15 April, Wednesday:
I was in the Delhaize supermarket today, laying in provisions. A British lady of a “certain age” was pushing a baby stroller filled with groceries and was heading for the exit, where she was intercepted by the staff. I don’t think she was trying to steal the stuff…I just think that she in her inimitable British way, was confused and was barging ahead. She tried to explain to the staff that she had the stuff in the baby stroller because she was staying at her son’s home in Brussels and didn’t know how to drive his car. The problem was that she was explaining this in English, and when the staff did not seem to understand, she just kept saying it louder and slower, as if they were quite stupid children who were hard of hearing. I was tempted to intervene, but did not. Partly because I was bored and needed some entertainment, and partly because if this woman was so stupid that she didn’t understand that the way to exit a grocery store was to stand in line like everybody else at the checkout counters and pay for her goods, then she deserved what was coming to her. Finally, an English speaking staff person was located, and she explained that in Brussels there is a quaint (“old World”) custom that people have to pay for things they pick off the shelves at a grocery store, even if you are English. This appeared to have sunk in, and then the woman started looking for her husband, who, she claimed, had the money. The poor man, totally mortified was hiding in the adult magazine section pretending that he didn’t know his wife, but he finally appeared, brandishing his wallet. You have to love the Brits. After my supermarket adventure I had to get serious, as I had a 3 hour French class with Aurélie. Aurélie had e-mailed us a website which was supposed to test our level of proficiency in French. Beagle took it and said it was really hard. I took it and Beagle was right. I had no clue on about half of the questions, and ended up scoring 17 out of 30, which qualified my French level as “moyen.” Beagle says that she got the same score…but that she would have gotten one or two more right answers if she had spent more time. Ha!! Although I will admit that any French test on which I score the same as she does is a stupid and misleading test. Anyway, we were discouraged, and when Aurélie turned up I told her. She was delighted. She said that scores like that were very good. She had taken the test herself and got 28 out of 30, and many of her colleagues had done much worse. 17 out of 39 was a great accomplishment! Those French! How about a test that encourages you as opposed to discouraging you? Speaking of which, I get an e-mail every day with a new French word. Today’s was a word that you could use in the phrase “My father was arrested by the police today.” Recovering from French class, I was on the phone to Beagle when a male pigeon flew into our garden and started molesting a female pigeon who decided to flee from his amorous advances into our living room through the open French doors. It was a good thing I was there to usher her out. I went from Aurélie to gym to dinner. Typically, I had bought twice as much as I cooked, and I ate half of what I cooked. The meat I had bought was something from the bio section, something that was lamb of some variety. When I examined the package closely it turned lout to be something called noisette d’agneau (in French) and Lambsnoot (in Dutch). Holey moley! Did I really buy lamb snout? Lamb’s nose? It didn’t look like anything that would come from the nose of any lamb I had ever seen, but I decided to cook it before I looked into what it was any further. It was delicious, was not lamb’s snout, and went well with my salad. The prehistoric broccoli that II had bought was another story. After dinner I consulted google and wickipedia. It turns out that noisette d’agneau or lambsnoot is really a lump (piece/nut) of lamb without a bone. Whew! I’ll be glad when someone who knows what they’re doing in the kitchen returns to this apartment.
16 April, Thursday:
After at least two weeks of glorious weather, today was rainy and cooler…but still in the 60s. I am bored stiff here and may go somewhere else for the weekend. This is easy to do from Brussels. Brilliantly cooked lamb chops for dinner (tiny and very good, but not as good as NDF lamb chops). Stunningly enough, the avocado I bought this afternoon to spice up my salad was ripe and ready to eat. I pitched the broccoli and am ready for someone who knows what they are doing to take over the cooking. I looked at all sorts of fish, but realized that I had no idea how to cook it.
17 April, Friday:
I needed a change and was able to get a Eurostar ticket to London for a cheap price as well as a reservation at my “usual” London fleabag hotel, so I went to London this afternoon. Like Brussels, it was wet and rainy. I planed on visiting my usual haunts and reveling in the company of the flight crews from Trashkanistan, who seem to frequent this hotel. But instead I went to the Windsor Castle pub and had a pint of London Pride and had dinner there.
18 April, Saturday:
Today was a glorious day, and London “showed” very well. The first thing I noticed was that it is very clean, especially compared to Brussels. The sidewalks are wide and clean, and there is no dog poop to be seen. There are street sweeper people everywhere, picking up trash, sweeping the gutters and cleaning up dead leaves and flower petals. All the buildings are clean, the streets are pretty, and there are trees and fllowers and grass everywhere. The parks are lush and green and full of people lying on the grass, playing soccer, learning how to ride bikes, etc. Quite a change from Brussels. I spent most of the day walking, although I did go into Harrods and bought a book. While there I gazed admiringly at a sculpture of Princess Diana and Dodi al-Fayed entitled “Innocent Victims,” which was commissioned by Mohamed Al-Fayed, Dodi’s father, the odious owner of Harrods. It was quite wonderful, if you like things in grotesque bad taste. There appears to be no recession in London. Ferraris and Porsches everywhere, every other house seems to be under renovation, and the streets are full of people. At least the center of the city gives off an aura of being rich. And I thought that (a) London depended on the City of London (the financial sector) more than New York depends on Wall Street, and (b) that the City was hemorrhaging money and laying off anyone they could find. It didn’t look like that to me.
19 April, Sunday:
Today was another wonderful day. Cool and sunny in the morning and warm and sunny in the afternoon. Shirtsleeve weather. In spite of the fact that it was Sunday, most stores and restaurants seemed to be open, and there were people everywhere. I went to the Saatchi Gallery in Chelsea, close to Sloane Square. It is in a big, fancily renovated old building, and is, I guess, dedicated to modern art. Today they were focused on Iranian artists, most of whom I could have done without. But in the basement there was a wonderful “installation.” There were about 10 very realistic mannequins (I guess that’s what you’d call them) that were made up and dressed to look like old arab men, some dressed in robes, some in military uniforms, some in business suits, etc. All asleep and seated in electric wheelchairs. The wheelchairs rolled quietly around in the gallery, changing direction every time they bumped into a wall or a pillar or another wheelchair. You could watch this little “ballet” going on from a small balcony, but you could also go onto the floor of the gallery and walk around the wheelchairs, making sure not to run into them, and jumping 10 feet when one of them ran into you. It was marvelous. And admission was free! After that I went to the Royal Academy and saw an extraordinary exhibit of color woodblock prints by a Japanese artist named Kuniyoshi who lived from 1797 – 1861. The prints were fabulous…very detailed with vibrant colors, etc. In some respects reminiscent of the elaborate grafitti and comic book artists that modern Japanese and Europeans (and William and John) like so much, but with an incredible attention to detail. How you could cut so much detail into a woodblock is beyond me. I walked back to my hotel through Hyde Park and Kensington Gardens, had a British version of a club sandwich (chicken and huge slabs of incredibly greasy bacon…Yum) and caught my train back to Brussels. It was sort of foggy and gloomy when we came out of the tunnel into France, but in Brussels it looked like it had been a warm and sunny weekend. But the streets were empty, the sidewalks were covered in dog poop, and I almost fell into a huge hole in the sidewalk. Welcome to Brussels!
20 April, Monday:
Today was a lovely sunny day in Brussels. I kept the French doors to the garden open all day, went food shopping, took a walk and generally wasted time.
21 April, Tuesday:
Beagle has decided that she is not coming back to Brussels, and I will be leaving as soon as I can manage it. She has seen the hip doctor, who tells her that the problem in her hip has gotten better, but that her current pain is coming from her back. She is going to see someone called a physiatrist, which is apparently a doctor who specializes in pain management and restoring functionality to people with injuries or disabilities, but in the interim the thought of getting on a plane back to Belgium is too much for her. I am trying to figure how to pack up everything in the apartment in 4 suitcases, since we arrived here with 4 suitcases and 2 backpacks, and have accumulated a lot of junk while we were here. Yuck. I had lamb snout again tonight. I’m getting pretty good at cooking it, but I did manage to generate enough smoke in the kitchen that the smoke alarm went off.
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