… to dash downstairs ready for the nurse as soon as the alarm went off this morning, it goes without saying that he didn’t arrive until about 08:30. But then, that’s typical, isn’t it?

Mind you, I was lucky to be here at all because I had travelled quite a long way during the night. And that’s despite it taking me ages to drop off to sleep last night too. Despite my little walk, an early night and an exciting hour or so watching “The Raiders Of Tombstone Canyon” or some such, I was still tossing and turning around at 23:30. Clearly the effects of my nightmare last night were having something to do with all of that.

But eventually, off I went. And “off” is the right word to use too. Belgium was the first destination last night and there was quite a large mob of us in the Belgian public transport system, which included my brother (him again?) and my niece in Canada and a couple of her girls. It was almost as if we had been to a family gathering and I do remember Shavington featuring in here somewhere – Hunter’s Avenue being where we got onto this bus. Once aboard, the conductress came round to check our tickets and she overheard me talking to someone, telling them a most improbable story about 2 different lines on the Montreal Metro. “Oohhh” she said. “Do you know the Montreal Metro then?” and so we had a lengthy chat about Montreal (very reminiscent of something that really did happen to me on a bus in Montreal a few years ago where it turned out that the driver was not only from Brussels in Belgium – he recognised my accent – but actually drove on the route that I used to take to see my friend Marianne, so we spent the journey chatting about that route). So after all of that, she checked my ticket, which was one of these Belgian 10-pass tickets but I had forgotten to stamp it when I got on the bus so as a favour to me she took it off with her to stamp. But it kept on showing up an error, so I thought that it had probably run out and so I needed a new one, but for some reason I didn’t have any money on me. After yet another lengthy discussion, she agreed that she would let me off for this trip but I’d have to buy another ticket immediately as soon as I alighted – after all, we were planning to make quite a lengthy voyage involving a few changes of vehicle. And so we alighted at our first destination and so one of our party was asking where we could go to buy a ticket for the transport. There didn’t seem to be a ticket office anywhere. I seemed to remember that there was a place downstairs in the station where we could buy some of these ten-trip tickets and so that was where we headed. But here, at the entrance to the restaurant, was an automatic ticket machine (but it was blue like in Montreal, not yellow as in Brussels). I pointed it out and said that I may as well pick up my ticket here, so everyone else said that they would go downstairs to the railway station and buy my train ticket for me while they were waiting for me to join them. So I went off to the machine but the first side of it was actually a telephone, not a ticket machine. The second side of it had a huge queue hanging around by it, and the third side was out of order. I went to the fourth side of the machine and I was just on the point of trying to buy a ticket from here when I suddenly and inexplicably woke up.
After the usual trip down the corridor we were off again and this second part concerns a boy who was being kept as a slave somehow in a weird first-floor apartment and was being made to perform all kinds of household tasks and general slavery duties. He was determined that at the first available opportunity he would to make his escape, and he had some kind of confidant who would help him. His master, who resembled a kind of cross between Ebenezer Scrooge and Alastair Sim was equally determined that he wouldn’t, and so his life became even more grim. One day one of the windows breaks in this apartment – the day that the master is having to leave the same evening and be away all night until the following evening. It was the next day, the day that the master would be away until the evening, that this escape had been planned. Now with this broken window the master decides that he isn’t just going to have the pane of glass replaced but four complete new windows with frames at the back of the apartment overlooking the rear entrance to the courtyard. Some workmen arrive and they start to take out the old window frames and to fit new ones. As the work is progressing well, the master leaves on his journey and the young boy is delighted by being invited by the workmen to kick over all of the windows that have been stacked up against the wall and watching them break. But by the time the workmen come to finish for the day, there’s still one window not installed so they need to come back the next day. But with the window missing it’s easy for the boy to escape from the house and climb down a stack of old furniture that had been piled up against the rear wall of the house. And so he makes good his getaway. He ends up down West Street in Crewe, out by Merrill’s Bridge heading into town past the pubs and chip shops, being followed by this big ginger cat that allows him to stroke it but not pick it up. He passes by a pillar box that is crammed full of mail and a couple of postmen are busy trying to wrestle a couple of sacks of letters from it. And a little farther down the street there’s a railway level crossing with a branch junction that swings round immediately to the right to opposite where this pillar box was. Eventually, he ends up with friends and tells them some (but not all) of this story and how he is leaving the next day. In the meantime these people whom he’s visiting are loading all kinds of scrap paper into a shipping container and compacting it in with a hydraulic ram. It ends up with this boy having to go back to the apartment for some reason but he’s really worried in case the master has unexpectedly returned (why he couldn’t make his getaway that night I really do not know) but that’s a risk that he has to take. And the rest of this story becomes something of an anti-climax because he goes back, re-enters the apartment, the master hasn’t returned unexpectedly, and next morning with the aid of his friend he makes good his getaway and disappears into the sunrise to presumably live happily ever after.
After all of that it was my turn to look at a couple of short videos offering ideas for holiday venues. One that particularly caught my eye was a snow-swept Central European town and so off I went. I was walking up the street here in rather inclement weather, somewhere near a road junction, and some woman was driving down the hill slowly on the wrong side of the road, totally oblivious to me. She approached closer and closer and rolled forward to come to rest against my shin. Her car was one of these little Autobianchis, a red one, and I was musing to myself that I could flip it over with my foot, it was so small and lightweight.

At that moment, the alarm went off so I never knew how it all finished. I shot off downstairs, as I said.

This morning, I had plenty of things to do but I didn’t manage anything much because Liz and Terry left me here on my Tod while they went off to do some shopping. I had a good play around with my 3D program and tried out a couple of new techniques that I had been thinking about.

Lunch was left-over pizza (which, like anything else spicy, always tastes better the following day) and bread with vegan cheese spread. and then this afternoon, I made a start on one of my courses – this one being a basic Dutch course. I’m off to Leuven in a couple of weeks and I’ve forgotten most of my Flemish. Dutch and Flemish are very similar languages so if you can understand one you can understand the other, but I’m not sure how that’s going to work as most people can’t even understand me when I speak English.

But we did have some excitement today. Being fed up of waiting for my Insurance Company to phone me back, I sent another one of my incendiary e-mails. And having blistered the paint off the walls of the receiving office, I received a reply. Basically “please find attached our acceptance of your claim to be suffering from a serious illness”. It’s only taken them 7 weeks to agree this.

What it means in practical terms is that instead of being reimbursed the ceiling limit of claims, I can receive an ex-gratia payment to cover the costs of my actual expenditure, together with certain other benefits that would not ordinarily be covered. And that is certainly a great help as far as my finance go. I may even be able to afford to eat as well, if I am careful. It’s quite reassuring for my voyage to Leuven, which I was half-expecting to have to pay out of my own pocket.

But talking of eating, I’ve had home-made vegan lentil-burgers for tea tonight, with chips and peas followed by vegan ice cream. Liz made the burgers and I was lucky enough to be in the kitchen just as she was starting. Consequently, I had a grandstand view of the whole procedure and have made copious notes.

Now, I’m off for my little walk up the hill again, even if it is pouring down with rain and has been all day, and then I’m off for another early night.

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