Tag Archives: tinned curry

Monday 22nd August 2016 – AND WASN’T THAT A WASTE OF TIME?

I managed to arrange two appointments this afternoon for visiting apartments. The first one was at 14:30 down the Kapicijnenvoer and I was there on time. The guy turned up, took one look at me and asked “are you a student?”
“Not at all” I replied
“I only let to students” he replied, returning to his car.
And yet nowhere on his advert was this mentioned and so I had “a few words” with him about him wasting my time.

At 16:00 I had an appointment with an estate agent at a studio not too far from here. And I was on time there too. 10 minutes later I had a ‘phone call. “I’m sorry, Mr X has had something urgent come up. Can he arrange another appointment with you?”
And so I had a few words with them too about wasting my time.

Mind you, it’s true that there’s not a lot of money to be earned from the letting of a studio. There’s much more money to be earned from letting or selling a house, so it’s not surprising that I’ve fallen to the bottom of the queue. But you can see what I mean about Belgium.

I was in a bad humour too. I was still awake last night at 01:35. And for no good reason either – it wasn’t as if my new co-habitant disturbed me any. I just couldn’t drop off.

But when I did finally drop off, I did set off on a few travels. First thing was something to do with a court case and I was cross-examining witnesses. Some barrister came up to me afterwards and offered me a place in his chambers – an offer that was quite interesting (and which rings a bell from an event that took place 25 years ago) but not one that I could take up properly due to the financial constraints that it called for during the period of training. A little later there was a scene where I was with a woman and we were doing something for a young boy who had come off the rails somehow.

The 07:00 cacophony awoke me, and it was quite an impressive one this morning. Once I’d gathered my wits (which doesn’t take long these days) I went off for breakfast. And as I was parting, I was joined by my neighbour. I exchanged a few words of greeting – he said nothing at all – and then I came back down here for a little doze.

The owner of the property came round this morning and we had a few words about this and that. And now the internet is back working again (but for how long I really have no idea) and a couple of essential repairs have been done to the property too. But as for this thing about cleaning – it’s been 11 days since I’ve seen the cleaner and my bedding is starting to smell as badly as I do.

My baguette for lunch was excellent even though it came from the supermarket on the corner and then in between making unsuccessful visits to various properties I’ve been catching up on a few things here and there.

That tinned curry that I bought the other night – it was certainly different but absolutely excellent and I enjoyed my tea. Not being particularly hungry, I didn’t make any garlic bread so I’ll have to attack that in very early course. I wonder what I can eat it with tomorrow. A tin of ratatouille maybe?

But in other bad news, this cold has now developed into a streaming head cold and the cough has now settled properly on my chest. This is not the news that I wanted to hear, remembering my unexpected 10-day incarceration in the hospital last time this happened when I was only supposed to be in there for a couple of hours.How I’m getting fed up of all of this.

So tomorrow, I’m back house-hunting again. I’m getting fed up of all of this too!

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Thursday 10th June 2010 – Look what I’m having for tea!

home grown strawberries les guis virlet puy de dome franceYes, strawberries. The first of the year, and all grown with my own fair hands too in my own garden.

Unfortunately there aren’t not all that many. It looks as if the local wildlife has been helping itself to them but nevertheless there were five left, and these, together with some soya cream, is a sure sign that summer is here at last.

Or is it?

rain fall in wheelbarrow les guis virlet puy de dome franceIt was raining again this morning and although it stopped for several hours, at about 18:00 it started up again in earnest and it’s still chucking it down now.

A quick look inside the wheelbarrow will tell you everything that you need to know about the amount of rainfall that we’ve had this last couple of days. Remember that this was empty just a couple of days ago when we were shovelling all of these stones around.

Liz came round this morning with my beans and vegan cheese and that’s good news. There are also some tins of curry and so it’s back to my Saturday night ritual again. We had quite a chat and it was a shame that she had to go.

And after that I carried on with the tidying up outside. Now that I have a hardstanding (or a wetstanding, or a notwithstanding) I’m moving over there everything that was propped up against the side of the barn. In a couple of weeks we’ll be putting up a scaffolding against the barn in order to do the barn roof, and I’ve been waiting years to do this. For many reasons actually – not the least being that I can finally move the solar panels off the roof of the Luton transit and onto the wall of the barn.

I’m tidying up a few other things too so I’m clearly not well. And when it clouded over at about 17:50 I called it a day and came up here. In fact I crashed out for half an hour.

In other news, I see that the new Conservative Government is planning to remodel University education. The Minister has considered several University models, including major part-time suppliers, ans has decided to try to remodel things on the lines of that well-known supplier of distance education, the … errrr … University of London.

As I said a few years ago when they set up a committee to consider part-time degree education and it consisted of staff from that other well-known supplier of distance education the … errrr … North Staffordshire University, the days of the Open University having any kind of significance and playing any kind of major role in shaping Government policy, these are long-gone. The OU has lost its relevance and has received yet another kick in the teeth.

Increasing prices and tuition fees brought an angry response from the National Union of Students. But of course they are a small-minded militant body made up of kids still wet behind the ears. So where was the response from the Open University Students’ Association – that body of 180,000 grown-up and mature students? The answer is of course “nowhere”. Either no-one considered the OUSA to have any relevance (which is a damning indictment of OUSA) or else whatever OUSA did say was considered to be not worth reporting (which is a damning indictment of OUSA).

It seems that OUSA has outlived its relevance too. But we all knew that, and a long time ago. A couple of years ago when the Labour government considered the idea of increasing costs and reducing subsidies, the response of that grown-up and august body of mature students was to … errr … sign a petition! I mean! We did things like that in Primary School when we were 10 and 11. Was that really the best that OUSA could come up with?

I once worked in a multinational multi-government organisation and we used to receive petitions from all kinds of people in all walks of life, on a regular basis. And do you know what we did with the petitions that we received? Well, we never bought any toilet paper, that’s for sure. That’s how petitions are treated in organisations such as that.

And the strawberries were delicious!

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