Acrobats, marching bands and infringements of statue's rights

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.