Don't take your Dragon to the Doudou

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.

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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

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!!

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.