Last, final, Goodbye Mons post

I kept meaning to write my last, goodbye Mons post, and then life got in the way and I kept forgetting, and then I couldn't think of anything worth writing, so just left it.

I am appreciative of my lazy nature now, as I can write this final, last goodbye Mons post.

I've been back in the UK now for three weeks, and I have a job selling insurance over the phone. It's a world away from trotting to the laundrette every other week, and I would not be hard pressed to tell you which lifestyle I preferred. But time ticks inexorably on, and I knew the Mons adventure wouldn't last forever.

My last missive to you documents the happenings of last night. I went out in Canterbury with Alana, and as the night drew to a close we found ourselves meandering towards the Loft, as the DJ there had caught Alana's eye and she wanted another look. Two chaps behind us commented at the speed of our meanderings, and Alana politely asked them why they didn't just overtake - we were walking down a street that could comfortably fit six or seven people walking in a row. One of them said something in response, but what he actually said was lost underneath his bizarre accent.

There is a funny bit Eddie Izzard does, about the bad guys in Bond films having unrecogniseable accents. 'What is your accent?' Eddie's impeccable impression of Bond asks. 'I hev it stuk on shiop demonsraation' says his villain.

If you've seen the sketch to which I refer, you'll understand. If not, I expect that was thoroughly confusing. I apologise. Basically, his accent was all over the place, starting in South Africa, skimming across to India, touching on Spanish and ending up in Abba.

Not unreasonably, Alana and I accused him of making up an accent. As we had previously pretended to be a lesbian couple on our first date to avoid the attentions of an over amourous builder, we weren't judging, we just wanted to know the truth.

'Ay em not mekin thees accent up,' he told us in confusion. 'Whet diu yiu myean?'

'It just sounds made up,' we told him. 'Where are you from?'

'Wheyere diu yiu theenk?' he asked.

Lana guessed South Africa. I went for Dutch, having confused those accents in the past. He said Dutch was close, so I guessed Sweden. Nope, but close. My geography all but exhausted, Alana took the lead, and guessed a host of countries that I've only heard about on Eurovision. Finally, she shrugged her shoulders.

'I dunno. Belgium?'

'Yeeeyes!' he cried gleefully. "Ey em frem Brussels!'

'She lived in Mons!' Alana said, pointing at me.

He looked at me with a bemused expression.

'Why?'

That question is one many people have asked, and I didn't feel like explaining to a drunk Belge dressed as a cowboy. Instead I tried to wow him with my French. He looked even more confused.

'I don't think that means what you think it means," he said. 'Did you mean to ask me whether I sell binbags?'

I'm watching you...

I noticed this some time ago, but today it's really freaking me out.

Here is the view from our window (I know, attractive)














Here is the window over the road in close up.














Closer...














Behold! Creepy, huh?

On the note of the window we had a man in to fix ours the other day. It's one of those that either has a small crack at the top or the whole thing swings inwards. Of course, ours is broken so that it will only open one way, the rubbish tiny crack at the top way. As the room is currently the temperature of the lower echelons of hell, we hoped he would fix the freaking window.

He didn't, on the basis that if he did, it would present a safety hazard - namely, we might jump out.

He wouldn't fix the window because he seriously thought that if he did, we might consider it a suitable alternative to taking the stairs.

But look at the fuzzzzeeeee!

You might remember, some time ago, a few very excited posts about the black swans in the local park. Together they created an almighty nest of epic proportions and laid six eggs. I was very excited, then one day we went to see them and there were no eggs, and no babies.

At first we hoped that the cygnets were under the parents' wings, but after a few more visits it was clear that it was impossible for six baby swans to be hidden for that long, and we sadly accepted the fact that something had gone wrong and we wouldn't be seeing any baby swans in the near future.

Yesterday we strolled down to the park with some day old baguette, just for something to do. The swans were nowhere to be seen in the main pond, so we wandered round to the secondary pond.

There they were, as elegant and graceful as ever, only there was ... something else.

Something small and grey and fuzzy.

GickBling

My friend Laura, knowing my interest* in cockroaches, has let me in on an almost unbelievable fashion accessory - so almost unbelievable that even after checking various sources that back up her claims, I am still oscillating wildly between belief and disbelief like a child asked to choose between its parents.

Cockroach Jewellery

Cockroaches that live on a small chain and are bedecked in various bling. The ultimate accessory? Lord, I hope not.

Behold!


Gick. Sparkly gick, but gick all the same. With extra iiiiii for emphasis. Giiiiiick.

I would like to point out that our cockroaches were about twenty times smaller than the pimped out dude in the picture and in comparison, relatively cute.

*for 'interest', read absolute horror, detestation and occasional pity and remorse derived from impaling one on a fork.


In other news, Ben and I were woken up last night at around 1am by the man changing the posters in the bus stop. He has to do this, apparently, in the dead of night with the orange flashing lights on the van going overdrive.

As though that isn't annoying enough, another van promptly pulled up behind with equally annoying and bright flashing lights, another man got out, and (from what I could gather, peering through our blinds and not understanding French) they had an argument about whose turn it was to replace the poster.













I got back into bed shaking my head at the absurdity as Ben said from his pillow,

"Always the way, isn't it? You wait for ages for them to change the posters in the bus-stop, and then two come along at once."

You can also see, in the bottom left hand corner of the two van picture a long pipe running into a drain.

This pipe is currently the bane of our nights. For some reason, we know not why, this pipe is extracting water from the building site next door. You know, the one that's building over an Ancient Belgian Burial Ground. It used to gush out onto the pavement and flow down to the drain, which whilst loud was actually relatively pleasant; it sounded a bit like we were next to a beach.

This was not good enough for the Belgies, however. They decided that the noise was not quite loud enough to well and truly keep us up, so they installed a second pipe that takes the water from the first pipe directly down the drain. But they had to bend it to get it to do that, so the water now builds up behind the bend and at irregular intervals when there is enough pressure the water whooshes out. It sounds a bit like an elephant taking a drink and then being startled by another elephant who is also taking a drink.

I was much more comfortable drifting off to sleep by imagining myself by the sea than I am with the idea of sleeping my some thirsty pachyderms, I can tell you.

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.

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

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.

Faux Angel Delight

We were amused by a packet in the dessert section of our local express supermarche that declared itself to be 'Plop!'. We considered buying it just for the sheer hilarity, but were instead convinced by a three pack of some sort of chocolate dessert mix as I thought it looked a bit like Angel Delight.

So I had a quick look at the instructions and didn't really understand anything except 700ml du lait, but I thought that was enough - 700ml of milk, easy peasy, mix it in, voila, Angel Delight. O ho, how I misunderestimated the Belgies - nothing is that simple. It came out all runny, so I shoved it in the fridge and hoped it would solidify somehow.

It did not.

"Are you sure you read the instructions properly?" asked Ben.
I shrugged and said something noncomittal, and threw the empty sachet at him to decipher.

"You were supposed to boil it," he told me after scrutinising the French words on the back.

So I popped the whole thing in a saucepan and wandered off. It began to burn. I rushed back after Ben alerted me and stood diligently stirring whilst it thickened up. There didn't seem to be any burnt bits, so I quietly congratulated myself.

I then poured it back into the bowl and put it back in the fridge.

Half an hour later we had a look and it appeared to be custard. Burnt chocolate custard. Not actually Angel Delight at all. Faux Angel Delight. Burnt Faux Angel Delight.

I am determinedly making my way through it anyway.

After publishing this post I spoke to my sister about it online.

The following conversation ensued.

Sara says:
How was your Plop?
Amanda says:
We didn't have Plop, we had chocolate custard.
Sara says:
oh i thought it was Plop that you bought.
Amanda says:
Nice to see you pay attention. We also have cockroaches here sometimes, did you know that?
Sara says:
Shut up. You cant talk about paying attention.
Amanda says:
Yes I can.
Sara says:
You tried to refrigerate uncooked custard.

Dammit. I should have guessed she would use that against me.

Whose pants are these?

We went to the laundrette today. We've been putting it off since we got here; at first it was snowy outside and then it got rainy and it's just such a long walk that I couldn't bring myself to go. But after a while the laundry basket started to overfill and began to look like a small fabric mountain that might well topple over whilst I was brushing my teeth or something and then I'd be stuck under a pile of grimy clothes until Ben came home to rescue me. So added to the fact that Ben had run out of underpants (I hadn't - thanks to Alana) I did actually make a run last week, but didn't even manage to make a dent in the pile of clothes requiring attention.

So we packed up both of our traveling bags with dirty clothes and hung them off the handles of Ben's bike as though it was a packhorse and made the trek. We were going to wait until later on this evening to go as midday on a Sunday tends to be the laundrette's busiest time, but Ben got itchy feet and wanted to Get Stuff Done, so we decided to take our chances. When we got there I thought we'd done well because there was only three or four people, and it would have been alright, had not the young couple who must have got there just before us have bagsied no less than SEVEN of the twelve washing machines and were taking their time about even turning them on.

I think of myself as a relatively patient person but there are a few things that properly get my back up, and two of those things are rudeness and stupidity. Not only had these people stuffed their things into seven of the washing machines, but they then faffed around for a while getting the tokens, and then wandered off to get the powder. Whilst I was waiting for a machine to become free, getting more and more irate, I grumbled to Ben.
"Calm down," he said. "Perhaps they've never been to the laundrette before."
"Well, maybe," I retorted. "But it's just basic common sense not to take up so many machines and then leave them without even turning the bally things on" (I've been reading a lot of Wodehouse, and I wish I was half as eloquant as Bertie Wooster. Instead I'm going through a phase of peppering my speech with Wooster-isms, like 'Bally well' and 'G. and Tonic' and 'Well if that doesn't just take the giddy biscuit!'). I also said some other things, secure in the knowledge that they wouldn't be able to understand neither English nor Wodehouse but were probably getting the gist. Whilst they were willywallying around doing not much and being useless, one of the other washing machines finished its cycle, the owner of the clean laundry inside it managed to empty it, I filled it up with some of our clothes, and it was already washing away happily before they even managed to turn one of the seven they had comandeered on. Baring in mind that we had roughly three weeks of washing and still only used three machines I don't even know where they found enough clothes to take up seven machines.

Then they left. Ben, who had gone off in search of change, managed to get back as they were trying to drive out the car park, and he said that they were just as bad at driving as they were at doing laundry, which was comforting.

We managed to get all of our things in various washing machines quickly and efficiently and we'd already got one batch in the dryer before they got back. I then took great pleasure in taking up four dryers for all our clothes in the hope that they might learn something from it. I don't know whether they did, but Ben and I got our revenge anyway.

"Who's pants are these?! They aren't mine!" cried Ben, brandishing a grubby pair of white(ish) y fronts that he'd found as we sorted through our now dry clothes and giggling. "Ew!"
We laughed and put them to one side, just as the clueless couple pottered over to put some of their clothes in the dryer next to ours. After setting it going they wandered off again to put the rest of their washing in the big bank of dryers round the corner.
I was still quite annoyed at them so I had a bit of a grumble to myself whilst folding our laundry which Ben overheard. He patted me on the shoulder and peered round the corner.
"Quick! They're not looking!"
"What?" I asked, never the first to catch on.
"The pants! Put them in their dryer!"
I looked at the pants and then at the dryer.
"I can't do that! They'll come back!"
"No, they're putting all their clothes in the other dryers - quickly!"
So I did it. I put a pair of clean - albeit greying - underpants in amongst their clothes and it was one of the funniest things I've done in my whole life.
"You've gone bright red!" Ben told me, amused at my fit of giggles.

I really wanted to stay and watch their reaction - "Quoi? Quoi est la paire de gris sous-vêtements fait ici?!"

Brilliant.

In other news Ben is pretty pleased with himself because whilst peeling the potatoes he just found one that looked a bit like a bum.

Made up mannequins

When we came out here in September I was of the opinion that I had never even visited Belgium before and was most excited about thusly extending my horizons. Then when Alana and I visited Bruges I called my mum, bubbling over with excitement, to tell her how far and wide I was traveling, and she calmly said "Ooh, Nana's got a photo of you sitting on a monument in Bruges", which rained on my parade somewhat and then some time later I was studying Belgium on Google Maps and after a while it slowly dawned on me that not only had I already been to Bruges, I'd also been to Ypres on a school history trip. At the time I'd thought it was France, but according to Google Maps (which let's face it, is rarely wrong about this sort of thing) Ypres was firmly in Belgium.

I didn't find the trip particularly interesting, and came away no more enthused about history than I had been prior to getting on a stuffy coach and driving for an interminable time around 'French' motorways , but somewhere in the ten (ish) years since I picked up an interest in the world around me. I don't know how it happened, as I studiously tried not to pick up such a time consuming hobby, but there we have it. Somewhere along the line I began to find that subjects like History, Geography and Biology now held a kind of fascination (still not Chemistry though, despite Ben's best attempts to reel me in); sadly if I'd reached this conclusion a little earlier on in my life, possibly whilst people were happy to teach me everything that I'd like to know, I might not have gone on to study the fairly useless degree of English at Uni and might have done something that has more impact on my adult life than being able to spell and turn a phrase. And might have known, for example, that Ypres isn't in France.

So yesterday, whilst engaged in the fairly pleasant activity of wandering aimlessly around Mons with Ben, we happened across an old military museum and although he's not particularly bothered about history, Ben indulged me. The museum is fairly hidden and set back from the street, in a sort of similar way to the Irish Pub. You walk in through the main doors and find yourself in a sort of large drafty hallway. In the case of O'Malleys this area is just dead space you have to cross until you reach another set of doors behind which is the pub itself, but in the case of the museum the walls feature a set of pictures with explanations in French, Dutch and English that give you a brief snippets of events in Mons during the World Wars; it mentioned something I'd not heard of before but probably should have - the Mons Angel, which apparently appeared to British soldiers on the brink of giving up and encouraged them to fight that little bit harder and win the day. Sort of like an ethereal cheerleader.

So after all these we came to the museum itself, which was 1,25 € each entry. Whilst discussing whether we should go in (it looked a bit rubbish, in fairness) we noticed a whole row of ancient filing folders, just stacked against the wall. It said, in French "Ne pas toucher SVP; toxique", and then in English 'Do Not Touch'. Ben laughed and said "The English are more trustworthy - we're good at following instructions but the French need extra warning 'oooh, it's poison, don't touch'". This would seem to be the case, as folders by their very nature aren't poisonous, seeing as they are for practical use rather than just aesthetic and picking them to file things is more or less their reason for being. However, I wouldn't be surprised if the chap had actually imbued certain folders with poison as a nosy person deterrent, but didn't think it was worth warning the English to that extent. "Aah, the Eengleesh, I tell them no touchy, but if they do, pffff." Then when he appeared he did actually look a little bit like someone who might poison folders in an attempt to stop people getting their sticky paws on them, so we just politely gave him 2,50 € and hurried on into the museum itself.

The exhibitions were actually pretty good; they were organised into each different country's soldier's uniform and bits and pieces found - in the British cases there were exercise books, lighters, cigarette cartons and a little silver box with several signatures etched onto it that made me cry a little bit.

There was also a case with Nazi memorabilia which I didn't like to get too close to.
Something I'd known but that hadn't really been driven home was the fact that during the war Mons was occupied by the Nazis. There were pictures of the Grand Place with rows upon rows of German soldiers marching, and it looked terrifying. I know that not all the Germans were evil; that most of them were just men fighting for their country just like we were, but the case of Nazi uniforms and swastika emblazoned crockery just sent chills down my spine.


But the best bit by far was the mannequins. I'm quite frightened of mannequins anyway - they feature on a long list which includes millipedes, icebergs, tractors and hyenas, so that doesn't mean much, but these ones redefined creepy. Ben didn't get a photo of them, except for this one of me staying on the correct side of the velvet rope, so what you can't see is that although each and every mannequin was dressed in a rugged soldiers uniform, each and every one of them was wearing bright scarlet lipstick and green eyeshadow. The first one we saw I thought might have been a mannequin from a clothes shop, because at 1,25 € a visitor the museum obviously isn't pulling in enough cash to spend on custom made soldier dummies. However, as we walked round, it became clear that every single one had a full face of horribly clashing make up. But why, we mused, why would anyone go to this trouble to amass such an impressive collection of war memorabilia only to make a mockery of the whole thing with a shade of lipstick so red that not even I'm brave enough to wear? Until the obvious answer dawned on me. A lady - braver than I - must have accidentally left her scarlet lipstick behind; perhaps it fell out of her bag when she was leaning over to look at the lighter and half empty tobacco pouch. And then the mannequins come alive at night and entertain each other with bad makeovers, then leave the make up on just to screw with patrons.

I had to leave quite soon after that as I was convinced that they were going to start lurching towards me brandishing a lipstick I know I wouldn't suit.

Burfdee and crayon eating puppies

It's Ben's birthday today and I attempted to bake a cake. I say attempted, because the end result was not as cake-like as I would have liked. For this I blame the Belgians - I have been baking cakes since my primary school decided to give cookery classes for all those not sporty enough to have been picked for the school teams and generally they turn out alright, so it must be the Belgian's fault. That's just logic.

I bought the ingredients a while back, and after staring blankly at the (small) range of flour Delhaize had to offer I thought the most sensible option would be one described as 'cake flour'. I thought, cakes rise, so this LOGICALLY must be self raising flour. It's my own fault really for trying to apply logic and common sense in a country where they come out to change bus posters at 1am but wouldn't come to connect our internet for three weeks. As you might have guessed it was not self raising flour, and Ben's cake looks like it's been sat on by a small elephant.

I ranted about this to all and sundry via the awesome medium of Facebook, and was particularly tickled by the response it got from my friend Joost, who pointed out "I couldn't possibly ever be angry at Belgianry - we of the North find they have a simplistic endearing quality about them, like puppies eating crayons. Which is why we don't let them in; they'd just get sick on our carpets."

And in Lidl whilst buying Ben's birthday dinner (pizzas - the boy is easy to please) the girl on the till who usually insists on looking in my bag said something unintelligible and I panicked. I thought she knew I was English, but apparently not. Anyway, I just looked at her with wide confused eyes and the man behind me in the queue said 'Anglais?' to which I said 'Oui, oui! Anglais!' and he smiled benevolently and repeated everything the girl had said in French, only louder. Nice to see that some things are the same anywhere you go.

Black Swan Sweethearts

Having exhausted all of Mon's interesting sights on the first day of their trip we decided to finish off Ben's family visit with a trip to the local duck pond. An adventure that manages to be better than it sounds, as this particular duck pond boasts a pair of gorgeous black swans. They are simply beautiful creatures and, unusually for swans, they're also quite sweet natured - although I don't know how they'd be with us if we dared to turn up without our usual offering of stale bread.

The pond looked a bit odd as we approached and Ben offered the opinion that perhaps the whole thing had been drained, as the swans seemed to be standing up in the middle. As we got closer we realised the pond was actually quite full, but rather than the swans being the foretold second coming of Jesus, the whole pond had simply frozen, and the birds were perched somewhat bemusedly on top of the ice.

We were just as bemused as they, as although it was very cold in the beginning of January (-14° centigrade at one point, a fact Ben's sister Jo couldn't quite get her head round - "C?" she repeated incredulously, "C?!") of late the temperature has hit such heights as 3° centigrade, thus thawing the snow we had hanging around endangering unwary pedestrians for a week or so. Nevertheless, most of the pond was still iced, except for a small corner which the swans wearily made their slippery way over to, apparently in order to menace a fat looking fish that had sleepily ventured out from under the ice.

As we were feeding the black swans a large white one saw us - or rather, the bread we were touting - and started to make its tiresome and arduous journey across the ice over to where we were standing. It took the poor thing ages, and then when it finally did arrive one of the black swans made it abundantly clear that it was not at all welcome and should possibly sling its hook. It rapidly did as suggested with a rather put out demeanour, so we threw some bread at it anyway whilst doing our best to ignore the irritated stares of the black ones.

I tried for ages to get a photo of one of the swans on its own, but one of the sweetest things about them is that they're always together, and - except for the incident where one of them had to see off the unwanted attentions of the white one - they were never more than a foot away from each other.

I took loads of videos of them slipping all over the place as frankly, it was pretty funny, so for your viewing pleasure I've uploaded one of them as they trudge towards the thawed area, and another that shows the white swan midway through its ill fated journey over to see what was going on.





And for those of you who would like to have a cockroach situation update, here it is: the little bastards laid low because we had guests. Thoughtfully not forcing their presence on visitors not quite accustomed to their ambush tactics, you say? No! Do not give them more credit than they are due. They're just trying to convince people that we're making them up, so that we get no sympathy. They're cruel and unusual beasties.

Yes We (Coke) Can!

We were kept awake last night by the wind, which blew the window open and sent a noisy drinks can scampering with a mad gaiety across the road and back, over and over again. Ben's mama and sister had wisely opted for a hotel, so when they came round this morning full of the joys of life and quiet hotel rooms we told them our woes.

"It was a Coke can!" I told them joyously, always one to keep a theme going.
"How can you possibly know that?" asked Ben's brother Jack. "I bet it was a beer can."

I was about to admit that yes, knowing the BelgyBums it probably was an errant beer can, when Ben's mama chipped in sagely.

"Of course it was a Coke can, Jack. Otherwise it wouldn't be relevant."

The title of this post was inspired by an inspirational marketing move by one of the Belgian shops that we walked past yesterday. They have a big sign in the window saying simply: Soldes! (Sale!) YES WE CAN!

Good old Obama, still working tirelessly to shift cut price clothes across Europe.

Cockroach Attacks Weatherman

We found the following video on failblog.org and thought that it pretty much sums up how I react to the cockroaches we find. Cockroach Attacks Weatherman! Wait to the end of the post to click on it, otherwise you'll get sucked in by the awesomeness of the Failblog and you'll forget what you were doing before. Yeah, I know what you're like.

I had to kill another one yesterday - this one was a baby, so I felt even worse than when I tried to kill Mr Whiskers, our resident under-oven dwelling friend who hasn't shown his mandibles in our presence since I unsuccessfully tried to smush him. I might have jumped the gun though on proclaiming the invasion, as we've only seen two. As the well known phrase goes, two cockroaches do not make an infestation. So long as they're both lady cockroaches and haven't been getting jiggy with any gentleman cockroaches prior to stopping by. One of them is dead now anyway so it's all acedemic.

Ben's lovely fambly have been visiting this weekend for his birthday and we all went out for a meal at the local Italian (I know, I know, they've come all the way to Belgy only to eat at an Italian restaurant, but it really is the only place you can get friendly service - last time we got food at a Belgium eatery the lady shouted at us for ordering extra chips. True story). Whilst there I spotted a young couple out the window, and it amused me as he appeared to be trying to smooch her whilst she was blowing her nose. I drew the attention of the rest of the table to the amorous/ non amorous couple, and it became quite an interesting topic of conversation. It slowly occured to us that she was doing everything in her power to subtly not smooch him, without actually stepping away, and during one intense hug (we did feel a bit weird nosying on them at this point, but it was just fascinating) he actually checked his watch over her shoulder. Then she skipped away! Brilliant. Better than Hollyoaks.

On the subject of things that are more interesting as they are happening than when I later come to write them down, we saw another abandoned Coca Cola can on the way home. Naturally we took a picture of it (we didn't think to turn the can round so it looked more aesthetically pleasing; blame the jug of wine we had with dinner) and as we did so a police car drove past and looked at us suspiciously! I'm beginning to wonder if it's some sort of Coca Cola can conspiracy.

So go check out that video now - it's me! Apart from the African American gay weatherman thing, obviously.

Pickchures!

Mons in 'Actually Quite Interesting' shocker:


I got a bit carried away taking pictures of the gargoyles.

It has begun.

The cockroach epidemic that I joked about but never really took seriously has, in all seriousness, begun.

Whilst minding my own business earlier one ran at me from underneath the oven. I reacted with my typical lightning fast reflexes - pow! Luckily for the cockroach my lightning fast reflex was to jump back and flap for a while, whilst looking for something flat-ish to flatten-ish it with. Then as I was merrily hopping from one foot to the other it casually trundled back under the oven, where I watched it wandering back and forth for a while, before I remembered that I have to wait until it eats the poisoned food. The chap was most clear on that - don't kill them until they eat the poison, which makes no sense, because whether it's dead from poison or dead from slipper, it's still dead, right? Dead cockroachs being preferable to live ones (to me, probably not to it), and all.

So now I am sharing my kitchen space with a cockroach, who I can't kill even if I was allowed to because it's so damn fast. Before I remembered I wasn't supposed to kill it I did have a go at squishing it, but at the last second I was distracted by it cleaning its whiskers, which albeit gross made me remember that it's a creature rather than just an annoyance and it stayed my hand, as it were, for a moment too long, and it ran back under the oven, where I swear it turned round and looked at me reproachfully.

On a side note I just spoke to my mama back in Blighty who was convinced I had tonsilitus because I've had the snuffles and my tonsils swelled a bit. They've gone down now, but as she is still worried I tried to reassure her:
Amanda: It's alright Mum, they've already gone down.
Mum: But tonsils aren't supposed to do that!
A: Yeah, they are, the swell up now and then if you're ill.
M: But mine don't do that!
A: ... You don't have any. You had them out when you were little.
M: Oh yeah.

I love my mum.