Have I stumbled into a low budget horror movie?

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

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!

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

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

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.

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

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

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.