… of the weekend, I paid for it today, as I expected. Without even my Day of Rest to recover on Friday, I was waiting for everything to catch up with me.
As we expect, it was rather a bad night yet again and trying to haul myself out of bed at 06:00 was not as easy as it might have been.
Anyway, after the medication and checking my mails and messages, I attacked the radio programme that I intended to prepare. And I would have set a new record for completing it too had I not deleted it instead of saving it, so I had to start all over again to join it all up.
There were the usual halts for a coffee and also for breakfast. And for breakfast I had some of the banana and molasses cake that I made a couple of weeks ago. It was sticky and sweet and far too molassy for me but I’ve had worse. Next time that I make it, if there is a next time, I’ll use something else instead of all those molasses.
While i was listening to the finished product I was … errr … relaxing. And I needed it too.
And listening to the dictaphone too. I was working in a factory or office or somewhere. There were 2 of us. It was a pretty miserable kind of place, very run-down and not much going on. The shifts were long. 12-hour shifts were not uncommon at all. We’d have a lot of work to do. I’d been there a while and one day the manager called me over. He talked to me, in French of course, and then took me outside and said that we could speak in English. So we spoke in English and he told me a few things that I can’t remember now. he asked me a few questions and in the end said “don’t discuss anything of this with your workmate”. I said “what happens in this room happens between the two of us”. After he’d finished telling me this confidential stuff I went out back into the other office. It was Josée who was my other workmate. She’d been shopping again and had some clothes-washing liquid, a few bits and pieces and a whole collection of bottles. I asked her what they were and she replied “it’s all laundry stuff. After all, I am on the road”. Then she asked me “what does “on the road mean?”. I replied “for me, it means travelling about, voyaging around. Anyway we were packing our things ready to leave. There was a half-eaten bag of crisps lying around somewhere in the office so I packed it up into my backpack to think that I could eat it on the way home.
There was something else about a teacher at a boarding school who was going to throw a tuck shop party in his room. Apparently it was a normal thing that every now and again a teacher would invite a few of the kids to go along and have a little party and a social gathering in their room but that was all that I remember
There was time for a shower and to set the washing machine on the go before lunch. And the bread that I brought back from Leuven was delicious
After lunch I went for my physiotherapy session – and I went in Caliburn too. I have shopping to do for Christmas and I may as well do it while I’m out this afternoon. I parked Caliburn in the street outside Lidl and walked down the hill for my session.
No tilting platform today. A warm-up on the cross trainer and then a pile of kinetic exercises to keep me out of mischief.
At Lidl and later at LeClerc I spent rather a lot of money but I now have my potatoes, chicory, leeks and brussels sprouts to go with the seitan slices that I brought back from Leuven. There’s nothing like a real Christmas dinner with all of the trimmings and the essential vegetables. I don’t intend to starve myself over the Christmas period.
It was late by the time that I returned – only just enough time to make a nice hot coffee and drink it before I had to think about tea. A nice plate of mixed vegetables with pasta tossed in olive oil, ground black pepper and grated cheese. I bought a pile of grated vegan cheese back from Leuven too.
So I’m off to bed in a moment. It’s early but I’m tired. I’ve had a hard day, a long weekend and a difficult period at Leuven. And tomorrow I’m interviewing for the radio. I’ll catch up with these arrears one day, but I don’t know when it might be.
