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.

Whoops

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

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.

Snowy boots

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.

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.