Tuesday, October 28, 2008

Back online

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.