Shut.

It's a beautiful day here in Flanders, much too nice to be sitting at my computer and writing. The sun is shining, the birds are singing and everything is right with the world. It's also a bank holiday, which means, apart from the bakers, everything is shut! Suddenly Belgium feels like Sunday did when I was a child. Sundays in the 70's were sooooooo boring.
It's not that I particularly feel the urge to go to any specific shop, it's just that if I did want to go to a shop for something...I can't. It leaves one feeling a tad...oh I don't know...deflated? It's not as if my civil rights have been violated.
Britain celebrates May Day on the first Monday of May, not the 1st May. Not sure why, maybe because a long weekend is preferable to a day off in the week. But on Monday every shop in the country will be open and not only that, the big stores will be doing special deals for the bank holiday. Over the past 10 years or so the traditional day of rest has been done away with so that now Sundays are just another day. Bank holidays are, as well, and some stores even open on Christmas Day. I can remember when I was younger, maybe 17 or so, walking to the pub for a traditional Christmas Day pint and discovering the local Indian owned newsagents open for business. The shock was palpable, I had to go into the shop, even though I didn't want anything. I walked in, did a circuit around the shelves of Dolly Mixtures and Black Jacks and walked out again. The owner gave me a world weary look that suggested I hadn't been the first person to do that, that day.
I like living in Belgium, but sometimes it is a bit like living in a real life version of the BBC programme Ashes to Ashes( a series about a bloke who finds himself in 1970's Britain). I still can't get over the fact that nearly every shop, Bank etc. closes for lunch! At lunch time...when people can nip out of work and do a bit of shopping!