Spook!

Another Halloween has been and gone. The spooky festival still hasn't really taken off here in Belgium, certainly not where we live anyway. We had a knock on the door the week before last, a full ten days before All Hallows Eve, and my wife opened it to discover two rather small children and their father.
"Trick or treat!"
A bit of a surprise. Not as surprising, I will grant you, if they had been singing:
"We wish you a merry Christmas"
but still a surprise none the less.
There was a mad scramble around the house while we looked for something suitable to give them with me complaining about the fact that it was waaaay too early for trick and treating. We don't keep sweets in the house at the best of times.
Me: Make them a cheese sandwich!
Wife: Don't be mean!
Me: Do we have any cough sweets?
In the end we gave them some money.
A bit reluctant to do that. But I have memories of me and some friends going door to door every Christmas as a child carol singing.
"....and a happy new year!"
ding dong.
That squirmy stomach feeling as you waited for the door to open.
An angry looking adult opening the door.
Him or Her: Yeah?
Us: Merry Christmas!!
Him or her: ............................................(silence)................
Then the door would slam.
I'm not saying we are soft touches but we usually have something in the house around festival times to give to beggars. In the end, yesterday passed with no visitors, leaving us with a nice tin full of bite size Snickers and Twix. Which we have to eat ourselves...damn and blast!

Listening Post

The wife and me are going to see one of our favourite groups tonight. They are the very under-rated Magic Numbers.

I Would Like To Buy...

One of the themes running through this blog has been about my inability to make myself understood in Dutch. Recently I had to buy some health supplements from the local Apoteek. The tablets contained Cranberries. I repeat, the tablets contained CRANBERRIES. I knew that the Apoteek sold them because I had seen them a few weeks before. They were packaged in shiny bright boxes with a red pill on the front that could indeed have been a Cranberry in pill form. The boxes were part of a promotional display that sat proudly on the counter enticing customers to buy them.
I entered the establishment and to my joy I noticed that the display had been removed. My mission was about to get complicated and quite possibly embarrassing.
The man who works behind the counter looks a lot like the old shop keeper in Little Britain. You know the one, he always shouts to his wife Margaret.




The man in the apoteek doesn't call out to his wife like the bloke in the clip, although strangely enough there is always an unseen presence moving about behind a partition.
I looked around the shop very carefully before approaching him, but I couldn't see what I wanted and so approach him I did.
The following conversation took place in Dutch.
Me: Hello.
Him:...........(worried silence)
Me: Do excuse me old chap but I am an Englishman and I speak very bad Dutch.
Him:..........(continued worried silence but this time with an opened mouth, similar, I should imagine to one you or I would have if we had just been approached by...oh, I don't know...a talking dog?)
Me:Last week...boxes...there...Cranberries!
I pointed to the place where they had been in the hope that he would remember such an impressive display of boxes but he seemed to be looking at my finger and not at the place I was pointing.
Me:Cranberries!
Him: (an embarrassed shake of the head)
Me:Cranberries!
Him:Do you speak French?
Me: Of course I don't speak French, I'm bloody English! I'm speaking your language! Listen to me! CRANBERRIES.
The shop started to fill up with people and by this time I'm getting a bit embarrassed myself.
Me:Cranberries! (I mimed the shape of the box)
He shrugged his shoulders.
Him: I'm very sorry but I don't understand you.
Me: But I can understand you!
I left the shop like a salted slug and trudged home in the rain.
I found a leaflet that had accompanied the display and trudged back to the shop with it. There were two people waiting to be served and I could see the man behind the counter looking over nervously at me. When it was finally my turn to be served I thrust the leaflet at him and stabbed a finger at the product.
Me:Cranberries.
Him:Oh...cranberries! why didn't you say that in the first place?
He turned and picked a box from the shelf imediately behind him. He had been standing in front of them, obviously the only place I couldn't see.
Him: I'm very sorry but they get moved from place to place by the presence behind the partition.
He pointed to three spots in the shop with me a little bit amazed that I could still understand him.
Him:That will be €17.50 please.
Me:How much??? You can stuff your bloody tablets!
Ok, I didn't say that, just thought it.
Yeah, I still have problems. A couple of saturdays ago the doorbell rang and I opened the door to find two girls on the doorstep.
Them: Hello, would you like to buy something you don't need or have any use for...it's for a good cause!
Me: How much?
Them:€6
Me: What...? (I wanted to ask what they were selling again but couldn't find the words so I just held my finger up as if I was telling them to wait there, shut the door and looked at them through the window until they went away.)
Below is an amusing clip of Steve Martin trying to get his pronounciation right...I share his pain!

Coming Soon

I'm a big fan of Simon Pegg and Nick Frost. This is the teaser trailer for their new movie.

Listening Post

Again, no video...just a song.

Bad

Sometimes life can be good and sometimes it can be ass wipingly bad! Not my words, Rowan Atkinson said that and who am I to disagree?
The past weekend was a series of mini-disasters, one of which was a totally freak accident with an almost empty plastic bottle of drink falling onto the open door of the microwave oven and shattering the glass. Other mini-disasters included the shutters in the guest bedroom breaking and my wife's oldest son having to reload the opperating system onto his pc after it refused to work- I say operating system but it could have been the Microsoft Rotary Wangle Engine for all I know about computers. I bought some hooks to hang towels up in the bathroom and they worked well...for ten minutes. I ran out of Duvel. We had a plumber in on friday and he fixed one problem and left us with another 3.
I decided this morning that I should really back up my itunes, a job I have been putting off even though I've lost all of my music files not once, but twice in the past year. Along with my music files I lost all of the photos of our honeymoon and every single photo I have taken since meeting my wife. It's not like the old days when you took a roll of film and had them developed. You tend to leave the pictures on your hard drive and that's it. So, this morning I dusted off the external hard drive and connected it up to my pc and what did I find sitting in a folder? Every single one of our honeymoon photos! Not only that...every single photo I've taken since meeting my wife!
Yeah, life can be ass wipingly bad...but sometimes it's really quite nice:-)
P.S The music files were not on the hard drive so....

Listening Post

No video, just a great song!

Coming Soon

I saw this trailer in the cinema last month and thought the movie looked really funny.

Ouch!

Best Fails of 2009 - watch more funny videos

Listening Post

One of my all time favourite songs. Cloudbusting by Kate Bush

Green Fingers

I may have mentioned before my 'break' that I had big plans for the garden. I may also have mentioned that I've never actually done any gardening before. It all seemed so simple, a lovely English meadow of wild flowers in Belgium. What could be simpler? After all, how difficult can it be to grow wild flowers? I think you can see by the photo that we were not being too ambitious.
Two patches for flowers and a narrow pathway between them.
The patch of ground that is in shadow is like that from the break of dawn to the setting of the sun. It is a dead zone. Not even toadstools will grow there. It is in perpetual shadow. People go missing if they venture inside it. Now, the rest of the garden is a different story. It is bathed in sunlight, butterflies flutter around it, pixies frolic amongst the dandelions and long grass. Dandelions and long grass are the only things that will grow there. We sowed the seeds and scattered, just like the hymn says, and waited...and waited...and waited.
To be fair, a hundred or so dandelions do look quite pretty. But we didn't want dandelions and they don't stay pretty for long. After waiting all summer for a flower that wasn't a weed:
"Who are you calling a weed?"
"You!"
"I thought I was a plant like matey there with the yellow hat"
"Well, you've got thistles"
"And that makes me a weed?"
It does as far as I'm concerned, although it's true to say that it is a wild flower. Just not the wild flower I had in mind.
"I'll have you know that I can trace my family back to the Jurrasic period!"
So can crocodiles, doesn't mean to say I want one in my garden!
Ok, I'm having an imaginary conversation with an imaginary plant...and they say Prince Charles is a bit nutty....
A few weeks ago I mowed the grass that had grown where flowers should have. The garden looked exactly the same as when I took the above photo in April. The summer might have not happened!
On a happier note I did manage to grow a variety of herbs, Corriander, Basil, Lovage, Thyme, Parsley and of course Mint. It was nice to be able to use them in meals over the summer. Next year I shall have another go at growing stuff, more herbs and maybe some vegetables.

Listening Post

Look out, Grizzly Bear!

Coming Soon

I'm a sucker for Sci/fi movies. This is the trailer for a new movie called Skyline.

Listening Post

An oldie for your enjoyment today. This track can be found on one of my many cassettes I was telling you about.

Caution

Doris is a lovely lady but very unreliable. Doris is our Sat Nav. I should say right now that the box that contained her brain does say that she knows Belgium like the back of her hand, or would do if she had any hands but with the rest of Europe she only thinks she knows the way.
"Im' not sure, but I'll give it a go!"
We first tested her powers of navigation when we visited the South West of England this past July. I wasn't too bothered because like her, I thought I knew the way as well and so with both of us only fifty percent sure that would ensue that we arrived safely in Wells, which was our final destination.
Doris took us the long way round. It involved circumnavigating the city of Bristol and driving down the coast towards Weston Super Mare. I looked at the kilometres counting down to zero with a mixture of interest and horror because suddenly we were driving around a roundabout and Doris announced somewhat smugly:
"You have arrived in the general area of your destination"
"What!?...no we haven't!"
Doris was silent.
"Doris?"
The car was silent execpt for the clicking of the indicator as we drove around and around the roundabout.
"Doris!"
The tiny screen was a blank with a little red arrow in the centre of the screen. The little arrow was us and the blank bit was terra incognito.
Luckily, I knew the general direction we had to take. We happened to be around 20 miles from our destination.
General area of your destination was a tad optimistic in my opinion.
But, Doris can be funny. We spent this weekend in dear old England. Most of the time she keeps quiet, happy to throw in a:
"Caution, traffic disruption"
However, leaving the ferry at Dover on friday evening she suddenly announced:
"Caution, ferry!"
Which had both my wife and myself laughing. We were leaving the ferry, surely Doris meant:
"Caution, England!"

While we were in England I loaded the car up with part of my music collection, hundreds of cassettes which I bought over the period of 25 years. Anyone of a similar age to me will have music in many forms, vinyl, cassette, cd and digital. I found free software called Audacity, which allows you to transfer your old tapes to itunes. I set up a tape deck to my pc this morning, took a cassette, placed it in the deck and pressed play.
Ah, the memories came flooding back...wibbly wobbly sound and then nothing. I pressed the eject button and gently coaxed the cassette out, found a pen and twisted it until the tape which had billowed out of the cassette returned to its proper place. You can't beat the good old days!

Coming Soon

I love movies. Watching trailers for upcoming movies is something I do nearly every day. So I thought I'd share with you my must see list of upcoming movies. First off is a movie that completely escaped my radar...until yesterday that is. It's the Cohen Brothers new movie, it's a remake of one of the greatest westerns ever made, it's True grit.

Listening Post

Villagers are winning a lot of critical aclaim with their cd Becoming a Jackal. On my first listen I wondered what all the fuss was about but on my second listen I loved it. Here's the title track.

Incey Wincey

Autumn has to be my favourite season. It's like Summer and Winter had a child.
"What shall we call it?"
"What about Trevor?"
"Ummm...well I was thinking of something a bit more...you know...seasony."
"What about Salt?"
"Not that sort of season...you can be very trying at times, Winter!"
"How about Autompne?"
"Hmm...it's a bit French..."
"Autumnus?"
"A bit Latiny but ok...we can call it Autumn for short!"
Best thing about Autumn? I don't have to mow the lawn anymore.
Worst thing about Autumn? Spiders! Lots of them!
I don't like spiders. When I was younger I operated on a shoot on sight policy as far as spiders were concerned but as I've grown older I pick them up and release them into the wild which must be very annoying if you are a house spider.
Spiders abound in Autumn. You can't walk into the garden without walking into a web. Such a lovely feeling having a spiders web drape over your face!
Inside it's less noticable, house spiders tend to try and stay in the shadows, but you usually see one or two as the weather gets colder.
A few weeks ago my wife and myself were retiring to bed. Being a gentleman I always let my wife climb the stairs first. On this occaision my wife let out a yelp and shot back down the stairs.
It could only be one thing...a spider.
Smiling, I walked up the stairs and there on the wall was the biggest goddammed spider I have ever seen in my life!
Ok, it's easy to make that claim. I'm writing a blog and to make it more intresting I have to point out that this spider was the biggest spider I've ever seen...but it was.
My first reaction was to run down the stairs and join my wife on the sofa. Maybe hug a cushion for extra protection.
My second reaction was:
"There is no way that I'm going to pick it up with my bare hands!"
I took a tissue out of my pocket and walked stealthily to the spider, moving slowly so as not to startle it or appear to be a food source, all the time expecting it to either jump for my throat or scamper away. It was big enough to scamper...small creatures can't scamper. As I got closer to it I realised that my tissue wasn't sufficently big enough to pick it up with. I walked down the stairs and into the living room.
My suggestion to my wife to stand next to the spider and point at it so I could take a photo and get some idea of scale was met with less than polite enthusiasm so I returned up the stairs, took my slipper off and splattered the arachnid over the wall. I'm not proud of my actions but what could I do? You can't ask it to leave can you? If I had let it live I would have had to start charging it rent...it was that big!
The next morning I did a search on the web...pun intended!
Like I said, it was by far the biggest spider that I've seen outside of a zoo. I've heard that spiders sometimes hitch a ride with fruit from warmer climes and suddenly leap out to scare unwitting shoppers when they buy a bunch of bananas, so I searched expecting to find some exotic species only to find it was a common house spider!

Listening Post

A great version of a song I first heard on the Ryan Adams cd Heartbreaker.

Listening Post

Welcome to the Listening Post. New name but same good music. Todays video comes from the new Robert Plant Cd called Band Of Joy.

Typical

We had a festival of rugby here in the village a few weeks ago. Yes, you read correctly...rugby. In Flanders. The place where the bicycle is king and a woman called Kim is the biggest sporting star in the country. To be fair, we are close to the Wallonian border and I guess it's inevitable that a certain amount of Gallic influence abounds in these parts; I've seen more than one person wearing a beret since I've been here.
What really intrested me was that 2 English teams had been lined up to play in the tournament. I'm afraid that I'm one of those dreadful people that become ultra patriotic the moment I leave the port of Dover. The merest glimpse of an Eddie Stobart lorry on Belgian roads is enough to start my bottom lip wobbling. I do like rugby. For a few years it took over from football as my favourite sport. I like the commitment from the players. Unlike football there's nowhere to hide on a rugby field...unless it's at the bottom of a collapsed scrum. So, the appearence of the English teams was an added bonus, as was the fact that the festival was taking place at the end of our street.
Here's a fact about Belgium that I've always found curious. They hide things.
I was stopped a few months ago and asked for directions to the vis winkel. The fish shop is so fiendishly positioned that I wondered if it was a secret. Would I be breaking any local customs by imparting the knowledge to outsiders? After all, when the wife and I asked for directions to the vis winkel we ended up sitting in a field surrounded by cows 20 Kms aways.
In Belgium there are very few shopping centres outside of the bigger towns. This means that you can be driving down a country lane surrounded by farm land on either side and suddenly come across a shop selling beds or computers. It's always struck me as odd. How do people make a living? The fish mongers isn't sign posted from the main road. If you didn't know it was there you would happily drive past the road in which it is situated, which is probably what happened to the people I gave directions to as I actually gave them directions to the place we buy our wood from, a 30 minutes drive away.
Ok, I admit that there's a thin line between hiding something and something being hard to find; almost the same but not quite. So maybe my accusation of hiding things is wrong, maybe Belgians, rather than thinking:
"Hmm, this is a prime spot for my business, lots of houses and other shops, good amount of traffic passing and there's even enough parking space for a few cars!"
They think:
"Yay cows!"
My point being that the stadium...yes, remember that?The stadium is hidden behind the convenience shop at the end of the street.
( Now despite being a convenience shop, the convenience shop is not that convenient because it closes on tuesday, exactly the same day as every other shop in the village. In my opinion, the convenience shop would be a damn sight more convenient if it opened on tuesday and closed on wednesday.)
A stadium hidden behind a shop? Makes it sound pretty impressive doesn't it? Actually it is pretty impressive. It has two playing fields and a stand that would put most amatuer football and rugby clubs in the UK to shame.
There was an English coach parked next to the convenience shop. I saluted it as we walked past.
As we approached the stadium the sound of Englishmen wafted on the late summer breeze.
Barking laughter and incoherent shouts.
On the field, rather confusingly, were two teams wearing almost identical kit. Off the field, a string of pot bellied Englishmen, hugging the touchline and shouting encouragement and advice to their team mates.
We felt strangely drawn to the bar. At the bar, two English players, both older and fatter than me. Both drinking the local brew.
Shouldn't they be playing? I wondered.
"They're giving us a hard game!" one said to the other.
It was true. The local team were mostly young men in their 20's. The English, as I said, were mostly men who looked like me. Those that weren't balding were grey. Stomachs protuded above their shorts. Obviously men in the prime of life!
We found out that some of the teams hadn't turned up. A shame, because some of those teams were local, or at least more local than the one English team that turned up. Because of this the festival ended early and we only got to see about twenty minutes play. I say play, but it was mostly lots of fat blokes trying to catch lots of skinny ones. Surprisingly, the English won. I think. There was no score board. But they got a trophy. It could have been a 'thanks for coming' trophy for all I know.
We found ourselves left with a sheet of beer tokens that we had to use up...damn!

Where do we go from here? I couldn't post this blog without bringing to everyone's attention that this is the first post for a few weeks...ok months...ok 7 months!
I was going to start a new blog but then I saw that In Flanders is still getting a regular trickle of people visiting the page and whilst 99.9% come here by accident maybe that .1 % sticks around long enough to read something. Feed back is very important to this blogger. If I feel that no one is reading then I lose interest in writing for it. From now on I shall post at least once a week. I shall continue with the music videos and I will be starting a regular feature called ' The Duvel Made Me Do It!' which I hope will be a weekly post. There may even be the odd book review in there as well.

Pancakes

Last tuesday was Shrove Tuesday, or Pancake Day to give it its more popular name. Pancake Day is the only day of the year when it is legal to eat pancakes in Britain. Eating pancakes on any day other than Shrove Tuesday is punishable by death. I missed it...now I have to wait another year before I can eat a pancake.

Shrove Tuesday is the last day before the start of Lent. Pancakes were just an easy and tasty way of using up eggs and flour before fasting began. I was listening to the excellent Danny Baker on BBC London last week who mentioned that his mother would only ever make pancakes on pancake day and it was just the same in my house. We very rarely saw a pancake on any day other than pancake day! I wasn't too fussed as I don't like them anyway!

Pancake Day is followed by Ash Wednesday. Ash Wednesday was so called because ashes were put on repentant adherents foreheads. The ashes were usually collected from the Palm crosses that had been burnt on the prvevious years Palm Sunday.

It's a lucky coincidence that this weeks Band That You've Never Heard Of...post is from an album called Ash Wednesday.

Some of this post is true.

This Weeks Band You've Never Heard Of....Elvis Perkins (not a band)

This Weeks Band You've Never Heard Of....The Decemberists

Tweet

This year, I will be gardening for the very first time. I would like the garden to be as natural as possible and I think it would be nice to encourage wildlife to spend some time amongst the flora which will, hopefully, grow in the rich and fertile soil of this part of Flanders.

All winter I have been putting bread out for the birds. We get the usual suspects here: Blackbirds, Blue Tits, the odd Magpie, a couple of Wood Pigeons (more acceptable than their city living cousins) and a Wren.

Over the past few weeks I have noticed a worrying trend in my garden. The birds are becoming obese. Not, a bit chubby... obese. Two blackbirds, in particular, have developed a waddle. They have to take run ups to take off. I don't think they have anything to fear from next doors cat, because I suspect that he has been eating the bread I put out as well.

The other worrying trend has been that the avian grape vine appears to have been busy. Yesterday morning, a flock of Starlings descended from the sky and helped themselves to a free meal. It was like scene from an Alfred Hitchcock movie. When they left, there was nothing left. Even the grass had been eaten...

They are back today, sitting on the fence...waiting...abusing the two fat Blackbirds. Calling them names...

Snow

Sorry about the lack of postings over the past few months, but we, as a family decided to hibernate this winter.

December:

"Yippee, it's been snowing!"

January:

"Oh...snow..."

Febuary:

"ARRRRRRGGGGGGGGHHHHHHH!"

It's beyond a joke! Really, enoughs enough!

Snow, I hate you...go away!

A man knocked on the door yesterday wanting to talk about global warming...I punched him.

I grew up in the north of London, suffice to say, years would pass without a single flake of of snow falling anywhere near me. We were so starved of snow as children that I can remember one year, on a particulary windy April day, the trees surrounding the play ground of my school shed all of the white blossom that they held on their branches and one loud mouth kid shouted out "It"s snowing!" And for a few seconds we all thought that it was indeed snowing, a hundred or so children went crazy, throwing their caps in the air along with their satchels. Some of the bigger kids even threw some of the smaller kids! Unhappily though, our joy was short lived.

This winter has been remarkable. For one thing, we in the western parts of Europe are not so used to the truly cold winters we used to have-those of us who expierenced the winter of 1962/63 would scoof at our puny winter this year. The other thing of course, is that we have been told for over a decade that the world is getting warmer. I'm no expert on climate change, but I can remember clearly that so called experts, people that had studied the climate and the history of weather patterns were saying that we as a planet, were heading towards another ice age. This was about thirty years ago, I guess. Time flies, doesn't it? One minute you think that Kajagoogoo are the bees knees, the next you are watching Lady Gaga with a mixture of fear and incomprehension. What happened to the ice age? A quick search on Google will lead you to newspaper articles telling us that a) Britain will be in the grip of an ice age before the end of the century and b) Britain's climate will soon be conducive to growing wine grapes to match the best of our European neighbours.

Don't you just love experts?

All I know is, it's bloody freezing out there. It's been snowing all day and I felt like Dr Zhivago this morning during my walk to the shops.

New Post

What's this? A new post? Well...yes and no. I put up a Josh Rouse video because me and the missus are going to see him in March and no one that I tell will have the slightest idea who Josh Rouse is.

Me: We are going to see Josh Rouse in March

Them: ?

Me: Josh Rouse, you know...Nashville, 1972...

Them: (silence)

Me: Hey, why don't you look on my blog? There's a video on there and also a preview of this conversation we are having right now!

Josh Rouse