In Mons

Last, final, Goodbye Mons post

2009-07-11T04:04:00.000-07:00

I kept meaning to write my last, goodbye Mons post, and then life got in the way and I kept forgetting, and then I couldn't think of anything worth writing, so just left it.

I am appreciative of my lazy nature now, as I can write this final, last goodbye Mons post.

I've been back in the UK now for three weeks, and I have a job selling insurance over the phone. It's a world away from trotting to the laundrette every other week, and I would not be hard pressed to tell you which lifestyle I preferred. But time ticks inexorably on, and I knew the Mons adventure wouldn't last forever.

My last missive to you documents the happenings of last night. I went out in Canterbury with Alana, and as the night drew to a close we found ourselves meandering towards the Loft, as the DJ there had caught Alana's eye and she wanted another look. Two chaps behind us commented at the speed of our meanderings, and Alana politely asked them why they didn't just overtake - we were walking down a street that could comfortably fit six or seven people walking in a row. One of them said something in response, but what he actually said was lost underneath his bizarre accent.

There is a funny bit Eddie Izzard does, about the bad guys in Bond films having unrecogniseable accents. 'What is your accent?' Eddie's impeccable impression of Bond asks. 'I hev it stuk on shiop demonsraation' says his villain.

If you've seen the sketch to which I refer, you'll understand. If not, I expect that was thoroughly confusing. I apologise. Basically, his accent was all over the place, starting in South Africa, skimming across to India, touching on Spanish and ending up in Abba.

Not unreasonably, Alana and I accused him of making up an accent. As we had previously pretended to be a lesbian couple on our first date to avoid the attentions of an over amourous builder, we weren't judging, we just wanted to know the truth.

'Ay em not mekin thees accent up,' he told us in confusion. 'Whet diu yiu myean?'

'It just sounds made up,' we told him. 'Where are you from?'

'Wheyere diu yiu theenk?' he asked.

Lana guessed South Africa. I went for Dutch, having confused those accents in the past. He said Dutch was close, so I guessed Sweden. Nope, but close. My geography all but exhausted, Alana took the lead, and guessed a host of countries that I've only heard about on Eurovision. Finally, she shrugged her shoulders.

'I dunno. Belgium?'

'Yeeeyes!' he cried gleefully. "Ey em frem Brussels!'

'She lived in Mons!' Alana said, pointing at me.

He looked at me with a bemused expression.

'Why?'

That question is one many people have asked, and I didn't feel like explaining to a drunk Belge dressed as a cowboy. Instead I tried to wow him with my French. He looked even more confused.

'I don't think that means what you think it means," he said. 'Did you mean to ask me whether I sell binbags?'

Don't take your Dragon to the Doudou

2009-06-16T03:04:00.001-07:00

My time in Mons is drawing to a close this weekend, as my papa is coming to pick me up along with all my belongings and taking me back to Blighty. I feel a bit sad that my Belgium adventure is over, but we finished it on a high.

This is adapted from a message I just sent my friend Tim, as I am (as previously mentioned) an inherently lazy person, and copy and paste is my friend.

*

Well, this weekend was fairly insane.

To give you some background, the Doudou Festival has been going in Mons since the 1340s and it still has an incredibly medieval feel to it. We arrived on Sunday for the Lumeçon, which is a reenactment of St George fighting the Dragon. It was supposed to start at 12, so we got there about 11 in a futile attempt to get a good spot.

The Grand Place was packed with people surrounding a roped off circle in the centre. In this circle the 'young men' of Mons were drunkenly wrestling, and anyone daring to enter the circle - or even get too close to it - with a t-shirt on, immediately got it ripped off. Ben did not get too close, and zipped his hoodie up.

The Doudou is a massive event in Mons - everyone goes, and they all look forward to it for about a month. In fact, there's even a saying that amuses Ben at work - 'You don't take sausages to Berlin, so don't take your Dragon to the Doudou', which means widely 'don't take something somewhere that is famed for having lots of that particular something', but more specifically, 'don't take your wife to the Doudou, because there's so many drunk girls you'll be able to get laid anyway'. I didn't notice many drunk girls though, or in fact many girls; it was basically shoulder to shoulder drunk men. Drunk sweaty stinky men. But that's Mons for you!

So anyway, we got a relatively good place near the centre, that is until about quarter to 12, when the number of people in the square doubled and we found ourselves slowly pushed back to the middle of the crowd where we couldn't see anything but the backs of the aforementioned sweaty, stinky men. Then it started to rain - those big fat drops that indicate a proper tipping it down is about to occur.

Ben pointed at the Town Hall, which has a covered archway through to the Town Hall Gardens.

"Let's take shelter under there, before everyone tries to,' he said in my ear.

'But we won't seeeeeee anything,' I wailed.

'We're not gonna see anything here anyway. At least there we'll be dry,' he said, very reasonably, and off we scuttled.

There were a few people there already, so we ended up only just in the shelter. I couldn't see the circle at all, but at least we were dry.

Then something odd started to happen. Lots of policemen came over and started shooing people away from the archway, one stocky guy in particular (see photo), who kept physically throwing himself at anyone who dared to join us under the shelter, yet kept coming back to us and saying something in French that sounded reassuring. Look at him! He almost singlehandedly kept that crowd back! I have no idea why he took to us, but I was glad he did - I saw him almost rip some girl's arm off when she ran out of the crowd to stand next to me.

It turned out that we had managed to stand in the ONLY bit that the public were allowed to stand in, and the procession went right by us, through the archway! So there we were, watching the procession of the dragon and St George, in the dry, whilst the rest of Mons jostled each other for a good look in the rain. It was amazing.

That green pole is actually the Dragon's tail. And that's the only bit of the Dragon I saw. I was a bit envious of Ben who saw the whole thing. Damn my average height for a women stature. I couldn't actually see any of the fight, which was a shame, but I wouldn't have done anyway unless we were right at the front, which was never going to happen.

It was amazing right up to when the procession went past and the public were allowed back to where we were, as I then found myself once again staring at the backs of those sweaty, smelly men. And then, at the end, the procession went back through the archway, only with less organisation, so they basically piled through, squishing Ben and I up against the unforgiving stone of the Town Hall. Ben got humped by a squat little fat man, and some poor kid got pressed against me with his head on a level with my boobies. He didn't look that unhappy though, the little perv.

So all in all it was good, except for the groping at the end. And we had a burger that was tasty at the time but my stomach grumbled for the rest of the day. So don't take your dragon to the Doudou, and whilst you're there, don't eat any of the burgers.

Just when I thought Belgium couldn't get any weirder

2009-06-11T04:36:00.000-07:00

I just went to the shop - the Intermarche rather than Delhaize, because it's a little bit closer and it's all rainy outside.

That was my first mistake.

My second mistake was assuming it would sell minced beef.

It doesn't.

I'll tell you what it does sell though.

Chien Viande.

Yep.

Minced dog.

My third mistake, although this by no means tops the minced dog incident and only goes last due to chronological ordering, is that I stupidly - STUPIDLY - tried to buy only one can of tomato puree. In Intermarche no one does this, apparently. You have to buy two or more. Why? No one knows. Is it on offer? No. Are they sold together, packaged together? No. It's just an adorable quirk.

Lidl all the way.

J'AI NONNE PAS BESOIN!!

2009-06-04T05:49:00.000-07:00

I just bumped into Mrs Busybody after months of managing to avoid her. She's been asking Ben where I am so that she can give me some sac poubelles, he's been saying 'En Angleterre' to put her off.

So when our paths crossed just now, she asked me if I would like a sac poubelle - which I understood, incidently - and although we are running low, I knew that getting a sac poubelle off her would unavoidably mean her working out that I do not reside in room 14, but actually have been living with Ben this past 10 months, so I shook my head no and said 'c'est d'accord' which means, no thanks, I'm ok. Instead of accepting this and walking off she fired more French at me. From what I could gather she was asking if she should pop over now and give me some bin bags. I shook my head again and stumbled through a sentence telling her I'd bought 'beaucoup' in DelHaize (Lies, all lies). She refused to accept this, and told me to wait and she'd bring me some sac poubelles. At which point it would have been great to pull out the phrase my mum taught me, the phrase I had rehearsed over and over again, so much so that it became like a mantra that I repeated when leaving the room in order to keep Mrs Busybody away.

On this instance, this moment where I really really needed to tell her 'I have no need of any more bin bags', could I remember it? Could I heck. I couldn't even remember what it began with, and given that it starts with 'je', as in 'I', shows just how far into my subconscious it had fled.

I ended up shaking my head like a dog shaking a rat and walking backwards. It seemed to occur to her then that I was acting a bit crazy, and she too started to retreat, eyeing me suspiciously. Then, as I gave her a final, desperate, 'c'est d'accord!!' and ran into the apartment block, the phrase jumped out at me, waving its hands and shouting 'TAH DAH! Here I am! Just when you don't need me!' J'ai nonne pas besoin. J'ai nonne pas besoin! J'AI NONNE PAS BESOIN!! Goddamn it. I actually took a step towards the door to yell it at Mrs Busybody's retreating back, but thought better of it.

On the note of scaring people away, when Liam came to stay we all went for a drink in the Irish Bar. Ben and Liam wandered off to get drinks, leaving me on my own where I was approached by an American man, who asked if he could buy me a drink. Thank goodness I wasn't on the pull, as for some reason I thought it would be completely appropriate banter to tell him "No thank you, I don't drink anymore... because when I do I go crazy and knife people." I was just joking (OBVIOUSLY) but he made a fairly rapid exit. I have no idea why i said it. Belgium is getting to me.

Also, when I mentioned the Brandenburg Gate here, I completely forgot to mention Liam. I don't knwo why, because I actually set out to credit him when I started to write, then got distracted by wikipedia (story of my life). It was Liam who told me that the Brandenburg Gate was important; that was why I looked on wiki, just to get the details right. Liam gave a very funny account of it too, as he told me how in 1806 Napoleon took a fancy to the four horsed chariot on top and took it back to France, only for the Prussian soldiers to take it back in 1814.

Annoyingly, I did actually have a photo of it, but deleted it to make room for more pictures as I didn't realise what it was. Pay attention in history lessons, kids, or else in 10 years time your inattention will come back and bite you on the bum.

Celine the Smoker

2009-05-29T07:08:00.000-07:00

I just wandered into the bathroom and discovered it smells in there - not the sort of smell you'd usually associate with a bathroom, before you ask, but of cigarettes.

Obviously Celine has been having a bit of a smoko in her down time from bothering me whilst I wash. I have images of her hastily stubbing it out as I approach, clearing her throat in preparation of breaking into glorious song, and then looking annoyed when I leave again after grabbing the nail clippers from the bathroom cabinet.

My Heart Will Go On Part Deux

2009-05-27T03:37:00.000-07:00

I just had a shower (see? I do wash) and after a while I became aware of music. Well, 'music'. Namely Celine Dion, and My Heart Will Go On, the theme to everyone's secret favourite film. I wondered vaguely where it was coming from, and then (shower being finished) stepped out into the bathroom and once appropriately towel-clad, into the bedroom (slashkitchenslashstudyslashsittingroomslashguestroomslashdrawingroomslashpantryslashetc).

The music stopped.

I stepped back into the bathroom.

...love can touch us one tiiiiiime, and laaaaast foooooor, a liiiiife-...

Back in to the bedroom (slashkitchen...).

Silence.

Bathroom

...thaaaaat is how I know you, go onnnnnnnn...

There is only one logical conclusion. Celine Dion is haunting our shower cubicle. Which means she saw me nudey! How embarrassing.

I'm watching you...

2009-05-26T07:12:00.000-07:00

I noticed this some time ago, but today it's really freaking me out.

Here is the view from our window (I know, attractive)

Here is the window over the road in close up.

Closer...

Behold! Creepy, huh?

On the note of the window we had a man in to fix ours the other day. It's one of those that either has a small crack at the top or the whole thing swings inwards. Of course, ours is broken so that it will only open one way, the rubbish tiny crack at the top way. As the room is currently the temperature of the lower echelons of hell, we hoped he would fix the freaking window.

He didn't, on the basis that if he did, it would present a safety hazard - namely, we might jump out.

He wouldn't fix the window because he seriously thought that if he did, we might consider it a suitable alternative to taking the stairs.

But look at the fuzzzzeeeee!

2009-05-24T05:19:00.001-07:00

You might remember, some time ago, a few very excited posts about the black swans in the local park. Together they created an almighty nest of epic proportions and laid six eggs. I was very excited, then one day we went to see them and there were no eggs, and no babies.

At first we hoped that the cygnets were under the parents' wings, but after a few more visits it was clear that it was impossible for six baby swans to be hidden for that long, and we sadly accepted the fact that something had gone wrong and we wouldn't be seeing any baby swans in the near future.

Yesterday we strolled down to the park with some day old baguette, just for something to do. The swans were nowhere to be seen in the main pond, so we wandered round to the secondary pond.

There they were, as elegant and graceful as ever, only there was ... something else.

Something small and grey and fuzzy.

Suspicious and suspiciouser

2009-05-19T11:28:00.000-07:00

In England I never shopped in Lidl. Not out of snobbishness, but because the nearest Lidl is far away up a hill in Hawkinge and Sainsburys, Tescos and their ilk are much closer.

But Lidl not only sells 13 kiwis for 0,99 Euros (7p a kiwi, people) it also gives away free extras that you don't expect.

I purchased a bag of spinach earlier today to go in a salad. After slaving away over a cold fridge for the best part of half an hour to create an awesome dinner I slid Ben's plate in front of him. Whilst I was turned away he popped something off the plate into his mouth and then made this noise: "Bleurrgrrrrrhhh!" and scooched his chair back from the table in an attempt to distance himself from whatever had so disgusted him.

"What?" I asked, scanning the plate for un-Ben friendly foods - he'd already reminded me not to put spring onions on his plate, had I forgotten? But no, everything on there was usually to his taste. To check I ate a few bits and pieces off his plate (perhaps more than strictly necessary) but it all tasted a-ok.

"It was lemony," he said, screwing his nose up.

We continued our dinner with no further unexpected flavours until I hit upon something stalky and decidedly un-spinachy.

I am not much of a botanist, but I think it was a nettle.

Bleurgh indeed. But at least we discovered the whereabouts of villainous salad infiltrator, right?

Then Ben nibbled a leaf, pulled a face and said 'It isn't whatever I had in mine."

Which means that we did not recieve one unasked for mysterious extra in our spinach, but two.

The generosity of Lidl knows no bounds.

Eurovision

2009-05-18T05:09:00.000-07:00

I meant to post about this when it actually aired on TV, but I was on the sofa and the laptop on the other side of the room and it was just tooooooo farrrrrr away. My memory has been jogged by the discovery of another blog, written by an Aussie currently living in Belge, so here is Ben and my take on it.

I haven't actually watched Eurovision since the year we won, with a horrific song I would rather not name in case it gets stuck in my head... too late, it's there. Damn. Anyway, this year Ben and I managed to catch it on TV whilst flicking through the channels, so we gave it a bit of a watch. When France came on, however, we decided she had too much of a funny face, and Ben went back to channel hopping, a hobby he enjoys and drives me mad. On a channel that shows almost entirely MGM movies we discovered 'Welcome to Woop Woop', a film set in a remote part of Australia that actually makes the Eurovision song contest seem normal in comparison. I do not recommend it; the best bit about it is the title. We watched it anyway, and flicked back over to Eurovision once the titles had rolled, just in time to catch Jade, England's entry. We watched her (and her creepy little hobbit sidekick) on Jonathan Ross and I thought she was quite sweet, so I was rooting for her.

One thing both Ben and I noticed yet has not be remarked upon in the articles I've read reviewing her performance was the fact that whilst walking down the stairs she managed to bop one of the violinists. How has this been glossed over?! She WALKED INTO one of the musicians! Surely that's worth more of a mention than Dita Von Teese's frankly lack lustre and faintly fluttery 'performance' in Germany's entry. Although not as worth a mention as one act that featured 'half naked rockin' out Romans', as Ben eloquantly put it.

Graham Norton was particularly amusing - not so much with his remarks about each entry, but his comment about the segment that played before each act; a strange looking girl with oddly highlighted hair blowing about in a very pop starlet fashion. As she appeared for the 24th time Graham paused halfway through what he was saying and said with some mild irratation, 'I'm getting really bored of her hair.'

That's why I like Graham Norton.

Ich bin ein Berliner!

2009-05-15T06:27:00.000-07:00

Germany was not a country I was interested in going to. So when Ben suggested going to Berlin for a few days before going to Hamburg to celebrate his friend Liam's 21st I agreed with no particular enthusiasm.

Then a few days before we left I started to get a bit excited. As I might have mentioned, my interest in history - especially the two world wars - is increasing as I age, and I decided I would like to see the Holocaust Memorial and the Berlin Wall.

So I was in a good mood when we arrived in Germany, and the few days we spent there were fantastic.

Ben got his head round the U-Bahn train stations quickly and we ended up filling our days up to the brim with excursions and adventures.

But I'll try to start from the beginning.

The hotel was really nice - although, like the rest of Berlin, they seemed to have found the look they wanted to go with back in the 70s and decided to stick with it. I recommend it, if you go - the Agon Aldea Hotel - clean and comfy and pleasant.

From there we visited the Potzdamer Platz, where we grabbed some interesting looking pastries for our first breakfast. Ben did ok, but I managed to chose something that appeared to basically be cherry crumble on a doughnut. Awesome? Yes; healthy breakfast? Not so much.

On Liam's recommendation we opted to spend one day taking a bus tour around the city. We though this was a good idea as we could hop on and off, and we chose a rainy day to go so that we wouldn't have to trudge around too much outside.

Unfortunately, like the hotel, the bus we ended up on seemed to have been made in the 70s and not updated since.

We hopped on and attempted to sit downstairs, but the driver stopped us with some expressive yet gutteral grunts and jerked his thumb up the stairs. The meaning was clear; get up to the top deck or I might murder you.

We acquiesed to his request.

Upstairs the canvas roof of the bus that peels back on sunny days was loosely strapped down. The important word in that sentence is loosely, as everytime there was a particularly enthusiastic gust of wind it flapped up, allowing all the rain that had collected on it and the rain still falling to drop squarely on my head. Soon there was a mini tide flowing up and down the aisle and we gave up on trying to hear the recorded guide through the tinny headphones and started concentrating on staying dry.

This is not usually what one expects to concern oneself with on a bus tour.

Luckily we had actually managed to find most of the important things on our own anyway; though my appalling lack of knowledge on certain subjects meant that I didn't quite grasp the historical relevance of the Brandenburg Gate until it was explained to be later, and just thought it was a nice looking monument. Wikipedia tells me pitingly "It is considered one of Europe's most famous landmarks"; thanks Wikipedia, I felt silly enough already. You didn't have to rub it in, you know-it-all online encyclopedia smartass.

The Holocaust Memorial was just round the corner, and at least I knew more about that then the American blog writer my friend Tim just told me about, who refers to it as "some sort of Jewish memorial. You could climb on all the blocks like a giant game of Q-Bert!"

Although Ben did quite enjoy playing hide and seek whilst I was trying to be melancholy and pensive.

We were sad to leave our hotel room but the train ride to Hamburg made up for it - they gave us free muffins, orange juice, and then a little chocolate in a box for no apparent reason.

Liam seemed to get the better deal of this year in industry thing - rather than living in a little room with an interfering busybody upstairs and a drunk man downstairs, he lives in a huge seven bedroom house with one other person, surrounded by beautiful countryside. If that isn't bad enough, they have two washing machines and a dishwasher. I shook my fist at that, I can tell you.

We spent a day in Hamburg, where we accidentally happened upon the celebrations for the 321st anniversary of the harbour. I would have liked to have seen more of Hamburg than we did, but my wishes were granted when Ben and I rocked up to the airport check in on Sunday and were told we'd booked a flight for Monday.

"Do you want to go back to the hotel in Berlin?" Ben asked ruefully. "We could say 'Please let us stay, we used to have a reservation, it was for last week, but can we stay anyway?'"

We never found out if that plan would have worked, as a quick visit to the internet found us an awesome hotel that Ben only picked because they offered free bathrobes and slippers.

"Slippers! Slippers, Amanda, slippers!" he cried gleefully, his little face lighting up.

Who could say no to that?

Kersmash!

2009-04-29T12:49:00.000-07:00

I bemoaned the driving standards in Belge back in October and today we were given another example of it.

We were sitting on the sofa; Ben playing some Star Wars game on the Playstation, and me as ever on my beloved laptop. There was a sudden noise outside and Ben, being intrinsically nosy got up to have a look.

"Someone's crashed their car outside!" he told me excitedly.

I got up to look, expecting to see a car with a bit of a ding. Instead we saw a car right up on the pavement with the post for the bus stop embedded in the front of the car.

The bus stop I was talking about last night, in case you were wondering.

Everyone came out of their houses to have a look and a chat, people stopped their cars; it was a real social event for them. The driver got out after a bit, so don't worry about him, in case you were.

We couldn't work out what happened, until one of the people busily milling round pointed out what we assume was the car's trajectory. It seemed to have swerved off the road onto the pavement on the other side of our apartment block and just carried on going until it was car-stopped by a bus-stop. As Ben pointed out, we never heard brakes; just the kersmash. So we really have no idea what happened, but one important detail stands out.

It took out the water pipe.

The water pipe is gone.

We can sleep again.

It was a car sent from Heaven.

GickBling

2009-04-28T13:01:00.000-07:00

My friend Laura, knowing my interest* in cockroaches, has let me in on an almost unbelievable fashion accessory - so almost unbelievable that even after checking various sources that back up her claims, I am still oscillating wildly between belief and disbelief like a child asked to choose between its parents.

Cockroach Jewellery

Cockroaches that live on a small chain and are bedecked in various bling. The ultimate accessory? Lord, I hope not.

Behold!

Gick. Sparkly gick, but gick all the same. With extra iiiiii for emphasis. Giiiiiick.

I would like to point out that our cockroaches were about twenty times smaller than the pimped out dude in the picture and in comparison, relatively cute.

*for 'interest', read absolute horror, detestation and occasional pity and remorse derived from impaling one on a fork.

In other news, Ben and I were woken up last night at around 1am by the man changing the posters in the bus stop. He has to do this, apparently, in the dead of night with the orange flashing lights on the van going overdrive.

As though that isn't annoying enough, another van promptly pulled up behind with equally annoying and bright flashing lights, another man got out, and (from what I could gather, peering through our blinds and not understanding French) they had an argument about whose turn it was to replace the poster.

I got back into bed shaking my head at the absurdity as Ben said from his pillow,

"Always the way, isn't it? You wait for ages for them to change the posters in the bus-stop, and then two come along at once."

You can also see, in the bottom left hand corner of the two van picture a long pipe running into a drain.

This pipe is currently the bane of our nights. For some reason, we know not why, this pipe is extracting water from the building site next door. You know, the one that's building over an Ancient Belgian Burial Ground. It used to gush out onto the pavement and flow down to the drain, which whilst loud was actually relatively pleasant; it sounded a bit like we were next to a beach.

This was not good enough for the Belgies, however. They decided that the noise was not quite loud enough to well and truly keep us up, so they installed a second pipe that takes the water from the first pipe directly down the drain. But they had to bend it to get it to do that, so the water now builds up behind the bend and at irregular intervals when there is enough pressure the water whooshes out. It sounds a bit like an elephant taking a drink and then being startled by another elephant who is also taking a drink.

I was much more comfortable drifting off to sleep by imagining myself by the sea than I am with the idea of sleeping my some thirsty pachyderms, I can tell you.

How was Nice? Was it - DON'T SAY IT

2009-04-27T10:35:00.000-07:00

I asked Ben what I should blog about tonight, and he did the cheeky monkey mechanic face again and said "have you talked about Nice?"

I haven't yet, I told him. What should I say about it?

"We went there?" he replied helpfully.

Ta, Ben. I bless the day that I picked you to be my muse.

So here goes. We have just (last Friday, actually, but I've only now got round to writing about it. You know how it is, Hotmail to de-junk, Facebook to check, Lolcats to lol at; I'm a busy lady) returned from the South of France. Nice, to be exact, on the French Rivieria, and it was lovely, pleasant, interesting and fun. All the words that your teacher in primary school told you to use when describing something 'not bad' instead of the awful 'n' word. You know what word I mean. Yes, that word. If I had a penny for everyone who has made a Nice joke, I would have... at least a quid. In fact I might go round and demand a penny from everyone who subjected me yet another Nice pun; every little helps, and Nice isn't the cheapest holiday resort on the map.

I wanted [Ben] to buy a souvenir item of clothing, a tradition I picked up in Paris a year or two ago. It's really just an excuse to buy clothes, but I've managed to grab a top in Pisa and one in Mons since. Ok, so Mons isn't that impressive since I actually live here, but still. However, the cheapest pieces in Nice were in the bargain bins full of clothes even a Peacocks aficionado would turn their noses up at, and the price was never lower than 20 euros. 20 euros! For a top I could make with my eyes closed and one hand tied behind my back!* So with a heavy heart I returned from Nice clothes-less, apart from the clothes I was wearing and those in my bag, which don't count.

Prior to jetting off to Nice we spent a week at home. It was really good to catch up with my friends and fambly; I really miss home when I'm back in Mons, but I'm aware that people only make quite such an effort to see me because at the moment I play a cameo role in their lives, that it won't be quite the same when I'm a series regular.

Once again I just turned to Ben to offer some insight into what events from our brief home visit were worthy of mentioning.

"We had chinese food on Saturday ... and indian food with Dave and Kaylee ... and a roast dinner at Weatherspoons," he recounted thoughtfully.

To say Ben likes his food is a bit of an understatement. If I didn't know how far he has to ride to work and back everyday and if I didn't essentially just sit on the sofa all day I would really resent his slimness.

*This is a slight** mistruth ***for emphasis. I think it worked.

** For 'slight', read 'substantial'.

*** For 'mistruth', read 'lie'.

Petsitting and Ostriches

2009-04-03T12:35:00.000-07:00

Last night Ben asked what I would do third if I somehow came into possession of a kazillion dollars (a kazillion is somewhere between a billion and a majillion, we have decided). I thought about it long and hard, and decided that the third thing I would do, after going on a crazy shopping spree and bestowing lavish amounts of cash on my nearest and dearest, would be to build an orphanage in Africa to protect the witch children (children who are villified by religious 'pillars of the community' - ie evil, evil people. It's awful - google it, you'll be horrified). I waxed lyrical about what I would do, sinking wells and setting up schools with massive security fences to keep out the bad guys. After I finished Ben was quiet.

"Why, what would you do?" I asked.

"I'd have a wee," he replied.

"...What?" I asked, wondering if I'd misheard.

"Well, after I ran round going 'WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO" and then going and buying loads of stuff, I'd probably need a wee."

Ben is very practical like that.

In other news, it has come to my attention (on this blog I am omnipotent. More or less) that someone stumbled upon this blog via Google, with the search term 'Pet sitting in Mons'. There have been funnier terms that have landed Googlers here, like 'Boobies in Mons' and 'Woosterisms', but I'm mentioning this one because I would very much like to petsit. If you happen to refind this blog, petsittee anonymous, look no further. I will petsit; I have plenty of experience from a small colony of rabbits and guinea pigs we had in the back garden when I was growing up, my demanding, grumpy dog back in Blighty, and from looking after Ben.

Speaking of Ben, I just asked him what else has happened that's worth mentioning. He looked up to the ceilings and blew his cheeks out expressively, looking a cross between a naughty monkey and a mechanic who is about to tell you your car is going to cost more than he originally anticipated.

"We ate ostrich the other day," he pointed out, after some thought.

He's right. We did. Traditional Belgium cuisine, all the way.

Incidently, petsittee anonymous, if your pet is an ostrich, I promise not to eat it.

Whoops

2009-03-28T05:05:00.000-07:00

We just scuttled back dripping after stepping outside in bright sunshine. By the time we reached the end of the road it was hailing and blowing up a storm, and once our brolly flipped itself inside out we thought it might be best to turn around and go home. We got in and shook ourselves... and outside the rain stopped and the sun came out.

"It's my fault" I told Ben gloomily.

"Why?" he asked. "We took the brolly; this shouldn't have happened."

He hasn't read my last post yet, but when he does, he'll blame me too. I laughed in the face of Sod and he exacted a revenge most soggy.

Sod and his Law

2009-03-27T08:06:00.000-07:00

I'm a great believer in Sod's Law (or Murphy's Law, as my mum insists on calling it and tries to insist on me calling it - sorry Mum, Murphy's Law makes no sense; I mean, who is this Murphy? What kind of a guy is he (or she, of course) to go round trying to spanner the works and what authority does he has over the fickle ways of Fate anyway? At least you know where you are with Sod). My belief thusly caused me to be in two minds about even posting this, but when I mentioned it to Alana she made me laugh, so I thought what the heck.

I went to the laundrette today (yes, another laundrette post. Are you surprised? Mons really is that boring). I went to see the swans on the way - there is no trace of the cygnets whatever. The eggs are gone, but there aren't any fuzzy babies. We thought for a while maybe they were hiding under their parents wings, but today I had a good look and I really don't think they are. Tis very sad. Anyway, as I was leaving it was very bright, and I thought, shall I take my sunglasses? Then I thought, better not, Sod's Law and all that. In fact, I thought to myself, I'll take my brolly and a heavy coat, then it'll be gorgeous weather.

Then of course as I was leaving I forgot both the brolly and the coat, and left with only a jumper on. The weather was pleasant though, and so nice that when I got to the swans I took my jumper off.

Upon arriving at the laundrette the heavens opened - with hail stones, no less! Tch, I thought gloomily. It's my fault, that is, for forgetting my brolly. At least I've got my jumper... where is my jumper?

In the wash, of course.

So I sat and watched as the rain fell outside and people rushed by. My wash finished and I spent all the change I had on dryer tokens. At the end everything was dry - except for one item of clothing.

My jumper.

I sighed heavily, dreading the walk home.

Then as I stepped outside I realised the rain had stopped, and the clouds were dispersing, and the sun was shining. It carried on shining until I stepped through the door of the room, when suddenly it got very dark and started to rain again.

This led me to wonder - had I accidently pleased Sod somewhere along the line; so much so that he had decided to exempt me from his tyrannic Law? If so, what had I done, and could I keep doing it?

I mentioned it in an email to Alana, and she thought about it for a minute before replying wisely.

"Maybe it was just that numbers were working in your favour and he could upset more people by doing it that way round. In which case, its luck you need to be worrying about appeasing."

It will be the first time that numbers have ever worked in my favour, but I am not complaining. Now I just need to work out how I've been appeasing luck.

My Heart Will Go On

2009-03-15T14:41:00.000-07:00

No posts recently because I have been roadtripping across the universe (England) with Sara and as might be expected internet access was few and far between.

We arrived at our penultimate destination at our uncle's house in Oakham with Nana in tow and breathed a sigh of relief as we hooked up our laptops to their wireless.

I brought with me a recent purchase - the special edition of Titanic on DVD. I don't much like girlie films; Pretty Woman, Dirty Dancing, Bridget Jones I have no time for, but Titanic is my weakness. I saw it four times at our local sticky floored cinema (12 hours of my life I'll never see again) and I generally start crying half way through, which means I have to have a large glass of water nearby in order to stay hydrated.

This special edition is special as it has an ALTERNATE ENDING - 9 minutes worth, no less. Auntie Di is, like Sara and I, a self confessed Titanic fan, so we fired it up. It was rubbish. Jack still died, the boat still sank; rubbish. They just had a party on the boat in the present day (who watches it for the present day bits, honestly) and had an argument with old Rose when she insists (stupidly) on throwing the diamond into the sea because of some trite faux-philosophical nonsense "The real treasure is our day to day moments, blah blah etc"

But then it went back to the proper ending, where old Rose dies and goes back to the boat. To my horror and embarrassment my eyes welled up in a Pavlovian response, even though we hadn't watched the film itself. Then Auntie Di turned to me with a sheepish expression and shiny eyes, and Sara shouted "You're both crying too!" which made me feel a bit better. Soppiness loves company.

Auntie Di made me giggle, as we grumbled about how our respective other halves probably would push us off the wardrobe door, or at least say "Move up you fat cow, it's freezing in here" (sorry Ben, you know it's true) and she leaned back in her chair to call to Uncle Mark, pottering around the kitchen, tidying away.

"Sweetie? If we were floating around in the icy waters of the Arctic Ocean, would you say 'Don't worry love, I'm toastie warm down here, you stay comfy up there'? Sweetie? What would you say?"

There was a brief pause whilst Uncle Mark considered the implications.

"I always look out for you," he said.

Which was very sweet, but did not actually answer the question.

Have I stumbled into a low budget horror movie?

2009-02-26T05:41:00.000-08:00

There is a small child standing outside my window, and I swear, I swear she is calling my name over and over again. Eerily.

I am concerned because they are building something next door and you hear about ghosts turning up if people build on burial grounds- what if Native Belgium Burial Grounds are actually worse than their American counterparts?! It could happen - and the small child ghost outside might just be a bit keen to get things started, so is practising on freaking out me.

I was supposed to be going to the laundrette today, but the ghost child combined with Mrs Busybody enthusiastically cleaning the stairs means another day inside.

Ah well, I'll just sit here and eat some more oreos. Nyem nyem nyem.

And all

2009-02-25T12:26:00.001-08:00

Ben just found a link for the trailer of the variety show we watched and posted about a week of two ago - you know, the one with the, erm, hmmm. The you-know-whats... The one with the boobies!

Here it is - boobies and all

Prepare to taste the kiss of vengance!

2009-02-24T13:55:00.000-08:00

We have been hesitant to mention the current cockroach situation in case it attracts the attention of that fickle deity known as Fate, but it seems the exterminators we had in a month or two back have actually achieved what they set out to do and exterminated that which they set out to extermine. To wit, we have not seen a single cocky since the one I skewered with a fork.

So for those of you who miss the regular cockroach updates (you know who you are), I present an installation of my new favourite comic, Beaver and Steve.

Behold!

In other news, it is of course pancake day! We made (I made, Ben watched and made 'helpful' comments throughout) a ton of pancakes somehow - the batter just would not run out. Most of them are still int fridge, I suspect we'll be making our way through them for the next few weeks. Do pancakes go off?

And it's Ben's lovely mama's birfdee today, so Happy Birthday Jeanneke! xxx

Swan Watch 2009

2009-02-22T07:07:00.000-08:00

We hadn't been to feed the ducks for a while so we thought that we'd have a wander on over there today and see what's what. Heading for the bridge we usually stand on to throw food off (I like standing up there because they feel like my duck-minions) I expressed some concern, as only one of the black swans could be seen, and usually they're always together. The loner swan hurried over to us so we threw it some bread and I asked it where its other half was, but it didn't answer, because it's a swan. They can't talk.

I was really worried that a fox had made off with the other one, but Ben shook his head and said a swan would make short work of a fox, and just because they mate for life, it doesn't mean the other swan sometimes doesn't sometimes just enjoy time on his own; perhaps he was just off having a beer with his mates, they didn't need to be together ALL the time. I think there might have been some subtext there, so its probably a good job I'm going home for three weeks next Saturday.

I fed the poor lonely swan half the bread and we made our way round to the other side of the pond, just to see if the other one was hiding somewhere.

And it was - sat happily on six giant eggs, surrounded by bread crumbs, which we added to. We thought it was the lady swan at first, until the other one swam over to enquire exactly what we were doing quite so close to its next and we saw they were quite different in size.

(That is a freaky statue of what appears to be a drowned woman just to the bottom left of the picture. The Belgians truely are barking - "Alors, we've got this duck pond that will be popular with small children - we can either have a statue of a happy mermaid combing her hair, or we can have this statue of a naked dead woman with a crying child... shall we vote on it?")

The lady swan waddled up to the gentleman swan, who gave her a sort of 'it's about time you got back here' look; the effect of which was lost on her, probably because of the bread crumbs he had round his beak. After about half an hour of drying her tummy they decided to swap, and he began sorting out the nest, picking up bits of leaf from there and putting it over here, and tugging that bit of twig just so, for reasons he declined to let us in on.

Then some geese turned up and looked at us menacingly so we left. Not because of the geese, you understand; it was just a bit cold and we'd run out of bread. We definitely were not intimidated by birds. Ben did not say 'Amanda! Watch out - they're the mean ones!'.

The Mighty Boost

2009-02-18T07:25:00.000-08:00

The blog has been bereft of updates for a while because we have been Mons bound and not much really happens in Mons.

Apart from Ben got sick with some sort of evil flu-ey thing that failed to infect me (I begin to suspect I am immortal as Ben has as yet caught everything going and I remain untouched TOUCHWOODTOUCHWOODTOUCHWOOD) last week and we had to call a doctor out. He was part man part tortoise, and I wanted to keep him and feed him lettuce. But Ben wouldn't let me - he never lets me do ANYTHING I want to do.

He's better now, by the way, in case you were worried. He still has a cough but I think its for attention more than anything.

We had a jolly nice Valentine's Day; my sister sent me some knickers in the post (pants post is ossum post) and Ben made sushi for me. It was awesome, but there was a lot of it. A lot. I had sushi every day for lunch until Monday, after which I just couldn't stomach any more raw tuna. There comes a time where raw tuna stops being novel and starts being suspiciously squishy and I discovered that time just before the tuna discovered the binbag (sac poubelle).

On the subject of sac poubelle I got a brilliant letter and gift from my friend Rach. She sent me a Boost; it got battered but it survived - until I ate it, obviously. Curiously the letter was already opened, possibly by our nosy postman. If I had been him I woulda stolen the Boost as they are a most wonderful confectionary but he clearly didn't know what it was and put it back. They just don't have decent chocolate bars here. Belgium, land of chocolate - pish. Rach also sent a great letter where she recommended a phrase to use next time Mrs Busybody tried to push a bin bag onto me: 'Tu sais où tu peux te le mettre!' which means something rude. I memorised it just in case, but I don't think I'll ever have the guts to say it. Maybe when we move out, though she probably won't be proferring bin bags and the sentiment will be lost.

I'm not going to lie to you. This post is mostly about boobies.

2009-02-07T11:38:00.000-08:00

My posts are like buses. You wait for ages, blah blah blah, you know the metaphor.

I had to post again on the heels of the dog post for two reasons. 1) The dog post was a bit lame, and 2) Ben put the TV on and turned to a random channel.

This is not usually a newsworthy turn of events as Ben does that a lot. But he managed to find a show that promises to be awesome. It's called LE PLUS GRAND CABARET DU MONDE.

As Ben turned away I saw something that I didn't see much of on British television screens, but see more and more over here.

Boobies.

"Ben! Look!" I cried, pointing at the television. "Boobies!"

From what we can guess it seems to be a French talent show. Only the cabaret dancers have their boobies out. Casually, as though it's no big deal. We can't work out why they should be so clothingly challenged, as most of the audience is made up of middle aged, middle class women. So either they're there for the few men, or they just don't have the same attitude as we do to boobies. And good for them! Although there are little children in the audience. That's a bit weird.

So, if we were to forget the boobies for a moment - is the show something like 'Britain's Got Talent'?

No. No, it isn't. If any one of these acts rocked up in front of the Britain's Got 'Talent' judges, they would just cancel the whole competition there and then, and bring them on every Saturday night instead. And the ratings would go through the roof.

First off was a trampoline act.

"This show ticks both my boxes for good TV!" Ben crowed happily. "Trampolines and boobies!"

It was awesome. The only youtube vid I could find is a bit grainy, but impressive nonetheless (no boobies here, I'm afraid).

The next was a cheeky magician from whose fingers cascaded card after card after card after card after card - he ended up standing on a little mound of cards, and still produced more. Ben said "I bet the guy who sweeps the stage gets annoyed". I think he (the magician, not Ben, though sometimes I wonder) must have been some kind of X-Men mutant, as it just defied all laws of God and man to be able to conceal that many cards up his normal sized sleeves.

Then a girl who seemed to be a human slinky.

A small group who catapulted themselves off a seesaw - whilst wearing stilts.

A Japanese couple performed a beautiful, romantic, elegant dance. On unicycles.

Male acrobats with rippling muscles who performed to We Will Rock You by Queen. Ben was not as impressed with this as he had been by the boobies. Although that might have been because their amazing feats of strength were offset by girly little dances complete with flourishes and little head wiggles. "I doubt anyone calls them gay though," Ben mused. "Not to their faces."

A woman who danced in what appeared to be a cuboid sprinkler system. Ben perked up here.

I could go on.

Britain apparently doesn't have talent because France has it all. Will we ever have a show like this en Angleterre?

Probably not. As Ben said, "We have stricter policies on boobies before nine. And after nine as well."

le woof le woof

2009-02-07T07:42:00.001-08:00

We were looking at pictures of dog breeds yesterday in order to decide what kind of dog we're getting when we're grown up - I've wanted a shih tzu my whole life, before Paris Hilton and her ilk started carrying them around in handbags - look at his little face! Teddy bear dog! But Ben put his foot down, refusing blankly to let it share a house with him. I said he could sleep in the garden. He ignored that.

So we've decided, more or less, on a border collie or a beagle. They look suitably manly and not stupid, apparently. But the point of this post was to show you something we found amusing.

<---------- English Bulldog . . . . . . . French Bulldog ------------>

I imagine one says 'WAUGH! WAUGH!" and the other says 'Le woof! Le woof!'

It's fun to laugh at the French.

I also particularly like the way these two little guys look like they're steadfastly ignoring each other. I didn't mean that to happen, but sometimes things just fall into place.

On another note, I didn't think there was anything more boring than watching sport on TV. It turns out there is one thing more boring - watching sport on French TV.

Oi'm a very Oirish chappie

2009-02-01T04:45:00.000-08:00

We're watching tennis this morning. Ben got up early to watch it but to his dismay couldn't find it on any of the usual channels.

"But it's the final!" he wailed. "Why would Belgium TV put on every single match except for the men's final?!"

It's winter sports season so after flicking through hundreds of channels featuring skiing, snow boarding and sledging he found it eventually on Belgium's equivalent to Cartoon Network.

Until about half way through the match (a very exciting one - Federer vs Nadal) when the channel decided it had had enough of tennis and went over to the news. Ben was washing up at the time and threw himself across the room at the remote, feverishly hitting all the buttons in an attempt to find it somewhere else.

He did, and I'm glad because otherwise he would be sulking all day. I don't really watch tennis myself, but Ben keeps me up to date with a running commentary. We also had the Aussie commentatary via my laptop and they came out with some gems; our favourite being "He's shivering to his shoelaces!" which I intend to work into my everyday vocabulary.

We went out on Friday to the Irish bar, and as usual Ben told me off for doing my AMAZING Irish impression until he got a few pints of Mais down him and merrily joined in with the Father Ted and Dougal quotes. We noticed an area of the pub closed off to the public that looked very interesting, and Ben wondered aloud whether it was just for the Irish patrons.

"I reckon we could get in there," I told him.
"Yeah, we could just walk on up the door and said 'Oi'm a very Oirish chappie!'" Ben cried gleefully, reveling in the way the Irish accent trips off the tongue. Unfortunately, life imitated art, and the song playing wound down to near complete silence just as he yelled the last bit, enabling his loud Irish imitating voice to carry clearly right across the crowded bar to the waiting ears of the Irish Barmen.

Ben looked at me sheepishly.
"You're going to put this in the blog, aren't you?"

We left quite soon after that.

Faux Angel Delight

2009-01-29T04:56:00.000-08:00

We were amused by a packet in the dessert section of our local express supermarche that declared itself to be 'Plop!'. We considered buying it just for the sheer hilarity, but were instead convinced by a three pack of some sort of chocolate dessert mix as I thought it looked a bit like Angel Delight.

So I had a quick look at the instructions and didn't really understand anything except 700ml du lait, but I thought that was enough - 700ml of milk, easy peasy, mix it in, voila, Angel Delight. O ho, how I misunderestimated the Belgies - nothing is that simple. It came out all runny, so I shoved it in the fridge and hoped it would solidify somehow.

It did not.

"Are you sure you read the instructions properly?" asked Ben.
I shrugged and said something noncomittal, and threw the empty sachet at him to decipher.

"You were supposed to boil it," he told me after scrutinising the French words on the back.

So I popped the whole thing in a saucepan and wandered off. It began to burn. I rushed back after Ben alerted me and stood diligently stirring whilst it thickened up. There didn't seem to be any burnt bits, so I quietly congratulated myself.

I then poured it back into the bowl and put it back in the fridge.

Half an hour later we had a look and it appeared to be custard. Burnt chocolate custard. Not actually Angel Delight at all. Faux Angel Delight. Burnt Faux Angel Delight.

I am determinedly making my way through it anyway.

After publishing this post I spoke to my sister about it online.

The following conversation ensued.

Sara says:
How was your Plop?
Amanda says:
We didn't have Plop, we had chocolate custard.
Sara says:
oh i thought it was Plop that you bought.
Amanda says:
Nice to see you pay attention. We also have cockroaches here sometimes, did you know that?
Sara says:
Shut up. You cant talk about paying attention.
Amanda says:
Yes I can.
Sara says:
You tried to refrigerate uncooked custard.

Dammit. I should have guessed she would use that against me.

Whose pants are these?

2009-01-25T08:56:00.000-08:00

We went to the laundrette today. We've been putting it off since we got here; at first it was snowy outside and then it got rainy and it's just such a long walk that I couldn't bring myself to go. But after a while the laundry basket started to overfill and began to look like a small fabric mountain that might well topple over whilst I was brushing my teeth or something and then I'd be stuck under a pile of grimy clothes until Ben came home to rescue me. So added to the fact that Ben had run out of underpants (I hadn't - thanks to Alana) I did actually make a run last week, but didn't even manage to make a dent in the pile of clothes requiring attention.

So we packed up both of our traveling bags with dirty clothes and hung them off the handles of Ben's bike as though it was a packhorse and made the trek. We were going to wait until later on this evening to go as midday on a Sunday tends to be the laundrette's busiest time, but Ben got itchy feet and wanted to Get Stuff Done, so we decided to take our chances. When we got there I thought we'd done well because there was only three or four people, and it would have been alright, had not the young couple who must have got there just before us have bagsied no less than SEVEN of the twelve washing machines and were taking their time about even turning them on.

I think of myself as a relatively patient person but there are a few things that properly get my back up, and two of those things are rudeness and stupidity. Not only had these people stuffed their things into seven of the washing machines, but they then faffed around for a while getting the tokens, and then wandered off to get the powder. Whilst I was waiting for a machine to become free, getting more and more irate, I grumbled to Ben.
"Calm down," he said. "Perhaps they've never been to the laundrette before."
"Well, maybe," I retorted. "But it's just basic common sense not to take up so many machines and then leave them without even turning the bally things on" (I've been reading a lot of Wodehouse, and I wish I was half as eloquant as Bertie Wooster. Instead I'm going through a phase of peppering my speech with Wooster-isms, like 'Bally well' and 'G. and Tonic' and 'Well if that doesn't just take the giddy biscuit!'). I also said some other things, secure in the knowledge that they wouldn't be able to understand neither English nor Wodehouse but were probably getting the gist. Whilst they were willywallying around doing not much and being useless, one of the other washing machines finished its cycle, the owner of the clean laundry inside it managed to empty it, I filled it up with some of our clothes, and it was already washing away happily before they even managed to turn one of the seven they had comandeered on. Baring in mind that we had roughly three weeks of washing and still only used three machines I don't even know where they found enough clothes to take up seven machines.

Then they left. Ben, who had gone off in search of change, managed to get back as they were trying to drive out the car park, and he said that they were just as bad at driving as they were at doing laundry, which was comforting.

We managed to get all of our things in various washing machines quickly and efficiently and we'd already got one batch in the dryer before they got back. I then took great pleasure in taking up four dryers for all our clothes in the hope that they might learn something from it. I don't know whether they did, but Ben and I got our revenge anyway.

"Who's pants are these?! They aren't mine!" cried Ben, brandishing a grubby pair of white(ish) y fronts that he'd found as we sorted through our now dry clothes and giggling. "Ew!"
We laughed and put them to one side, just as the clueless couple pottered over to put some of their clothes in the dryer next to ours. After setting it going they wandered off again to put the rest of their washing in the big bank of dryers round the corner.
I was still quite annoyed at them so I had a bit of a grumble to myself whilst folding our laundry which Ben overheard. He patted me on the shoulder and peered round the corner.
"Quick! They're not looking!"
"What?" I asked, never the first to catch on.
"The pants! Put them in their dryer!"
I looked at the pants and then at the dryer.
"I can't do that! They'll come back!"
"No, they're putting all their clothes in the other dryers - quickly!"
So I did it. I put a pair of clean - albeit greying - underpants in amongst their clothes and it was one of the funniest things I've done in my whole life.
"You've gone bright red!" Ben told me, amused at my fit of giggles.

I really wanted to stay and watch their reaction - "Quoi? Quoi est la paire de gris sous-vêtements fait ici?!"

Brilliant.

In other news Ben is pretty pleased with himself because whilst peeling the potatoes he just found one that looked a bit like a bum.

Made up mannequins

2009-01-25T03:35:00.000-08:00

When we came out here in September I was of the opinion that I had never even visited Belgium before and was most excited about thusly extending my horizons. Then when Alana and I visited Bruges I called my mum, bubbling over with excitement, to tell her how far and wide I was traveling, and she calmly said "Ooh, Nana's got a photo of you sitting on a monument in Bruges", which rained on my parade somewhat and then some time later I was studying Belgium on Google Maps and after a while it slowly dawned on me that not only had I already been to Bruges, I'd also been to Ypres on a school history trip. At the time I'd thought it was France, but according to Google Maps (which let's face it, is rarely wrong about this sort of thing) Ypres was firmly in Belgium.

I didn't find the trip particularly interesting, and came away no more enthused about history than I had been prior to getting on a stuffy coach and driving for an interminable time around 'French' motorways , but somewhere in the ten (ish) years since I picked up an interest in the world around me. I don't know how it happened, as I studiously tried not to pick up such a time consuming hobby, but there we have it. Somewhere along the line I began to find that subjects like History, Geography and Biology now held a kind of fascination (still not Chemistry though, despite Ben's best attempts to reel me in); sadly if I'd reached this conclusion a little earlier on in my life, possibly whilst people were happy to teach me everything that I'd like to know, I might not have gone on to study the fairly useless degree of English at Uni and might have done something that has more impact on my adult life than being able to spell and turn a phrase. And might have known, for example, that Ypres isn't in France.

So yesterday, whilst engaged in the fairly pleasant activity of wandering aimlessly around Mons with Ben, we happened across an old military museum and although he's not particularly bothered about history, Ben indulged me. The museum is fairly hidden and set back from the street, in a sort of similar way to the Irish Pub. You walk in through the main doors and find yourself in a sort of large drafty hallway. In the case of O'Malleys this area is just dead space you have to cross until you reach another set of doors behind which is the pub itself, but in the case of the museum the walls feature a set of pictures with explanations in French, Dutch and English that give you a brief snippets of events in Mons during the World Wars; it mentioned something I'd not heard of before but probably should have - the Mons Angel, which apparently appeared to British soldiers on the brink of giving up and encouraged them to fight that little bit harder and win the day. Sort of like an ethereal cheerleader.

So after all these we came to the museum itself, which was 1,25 € each entry. Whilst discussing whether we should go in (it looked a bit rubbish, in fairness) we noticed a whole row of ancient filing folders, just stacked against the wall. It said, in French "Ne pas toucher SVP; toxique", and then in English 'Do Not Touch'. Ben laughed and said "The English are more trustworthy - we're good at following instructions but the French need extra warning 'oooh, it's poison, don't touch'". This would seem to be the case, as folders by their very nature aren't poisonous, seeing as they are for practical use rather than just aesthetic and picking them to file things is more or less their reason for being. However, I wouldn't be surprised if the chap had actually imbued certain folders with poison as a nosy person deterrent, but didn't think it was worth warning the English to that extent. "Aah, the Eengleesh, I tell them no touchy, but if they do, pffff." Then when he appeared he did actually look a little bit like someone who might poison folders in an attempt to stop people getting their sticky paws on them, so we just politely gave him 2,50 € and hurried on into the museum itself.

The exhibitions were actually pretty good; they were organised into each different country's soldier's uniform and bits and pieces found - in the British cases there were exercise books, lighters, cigarette cartons and a little silver box with several signatures etched onto it that made me cry a little bit.

There was also a case with Nazi memorabilia which I didn't like to get too close to.
Something I'd known but that hadn't really been driven home was the fact that during the war Mons was occupied by the Nazis. There were pictures of the Grand Place with rows upon rows of German soldiers marching, and it looked terrifying. I know that not all the Germans were evil; that most of them were just men fighting for their country just like we were, but the case of Nazi uniforms and swastika emblazoned crockery just sent chills down my spine.

But the best bit by far was the mannequins. I'm quite frightened of mannequins anyway - they feature on a long list which includes millipedes, icebergs, tractors and hyenas, so that doesn't mean much, but these ones redefined creepy. Ben didn't get a photo of them, except for this one of me staying on the correct side of the velvet rope, so what you can't see is that although each and every mannequin was dressed in a rugged soldiers uniform, each and every one of them was wearing bright scarlet lipstick and green eyeshadow. The first one we saw I thought might have been a mannequin from a clothes shop, because at 1,25 € a visitor the museum obviously isn't pulling in enough cash to spend on custom made soldier dummies. However, as we walked round, it became clear that every single one had a full face of horribly clashing make up. But why, we mused, why would anyone go to this trouble to amass such an impressive collection of war memorabilia only to make a mockery of the whole thing with a shade of lipstick so red that not even I'm brave enough to wear? Until the obvious answer dawned on me. A lady - braver than I - must have accidentally left her scarlet lipstick behind; perhaps it fell out of her bag when she was leaning over to look at the lighter and half empty tobacco pouch. And then the mannequins come alive at night and entertain each other with bad makeovers, then leave the make up on just to screw with patrons.

I had to leave quite soon after that as I was convinced that they were going to start lurching towards me brandishing a lipstick I know I wouldn't suit.

Burfdee and crayon eating puppies

2009-01-19T09:54:00.000-08:00

It's Ben's birthday today and I attempted to bake a cake. I say attempted, because the end result was not as cake-like as I would have liked. For this I blame the Belgians - I have been baking cakes since my primary school decided to give cookery classes for all those not sporty enough to have been picked for the school teams and generally they turn out alright, so it must be the Belgian's fault. That's just logic.

I bought the ingredients a while back, and after staring blankly at the (small) range of flour Delhaize had to offer I thought the most sensible option would be one described as 'cake flour'. I thought, cakes rise, so this LOGICALLY must be self raising flour. It's my own fault really for trying to apply logic and common sense in a country where they come out to change bus posters at 1am but wouldn't come to connect our internet for three weeks. As you might have guessed it was not self raising flour, and Ben's cake looks like it's been sat on by a small elephant.

I ranted about this to all and sundry via the awesome medium of Facebook, and was particularly tickled by the response it got from my friend Joost, who pointed out "I couldn't possibly ever be angry at Belgianry - we of the North find they have a simplistic endearing quality about them, like puppies eating crayons. Which is why we don't let them in; they'd just get sick on our carpets."

And in Lidl whilst buying Ben's birthday dinner (pizzas - the boy is easy to please) the girl on the till who usually insists on looking in my bag said something unintelligible and I panicked. I thought she knew I was English, but apparently not. Anyway, I just looked at her with wide confused eyes and the man behind me in the queue said 'Anglais?' to which I said 'Oui, oui! Anglais!' and he smiled benevolently and repeated everything the girl had said in French, only louder. Nice to see that some things are the same anywhere you go.

Black Swan Sweethearts

2009-01-18T10:00:00.000-08:00

Having exhausted all of Mon's interesting sights on the first day of their trip we decided to finish off Ben's family visit with a trip to the local duck pond. An adventure that manages to be better than it sounds, as this particular duck pond boasts a pair of gorgeous black swans. They are simply beautiful creatures and, unusually for swans, they're also quite sweet natured - although I don't know how they'd be with us if we dared to turn up without our usual offering of stale bread.

The pond looked a bit odd as we approached and Ben offered the opinion that perhaps the whole thing had been drained, as the swans seemed to be standing up in the middle. As we got closer we realised the pond was actually quite full, but rather than the swans being the foretold second coming of Jesus, the whole pond had simply frozen, and the birds were perched somewhat bemusedly on top of the ice.

We were just as bemused as they, as although it was very cold in the beginning of January (-14° centigrade at one point, a fact Ben's sister Jo couldn't quite get her head round - "C?" she repeated incredulously, "C?!") of late the temperature has hit such heights as 3° centigrade, thus thawing the snow we had hanging around endangering unwary pedestrians for a week or so. Nevertheless, most of the pond was still iced, except for a small corner which the swans wearily made their slippery way over to, apparently in order to menace a fat looking fish that had sleepily ventured out from under the ice.

As we were feeding the black swans a large white one saw us - or rather, the bread we were touting - and started to make its tiresome and arduous journey across the ice over to where we were standing. It took the poor thing ages, and then when it finally did arrive one of the black swans made it abundantly clear that it was not at all welcome and should possibly sling its hook. It rapidly did as suggested with a rather put out demeanour, so we threw some bread at it anyway whilst doing our best to ignore the irritated stares of the black ones.

I tried for ages to get a photo of one of the swans on its own, but one of the sweetest things about them is that they're always together, and - except for the incident where one of them had to see off the unwanted attentions of the white one - they were never more than a foot away from each other.

I took loads of videos of them slipping all over the place as frankly, it was pretty funny, so for your viewing pleasure I've uploaded one of them as they trudge towards the thawed area, and another that shows the white swan midway through its ill fated journey over to see what was going on.

And for those of you who would like to have a cockroach situation update, here it is: the little bastards laid low because we had guests. Thoughtfully not forcing their presence on visitors not quite accustomed to their ambush tactics, you say? No! Do not give them more credit than they are due. They're just trying to convince people that we're making them up, so that we get no sympathy. They're cruel and unusual beasties.

Yes We (Coke) Can!

2009-01-18T03:32:00.001-08:00

We were kept awake last night by the wind, which blew the window open and sent a noisy drinks can scampering with a mad gaiety across the road and back, over and over again. Ben's mama and sister had wisely opted for a hotel, so when they came round this morning full of the joys of life and quiet hotel rooms we told them our woes.

"It was a Coke can!" I told them joyously, always one to keep a theme going.
"How can you possibly know that?" asked Ben's brother Jack. "I bet it was a beer can."

I was about to admit that yes, knowing the BelgyBums it probably was an errant beer can, when Ben's mama chipped in sagely.

"Of course it was a Coke can, Jack. Otherwise it wouldn't be relevant."

The title of this post was inspired by an inspirational marketing move by one of the Belgian shops that we walked past yesterday. They have a big sign in the window saying simply: Soldes! (Sale!) YES WE CAN!

Good old Obama, still working tirelessly to shift cut price clothes across Europe.

Cockroach Attacks Weatherman

2009-01-17T14:59:00.001-08:00

We found the following video on failblog.org and thought that it pretty much sums up how I react to the cockroaches we find. Cockroach Attacks Weatherman! Wait to the end of the post to click on it, otherwise you'll get sucked in by the awesomeness of the Failblog and you'll forget what you were doing before. Yeah, I know what you're like.

I had to kill another one yesterday - this one was a baby, so I felt even worse than when I tried to kill Mr Whiskers, our resident under-oven dwelling friend who hasn't shown his mandibles in our presence since I unsuccessfully tried to smush him. I might have jumped the gun though on proclaiming the invasion, as we've only seen two. As the well known phrase goes, two cockroaches do not make an infestation. So long as they're both lady cockroaches and haven't been getting jiggy with any gentleman cockroaches prior to stopping by. One of them is dead now anyway so it's all acedemic.

Ben's lovely fambly have been visiting this weekend for his birthday and we all went out for a meal at the local Italian (I know, I know, they've come all the way to Belgy only to eat at an Italian restaurant, but it really is the only place you can get friendly service - last time we got food at a Belgium eatery the lady shouted at us for ordering extra chips. True story). Whilst there I spotted a young couple out the window, and it amused me as he appeared to be trying to smooch her whilst she was blowing her nose. I drew the attention of the rest of the table to the amorous/ non amorous couple, and it became quite an interesting topic of conversation. It slowly occured to us that she was doing everything in her power to subtly not smooch him, without actually stepping away, and during one intense hug (we did feel a bit weird nosying on them at this point, but it was just fascinating) he actually checked his watch over her shoulder. Then she skipped away! Brilliant. Better than Hollyoaks.

On the subject of things that are more interesting as they are happening than when I later come to write them down, we saw another abandoned Coca Cola can on the way home. Naturally we took a picture of it (we didn't think to turn the can round so it looked more aesthetically pleasing; blame the jug of wine we had with dinner) and as we did so a police car drove past and looked at us suspiciously! I'm beginning to wonder if it's some sort of Coca Cola can conspiracy.

So go check out that video now - it's me! Apart from the African American gay weatherman thing, obviously.

Pickchures!

2009-01-17T10:16:00.000-08:00

Mons in 'Actually Quite Interesting' shocker:

I got a bit carried away taking pictures of the gargoyles.

It has begun.

2009-01-15T09:42:00.000-08:00

The cockroach epidemic that I joked about but never really took seriously has, in all seriousness, begun.

Whilst minding my own business earlier one ran at me from underneath the oven. I reacted with my typical lightning fast reflexes - pow! Luckily for the cockroach my lightning fast reflex was to jump back and flap for a while, whilst looking for something flat-ish to flatten-ish it with. Then as I was merrily hopping from one foot to the other it casually trundled back under the oven, where I watched it wandering back and forth for a while, before I remembered that I have to wait until it eats the poisoned food. The chap was most clear on that - don't kill them until they eat the poison, which makes no sense, because whether it's dead from poison or dead from slipper, it's still dead, right? Dead cockroachs being preferable to live ones (to me, probably not to it), and all.

So now I am sharing my kitchen space with a cockroach, who I can't kill even if I was allowed to because it's so damn fast. Before I remembered I wasn't supposed to kill it I did have a go at squishing it, but at the last second I was distracted by it cleaning its whiskers, which albeit gross made me remember that it's a creature rather than just an annoyance and it stayed my hand, as it were, for a moment too long, and it ran back under the oven, where I swear it turned round and looked at me reproachfully.

On a side note I just spoke to my mama back in Blighty who was convinced I had tonsilitus because I've had the snuffles and my tonsils swelled a bit. They've gone down now, but as she is still worried I tried to reassure her:
Amanda: It's alright Mum, they've already gone down.
Mum: But tonsils aren't supposed to do that!
A: Yeah, they are, the swell up now and then if you're ill.
M: But mine don't do that!
A: ... You don't have any. You had them out when you were little.
M: Oh yeah.

I love my mum.

The morning after...

2009-01-12T23:25:00.001-08:00

After everything had calmed down and the house was gradually falling back to sleep, I heard Ben snort. (I mean he laughed, not that he was casually doing cocaine at bedtime).

"What?" I asked, anxious to know what he was laughing at because usually it's me.
"They're back," he said, gesturing at a light on the wall flashing from outside.

We jumped out of bed and had a look. The intrusively flashing light was coming from a van parked up on the pavement outside changing the poster on the bus stop. 1am, in Belgium, is apparently prime poster changing hours, as though they don't want people to see them do it, as though they want to imply the posters get changed by magic.

Ben got back into bed grumpily and said "They obviously didn't go to suspicious school," which made me realise just how asleep he had been before being woken up by the light. I think he realised what an odd thing it was to say as well, because he paused a moment and then said thoughtfully, "I don't think anyone goes to suspicious school."

Polizi! Polizi!

2009-01-12T15:01:00.000-08:00

One of the questions I get asked frequently by my many, many friends (Alana) is 'what's been going on in Mons?' and the answer is generally 'Oh, not much'. In fact, I didn't want to have to say this, but at times it can be a bit dull.

But tonight was terribly exciting.

At about 11:30pm, Ben glanced out the window after cleaning his teeth and said
"There's a police car outside."

I didn't take much notice as we're not situated in the best area of Mons - although most of Mons isn't the best area of Mons - but he stood there for a while and watched. After a while I too got curious and trotted over, only to be berated for getting too close to the window and make all the policemen look up. Outside was a police van with a desk in the back, and no less than eight policemen milling around. After a while another van came with blacked out windows that reversed into the driveway directly underneath us. Then all the policemen came into our building and stomped up and down the stairs, dragging heavy things with them.

We listened for a while from the comfort of the bed until I got too curious and pushed the duvet to one side.

"I'm going to grumpily open the door and peer out, just to see what's happening." I told Ben imperiously.
"Alright. You are wearing your pyjamas though, and your hair is a bit of a mess."
I got back into bed.

After a time we heard the van with the blacked out windows drive off. We got up for another look. Who should we see out there but MRS BUSYBODY; that woman has her beak in everything. She was wearing some kind of red armband, like a fire marshall would wear for people to know who to follow.

Surely we'd know if there had been a fire, we told each other incredulously.

Then another of our neighbours appeared downstairs, and he seemed to be moving the contents of his room into a car. He too had an armband on, and he seemed to be chatting amiably with the policemen who had come back out again after merrily stomping up and down the stairs all evening.

Then there was some more stomping, and now everything has gone quiet. Mrs Busybody disappeared up the road and to our notice has not returned yet. Ben (who wants me to mention how brave and handsome he was whilst sneaking out to nose) just had a quick look outside and everything is as it was before, ie a bit messy but generally normal for a common or garden apartment block stairwell, except for an empty Coca Cola can by the door that wasn't there before.

BUT WHAT DOES IT ALL MEAN?

various confusing hand gestures

2009-01-08T09:44:00.001-08:00

Alana (of 'make sure you have more underpants than he does' infamy) agrees with my stance on the horror of village halls, and comments "it’s the smell of the village hall that does it... mainly the smell but also the dreary décor and omnipresent brown flowery curtains. This is what I have concluded."

I particularly love the way she finishes up with her conclusion; you can tell the lass is a scientist.

In jest I told another friend that I have such little social contact with anyone who isn't Ben or my family via Skype that I would be posting today about the young chap who came round to sort out the ongoing cockroach problem. Sadly, what started out as jest has become reality, as I have very little else to actually concern myself with out here. That and the girl at Lidl who insists on rudely looking in my bag every time I shop there - do I look like a thief? Perhaps its the grey and white stripey top I wear combined with my black euroberet - classic burglar chic. But I digress.

I have lifted this almost in its entirety from an email I wrote yesterday to Alana, so I apologise to her as it means reading it twice. I shall change small parts of it and quiz her on them later to see if she's been paying attention.

Basically the cockroach man (I feel bad calling him that as he was very pleasant and made an effort to communicate in English, which none of the others do whenI'm sure they understand me perfectly and are deliberately being difficult) put down cockroach FOOD with which to LURE the cockaroaches to us; a move I am currently unconvinced in regards to the wisdom of, but apparently the food is poisioned (cunning) so then the cockroaches will eat it and die. However, he explained with various confusing hand gestures that the dying cockroaches will probably leave an egg behind in which are THIRTY TO FORTY of the frickin baby things, so they'll all turn up in three weeks, but will hopefully eat the poisoned nomnom before getting it on with the other cockroaches. So fingers crossed that their priorities are food THEN sex, otherwise the whole disgusting cycle willl just keep perpetuating itself.

Gross.

So basically, we are at the moment dealing with the odd one every week or so, but with this new posioned bait we will not only be dealing with quite a few more jumping out at us, in three weeks we will also be dealing with their babies in vast numbers.

I hate Belgium.

Most excitingly a teapot

2009-01-06T04:52:00.001-08:00

We returned to Mons after our two week holiday at home for Christmas laden with Tesco branded goodies – namely minced beef (minced beef over here is usually mixed with minced pork – don’t ask me why), chicken (more expensive over here than steak), bacon, fruit and barley squash, bread that won’t go hard overnight, and three packets of digestive / hobnob biscuits. Oh, and a big old block of Cheddar – they just don’t seem to make good cheese over here, it’s all runny and smelly. Ick.

Not only did we make the journey back with groceries, but we had plenty of exciting Christmas presents as well – most excitingly a teapot, which we very much enjoy using (there’s a phrase I never thought I’d utilise), a new camera with which to further document our adventures, and books, dvds and computer games with which we while away the time not spent hunting cockroaches or trying to make sense of Belgium TV.

We joked about returning back to find a cockroach infested room (according to Ben, we would have walked in to find them playing music and watching our dvds “Oh, hey guys! We, uh, didn’t expect you back so soon … we invited some of our friends round, and you know, bred with them, and now there’s loads of us…. Hope that’s cool?”) but there was just one lone, solitary dead cockroach lying on the floor with his legs in the air. I felt sorry for him until another one jumped out of the cupboard and wiggled his antennae at me, and I promptly went back to shrieking and hating them with renewed vigor.

It snowed all day yesterday which was very pretty, although apparently it snowed in England too – what is the point of living in a foreign country if England is doing exactly the same thing? I feel like writing a letter of complaint. Ben got home and insisted we go play in the snow, so we did until my fingers got too cold and I remembered why I prefer to look at the snow from inside and not actually get too close to it.

I also forgot to write a bit about the Christmas Markets over here – we couldn’t decide for the longest time whether to go to the market in Bruges or Liege, and decided on Liege as it is apparently more famous and we’d already seen Bruges. It was a two hour journey away and we managed to miss our stop – an inauspicious start, but it turned out to be a bit more auspicious as the stop we ended up getting off at was actually closer to the market than the one we missed, so hurrah us. We decided to look for a hotel, but if we didn’t find one to just get the train back. Of course, all the hotels were booked up, so we made do with wandering around the fair, which was very pretty and Christmassy, but…

At this point I should explain how susceptible to the power of words I am. When I was home before Christmas my mum said “Ooh, Amanda, we’ve been invited to a hog roast! A HOG ROAST! Would you like to come?” at which point I replied, “A hog roast! Why, how wonderful that sounds! Of course I would like to go!” so I called my sister and said “Sara! A hog roast! How wonderfully Harry Potte- esque does that sound! We’re going to a hog roast!” and she said, very dubiously “Is it at a Christmas Fete - IS IT IN A VILLAGE HALL?”

More explanation needed here, I’m afraid. Sara and I have an inexplicable hatred of all things village hall. We don’t know why – my dad says it’s because when I was a baby they would take me to get my injections done in a village hall, but apparently they were more normal with Sara and took her to an actual doctors, so that doesn’t quite explain it. But village halls absolutely make my skin crawl. Perhaps it’s the lighting in there, or the general dreary atmosphere. Perhaps its because I’ve never lived in a village, and I don’t understand the camaraderie. But I can’t bear them, not one bit.

“Is it at a Christmas Fete, and will we have to sit at plastic tables with people we don’t know?” asked Sara, very sensibly.

“No, I’m sure it isn’t,” I continue blissfully, images of long wooden tables (Harry Potter again, I'm afraid), cosy log fires and mulled wine in tastefully decorated candle lit surroundings parading through my head. “I’m sure it will be lovely. A hog roast, Sara, a hog roast!”

“Alright,” replied Sara, doubtfully. “If you’re sure.”

It turned out to be a dead pig on a stick just outside a village hall. We walked in and everyone turned to stare at us. We were indeed expected to sit at plastic tables with people we didn’t know, and eat bits of pig (aka, ‘pork’) in a bap. It was a far cry from the delightful scenes I had envisioned when my mum first said hog roast to me. So we did what our family always does in such a situation – we hid in the cloakroom to eat our pork baps and made jokes to each other in hushed undertones, and I would like to say that Sara refrained from saying 'I told you so', but instead she made a point of saying it at regular intervals.

My point here is that the words ‘hog roast’ fooled me in a similar way to the words ‘Christmas Market’ did. Again, I expected something involving cosy log fires and tastefully decorated candle lit surroundings, and what we got was a market full of French people. But it was fun, and we went on a Ferris Wheel – unfortunately we weren’t even half way up when I remembered I’m a bit scared of heights, and it went round three times before they let us get off. Then we had a two hour journey home, most of which I slept for and played the odd game of Tetris on Ben’s phone. We arrived back in Mons tired and hungry, only to find a Christmas Market going on in our own Grand Place, and it was amazing. The ground was covered in glitter and there was an ice rink around a massive Christmas tree in the middle, and just off to one side there was a band playing tunes straight out of Narnia. It was incredible. All that way, just to come home and find that Christmas was right on our doorstep.

Sniffer dogs and late night coach journeys

2008-12-09T09:38:00.000-08:00

I went home again last week for my baby sister's graduation (I feel old). She called us a month back to say that she had won an extra ticket to it, which spun everything into confusion. I had made my peace with the fact that I wasn't going to be able to go, but it seemed that I could hardly pass up the chance to laugh at her looking like Harry Potter once fate had smiled upon us and granted an extra pass. After a small paddy where I refused to take a train across France to Calais, Ben hit upon Eurolines, and we swiftly booked my passage aboard. The day arrived, I pulled my EuroBeret firmly down upon my head, and marched off. Everything went smoothly, except for a panicked half hour where I thought I must have missed the coach, being that I was off buying some pastry goodness when the announcement saying the coach would be half an hour late was made. I've written all this out in a Facebook message already, so I'll copy and paste it, because I don't want waste all my amusing musings on just one person. Here it is:

Anyway, we made shockingly good time to Calais, and I foolishly entertained hopes of getting on an earlier ferry, as we seemed to have arrived two hours before the ferry left. There was no such luck - instead we were subjected to TWO HOURS of customs, including sniffer dogs and a shrill angry french lady who x-rayed my stuff and demanded "what kind of girl goes to see her boyfriend for three weeks and only takes one bag?!" as I had cunningly omitted the fact that I live here too as it is rather unofficial. I'm really not sure what she was implying - that I'm not a girl?

So that was that. Then I was home for a week, but as this blog is entitled 'in Mons' and not 'in Mons but also sometimes Folkestone' I'll gloss over it and describe the coach journey back. I chose to travel overnight so that I could pass some of the boring travel time by sleeping, which I thought I might regret but actually worked better than the journey to England. This might be because the English customs were frankly lackadaisical in their attitude compared to the over zealous frenchies - they barely glanced at my passport, and the subject of sniffer dogs wasn't even brought up. Once on the ferry we all hopped off the coach and up into the bar where I got hit on by an ugly man who seemed to think that simply blurting out 'You are beautiful' and then follow me round would be a sure fire way to my heart. It was not. Instead I took refuge with some Australians (one was called Kylie, and it really says something about my willpower that I didn't mention the other Australian Kylie. It was the elephant in the room the whole time) who I then bothered for the rest of the crossing even though one of them fell asleep half way through a conversation. It was 2am by then though, so I decided not to take offence.

Once I arrived in Mons I had an argument with a taxi driver, who was convinced that Lidl was not on Chausee du Roeulx, and I didn't know how to say 'It damn well is on the Chausee du Roeulx because I live there and the light from the Lidl light keeps me up at night' in French so I said it in English and that seemed to get the message across, although it might have helped that I got so frustrated I said 'Lidl! Lidl Lidl Lidl SUPERMARCHE!' and he said 'Ohhhh, LIDL!' as though it was all my fault for incorrectly pronouncing Lidl, which I wasn't. He was, with his stupid Frenchy accent.

Snowy boots

2008-11-22T09:48:00.000-08:00

Today it snowed in Mons, so we went for a wander in it.

Unfortunately the wet mush seeped through my black boots, so when we decided to do a big shop later on I very sensibly decided to wear my brown pair and changed my tights accordingly. Ben was chivvying me to leave because he wanted to get back and sleep, so I rushed out the door. Half way down the road I looked down and realised I was wearing one black boot and one brown; that'll teach me to buy the same pair of boots in two different colours. I couldn't be bothered to turn back and change them, so I had to wander round Delhaize looking like a dialhead. I made sure I spoke English very loudly, in the hope that the Belgybums would think wearing different colour boots is a cool thing to do across the water - basically, if I'm going down as a fashion disaster, the rest of you are going down with me.

Drowning in bin bags

2008-11-20T06:11:00.000-08:00

I had a clean up today, and collected all the unused binbags. We now have a small pile of them, and keep being given more.

This is because of Mrs Busybody. Mrs Busybody is the woman who accosted me the time the man downstairs gave me a bin bag as a gift; she's the one who insisted I give it back to him. Anyway, it turns out she's a bit of a sticky beak (hence the name) and as I am not technically supposed to live here I try to avoid her, which of course means she jumps out at me at any opportunity. I think she actually waits and hides in the stairwell like a trapdoor spider.

Anyway, she seems to think I live in the other room, the one we rejected as it was already occupied by cockroaches, and we like to leave her with that assumption as it means she won't try to get me kicked out. This means that when she comes round with the weekly bin bag -they used to be posted in our postboxes, but they stopped doing that when someone started bending the doors of the boxes in order to get at the sac poubelle middle, which is ridiculous - how cheap do you have to be to steal binbags?! Even more annoyingly these door bending crimes apparently occurred just after she caught me taking the bin bag from the man downstairs - it wasn't me, I swear, but judging by the suspicious looks she gave me she thought it was. Although suspicious seems to be her default setting, so perhaps not - so anyway, when she comes round with the weekly bin bag she gives me one, and Ben one. But we go through one a week, so our little pile is getting bigger and bigger, until we've had to give them a drawer all to themselves, and I can barely close it anymore (this is an exaggeration, obviously, but the literary world would be nowhere without hyperbole).

It never rains (sac poubelles) but it pours (sac poubelles).

Naked ladies and churros

2008-11-13T09:12:00.000-08:00

We went to Bruges last weekend - again for me, first time for Ben. As before it was beautiful, and we managed to see a whole different part of the city that I missed before with Alana (I'm not sure how, because it isn't that big a city). The whole city is lovely, although we apparently only saw fit to take three pictures, two of the river and one of us. We also stumbled across an art gallery that showed almost exclusively pictures of nekkid ladies - not nekkid in the usual arty sense, Jack painting Rose, innocent booby paintings - these were proper full on, RUDE pictures of VERY nekkid ladies. It was difficult to know where to look, although I'm not sure Ben felt the same way. We also managed to accidently wander through the grounds of a monastery and shopped in H&M, which somehow feels more interesting than shopping in H&M at home, although again, I'm not sure Ben felt the same way.
Upon our return we discovered Mons to be lit up with more nekkid ladies - only these were spray painted on to the side of many wagons offering cuddly toys and candyfloss. Ben suddenly remembered that he had been instructed by his co-workers to make sure that he tried something, but couldn't quite remember the name. "Chin-Chins?" He hazarded wildly. No, that's a bar that we went to once but left because it was really cold (bars and pubs here are not the cosy places they are in England). "Tamtams?" No, that's a mexican restaurant, coincidentally across the street from Chin Chins. He finally hit on the right name after seeing a sign advertising them ("Churros") and we bought a few. They smell good - like doughnuts, and for the first bite they taste like doughnuts, and we were happy for a wonderful if short moment before we realised that they were not, in fact, anything like as good and tasty as doughnuts. I mentioned this to Liam, and he said he'd them in France and then accurately described them as being "like very chewy week old doughnuts", and then even more accurately, as "poop from a dog with a star-shaped bumhole".

I'm going to leave you with that thought.

Back online

2008-10-28T11:34:00.000-07:00

It’s been a while since I last posted – not because I couldn’t be bothered, but because we lost our internet connection for a while. And then when we got it back I was frankly too lazy to do anything with it, so a little bit because I couldn’t be bothered. But it was mostly the connection issue. I’d say probably 70% no internet, 30% lazy. More or less.

Since Belgacom got their acts together and hooked us back into the world of funny cat macros and Ikariam I have discovered that the trouble with trying to write a regular blog is that when one stops updating it, whether due to lack of internet or general laziness, it becomes difficult to remember what’s happened since the last post. It’s all too easy to just let it slide and do something else (again, see Lolcats and possibly notalwaysright.com), rather than try to remember everything that’s happened in the last month.

So let’s just agree that in the weeks I was absent there was a lot of hilarious generic Belgium craziness that I may or may not remember in coming weeks and move on to the here and now.

I did go home for a week, so that’s a week of hearing about boring Folkestone that you’ve missed out on, so it’s not all bad.

After being home I got driven back by my good friend Alana of “make sure you have more pants than he does” fame and was a little bit surprised that we made it safely, given the standard of driving that the Belgybums deem to be appropriate. Ben says the other night when I was still dans Angleterre he was awoken at roughly 1am by squealing car brakes, had a peek out of the window like any nosy person would, and saw a car pulled up partially on the kerb – what’s the opposite to parallel? Google says ‘perpendicular’ which I’m going to go with – perpendicular...ly to the road. At a 90 degree angle anyway. He then realised that the passenger had clambered onto the driver, and it whilst he was trying to process this new and confusing information that the car’s horn started to beep rhythmically, apparently waking up one of our neighbours who went out to see what the noise was, then got embarrassed and went back inside. Perhaps disturbed by this sleepily curious and latterly red-faced Belgian the cars’ occupants quickly finished what they were doing – whatever that might have been – and drove casually away. So I was pleased when we got here safely without crashing into a hastily pulled over car driven by some randy Belgies who just couldn’t wait until they got home. I mean, honestly.

Unfortunately we did have some car related woes – I tried to find Carrefours, a local superstore that sells pretty much anything you might ever want, including motorbikes and more importantly, fresh milk, that Ben and I walked to a month or two ago. However, although I'm relatively sure of my way around town on foot, I am not so hot on the crazy one way systems that the cars have to deal with, so instead of finding Carrefours I managed to get us hopelessly lost. It was only due to the fact that Mons boasts a large Bell Tower in the town centre that I was able to navigate and get us back to the flat, where we ate half a packet of biscuits and swore never to go anywhere without Sat Nav again. So I grabbed the aforementioned life saving device and asked it to find the nearest Carrefours, which it said was about ten minutes away.

ten minutes, that is, if you assume (wrongly) that as it knows its in Belgium (knowing where it is being its primary function, if you will) it would change the time from British time to Belgium time, ie one hour ahead. Of course, this was a foolish assumption, as when it told me we would arrive at 2.30pm, it meant 2.30pm English time, and 3.30pm Belgy time. But still a little freaked out after having to direct us back the first time, I was happy to leave everything to the Sat Nav.

An hour and five minutes later we arrived in France, and five minutes after that we arrived at the (French) Carrefours that our Sat Nav had felt would be the best option for someone who lives an hour and ten minutes away, in a completely different country. After spending fifteen minutes there we had to leave again in order to be home before Ben who didn't have the keys to the flat. On the way home we passed 3 Carrefours that the Sat Nav pretended not to notice, the deceitful thing.

On the up side, I did get to say that I took Alana shopping in France. I’m not sure she saw it in quite such a positive light.

Acrobats, marching bands and infringements of statue's rights

2008-09-22T05:22:00.000-07:00

We had a marvellous weekend in terms of witnessing the strange events that are quickly becoming commonplace over here. On Friday night we went out to the Irish bar again and drank beer (that's not one of the strange events; I'm just setting the scene). After a few glasses (peach beer - mmmmm)we moved on, and wandered towards the main square, enticed by the crowd gathered there. There was obviously something going on so we took a seat at one of the many and varied cafes and watched.

There was a large crane in the middle, with what appeared to be zipwires attached to all the major buildings around the square, and women dressed in white just sort of hanging from them. Twirling. And on a separate building were two other women in white hanging from wires and jumping across the boarded up windows. To give them their due, they looked very graceful and elegant, but they were still basically jumping. And twirling. I didn't really understand what the point was, and said as much to Ben. He leaned over, still watching the twirling, and patiently explained; "It's arty."

On Sunday we went to Brussels and managed to find some sort of celebration going on in the Grand Platz, so we sat and ate a baguette and watched. There was a marching band about to start up, so we settled down to be entertained. However the entertainment came from a member of the general population, who, as the marching band began to warm up, pulled a small flute from his backpack and blew a few reedy notes. Then as the band began to march, he did too. He hurriedly marched over to them, all the while blowing the odd off-key note from his flute. They all eyed him with suspicion as he proceeded to follow them across the square, and then he tagged on to the end. It was brilliant. Picture, if you will, a little man wearing shorts, socks and sandals and a full on backpack, trotting along after a marching band who are all wearing the same regal uniform, complete with helmets from which stream magestic feathery plumes. He's wearing a cowboy hat. They all have large brass instruments that emit varying 'Pom-pom-pom' noises. He is capering after them playing what looks like a flute but sounds more like a recorder being played sideways. The music stops and everybody claps. He looks so proud that he could burst. The rest of the band grudgingly nod at him. We clapped too - you can't help but respect someone with that much audacity. The crowd scene pictured is a bit ... crowded ... so click on the picture and it should embiggen, and I have helpfully circled the flute groupie.

And to further drive the point home - the point being, of course, that the Belgians are all slightly mad - whilst waiting for our train back to Mons we sat and idly watched a group of Japanese tourists all posing with a solemn looking statue. Ordinarily this probably wouldn't be worth a mention but in this case someone had, in a fit of inspired drunken hilarity, popped a traffic cone onto the statue's head as a sort of pointy orange hat. It's what all the statues are wearing these days, you know. So the statue - possibly Zeus or someone equally Greek god-ish - was sat proudly wearing his hat at a jaunty angle over one eye whilst Japanese tourists sat on his lap for photos. That in itself was amusing enough, but it just got better. As we sat and watched and took photos of the tourists taking photos, a woman came striding over, said something to the Japanese tourists and removed the offending headgear! As though the tourists hadn't realised that it wasn't supposed to be there - that it wasn't part of the artists's original vision of Zeus! As though she'd seen them all taking photos and had thught "Just one minute!" All in French, of course - "Seulment une minute! Zeus doesn't usually have a hat! What the - some young scallywag has put a TRAFFIC CONE on the head of the ruler of Mount Olypmus and father of all the Gods! What an INFRINGMENT! And those poor tourists don't even realise. Well I'll sort this one out straightaway...". It has to be said that the tourists didn't seem fazed by her removal of Zeus's hat, so perhaps they hadn't realised that a traffic cone on Zeus' head isn't usual. They continued taking pictures, but I thought I could sense rather a lack of enthusiasm. Pictures of Zeus sans hat just aren't as good, I feel.
We know that she did actually say something like that mostly fabricated speech, because Ben overheard her say 'enfringement', which pleased him because it meant he could then say "Well, it was an infringemnt of his STATUEtory rights!" and then laughed to himself quietly for the entire journey back to Mons, more or less.

No. That was the last Jelly Bub.

2008-09-19T01:58:00.000-07:00

I can take no credit for this at all, it's all the work of my baby sister. But i'm sticking it up here to illustrate why I miss her and home and Mama and Nana and the dogs (and of course papa but he isn't mentioned in the following exchange, although I imagine he'd probably have had something to say about it all) and everyone:

After having been told off for trying to feed the dogs boiled mints, Nana reaches for the jelly babies that Mama is so happily scoffling down. Ripping the last jelly baby in half, she scrapes some apple sauce onto the now horrifically maimed sweet and reaches down to the dogs.

MAMA: What are you doing?

(At this point I look puzzled and shrug at the Mama Bear)

NANA: Feeding the dogs a Jelly Bub

MAMA: You can't give them a jelly bub!

NANA: Why not? They like it...see.

(Jason spits out the appley, maimed Jelly Bub and walks off disappointed. Meanwhile Gizmo struggles to down both pieces of the sweetie goodness that was once a jelly bub and chews and chews.

SARA: I don't think dogs should have jelly bubs.

NANA: Well they weren't allowed the mints.

MAMA: (eagerly eyeing up the packet) Can I have another Jelly Bub?

NANA: No. That was the last Jelly Bub.

I miss home.

Creepier and crawlier

2008-09-17T12:05:00.000-07:00

I feel, after the events of today, that we have been giving our beautiful apartment a hard time. It's really quite lovely. Never more lovely than it was when we returned to it from - I'm getting ahead of myself. Let's start at the very beginning. A very good place to start.

Well, not quite the beginning, because I suppose that would be the day Ben called me up and said "Hey baby, how would you feel about moving to Belgium?" To which I replied "....Belgium?!" Which funnily enough was the standard response that we receieved from most of the people we told. So, not the beginning, but today when Ben got home from work. Usually he buzzes for me to let him in, but today he just marched straight through the door. I did not have time to remark on this new turn of events as Ben announced,
"Come on! We're moving!"
Caught off guard, I just said
"...What?"
He explained. The company he works for out here actually has two rooms ('apartments') in this block, and the other has just been vacated by the other student that was here. Apparently that's the better apartment, what with its working fridge and shower, opening window and connected phone line, so we went to check it out. We trotted excitedly down the corridor, Ben unlocked the door, and in we went.

One word summed it up, and that word is "Gunnnnnnackkkkkergh", a word which begins with mild distaste and ends in complete disgust and horror.

It was an awful experience. On the bright side we did find out where that one rogue cockaroach had come from.

So; from the top. The room itself was depressingly and half heartedly painted (and didn't have our cool 80s brick 'accent' wall) and had horrible blue lino like the stuff on the floor of a cafeteria instead of our nice cheerful mock wood effect lino (I never thought I'd say that). The furniture was dilapidated and it didn't boast the sofa that pulls out into a double bed that our apartment has, instead favouring the look of an old stained grannyesque chair that looked on its last rotton legs. It did have a small oven - I say 'did', because we've yoinked that. The toilet, whilst being gross, was also missing its seat. Well, not missing, because it was propped up on the wall beside it, but they were not strictly as 'as-one' as one might hope. The shower, to give it its due, worked quite well, but the scores of cockaroaches milling about put me off ever wanting to shower in there, whilst ironically making me desperate to wash. The window did open properly, but you'd need it to in order to get some fresh air in whilst spraying insect repellent. There were three cans of insect repellent just on the worktops, so it's not a new and exciting problem - oh no, they're ESTABLISHED bugs. The fridge worked, but was full of - you've probably guessed it, and if not you haven't been paying attention - dead cockaroaches.

That's the apartment they've been putting all the students in. This apartment, with its sturdy furniture and comfy sofabed and discerning lack of creepies and crawlies is the second choice. That's the room we would have had to had spent the last week and a half in if the girl before us hadn't had too much and gone mad/home months before we got here. No wonder she went!

So everything in our apartment looks much cleaner and shinier and nicer after that - AND, joy of joys, Ben's been given the keys to the bike shed, post box and rubbish cupboard (it turns out they were in his boss's drawer all along. Oh these crazy Belgian people!). So now our bikes are outside and we can access our post and keep the rubbish in an outside cupboard and everything (touchwoodtouchwooktouchwood) is right with the world.

Diabolical Fly Plots

2008-09-17T00:30:00.000-07:00

I’m sure you’ll be pleased to know that no Menaces, Flying, Scuttling or otherwise (touch wood) have been bothering us lately. Also, we discovered that it hasn’t been just us dealing with this cruel and unusual foreign bug invasion either; Ben speaks to Liam (his housemate from last year) most evenings because Liam is also on placement but in Germany, where they speak an even stranger language than the one they speak here. I overheard the following Skype conversation whilst making the dinner last night:
Liam: “I’ve got really good at swatting gnats. Flies too – it’s got to the point where I can sneak up on one (they’re really stupid), take off my top and WHIP it. I got one so good that it turned into goop.”
Ben considered this statement and said:
“Did you put your top back on afterwards?”
Liam laughed proudly.
“Yep.”

I can see where he’s coming from. Fly goop is the equivalent of a badge of honour in this war against the insect world. What really stood out was the inclusion of that aside; ‘they’re really stupid’, as though somewhere, sometime, Liam has encountered CLEVER flies. Flies that don’t just want to walk on poop and then on food. Flies that plan and scheme and connive in order to carry out some diabolical fly-plot.

Be afraid.

We also watched another film last night – Hellboy 2. Now, I was of the opinion that Hellboy the First was pretty bad, but Ben wanted to watch the sequel and I was interested in seeing the special effects and cool monsters. It was so dull, that half way through we both managed to get engrossed in a game of Spider Solitaire on my laptop (18 games won in a row. We’ve got a rule that states no game can ever be lost. Rewind right back to the start if you have to, but never give up. Strict adherence to this rule explains why I actually spent roughly two hours on a single game this morning. That’s two hours of my life I’ll never see again. Still, at least I wasn’t watching Hellboy.) There was only one bit that was worth watching – a bit that my sister had already mentioned, in the context of ‘There’s only one bit that’s worth watching’, and she was right. What really bugged Ben and I was the accent of a ‘German’ robot/incorporeal psychic energy thing. It was, even taking John Malkovich’s appalling French accent in Johnny English into consideration, the worst attempt at a foreign accent ever. As usual, as with any film we watch, I checked IMDb to see if there was any interesting trivia that I could impress Ben with. I discovered the following:

Del Toro had cast an actual, proper, born in Germany German voice actor to do the voice

He was not happy with the end result (was it the authenticity he had a problem with, perhaps?)

He cast, instead of this actual, proper, born in Germany German voice actor, SETH MACFARLANE.

Yeah, the guy who does Family Guy. Yes, he is very talented. But he is not German.

It gets better (worse?).

Seth Macfarlane based his German accent – wait, more emphasis – Seth Macfarlane BASED his GERMAN ACCENT on none other than JEREMY IRONS in DIE HARD!! He was doing an impression of a British man doing an impression of a German! Why?! For the love of God, why? If it had to be Seth MacFarlene, couldn’t he at least have tried to do an impression of a GERMAN? Would it have been so hard? He could have called up the guy who originally had the part - he probably still knows the lines, it’s not like any of them were unpredictable.

Moving on.

Whilst we were eating dinner last night, Ben was hit with sudden inspiration
“You could be really postmodern and write a blog on writing your blog.”He paused thoughtfully in order to construct a paragraph that he thinks sums up my blog entries thus far.
“You could put ‘Today I was writing in my blog and I wrote yeah, whatever, it’s cool and stuff.’” He looked at me helpfully, pleased with his contribution.

I think it’s quite safe to say that I probably won’t be writing a blog on writing my blog any time in the near (or far) future.

Monsters! Check.

2008-09-16T04:28:00.000-07:00

I meant to say this yesterday but got carried away with the laundry blog that I'd meant to do the day before that. Ah, the story of my life.

I have also written it out once to my friend in Ecosse, and whilst writing it to him I realised it's not really that funny. It might, however, end up being relevant later (I don't don't how) and it also might help you gain an insight into my psyche, so here goes.

The night before last I woke up with a start, grabbed Ben and hissed "Ben! There's a monster! Ben! Ben!" I then shook him a little bit to make my point and then slowly the realisation that I was disturbing his sleep again filtered through and I said "... Um... It's ok... there's not actually any monsters. Sorry." And went back to sleep.

I've written it twice now and it really loses something in the telling. BUT. In the message to my friend in Ecosse, I had also tried to be clever and written part of it in my poor pigeon French. I meant to say something along the lines of "Hullo Tim! How are you? I speak French!" If I'd been able to work the French out for 'I learn it - from a book!' I would have done, because I'm sure Tim would have got the Fawlty Towers reference. I continued "Yes, truly, I am now a French lady." Which was all I could manage, at the time. And now as well, as my French learning does not continue apace. Anyway, Tim wrote back and said:

As I'm very poor at languages other than English, I thought I'd run this through an English/French translator just to see what it said. This is what I got:

"Good morning Timotee, cava? I am definitely, I speak francais tres definitely, I am a francois woman now, that's true. Check."

I thought that that surely couldn't be right, so just to make sure I translated the French into Russian, then that into Spanish, then that into French again, and then back into English. Here is what I got, which I'm sure you'll agree is far more legible:

"Good days, Did Timotee put sails? I am true, say three francais indeed, - francois the supporting woman, am true. Check."

I didn't put any sails I'm afraid, but it's good to hear that you're true (and the same goes for Francois, the supporting woman)."

So on that note, I thought I'd run through our laundry sign from yesterday. It's been through Hindi, Dutch, Spanish and Arabic, in some sort of order that i forget now (it's not important) and it came out with:

"Customer drought for the washing of their homes, to use only one child, are invited to the timing and customers who prefer to wash laundry"

Drunk with my new found power over language, I ran it through again, this time from Englsih into Finnish into Czech into Greek into German into Korean back to English. It presented me with:

"Drought to wipe binding, a child using their own homes and timetables to invite customers who do not want to wash."

Make of that what you will. Ben read it and said "It looks like a heading. Or.... a subheading."

Check.

The Underpants Rule

2008-09-15T06:38:00.000-07:00

I mean that as in, 'The rule of the Underpants', not 'Yeah! Underpants! They're ace!', you understand.

I meant to blog yesterday about the adventure of the laundrette, but forgot in all the cockaroach related furore. So here is the post you would have had, were it not for the Scuttling Menace.

Before I left England for Belge my best friend popped over to say goodbye. We sat on my bed amongst the piles of clothes and shoes and books and new house paraphinalia and chatted, about how she would soon be coming to visit and about how we could go travelling and check out the Christmas markets in Germany and how we would both be okay communicating online rather than face to face and both feeling a little sad. (I was, anyway, I damn well hope she was as well or I'll feel a bit silly). She paused during the inconsequential chatter for a moment and looked seriously at me.
"I'd like to give you one piece of advice for going away. It's important, so remember it." She cleared her throat and leant forward slightly.
"Always make sure, Amanda, that you have more underwear than him. Then if it gets bad - I mean, really bad - he'll have to do it before you will."
"He'll have to do what?" I asked, wide eyed.
"He'll have to do the washing."
At this she nodded sagely, sat back and carried on with the conversation that we had been previously having about shoes.
Keeping her advice in mind Ben and I launched an expedition to the laundrette, and after intially trying to read the wrong signs we worked out that it was all in all, quite easy. Whilst waiting for our drying to finish tumbling (Ben found it particularly entertaining - "Look, there go your jeans! And your knickers! Weeeeeeeeee! They're having the time of their lives!") we tried to work out a sign above the wall of heavy duty dryers.
"I expect its saying not to leave your drying in there after it's finished." Ben suggested, sensibly. We wrote it down anyway to translate later at home.

"Les clients qui sèchent du linge qu'ils ont lessive chez eux, sont priés de d'utiliser qu'un seul séchoir à la fois et de céder la priorité aux clients qui ont lessive dans ce lavoir."

Here's what Google made of it:
"Customers that dry clothes they wash their homes, are requested to use only one hair at a time and assign priority to customers who have laundry in the wash."

And Babelfish:
"The customers who dry of the linen qu' they have detergent on their premises, are requested of d' to use qu' only one drier at the same time and to yield the priority to the customers who have detergent in this laundrette"

Ben then said, equally sensibly, that someone could make a mint if they managed to design a new translating site that took both translations into account and than worked out what it probably meant, rather than giving a paragraph of previosuly unrelated text.

The Underpants Rule! Yeah!!!

Notre ami, le cancrelat

2008-09-14T12:13:00.000-07:00

Today has been a day of learning new things. How to use the laundrette (easier than anticipated). That Belgian waiters are not the most polite and friendly (pretty much anticipated). That our room may not have an internet connection or a phone or a key to the bike shed, letter box and rubbish cupboard or a window that opens properly or a cooker or a shower that works properly, but what it lacks in everyday essentials, it makes up for in bugs.
"But Amanda, you have mentioned the Flying Menace before! This isn't blogworthy news!" I expect you may or may not be thinking right now. Yes, that's true. I have. Thank you for paying attention thus far. And it might offer you some closure to know that I did stalk that little bastard down, and I splatted him. But no, there's another bug. Or there was. I'm getting ahead of myself...

Picture the scene. We're sitting watching a film (Drillbit Taylor - even Owen Wilson couldn't make it worth a watch. And yet the whole way through it seemed familiar. Could it be that I'd actually watched it once and been so bored by it that I managed to erase it entirely from my memory? Apparently so. Apatow - I just don't get the appeal. But that isn't the point) and (possibly thanks to my new glasses) I see a something - wait, that's not right. More emphasis - I see a something scuttling across the floor. It stops, as though aware I've noticed it, and in return I gasp, and grab Ben's arm.
"Ben - ohmigodohmigodohmigod - is that (horrified pause) ?!"
Ben looks over, grabs my slipper and thwacks it down on something that ISN'T EVEN THE THING I'M POINTING AT. He looks pleased with himself but by now I'm beyond words. I just waggle my finger frantically at the something now and make squeaky noises.
I should say, by the by - I'm not ordinarily the kind of girl who will jump up and down and/or faint at something creepy or crawly. I let spiders out - even big ones. I'll grab a moth in my hands and open a window for it. If a cricket jumps on me, I'll admire its long legs and big old antenna and then shoo calmly it away. In fact, I was once cleaning a friend's kitchen and discovered a mouse under the sink, but I didn't panic. I did try to keep it as a pet, but that just backs up my point. I'm not squeamish, not really. There are only two insect-types I can't bear - centipedes and millipedes. Gahk. But usually, I'm the kind of girl that can handle bugs.
Back to the story. Just as Ben sits back on the sofa, the bug makes a break for it, and Ben, to give him his due, is up like a shot and thwacks it twice for good measure with my poor slipper. I look at him with wide eyes, hardly daring to ask.
"Was it... was it a...?"
He looks at me and confirms my fears.
"Cockroach."
I did what any normal person would do (Ben, apparently, is not normal, choosing rather to be level headed and all come-on-let's-sort-this-out. Boring). I stood in the middle of the room and flapped my arms whilst jumping round in a circle with my eyes closesd, squealing "EWWWWWWWW!!!" rather louder than I probably should in this densely populated apartment block. If there had been a chair that looked sturdy enough, I would have been up there with my slippers, clutching at my skirt and shouting "Thaaaaaaaaamas!" until Ben told me to stop being silly and get down. As it was he just sat down calmly and said
"You're in the way of the TV."
I joined him hesitantly and watched the final chapter of Drillbit Taylor (I don't want to spoil things for you, so if you haven't seen it, make a mental note here and now to NEVER EVER WATCH IT) but all the while my brain was saying
"Cockroachcockroach ohmigodohmigod cockroach wheredotheylive ohmigod DOTHEYLIVEUNDERTHEBED gahkgahk calmdowncalmdown MYLEGISTICKLINGME!!! THERE'SASOMETHINGONMYLEG!! nonoit'snothing calmdowncalmdown" and so on and so forth. After the final scene of the film (unrealistic but unsurprising) Ben got up and searched for "Cockroach" on Google. Turns out they like damp areas, which means that - thank goodness - under the bed was not a likely possibility. I made Ben check anyway. Devoid of cockroaches. But under the sink - the drain there is leaking and we've generally avoided the whole area because it's, well, gross. So Ben did the manly thing and clingfilmed it all up so no cockroach can gain access to the flat anymore. From there, anyway. Unfortunately, I had seen it scuttling from another direction, which means that it probably came from under the door. This is good as it means we do not have to share bedspace with any cockaroaches, but bad as - actually, no that's not bad. Someone else can deal with it. So long as they don't read the same Wikipedia article we read, which mentions the best way to deal with a cockroach infestation. I quote, "The house centipede is probably the most effective control agent of cockroaches, though many homeowners find the centipedes themselves objectionable." Yeah, you click on that link. (Open it in a new tab, you don't want to go navigating away now). But you click on that link and you look at what they are RECOMMENDING people to INSTALL IN THEIR HOUSES. That's right. Creepy looking CENTIPEDES who are so mean they actually PREY ON OTHER BUGS. That's like saying, there's a small candle burning in the living room, I know, I'll flood the house.

So. Cockroaches. Yeah, we are livin' the high life.

Purple Nasties served by leprechauns

2008-09-13T05:13:00.000-07:00

We went out last night to check out the town. We intended it to be a joyous exploration of our new home, but we managed to get as far as the local Irish bar and sort of stayed there for the rest of the evening. It boasts a bit of a dodgy entrance (a large expance of concrete that leads up to some more doors, as though the pub was built first and then the rest of the street inched forward around it) and we had to push past a group of intimidating cigarette smoking Belgian teenagers to go in, which served to lower our expectations, but once in it was pretty good. It's still legal to smoke inside here, and we stared at the ashtrays in wide eyed increduality. The novelty wore off after a while - I'd say when we got home and my clothes smelt - but it was, at the time, another wondrous example of how very different this town is to back home. The pub itself has a smoky, dimly lit ambience, and the barman are all Irish, which made ordering drinks a lot simpler, and probably explains the slight headache and nausea that I've been dealing with this morning, as it turns out they sell snakebite and black - the drink that anyone from Loughborough will insist is a 'Purple Nasty'. After trying a 'Méchant Pourpre' (yeah, you go look it up on Babelfish) I have discovered that they aren't as good as the proper Loughborough Nasties (which is not saying an awful lot) or as good as the local cherry beer, Kriek. So it was a good night of cherry beer and the Cranberries. We invented a new game of 'spot the nationality', and I correctly identified some Americans who then marched up to the bar and introduced themselves to the barman, who goes by the doubtful moniker of 'Wilson'. But any embarrassment he might have in introducing himself as such was probably dispelled by the fact that the American female shaking his hand told him her name was 'MacKenzie'. I mean, honestly. Then Ben got cross with me for doing a bad Irish accent and talking about Leprechauns.
On the note of the headache and nausea, when Ben cooked (reheated) our crepes for lunch he said, sympathetically "No Nutella on yours then?" to which I just gave him a look, and he sighed and loaded my crepe up with the wonderful chocolatey goop that everyone here seems obsessed with. "I like jam on pancakes" he then told me conversationally. Fortunately we have finally found out where to go for milk - Delhaize, up the road, which also sells sac poubelles, and is the word that I couldn't understand when all the Frenchies kept insistantly repeating it to me over and over again during the sac poubella saga.
"Delhaize! ... Non?"
"Du.... du lait?" I would ask in confusion. They would shake their heads.
"Delhaize! Er.... Delhaize!"
Then I would smile and say,
"Dulait! Merci beaucoup!" and wander off.
Now I look back, perhaps they were saying 'Du lait', as in, 'You must have discovered the only place here that sells milk that doesn't taste like cottage cheese, you Englishy! With your bizarre fresh milk liking ways! The place that sells milk also sells sac poubelles!" Maybe that's why Delhaize is so named. But probably not.

So, here we are

2008-09-11T03:52:00.000-07:00

We arrived in Mons last Friday, so we've been here nearly a week. I think, anyway. I'm not entirely sure whether it's Wednesday or Thursday. I could find out, but where's the fun in that? I quite like the fact that I've lost track of the days. I don't think there's every been a time that I didn't actually NEED to know what day it is - even at uni, I had to know whether it was a Monday or a Tuesday. Not in order to go to my lectures, you understand, but for my social life - because, let's face it, turning up to Echoes 'nightclub' on a Tuesday instead of a Monday would have been a faux pas indeed. So, I'm not entirely sure what day it is. I think scratching marks into the wall to show how many days have passed might not be recieved too well by Ben, and besides, I'd only get confused about whether I'd made a scratch yet for today or not. It's a veritable can of worms.* Also, if I was that bothered, we could get a calendar. In fact, we've got one. A wall planner thing that my dad gave me. But that's not the point.
Moving on. My aims for this next year in Mons were to:

Write a novel
Learn to draw
Learn to speak French fluently

So far I have not written anything, my sketchpad remains under the bed in the box it arrived here in, and French, it turns out, is a lot harder to learn than I originally anticipated. I don't really have much cause to speak French to anyone - unless you count saying "Je suis desolee, je ne pas parle francais" roughly four or five times a day. Having said that, I did have a somewhat stilted conversation yesterday afternoon with a man about binbags - if just for the pure, unadulterated joy of saying 'sac poubelle' over and over again. In fact, I just wrote the whole incident out in a message to my friend, so I'll just reproduce it here. Ah, my beloved copy and paste, the last refuge of the lazy.

Basically in Mons they have different bin bags for everything. And if you don't put your rubbish in the correct bag, they leave it, or worse, they throw it at your door. I imagine. I haven't seen any proof of this - they all just look the type. But they don't sell these 'sac poubelles' in the shops. I'm still yet to work out exactly why, but anyway. They don't sell fresh milk, and they don't sell any sac poubelles. We had some black bin bags that I'd sensibly brought over from England, but would they be accepted? What to do? I got more and more annoyed, and then decided to look up the word for 'rubbish' (ordures) and 'only' (seulment) and marched downstairs to ask a man I had seen sitting at his window. As I approached I realised that he was actually quite scary looking but by then I was commited. "Excusemoi monsieur!" I greeted him enthusiastically. I then pointed at the bin bags already left out for collection. "Le sac poubelle - c'est seulment blanc. J'ai sac poubelles noir - c'est dacord?" He shook his head. "Non, c'est blahblahblahblahblahfrenchyfrenchyblahblah sac poubelle blanc. Blanc." I said "Oh. Ou ... vendre ... la sac poubelle blanc?" He then gave me a long comprehensive description of exactly what one has to do in order to get a white sac poubelle, not a word of which I understood, so just as I was smiling brightly and saying 'merci beaucoup!' he disappeared then reappeared with a sac poubelle blanc. "pour moi?" I asked. "oui, oui, pour vous." Anything to get rid of the gibbering english girl, I thought. So I happily trotted back round to go back to my flat but got intercepted by some woman who had witnessed the whole thing, and then proceeded to show me that the bin bags were left in our post boxes, which is all very well except we haven't got a key for that, or for the bike shed might I add. She then implied in french that accepting Monsier Downstairs' bin bags was an error on my part, and made me go back and return them to him. So I trotted back round and tried to give them back. As he saw me his expression was one of 'Oh no, here she is again'. I tried to explain that I now knew they were in the post boxes ... geez this story is longer than I thought. To cut it short he told me to keep the bin bag, so I did and felt very proud of myself, until Ben got home from work with A WHOLE ROLL of the things. Someone at work had brought them in for him. Which to my mind is cheating, so clearly I won.

So hopefully the poubelle saga has been sorted. Now we just have the issue of the flat (aka, the room) being taken up with two large mountain bikes, as we haven't got a key to the bike sheds. I just can't understand why they keys for the front doors would have been separated from the keys for the post box and the bike sheds. Surely we need all of them at the same time? Is it a Belgium thing, or a poor organisational thing, or a Belgian poor organisational thing?
I have no idea about measurements - no idea about weights, temperature, or how big our room is in feet. Its about 8 of my stumpy strides by another 8, with a tiny hall area for the coats and shoes and a rather larger bathroom which boasts a large wall mounted cupboard where a large wall mounted cupboard clearly doesn't belong and is just waiting to cave someone's skull in. The shower itself has the power of a slight rainfall and the bedroom is as hot as a furnace, and the window doesn't open properly. It does however have more than enough storage space for all of mine and Ben's things, which I wasn't expecting, and a sofa bed that turns into a double - thankfully, because there was no way we'd fit in Ben's massive behemoth of a bed.

The room stays hot all night, which means that I sleep very fitfully, and when I sleep fitfully, I have bizarre dreams. I doubt I'm alone in this, and I only mention it so that I can also mention something that happened last night, around 3am. I woke up and asked Ben why, why had he put stones in my pillow? AGAIN? and then showed him the offending pillow. Ben blinked sleepily at me, and said, unsurprisingly, "...what?"
I repeated my question; "stones in the pillow, Ben! Look! Oh, it doesn't matter," before grumpily going back to sleep.
I wake up every morning covered in bites, from a mosquito or some such flying evil, but have as yet had no luck locating it and dealing out its overdue death. I'm beginning to wonder whether instead of sucking blood, it's slowly sucking out my sanity.

*Can of worms?! Who puts worms in a can? Why would you want to put worms in a can?!