Tag Archives: toast

Wednesday 27th January 2021 – MEANWHILE AT CASTLE ANTHRAX …

… my blood count is down yet again. To 9.6 this time – not a dramatic drop so I’m still holding my own (although I’m glad that I’m not holding anyone else’s too).

They aren’t able to help me with the Corona Virus vaccination though – but there again that was something of a forlorn hope. They still haven’t finished injecting all of the staff, and the in-patients are next in the queue. I shall have to continue to persevere with whatever I can find in France.

As well as that, I’ve changed my date of visit to Thursday with effect from the next time. With it being on a Wednesday, I can’t travel up on the Tuesday because that’s my Welsh class. So I have to come up on the train on Monday, missing my radio work and lugging all of my Welsh paperwork with me too.

With the appointment on Wednesday, I can do my radio stuff on Monday and have my Welsh class on Tuesday morning, all in the comfort and privacy of my own home, travel up on the Wednesday and go home on the Saturday, saving the cost of a day’s accommodation and benefiting from a cheap weekend fare on the train on the way home.

That makes much more sense to me.

This morning I was in no rush to leave the bed. 09:30 was good enough for me today.

And having had my medication and then my breakfast (more toast on the hob element) I had a shower and then washed my clothes.

Later on I headed out to the hospital in the rain, rather intrepidly in view of the issues about my virus test for which I hadn’t had the results.

sint pieters brusselsestraat leuven belgium Eric HallMy route, as usual, took me through the city centre and out down the Brusselsestraat past the old Sint Pieter’s Hospital.

The demolition there doesn’t look all that different from when I was here 4 weeks ago. They hardly seem to have advanced at all. At this rate it’s going to take them for ever to bring the building to the ground.

But it is a shame to see it like this. Built for the French community in Flanders, it was barely completed when the French community moved out to Louvain-le-Neuve and never had anything like the occupancy that was intended.

An important casualty of the Guerre Linguistic that has raged in the country between the Walloons and the Flemish for well over 100 years.

sint jakobs kerk leuven belgium Eric HallFrom the old hospital I continued on down the Brusselsestraat towards the Sint Jakobs Kerk – Saint Jacob’s Church and stuck my head inside the door.

For 6 months I lived in a room in a building just across the road and I never ever had the opportunity to go in to see it. A couple of times I saw people going to the door and on one occasion I was quick enough to join them, but the door would never open. It had been abandoned for years as it was falling down.

But over this last year or so they’ve started to renovate it and as I went past, I noticed that someone had left the door open. That was an opportunity not to be missed but I couldn’t go too far in, for fear of being observed by the workmen.

monseigneur van waeyenberghlaan leuven belgium Eric HallThe roadworks in the Monseigneur van Waeyenberghlaan are still far deom being completed.

My route led me down there so that I could see the carnage. They have been working on relaying the drains for about 18 months at least, as far as I remember, and while they seem to have filled in all of the holes now, they are still nowhere near putting down the final road surface.

This is inconveniencing everyone in the neighbourhood. Higher up the street is the building that they renovated. And parked there as best as they can is a furniture remover and a furniture lift. And they can’t position themselves close enough to the building to pass the furniture upwards.

sint hubertusstraat leuven belgium Eric HallAnd if you think that the Monseigneur van Waeyenberghlaan is in a mess, you should see the other direction, looking towards town.

This is the Sint Hubertusstraat and that’s even more messed up and muddy. It does make me wonder whether they are being paid by the hour or by the contract because there seems to be no incentive to hurry.

But turning my back on this end of town, I headed up the Monseigneur van Waeyenberghlaan, past the furniture guys struggling with their equipment.

corner ploengang monseigneur van waeyenberghlaan leuven belgium Eric HallAlong the Monseigneur van Waeyenberghlaan there are several small side streets, like this on to the right, which I think is the Ploengang.

They seem to be realigning the road junction here and that’s going to be interesting to see how that turns out, because straight ion down the hill is a service bus route when the road is in good condition. That road is going to make it difficult for the buses to negotiate.

Luckily I had my Covid test serial number with me, because the hospital receptionist presumably checked the national database and my number isn’t on it, which seems to indicate that I’m not a person of interest (at least, from that point of view) and I could have my treatment.

It was a rather indiscreet male nurse who saw me today to connect me up to my treatment. he told me, as I suspected, that there are a few of us undergoing this research as guinea pigs and we’ve all been here for a while. It seems that I applied to the University for treatment just at the right time when they were looking for guinea pigs, although he didn’t say that directly.

While I was at the hospital having the treatment, I attacked the pile of outstanding notes on the dictaphone.

There was an opera being broadcast or filmed or something and being overdubbed in English. We were doing the overdubbing and as it started under way we were still some way ahead but we hadn’t finished. At one point my brother brought me a huge mug of tea while I did some editing on the computer but he dropped the tea or the tea fell and it absolutely soaked that corner of the room in tea. He just stood there looking at this so I had to scuttle off and fetch a flannel and stuff like that to mop up the tea and clean that corner which was in a terrible state. He was still there looking at me and looking stupid so I asked him where was the recording of this certain aria. He didn’t know so I started to prepare to sing it myself in English to do the over-dubbing but I could see that he was in no mood to play the piano and I couldn’t play the piano but I could see that I was going to have to end up playing the piano and singing at the same time because I seemed to be the only person who was doing anything at that point.

Later on, I was on a bike, an old single-speed upright kind of thing. I would cycle everywhere on that but one day I decided that enough was enough and I decided that I would get myself a modern bike with derailleur gears and I could get about 10 times quicker than that. I ended up in Nantwich, out the other side in Henhull Lane (actually Welshman’s Lane) by the old Cottage Hospital there. As I turned into the yard there first of all came a boy whom I knew at school (what was he doing there, seeing as he is someone about whom I haven’t given a moment’s thought for over 50 years?) and another boy from school out jogging and he ran past. I had a good chat to the first boy about a few things and then I foolishly went in and told the guys in this bike shop that was looking for another bike. They only had a choice of about 4 or 5 and there was only 1 that was really my size. I apologised and said that there wasn’t really what I wanted here. He started on a rant about costs and so on. he showed me all of the wholesale prices and everything like that, how he wasn’t making much money on bikes and how he wasn’t here normally because he was off working elsewhere That wasn’t what I wanted to hear from a shopkeeper.

James Bond was on the loose later on driving down an Italian motorway on a motorbike and sidecar and there was someone on a motorbike pursuing him or at least keeping behind him, observing him. We were watching this from another car further behind. They were stuck in traffic working their way through this traffic queue. All of a sudden Bond seizes the opportunity, swerved his motorcycle around and brought it crashing down on the head of this guy who was following him. This guy picked himself up and ran off. Bond ran after him and we could hear sounds of fighting. Bond came back to our car and said “I killed the wrong man there. That was one of Blofeld’s men”. Not the enemy that he was expecting. We thought that if Blofeld’s men are now angry with us and if someone else is still behind us, the real villains, we’re pretty much blocked in here in this street in the mountains. There’s no way out from here. This road just leads to a town in the mountains. We can’t turn round and if we go on, we are going to be stuck. We really have no choice but to go on so off we set. Our car by this time was a dark blue Hillman Hunter.

Finally last night, I was with Liz Ayers. We had a car and caravan. We pulled into Hankelow Hall, or what I thought was Hankelow Hall in the dream. Who should be there but Marianne and a workman. They were going through the house looking at things. There was a huge fire burning with all kinds of stuff going on, stuff all over the place, loaves of bread, all that kind of thing. I was wondering what on earth was going on here. When I went in the builder came over to me and told me about a pile of work that needed doing on the house. he would give me a bill for it, all this kind of thing. In the end I said “no”. I told him to clear off. Marianne had ordered him and made the arrangements so he can clear off. I thought that when Marianne comes back I’ll have something to say about this. I started to tidy up a few things, put things away in rubbish bags. There were a couple of loaves on there, quite green. They had been there for a while. There was a pile of election leaflets from Guy Verhofstadt the MEP, tons of stuff like that. I was trying to sort it out. Liz came over with someone for there were crowds of people there too. She said that they were going to have a sleep on the beach. I said “what? Through the night? We have a caravan on the back of the car”. She said “no, we’ll watch a film about a Maternity Hospital attached to a University and the students took it over to run it”. She described the film and I said “oh I’ve seen that”. Anyway she went off. I kept on having to go back and to between rooms in this place. The quickest way was to go through the fire although the fire was roaring hot and there was tons of ash so the final time I decided that I won’t go that way, I’ll walk round which I did but there were all of these people hanging around there not doing very much at all. It made me wonder what was going on.

The treatment didn’t take long. The longest part was waiting for the doctor afterwards to come to see me. It was quite late when I was let out.

new post office brusselsestraat leuven belgium Eric HallBack into town and back down the Brusselsestraat when I was interrupted by this office place here that I hadn’t noticed before.

It seems that while many countries are actively closing their Post Offices, Belgium is reopening them. This seems to be a parcels pick-up point – Belgium is having a lot of issues with handling the volume of mail order parcels at the moment with all of this internet shopping with the Covid issues.

Stopping off at Delhaize for more bread, I nipped home to dump my stuff and then went back out to meet Alison in the town.

We had a walk around and a chat and then she came back for a quick coffee.

Later on I had tea and now having written my notes, I’m off to bed. A leisurely day tomorrow and then on friday I’m off on my marathon journey back home.

0

Tuesday 26th January 2021 – HAVING CROWED …

… yesterday about how well I did in getting up at 04:22 before any of the alarms went off, it goes without saying that this morning I slept through all three of the alarm calls and didn’t awaken until about 08:30.

diestsestraat leuven belgium Eric HallSo while you admire a couple of photos of the Diestsestraat in the early evening dark, I went off and had my medication.

First task today after the medication was to prepare for my Welsh class. And I forgot what I was going (or supposed to be doing), did the wrong homework and generally didn’t do very well at all.

With no fruit bread or anything like that, I had to make do with toast and jam. But with no toaster, that was likely to be a challenging proposition but I’m nothing if I’m not inventive, as regular readers of this rubbish might recall.

diestsestraat leuven belgium Eric HallIn this apartment it has the old-type resistance heater elements on the hob – the ancient type of solid element.

So simply switching on the larger one and putting the bread on top, and turning it over at the appropriate moment I ended up with a very reasonable approximation of toast. And so armed with toast and jam and coffee I could attend my lesson.

Why the lesson was under way I had a ‘phone call from Belgium’s Corona Virus Centre. But when I called them back at half-time, they couldn’t find any information as to why they called me. So I’ve no idea what they was all about.

mechelsestraat leuven belgium Eric HallWhile you are looking at an image of the Mechelsestraat, I went off for lunch. Yesterday at the Carrefour I’d bought some bread and some stuff to go on it, and of course it was followed by some fruit.

After lunch, I didn’t do very much at all for a couple of hours. As regular readers of this rubbish will recall, the trip up to here (and the one back again) takes a lot out of me and I need a pause to recover my strength.

But as it started to go dark outside round about 17:00 I went out for my evening walk around the town to see what was going on.

university library Monseigneur Ladeuzeplein Leuven belgium Eric HallThe University Library always looks nice in the dark when it’s all illuminated so of course I would go out that way past the Monseigneur Ladeuzeplein – although I do have to admit that I took this photo on the way home when it was even darker than it was on the way out.

Down the Tiensestraat I went, round past the University Library and into the FNAC to see if they had anything going on in the Sales. There were plenty of reductions of course but there was nothing in there that interested me.

While I was out I went into the shops down the Diestsestraat, the photographs which you have already seen, and then down past the Mechelsestraat ditto.

Mathieu de Layensplein Leuven belgium Eric HallWe’d seen the Mathieu de Layensplein the last time I was here, but I’d taken a photo of it from a completely different angle so I reckoned that I’d take a photo from this point of view.

One of the things that I was doing – I had to admit – was to have a look in the windows of the Travel Agents to see if there were any special offers going on – regular readers of this rubbish will recall that I’d found myself AN IMPROMPTU TRIP TO NORTH AFRICA a couple of years ago by doing just that – but they are all closed for the Duration.

Not that I was planning on going anywhere though even if they had been open. I think that this year is going to be cancelled too as far as voyages go. With today’s casualty list figures, anyone with a British passport is going to be treated like a pariah from now on, I reckon.

stadhuis town hall grote markt leuven belgium Eric HallAnd on the way back I went through the Grote Markt to have a look at the Stadhuis – the Town Hall.

Although it’s quite beautiful light up like this, it’s not a patch on how it has been in the past when it was lit up with all different colours of lights. But as I have said before … “and on many occasions too” – ed … Austerity seems to have been the order of the day with Christmas decorations this year.

Passing through the Monseigneur Ladeuzeplein to see the Library, I headed home to warm myself up. It was freezing cold outside.

Tea was a lovely spicy burger in breadcrumbs with pasta and veg followed by peach laves and strawberry soya dessert.

At some point I managed to find the time to listen to the pile of stuff that was on the dictaphone.

I was in my hotel somewhere when all of a sudden someone burst in, like Robert Vaughan of The Man From Uncle. He said come on, so-and-so (and mentioned a Christian name) we need to sort this out” or something like that. I replied “I’m not (so-and-so)”. He looked at me strangely, basically “don’t be silly” so I showed him some photo ID that I had. Then I went to show him my passport but somehow my passport had become damp in my neck thing that I wear and it came out in about 3 or 4 different parts. But he could see it and look at it and he said something like “trust it to be a Canadian” or “trust it to be one of you Canadians”. Then he picked up the telephone as if to dial someone The phone rang and all of a sudden I looked up and he wasn’t there – he’d gone But the receiver was hanging off a hook and there was a conversation going on, but I couldn’t understand all that much of it. Suddenly the door opened again and 3 people walked in. They were having a look around my room as if it had just been decorated. One of them was a woman whom I knew from the trip around the High Arctic in 2018. They were having a look at my room and in particular the huge mural of the desert that was on one wall which actually looked so life-like. She lay down on the bed, looked at me and said “do you know – one night when we were in a hotel somewhere I was in one room and when there was nothing particular going on in that room I went into the other room and do you know what i saw?”. She looked at me as if she was expecting me to answer but I couldn’t think of what it was she was talking about because I didn’t recall that I was doing anything that I shouldn’t have been doing in one of these rooms in this hotel that we were in, but she was looking at me with that look on her face as if she was expecting some kind of admission or some kind of answer

There were two girls aged about 7 and 9. They had been out somewhere so I’d made tea, a kind-of macaroni cheese thing with meatballs. When they came back I gave them their tea and made a bit of a play about it with the younger one. For dessert I went to fetch some of my special cake but found that it was all gone. In the box instead was some chocolate cake belonging to one of the little girls, a different one so I asked her if the two other girls could have some cake. She told me which ones to get but I couldn’t get them out. She asked me to pass her the box which I did and she worked the correct combination but a pile of little figurine things fell out so she said “you can have those and take them” which was OK but it wasn’t the cakes so I was wondering what I was going to do about the cake that I had promised this girl that she could have and where was I going to get that from.

I was living in France in a village where there was a lot of demolition going on. It was a village around which I’d walked years ago but since I’d been there I’d only visited a bit of it and hadn’t visited the rest so I was surprised when I went to visit the rest and so much of it had been knocked down I was doing some work for the Government that involved rounding up a group of people and a couple of others and we all piled into this big 9-seater huge car type of 1950s American saloon, a red one with a cream top. I made sure all of these people got in and then I had to get into the front. There were already 3 people sitting at the front so I told them to squidge up so I could get in. They grumbled but the fourth person in here was nothing to do with me. We set off and I drove back with these prisoners. When we nearly reached our destination I had to get out check round underneath the car and everything like that. I had a piece of emery cloth and was busy rubbing down the sills and so on to see what it was like and chatting to another one of the guys who was doing something. He was telling me about some new Hurricane cars that had been brought out and was apparently blowing everyone off the streets including him in whatever car he had – yes, he had the same one as this but had talen out the old V8 motor and put in a 9-litre BMW engine in it and this Hurricane had blown him off. I got back into the car but by this time I was the only one sitting in the front and I’d made my report that this was a good solid car and runs quietly but would benefit from a really good rub down of the bodywork and a respray

Some time later I was around with a group of people and there was an old woman who had a collection of vehicles that we had been admiring. We all went back to her house and she had this beautiful old 1930s car parked in her kitchen. I was having a good look around at this. It turned out that she was running some kind of private museum. I asked her if she had had this car valued. She replied that it had been valued in May at $30,000. I said “God it’s worth much more than this”. This woman was a teacher and had a class at a local High School. I was talking to one of the girls who studied there. They’d all done some homework, 6 pages, that was being handed out and this girl had only 5 pages back. I asked her about it and she replied that she had only done 5 but “I hadn’t done them anyway. One of the boys had done them for me”. She added “it was a weak class and I had 30%, that’s what I usually get and the class is pretty weak anyway so it doesn’t make much difference”. There were some boys there fooling around and they were in quite a bit of trouble with different things. This woman was having some kind of party and loads of people had been invited. I overheard these to boys talking about this addiction to painkillers was really hurting them and they were going to have to get some more from somewhere. They thought “this woman is a nurse too so we could raid her medicine cabinet”. I waited to try to get this woman on her own but she was too busy showing the scars of her operation to everyone so in the end I managed to get her to one side and said “by the way let me give you a piece of advice. Keep an eye on your medicine cabinet”. She asked “what do you mean?” and said it out loud so everyone turned round and looked. I said it again quietly and everyone in the crowd basically said “oh no, not them!”. She sailed off inside her house and we could hear a lot of noise and she was yelling at these two boys. She had obviously caught them trying to burgle her medicine cabinet. She sent them home from this party and made them write out an essay for homework as to why this was really a bad thing.

But now I’m off for an early night. I can really have a lie-in tomorrow as my appointment isn’t until 13:30. But I might not even be having that if I don’t have a negative report from the Covid test that I took on Monday.

It would be nice if they would hurry up and let me know.

0

Wednesday 7th September 2016 – WHAT A GOOD DECISION …

… that was, to book into that hotel at the back of the coach station.

I was stark out as soon as I laid down my weary head. We did have an interruption at about 23:45 when a baby started to cry, but that can happen in the best of places and it was a thing of five minutes. And then I needed to make a trip down to the corridor at about 03:00. I finally came to my senses, such as they are, at 04:45, having had a good night’s sleep in this extremely comfortable bed. The night porter’s call at 05:00 was therefore rather superfluous but it was nice to know that it was available and that it works.

But I’ll tell you this – $30-odd less per night than sleeping out at an airport hotel and while the comfort is rather less, I don’t need most of the difference. For the time and money that I save and for the convenience of being in the city centre, if I do ever make it back to Montreal I’ll be coming here, even if it does involve a 500-metre drag of the suitcase. And remember – when I stayed in Lille the other year I dragged it farther than that – and uphill too!

Let’s face it. It’s seen better days, this hotel, but I had a good shower, a really comfortable sleep, and no-one stole my boots. What more do you need?

I was too early for breakfast of course, but that can’t be helped. My bus was more important. I was at the coach station in no time flat and a friendly security guard unlocked the door to the left-luggage room and took my voucher so that I could recover my suitcase and Strawberry Moose, and we took our place in the queue, chatting to a guy who said he was a scouser, although he sounded more Northern Irish to me.

The trip to Sainte-Foy, on the edge of the city of Quebec, took just under three hours and I spent the time in half-asleep mode. After all, it was quite early in the morning. And it’s a good job that I didn’t go to sleep (or is it?) because this bus apparently goes right out to Sept Iles, somewhere else where we’ve been before and where I can catch a train to Labrador.

But when we reached our destination – Sainte Foy, not Sept Iles – a couple of mugs of coffee and a few rounds of toast and jam revived my spirits somewhat, although I’m not sure that you really need to say more than once that you don’t want butter on your toast.

viagra condom machine st foy coach station quebec canada september septembre 2016But what’s this all about? That chewing gum was disgusting – $2:00 for three slices and it tasted of nothing but rubber. As for the viagra however, I tried that once many years ago whilst in the company of the much – maligned Percy Penguin, who didn’t appear in these pages anything like as often as she deserved to back in those days. And I clearly didn’t swallow the viagra quickly enough – I had a stiff neck for a week.

And you all know that the wish that I have about my departure is to go suddenly while in the arms of a nubile nymphet a third of my age. Were I to be lucky enough to find a willing volunteer, the viagra would come in handy in those circumstances. But it would take them three days before they could put the lid on the coffin.

ship of the day pierre laporte bridge st lawrence river quebec canada september septembre 2016Coming over the Pont Pierre Laporte, which we’ve visited before, there was a ship a-sailing … "a-dieseling, you mean" – ed … by, up the river towards Montreal. It’s too far away to see what it is, but it’s the only likely candidate for today’s Ship of the Day and so we’ll include it in here.

We’ll see if we can identify it at a later date when I can access the record of the Port of Montreal … "he couldn’t" – ed.

But on the subject of Pierre Laporte, the whole world is currently up in arms about what they perceive as brown-skinned terrorism, but never forget that Pierre Laporte, a leading Canadian politician, was kidnapped and brutally murdered in cold blood by white-skinned Catholic terrrorists during a major terrorism in Canada – and some of the perpetrators of the crise d’Octobre were given a free passage to Cuba by the craven Canadian Government.

And not only that, some modern-day Quebec politician proposed to erect a plaque in their honour. Yes, and the Canadians complain about brown-skinned terrorists. You couldn’t make this up, could you?

orleans express bus sainte foy riviere du loup canada september septembre 2016But now the bus is in, and it’s two hours from Sainte-Foy to Riviere du Loup.

So feeling a bit more like it after the coffee, I did a pile of paperwork on the laptop and listened to some good music to pass the time. I’m in Traffic mode right now and I had a good listen to Sometimes I Feel So Uninspired from the magnificent On The Road album, because that’s just how I’m feeling right now. And if he can play a lead guitar solo like the last four minutes of that track when he’s feeling do uninspired, whatever could he do if he were to have some inspiration?

holland hurricane express bus edmundston new brunswick canada september septembre 2016By the time I got to Phoe … errr … Riviere du Loup I wasn’t all that far behind where I wanted to be. But we were late and the connecting bus was already in so I had no chance to buy something to eat and drink. Luckily, I still had a packet of the vegan crisps that Alison had bought for me in Belgium and which had survived the voyage across the Atlantic. They didn’t survive the voyage down to Edmunston anyway.

And our Holland Hurricane has internet available and I can actually configure it to work. All I need now is a few people on line to talk to, but as soon as all of my friends see me come on line, they all clear off rather smartish-like.

We had a 15-minute stop at Edmundston (it’s nice to be back in New Brunswick anyway. Home Sweet Home, an hour in front of Quebec time of course) which was plenty of time to visit the gentleman’s rest room and to pick up a coffee. That’s me organised now for the two hour journey that remains.

Much to my – and everyone else’s – surprise, the bus was bang on time to the minute on its arrival at Florenceville. Rachel, my niece, was already there and waiting and so that was ideal. She had a few errands to perform and then it was off to Centreville and the tyre depot. Rachel went on to do some more errands and I came back here with Darren and Amber.

First task was to sort out Strider. He’s been in his little hidey-hole since last October and needed to see the light of day. Even though the battery had had the odd trickle-charge it was a little flaky so that will need to be replaced, and the tyres were down. And not just that, but some creature or other had made a nest with the soundproofing from underneath the bonnet. But it’s good to be back behind the wheel of Strider again – just like old times and as soon as I can resolve this continuing insurance issue we’ll be in business.

Darren and I had quite a chat but I eventually called it a night. It’s far too much for me these days. It’s amazing just how tired you become doing nothing but sitting around all day on a bus.

And it’s nice to see some friendly faces, but a couple of weeks with me will soon take care of all of that.

0