Tag Archives: Stand In The Fire

Friday 5th April 2024 – TODAY HAS BEEN …

… a rather better day today, which is a surprise.

In fact I’ve gone the whole day without crashing out once.

Mind you, it’s been a near thing once or twice with wave after wave of sleep washing up on my own rocky shores but I’ve managed to fight them off so far.

Mind you, there’s still 90 minutes before my official bedtime so still plenty of time to follow the family tradition and snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. No-one else can manage that quite like us.

It was a lot longer than 90 minutes to bedtime last night what with everything that needed doing. It never used to be as complicated as this, I’m sure.. It was certainly closer to midnight than it was to 23:00 when I finally hit the sack last night, and glad I was to do so too. I was thoroughly wasted.

It was another really deep sleep and when I awoke with the alarm going off at 07:00 I was actually away somewhere doing something, but it completely evaporated the moment the alarm went off. As long as it wasn’t involving Zero, Castor or TOTGA, it’s OK.

So first things first. I fell out of bed and went off to check the blood pressure. 16.4/10.4. That’s quite a lot higher than last night’s figure of 15.5/10.6 so I wonder what has pumped it up. But the instructions for the machine say “take your blood pressure when you are sitting calmly and quietly and there are no distractions”.

Seriously, whenever is that ever likely to happen around here?

Having done that I went off to take the medication – all the piles of it – and then lay out the room how the nurse likes it to keep him happy while he’s here. He mentioned a shortage of large plasters so I added them to my cleaner’s notes for her shopping expedition

And while I was at it I sent her an order for some mushrooms and a cucumber.

In between everything else I made some bread for the weekend, and it turned out really well for a change I’m getting the hang of breadmaking after all this time

Once I’d managed to usher the nurse off the premises I had a listen to the dictaphone notes to find out where I’d been during the night There was another false alarm call at 04:24 this morning. There was a group of four kids who were having a wrestling tournament. They were each wrestling against someone or other and being substituted during the match, one for another for another for another etc. This was just at the moment when they were having to make a substitution and one of the players was having to leave and another one was coming onto the field to join in with the wrestling as the alarm went off

And if you think that the idea of kids fighting for sport in wrestling rings and even cages is appalling and never likely to happen, you just have a look on Youtube. There are some utterly crazy people out here in the real world

But I’m interested to know why it should suddenly appear in my subconscious. I can’t recall anything that might lead to that and even if it did, years of trying unsuccessfully to make Castor, Zero or TOTGA appear in my dreams are proof that nothing would follow from it.

It took a good while to fire up the enthusiasm today but I eventually managed it, later than I intended and not by 5 minutes either. And no sooner had I started than I had a parcel delivery.

That meant assembling my new coat hanger that hooks over the top of the door and then I had to configure my new fitbit, seeing as the old one has managed to die a death.

This new one has loads of added accessories, such as a bluetooth connection to the phone and all that. Somewhere on it that I have yet to find will be the button to press so that it makes the coffee.

One thing that I do like about it is that it has an optional analogue watch face. That’s something that I’ve really missed.

But the coat hanger means that all of the coats and so on that were loitering around here have at long last found a home and I hope that they’ll all be very happy together

So I was finally able to make a start on my radio notes and in the time available I managed to do a little over half of them

And then after my hot chocolate I pressed on with more of the outstanding Welsh homework and made quite good progress with that.

Tea was some of that home-made falafel with salad and chips, thanks to my cleaner who came this afternoon and brought my mushrooms and cucumber with her. And they really were spicy too. I shall have to make some more like that if I can.

But that’s it for tonight. I’m off to bed, where I’ll wish that I was like Warren Zevon.

He was an American singer who, having been diagnosed with a fatal illness, decided that instead of sitting at home feeling miserable, took to the road with his I’LL SLEEP WHEN I’M DEAD farewell tour and pressed on. That’s exactly the attitude that I ought to have, but it’s extremely difficult when I can’t seem to master this fatigue at all.

At times it seems that all of the fates are conspiring against me and that’s an uncomfortable feeling

Warren Zevon and I have something else in common too. We both have (or had) a weakness for red-headed girls. Warren Zevon’s red-headed girl wore "a red silk dress
You know I’m asking her to dance with me – she might say yes"
but I don’t know if mine ever did. It’s been years since I’ve seen her in real life and she doesn’t even come to see me at nights now

And there was another one with loads of red hair too but she fell off the radar a good few years ago which is a shame.

But that’s it anyway. I’m off to bed, hoping for a good sleep and an even better day tomorrow.

But while we’re on the subject of Warren Zevon … "well, one of us is" – ed …
"Knock knock"
"Who’s there?"
"Rarrrh"
"Rarrrh who?"
"Werewolves of London"

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Friday 26th July 2013 – WE HAD A COUPLE …

… of rainstorms today

Not much of a surprise though because it’s been threatening for a day or so.

The first one woke me up, again before the alarm went off, but then that’s no surprise seeing as how I was away with the fairies for a while yesterday afternoon.

So after breakfast I sorted out a few papers that I needed for the notaire and off I went.

It takes an hour and five minutes to walk there, as I now know for I timed it.

Yes, off I went on foot. I seem to have much more exercise when I’m here in Brussels than when I’m at home in France. When I’m out I do a lot of walking.

Bit of a shame that the walkman went flat after just 400 metres but then you can’t have everything.

The notaire didn’t come up with anything that was unexpected – well, yes she did, but what I mean is that nothing in Belgium is unexpected, if you see what I mean – it’s all par for the course.

So I left the building, straight into another rainstorm, and walked into town.

poor police parking brussels belgium july juillet 2013And you’ll see what I mean about nothing being unexpected when you see the fine example of Belgian police parking in the city.

Belgian drivers are the worst in the world, and so it’s no surprise to see that the coppers have no room to be complacent.

With driving like this from the police farce, no wonder that they can’t recognise poor driving whenever they see it and so the standards go down and down.

colonne de congres bruxelles belgium july juillet 2013I walked into town past the famous Colonne de Congrès.

This column, extremely controversial in its day, was designed by Joseph Poelaert and erected in the 1850s.

It is meant to commemorate the people who “ont fixé les destinées nouvelles du pays, après la fondation de son indépendance” – “gave the new country its new direction and future after independence”.

47 metres high, there is a spiral staircase of 193 steps inside and in the olden days it was possible to climb to the top.

Unfortunately, that’s not possible these days. Like much of Belgian infrastructure, it’s in poor condition. And it was badly-damaged by Hurricane Cyril on 18th January 2007.

soldat inconnu unknown soldier colonne de congres bruxelles belgium july juillet 2013At the foot of the Colonne is the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier.

One unidentified Belgian soldier was taken from each of the battlefields on which the Belgian Army fought in World War I and a blinded Belgian veteran made the choice of which one was to be interred here.

He was laid to rest here on 11th November 1922 and an eternal flame was lit.

After a mega-ramble I ended up at Elak, one of my favourite shops in Brussels. It’s an electronics shop and I buy my 12-volt LED warning lights and 12-volt piazzo buzzers from there.

I’m running a little low on the aforementioned and so I need to build up my stocks. No red lights in stock, and the blue ones are flaming extortionate, so I stocked up on a few green and yellow, and a couple of buzzers.

I’ve also found (well, remembered) a shop, Pêle-Mêle, that buys second-hand books, CDs, computer equipment and that sort of stuff and so I can move on a pile of Marianne’s stuff without too much effort and that will make even more room here.

I caught the bus back here, and once more crashed out for a few hours, but this isn’t doing any good. I’m going to have to start focusing myself so much better on what I need to be doing.

In other news, I was listening to one of the new CDs that I had bought the other day just before leaving. Warren Zevon’s superb Stand In The Fire.

A magnificent album, it really is, and it features, apart from “Excitable Boy”, “Werewolves of London” and “Send Lawyers, Guns and Money” (which will be my theme song for Canada-2013 of course) – to name just a selection of good music, a magnificent mickey-take of “Sweet Home Alabama”, entitled “Play It All Night Long”.

When I was in North Carolina in 2005 I remembered these Classic Rock radio stations that played nothing but “Hotel California”, “Free Bird”, “Bohemian Rhapsody” and, of course, “Sweet Home Alabama” non-stop. I wish that I had had a copy of “Play It All Night” back then.

Anyway I edited the relevant page of the journey to include the lyrics of the chorus. They were really appropriate for the journey through North Carolina.
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