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.

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

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.

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.

various confusing hand gestures

Alana (of 'make sure you have more underpants than he does' infamy) agrees with my stance on the horror of village halls, and comments "it’s the smell of the village hall that does it... mainly the smell but also the dreary décor and omnipresent brown flowery curtains. This is what I have concluded."

I particularly love the way she finishes up with her conclusion; you can tell the lass is a scientist.

In jest I told another friend that I have such little social contact with anyone who isn't Ben or my family via Skype that I would be posting today about the young chap who came round to sort out the ongoing cockroach problem. Sadly, what started out as jest has become reality, as I have very little else to actually concern myself with out here. That and the girl at Lidl who insists on rudely looking in my bag every time I shop there - do I look like a thief? Perhaps its the grey and white stripey top I wear combined with my black euroberet - classic burglar chic. But I digress.

I have lifted this almost in its entirety from an email I wrote yesterday to Alana, so I apologise to her as it means reading it twice. I shall change small parts of it and quiz her on them later to see if she's been paying attention.

Basically the cockroach man (I feel bad calling him that as he was very pleasant and made an effort to communicate in English, which none of the others do whenI'm sure they understand me perfectly and are deliberately being difficult) put down cockroach FOOD with which to LURE the cockaroaches to us; a move I am currently unconvinced in regards to the wisdom of, but apparently the food is poisioned (cunning) so then the cockroaches will eat it and die. However, he explained with various confusing hand gestures that the dying cockroaches will probably leave an egg behind in which are THIRTY TO FORTY of the frickin baby things, so they'll all turn up in three weeks, but will hopefully eat the poisoned nomnom before getting it on with the other cockroaches. So fingers crossed that their priorities are food THEN sex, otherwise the whole disgusting cycle willl just keep perpetuating itself.

Gross.

So basically, we are at the moment dealing with the odd one every week or so, but with this new posioned bait we will not only be dealing with quite a few more jumping out at us, in three weeks we will also be dealing with their babies in vast numbers.

I hate Belgium.

Most excitingly a teapot

We returned to Mons after our two week holiday at home for Christmas laden with Tesco branded goodies – namely minced beef (minced beef over here is usually mixed with minced pork – don’t ask me why), chicken (more expensive over here than steak), bacon, fruit and barley squash, bread that won’t go hard overnight, and three packets of digestive / hobnob biscuits. Oh, and a big old block of Cheddar – they just don’t seem to make good cheese over here, it’s all runny and smelly. Ick.

Not only did we make the journey back with groceries, but we had plenty of exciting Christmas presents as well – most excitingly a teapot, which we very much enjoy using (there’s a phrase I never thought I’d utilise), a new camera with which to further document our adventures, and books, dvds and computer games with which we while away the time not spent hunting cockroaches or trying to make sense of Belgium TV.

We joked about returning back to find a cockroach infested room (according to Ben, we would have walked in to find them playing music and watching our dvds “Oh, hey guys! We, uh, didn’t expect you back so soon … we invited some of our friends round, and you know, bred with them, and now there’s loads of us…. Hope that’s cool?”) but there was just one lone, solitary dead cockroach lying on the floor with his legs in the air. I felt sorry for him until another one jumped out of the cupboard and wiggled his antennae at me, and I promptly went back to shrieking and hating them with renewed vigor.

It snowed all day yesterday which was very pretty, although apparently it snowed in England too – what is the point of living in a foreign country if England is doing exactly the same thing? I feel like writing a letter of complaint. Ben got home and insisted we go play in the snow, so we did until my fingers got too cold and I remembered why I prefer to look at the snow from inside and not actually get too close to it.

I also forgot to write a bit about the Christmas Markets over here – we couldn’t decide for the longest time whether to go to the market in Bruges or Liege, and decided on Liege as it is apparently more famous and we’d already seen Bruges. It was a two hour journey away and we managed to miss our stop – an inauspicious start, but it turned out to be a bit more auspicious as the stop we ended up getting off at was actually closer to the market than the one we missed, so hurrah us. We decided to look for a hotel, but if we didn’t find one to just get the train back. Of course, all the hotels were booked up, so we made do with wandering around the fair, which was very pretty and Christmassy, but…

At this point I should explain how susceptible to the power of words I am. When I was home before Christmas my mum said “Ooh, Amanda, we’ve been invited to a hog roast! A HOG ROAST! Would you like to come?” at which point I replied, “A hog roast! Why, how wonderful that sounds! Of course I would like to go!” so I called my sister and said “Sara! A hog roast! How wonderfully Harry Potte- esque does that sound! We’re going to a hog roast!” and she said, very dubiously “Is it at a Christmas Fete - IS IT IN A VILLAGE HALL?”

More explanation needed here, I’m afraid. Sara and I have an inexplicable hatred of all things village hall. We don’t know why – my dad says it’s because when I was a baby they would take me to get my injections done in a village hall, but apparently they were more normal with Sara and took her to an actual doctors, so that doesn’t quite explain it. But village halls absolutely make my skin crawl. Perhaps it’s the lighting in there, or the general dreary atmosphere. Perhaps its because I’ve never lived in a village, and I don’t understand the camaraderie. But I can’t bear them, not one bit.

“Is it at a Christmas Fete, and will we have to sit at plastic tables with people we don’t know?” asked Sara, very sensibly.

“No, I’m sure it isn’t,” I continue blissfully, images of long wooden tables (Harry Potter again, I'm afraid), cosy log fires and mulled wine in tastefully decorated candle lit surroundings parading through my head. “I’m sure it will be lovely. A hog roast, Sara, a hog roast!”

“Alright,” replied Sara, doubtfully. “If you’re sure.”

It turned out to be a dead pig on a stick just outside a village hall. We walked in and everyone turned to stare at us. We were indeed expected to sit at plastic tables with people we didn’t know, and eat bits of pig (aka, ‘pork’) in a bap. It was a far cry from the delightful scenes I had envisioned when my mum first said hog roast to me. So we did what our family always does in such a situation – we hid in the cloakroom to eat our pork baps and made jokes to each other in hushed undertones, and I would like to say that Sara refrained from saying 'I told you so', but instead she made a point of saying it at regular intervals.

My point here is that the words ‘hog roast’ fooled me in a similar way to the words ‘Christmas Market’ did. Again, I expected something involving cosy log fires and tastefully decorated candle lit surroundings, and what we got was a market full of French people. But it was fun, and we went on a Ferris Wheel – unfortunately we weren’t even half way up when I remembered I’m a bit scared of heights, and it went round three times before they let us get off. Then we had a two hour journey home, most of which I slept for and played the odd game of Tetris on Ben’s phone. We arrived back in Mons tired and hungry, only to find a Christmas Market going on in our own Grand Place, and it was amazing. The ground was covered in glitter and there was an ice rink around a massive Christmas tree in the middle, and just off to one side there was a band playing tunes straight out of Narnia. It was incredible. All that way, just to come home and find that Christmas was right on our doorstep.

Creepier and crawlier

I feel, after the events of today, that we have been giving our beautiful apartment a hard time. It's really quite lovely. Never more lovely than it was when we returned to it from - I'm getting ahead of myself. Let's start at the very beginning. A very good place to start.

Well, not quite the beginning, because I suppose that would be the day Ben called me up and said "Hey baby, how would you feel about moving to Belgium?" To which I replied "....Belgium?!" Which funnily enough was the standard response that we receieved from most of the people we told. So, not the beginning, but today when Ben got home from work. Usually he buzzes for me to let him in, but today he just marched straight through the door. I did not have time to remark on this new turn of events as Ben announced,
"Come on! We're moving!"
Caught off guard, I just said
"...What?"
He explained. The company he works for out here actually has two rooms ('apartments') in this block, and the other has just been vacated by the other student that was here. Apparently that's the better apartment, what with its working fridge and shower, opening window and connected phone line, so we went to check it out. We trotted excitedly down the corridor, Ben unlocked the door, and in we went.

One word summed it up, and that word is "Gunnnnnnackkkkkergh", a word which begins with mild distaste and ends in complete disgust and horror.

It was an awful experience. On the bright side we did find out where that one rogue cockaroach had come from.

So; from the top. The room itself was depressingly and half heartedly painted (and didn't have our cool 80s brick 'accent' wall) and had horrible blue lino like the stuff on the floor of a cafeteria instead of our nice cheerful mock wood effect lino (I never thought I'd say that). The furniture was dilapidated and it didn't boast the sofa that pulls out into a double bed that our apartment has, instead favouring the look of an old stained grannyesque chair that looked on its last rotton legs. It did have a small oven - I say 'did', because we've yoinked that. The toilet, whilst being gross, was also missing its seat. Well, not missing, because it was propped up on the wall beside it, but they were not strictly as 'as-one' as one might hope. The shower, to give it its due, worked quite well, but the scores of cockaroaches milling about put me off ever wanting to shower in there, whilst ironically making me desperate to wash. The window did open properly, but you'd need it to in order to get some fresh air in whilst spraying insect repellent. There were three cans of insect repellent just on the worktops, so it's not a new and exciting problem - oh no, they're ESTABLISHED bugs. The fridge worked, but was full of - you've probably guessed it, and if not you haven't been paying attention - dead cockaroaches.

That's the apartment they've been putting all the students in. This apartment, with its sturdy furniture and comfy sofabed and discerning lack of creepies and crawlies is the second choice. That's the room we would have had to had spent the last week and a half in if the girl before us hadn't had too much and gone mad/home months before we got here. No wonder she went!

So everything in our apartment looks much cleaner and shinier and nicer after that - AND, joy of joys, Ben's been given the keys to the bike shed, post box and rubbish cupboard (it turns out they were in his boss's drawer all along. Oh these crazy Belgian people!). So now our bikes are outside and we can access our post and keep the rubbish in an outside cupboard and everything (touchwoodtouchwooktouchwood) is right with the world.

Diabolical Fly Plots

I’m sure you’ll be pleased to know that no Menaces, Flying, Scuttling or otherwise (touch wood) have been bothering us lately. Also, we discovered that it hasn’t been just us dealing with this cruel and unusual foreign bug invasion either; Ben speaks to Liam (his housemate from last year) most evenings because Liam is also on placement but in Germany, where they speak an even stranger language than the one they speak here. I overheard the following Skype conversation whilst making the dinner last night:
Liam: “I’ve got really good at swatting gnats. Flies too – it’s got to the point where I can sneak up on one (they’re really stupid), take off my top and WHIP it. I got one so good that it turned into goop.”
Ben considered this statement and said:
“Did you put your top back on afterwards?”
Liam laughed proudly.
“Yep.”

I can see where he’s coming from. Fly goop is the equivalent of a badge of honour in this war against the insect world. What really stood out was the inclusion of that aside; ‘they’re really stupid’, as though somewhere, sometime, Liam has encountered CLEVER flies. Flies that don’t just want to walk on poop and then on food. Flies that plan and scheme and connive in order to carry out some diabolical fly-plot.

Be afraid.

We also watched another film last night – Hellboy 2. Now, I was of the opinion that Hellboy the First was pretty bad, but Ben wanted to watch the sequel and I was interested in seeing the special effects and cool monsters. It was so dull, that half way through we both managed to get engrossed in a game of Spider Solitaire on my laptop (18 games won in a row. We’ve got a rule that states no game can ever be lost. Rewind right back to the start if you have to, but never give up. Strict adherence to this rule explains why I actually spent roughly two hours on a single game this morning. That’s two hours of my life I’ll never see again. Still, at least I wasn’t watching Hellboy.) There was only one bit that was worth watching – a bit that my sister had already mentioned, in the context of ‘There’s only one bit that’s worth watching’, and she was right. What really bugged Ben and I was the accent of a ‘German’ robot/incorporeal psychic energy thing. It was, even taking John Malkovich’s appalling French accent in Johnny English into consideration, the worst attempt at a foreign accent ever. As usual, as with any film we watch, I checked IMDb to see if there was any interesting trivia that I could impress Ben with. I discovered the following:

Del Toro had cast an actual, proper, born in Germany German voice actor to do the voice

He was not happy with the end result (was it the authenticity he had a problem with, perhaps?)

He cast, instead of this actual, proper, born in Germany German voice actor, SETH MACFARLANE.

Yeah, the guy who does Family Guy. Yes, he is very talented. But he is not German.

It gets better (worse?).

Seth Macfarlane based his German accent – wait, more emphasis – Seth Macfarlane BASED his GERMAN ACCENT on none other than JEREMY IRONS in DIE HARD!! He was doing an impression of a British man doing an impression of a German! Why?! For the love of God, why? If it had to be Seth MacFarlene, couldn’t he at least have tried to do an impression of a GERMAN? Would it have been so hard? He could have called up the guy who originally had the part - he probably still knows the lines, it’s not like any of them were unpredictable.

Moving on.

Whilst we were eating dinner last night, Ben was hit with sudden inspiration
“You could be really postmodern and write a blog on writing your blog.”He paused thoughtfully in order to construct a paragraph that he thinks sums up my blog entries thus far.
“You could put ‘Today I was writing in my blog and I wrote yeah, whatever, it’s cool and stuff.’” He looked at me helpfully, pleased with his contribution.

I think it’s quite safe to say that I probably won’t be writing a blog on writing my blog any time in the near (or far) future.

Notre ami, le cancrelat

Today has been a day of learning new things. How to use the laundrette (easier than anticipated). That Belgian waiters are not the most polite and friendly (pretty much anticipated). That our room may not have an internet connection or a phone or a key to the bike shed, letter box and rubbish cupboard or a window that opens properly or a cooker or a shower that works properly, but what it lacks in everyday essentials, it makes up for in bugs.
"But Amanda, you have mentioned the Flying Menace before! This isn't blogworthy news!" I expect you may or may not be thinking right now. Yes, that's true. I have. Thank you for paying attention thus far. And it might offer you some closure to know that I did stalk that little bastard down, and I splatted him. But no, there's another bug. Or there was. I'm getting ahead of myself...

Picture the scene. We're sitting watching a film (Drillbit Taylor - even Owen Wilson couldn't make it worth a watch. And yet the whole way through it seemed familiar. Could it be that I'd actually watched it once and been so bored by it that I managed to erase it entirely from my memory? Apparently so. Apatow - I just don't get the appeal. But that isn't the point) and (possibly thanks to my new glasses) I see a something - wait, that's not right. More emphasis - I see a something scuttling across the floor. It stops, as though aware I've noticed it, and in return I gasp, and grab Ben's arm.
"Ben - ohmigodohmigodohmigod - is that (horrified pause) ?!"
Ben looks over, grabs my slipper and thwacks it down on something that ISN'T EVEN THE THING I'M POINTING AT. He looks pleased with himself but by now I'm beyond words. I just waggle my finger frantically at the something now and make squeaky noises.
I should say, by the by - I'm not ordinarily the kind of girl who will jump up and down and/or faint at something creepy or crawly. I let spiders out - even big ones. I'll grab a moth in my hands and open a window for it. If a cricket jumps on me, I'll admire its long legs and big old antenna and then shoo calmly it away. In fact, I was once cleaning a friend's kitchen and discovered a mouse under the sink, but I didn't panic. I did try to keep it as a pet, but that just backs up my point. I'm not squeamish, not really. There are only two insect-types I can't bear - centipedes and millipedes. Gahk. But usually, I'm the kind of girl that can handle bugs.
Back to the story. Just as Ben sits back on the sofa, the bug makes a break for it, and Ben, to give him his due, is up like a shot and thwacks it twice for good measure with my poor slipper. I look at him with wide eyes, hardly daring to ask.
"Was it... was it a...?"
He looks at me and confirms my fears.
"Cockroach."
I did what any normal person would do (Ben, apparently, is not normal, choosing rather to be level headed and all come-on-let's-sort-this-out. Boring). I stood in the middle of the room and flapped my arms whilst jumping round in a circle with my eyes closesd, squealing "EWWWWWWWW!!!" rather louder than I probably should in this densely populated apartment block. If there had been a chair that looked sturdy enough, I would have been up there with my slippers, clutching at my skirt and shouting "Thaaaaaaaaamas!" until Ben told me to stop being silly and get down. As it was he just sat down calmly and said
"You're in the way of the TV."
I joined him hesitantly and watched the final chapter of Drillbit Taylor (I don't want to spoil things for you, so if you haven't seen it, make a mental note here and now to NEVER EVER WATCH IT) but all the while my brain was saying
"Cockroachcockroach ohmigodohmigod cockroach wheredotheylive ohmigod DOTHEYLIVEUNDERTHEBED gahkgahk calmdowncalmdown MYLEGISTICKLINGME!!! THERE'SASOMETHINGONMYLEG!! nonoit'snothing calmdowncalmdown" and so on and so forth. After the final scene of the film (unrealistic but unsurprising) Ben got up and searched for "Cockroach" on Google. Turns out they like damp areas, which means that - thank goodness - under the bed was not a likely possibility. I made Ben check anyway. Devoid of cockroaches. But under the sink - the drain there is leaking and we've generally avoided the whole area because it's, well, gross. So Ben did the manly thing and clingfilmed it all up so no cockroach can gain access to the flat anymore. From there, anyway. Unfortunately, I had seen it scuttling from another direction, which means that it probably came from under the door. This is good as it means we do not have to share bedspace with any cockaroaches, but bad as - actually, no that's not bad. Someone else can deal with it. So long as they don't read the same Wikipedia article we read, which mentions the best way to deal with a cockroach infestation. I quote, "The house centipede is probably the most effective control agent of cockroaches, though many homeowners find the centipedes themselves objectionable." Yeah, you click on that link. (Open it in a new tab, you don't want to go navigating away now). But you click on that link and you look at what they are RECOMMENDING people to INSTALL IN THEIR HOUSES. That's right. Creepy looking CENTIPEDES who are so mean they actually PREY ON OTHER BUGS. That's like saying, there's a small candle burning in the living room, I know, I'll flood the house.

So. Cockroaches. Yeah, we are livin' the high life.