{"id":11284,"date":"2018-10-29T07:08:18","date_gmt":"2018-10-29T07:08:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lesguis.com\/wp\/?p=11284"},"modified":"2019-02-28T13:32:46","modified_gmt":"2019-02-28T13:32:46","slug":"sunday-28th-october-2018-and-here-i-am-again","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lesguis.com\/wp\/?p=11284","title":{"rendered":"Sunday 28th October 2018 – AND HERE I AM AGAIN!"},"content":{"rendered":"

Safely shored up in my home from home from home in the Dekenstraat in Leuven. All ready … “I don’t think” – ed<\/em> … for my visit to Castle Anthrax tomorrow, where I hope that Doctors Piglet and Winston will be practising their arts (although, knowing me, I’ll end up with a retired Bulgarian discus-thrower).<\/p>\n

Last night was another night that was later than intended too. But there’s nothing whatever wrong with my body clock because at 05:17 (which is 06:17 in real money) I awoke bolt-upright.<\/p>\n

It goes without saying that I didn’t actually leave my stinking pit at that time though. I did at least wait for the alarms to go off before showing a leg, and then out to the medication as usual.<\/p>\n

While I was waiting for the medication to work I made my butties for the road. It’s a long day of course with plenty of waiting about, usually in places where there isn’t any food or drink. And even if there is, I usually can’t eat it anyway.<\/p>\n

After breakfast I did some tidying up – not much, and it’s the first time that I’ve ever gone away from home and left it in a tip. Due mainly to not having had the energy to clean it up this last week or so.<\/p>\n

As I have said before, I can see myself going slowly downhill and one of the (many) reasons for keeping this blog is to keep a check on my health, my moods and my state of mind and to be able to compare it with entries from a while ago in order to plot the deterioration.<\/p>\n

I definitely think that it was my efforts in the High Arctic that finished me off, but I wouldn’t have it any other way. As Neil Young once famously said, “it’s better to burn out than to fade away”.
\nMy my! Hey hey?<\/a>\"\"<\/p>\n

Having taken the rubbish to the bins and having backed up the laptop, I trudged off my weary way to the station.<\/p>\n

And it was weary too. Everything is in the big rucksack (which now has a broken clip due to an accident in the bedroom just now) and while that has worked in the past, it was a struggle today. But then again, dragging a small suitcase behind me would have been even more of a struggle. I’m just glad that I didn’t have the giant one to bring. I would never have managed with that today.<\/p>\n

\"gec<\/a>Much to my surprise, the train was on time at Granville. I grabbed a coffee from the machine and leapt aboard. I should have had a seating partner – a nice young girl – but the train wasn’t all that full so she toddled off to an empty seat nearby.<\/p>\n

The silence and the emptiness didn’t last long because at Vire we were invaded by a trainload of boy and girl scouts. But they cleared off after a while to another part of the train.<\/p>\n

Never mind the “by the time we got to Woodstock we were half a million strong” – I reckon that we were that many aboard the rain by the time we pulled into Montparnasse. And I’ve no idea why because the school holidays aren’t over yet.
<\/p>\n

Last time that I was here on a Sunday<\/a> the whole place was heaving in total chaos. And it was just the same today. I’ve never seen so many people about on the station.<\/p>\n

And the queues for the tickets for the Metro were enormous. It’s a good job that I still had one left over so I could proceed to the platform directly.<\/p>\n

The Metro was heaving too but luckily I could grab a seat by the door and there I stayed. But I had noticed that carrying my rucksack seemed to be a lot easier than it had been earlier in the day even though there was the same amount of stuff in it.<\/p>\n

The queues for the Metro tickets at the Gare du Nord were much smaller- only 6 people in front of me and two cashiers – so I took advantage by buying another carnet<\/em> of 10, seeing as I had the time.<\/p>\n

A single journey is \u20ac1:70 but a carnet<\/em> of 10 is \u20ac14:90 so it’s a decent saving, and it also means that you don’t have to hand around in these enormous queues all the time.<\/p>\n

\"TGV<\/a>Up in the Gare du Nord it took me ages to find a place to sit and eat my butties. I’d tried outside but it was freezing and there was a bitter wind blowing down the alley between the station and the offices next door.<\/p>\n

On the TGV to Brussels and I slept most of the way. I may as well make the most of the opportunities that come my way.<\/p>\n

We were bang on time in Brussels- 15:47.
<\/p>\n

And the 15:52 to Leuven was bang on time too which meant that I had only just enough time to grab my ticket. I had a very bizarre and garrulous seating companion who told me loads of stuff that I didn’t really want to know, and then he promptly fell asleep.<\/p>\n

I’ve never heard anyone snore as much as he did, but he soon awoke when he realised that he was about to miss his stop at Brussels-Nord. I’ve never seen anyone so big move so quickly. Evidently his bow tie could double up as a propeller if necessary.<\/p>\n

A good stride out from the station brought me to my lodgings where I was immediately recognised by the proprietor. Unfortunately my room is not one of the quieter rooms but it’s still good.<\/p>\n

And unpacking, I discovered that I’d forgotten to bring an ice cube bag with me.<\/p>\n

For tea I went into town to pick up a peng … errr … pizza. Which reminds me – mustn’t forget to buy some more vegan cheese tomorrow.<\/p>\n

Back here and a shower and then an early night with a Bulldog Drummond film. And true to form, I fell asleep after 5 minutes.<\/p>\n

Final word though goes to my friend Clare in the Auvergne. She told me that today they had had the first snow in the Auvergne, and she sent me a photo.<\/p>\n

Last time that they had had snow that early (winter 2012-13) it had snowed until 25th May 2013 – a record.<\/p>\n

Looks as if it’s going to be a long winter.<\/p>\n

0<\/span><\/a><\/div> <\/div>
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Safely shored up in my home from home from home in the Dekenstraat in Leuven. All ready … “I don’t think” – ed … for my visit to Castle Anthrax tomorrow, where I hope that Doctors Piglet and Winston will be practising their arts (although, knowing me, I’ll end up with a retired Bulgarian discus-thrower). […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11953,162,3,7527,7949,8630,4507,1616,8338,7526,8629,8571,3371,1308,7876,1317],"tags":[11954,3878,1673,199,7528,7957,1082,8632,1302,10855,2482,2560,5565,8351,8631,7414,12117,8581,5911,801,5918,1343,1840,1311,7891,1392,1315,5486,320,11572],"class_list":["post-11284","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-1st-snow-2018-19","category-belgium","category-brussels","category-brussels-midi","category-brussels-nord","category-condo-gardens","category-eric-hall-2","category-france","category-gare-du-midi","category-gare-du-nord","category-gare-montparnasse-vaugirard","category-granville","category-leuven","category-paris","category-place-darmes","category-tgv","tag-1st-snow-201819","tag-auvergne","tag-belgium-2","tag-brussels-2","tag-bruxelles-midi","tag-bruxelles-nord","tag-clare-2","tag-condo-gardens","tag-crash-out","tag-dekenstraat","tag-early-start","tag-eric-hall","tag-france","tag-gare-du-midi","tag-gare-du-montparnasse-vaugirard","tag-gare-du-nord","tag-gec-alstom-regiolis","tag-granville","tag-hospital","tag-httpwww-amazon-co-uk","tag-leuven","tag-metro","tag-neil-young","tag-paris-2","tag-place-darmes","tag-railway-station","tag-sncf","tag-tgv","tag-tidying-up","tag-vire"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lesguis.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11284","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lesguis.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lesguis.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lesguis.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lesguis.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11284"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/lesguis.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11284\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11848,"href":"https:\/\/lesguis.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11284\/revisions\/11848"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lesguis.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11284"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lesguis.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11284"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lesguis.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11284"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}