27th March 2016 – MY POSTILION HAS BEEN STRUCK BY LIGHTNING

Saturday 26th March 2016 – I’VE NOT GONE OUT …

Friday 25th March 2016 – NO COMPLAINTS FROM ME!

Thursday 24th March 2016 – BACK IN THE NETHERLANDS

Your reactions

Excellent

Useful

Interesting

Weird

Surprising

Boring