… all of the excitement of yesterday and the effort through which I went, it was nice to be able to go to sleep at the end of the day with the thought that there would be no alarm in the morning.
Not that it worked out like that because firstly I’d forgotten to take the dictaphone with me to bed (it’s the only company that I have these days) so I had to leave the bed to fetch it.
And then I kept on awakening during the night. In fact I had to force myself to stay in bed until 09:00.
In the end there were tons of stuff on the dictaphone that needed transcribing. Having forgotten to take one of these new pills before going to bed I had a very restless night again. Firstly I had 2 taxi-driving jobs lined up so I stepped out of the house to do them. There was another taxi driver waiting on the doorstep so I asked him what was the matter. He pointed to a house down in Southbank Avenue so we must have been in Shavington and he asked how far it was away from here. I replied “no more than 300 yards”. He said that on Christmas Even he was charged £22:00 for a taxi from here to there and he didn’t have that much money on him. He gave them what he had and it was 4p short so the taxi driver had chased him down the street. He was in a real rage about this. I’m not quite sure what he expected me to do about it or anything like that. He was pointing out all of the cars that they had down there and everything. I don’t really know what he was expecting me to do, he was in such a rage.
Later on there was something about these boys riding to horse and rustling all these cattle from these established ranches. One of them who was grabbed and executed was the chief of one of the other bands so they had ordered a few more guns and were expecting all kinds of help from the US Military in order to save them because the family of the guns was surely going to go out and ask for retribution while this feud was going on and they had lost their father because of it.
All these people going on about how the Tory Party promised to make them rich but it had never happened and everyone was just as poor. The guy who was doing the most spouting was the one who was behind some kind of election programme from the previous election that suggested something very different to what he was saying now. I thought that that was typical of politicians. He was teaching people a new song about the Pound in their pocket that was different from the election previously when he was singing a song about it and how all the children had been promised that it was hard work that was going to get them to succeed in the future and not on skiving off at sometime after 15:00 and coming home early. There was an interesting little poem that discussed it that I remembered right up to the time that I picked up the dictaphone but I’ve forgotten it now.
There was outdoor mining that creates clouds and clouds of dust whereas indoor mining inside a mine shaft creates very little dust at all because there are no currents of air so that’s why they considered face masks down where they were mining not to be particularly necessary, and I’d love to know to what all of this relates.
That’s no all of it either. I was also off on my travels camping during the night. I had a Hillman Imp. I pulled up in this field and there were already 2 or 3 tents in there. Some girl who was some kind of – I dunno – organiser told me where to put my tent. She said “don’t worry about that red kind of canvas over there. That’s an old awning off a tent that someone is making their home in it”. I started to put up my little tent but I wasn’t doing a very good job of it. A couple of people came over and asked “is that your tent”? I replied “yes” and we started to have a little chat. 2 girls came over to introduce themselves and handed me a menu – they were running some kind of little cafe on this site. I ordered a mug of coffee and some toast, someone else ordered a mug of coffee and some toast but he said “put loads of relishes on the toasts, everything you’ve got goes on it”. Another girl turned to talk to me and talked in a kind of pigdin- French so I replied in French but I couldn’t think of my words and it was all coming out wrong. She said “don’t you think that we had better talk in English before we get ourselves tied in knots?
So after all of that I had a coffee and then sat down to deal with the music for the next four radio programmes.
Yesterday, I’d chosen the tracks so today I went to combine them in pairs and add the technical parts for the first pair of each programme. It’s necessary to make sure that I have a good opening track, a good 10th track and to combine them in suitable pairs
Each first track of a pair has to merge in with the second at an appropriate point, and it’s rather confusing having to do work out the timings with a pen and paper rather than with my marker and whiteboard.
But to my surprise, I’d finished it all by lunchtime, and that included stopping for toast and coffee for a mid-morning break.
And then, after lunch, to my dismay, I crashed out for half an hour.
A little later on in the afternoon I went for a nice walk down to the Carrefour supermarket. I wanted some more banana drink, some mushrooms for my Sunday pizza and to see if they had any more of the vegan burgers on special offer. Another couple of those for home next week will be nice.
Here’s something past which I walk almost every time that I go to the Carrefour.
It beats me what it’s supposed to be. The building itself is the new student Halls of Residence, the Edouard Remy building (whoever he was when he was at home, if he ever was) with some old student accommodation on the other side of the road with the advert on its gable end.
A for the yellow thing, it’s probably a piece of modern art, but that doesn’t take us any further along the road. There wasn’t a sign to explain exactly what it was, and that’s always a bad sign. According to The Men From The Ministry, any statue that needs an explanation ought to be banned as being indecent.
Around the corner from the Andreas Vesaliusstraat in the Frederik Lintsstraat is some more even modern student accommodation.
A few years ago I remember seeing this in the course of construction but I don’t ever recall taking a photo of the completed building even though it’s been completed for at least a couple of years.
But look at the garden in the front of at. All of these raised beds for cultivation. It brings back many happy records of my old place in Central France where I had raised beds down in my vegetable garden.
But they never looked anything as nice as this lot ever did. Wouldn’t it have been nice if I’d managed to make my vegetable garden look like this.
Around the corner in the Vlamingenstraat I didn’t take the short cut through the Sint Donatus Park but walked down to the end of the street past this beautiful building.
It dates from 1621 so we are told and it was the home of Jasper de Paepe. He was apparently a weaponsmith of the time. But his building here seems to be one of the very few survivors of that particular period in this part of the city.
When I return home I’ll have to do some research into de Paepe. The one that I could find had several accounts on various social networking sites so it probably isn’t the correct one, unless the internet is older than we all think.
Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that the other day we saw all of the roadworks being undertaken at the and of the Naamsestraat.
Today, the roadworks have advanced considerably up the street today and I fell into them almost as soon as I left the Vlamingenstraat It’s looking as if they mean business here, and so I suppose that this will be another Soviet-type “Five Year Plan” like we’ve seen up on the way to the hospital
My route to the Carrefour went through the old Beguignage, one of the most beautiful parts of the city and then I went to do my shopping I bought everything that I had intended to and even remembered the vegan cheese for once I forgot that last time that I was here.
On the way back to my little room I noticed yet another abandoned building closed by the local authorities. Now that I know what I’m looking for, I’m finding them everywhere.
Tea tonight was a burger with pasta and veg followed by apricots for dessert. And then I had a big washing-up session ready for departing tomorrow.
With all of the rail perturbation due to the pandemic, I have a train at a more reasonable hour in the morning. 10:13 it leaves Brussels so I need to be out of here at a couple of hours earlier. I can actually stay in bed until 06:00 if I like.
But I’m not going to get home until 18:00 tomorrow so that’s a big down side of it all. I don’t like that idea very much.
