My sister appears to be having some difficulty with her Indian visa.
Bad hair day
Her: Your hair is odd.
Me: How?
Her: It’s sticking up.
Me (rhetorically): Why does it do that?
Her: I suppose because that’s the way God made you.
“Aithnionn ciarog ciarog eile†or, then again, maybe not.
We went to a christening party at the weekend for our lovely babysitter’s little son. I think Filipinos must be the most hospitable people in the world. Since our involvement with the Filipino community in Brussels began, we have been deluged with invitations to a range of events.We turned up last night to find that we were the only non-Filipinos in the hall aside from the DJ (they do big christenings, the Filipinos). On our arrival, the Princess ran to the stage where the threw herself into an energetic dance routine to the tune of  “itsy, bitsy, teenie, weenie, yellow polka dot bikini” while I hovered awkwardly behind her ready to grab her, if she got too near the footlights. Tragically, I have to report that she has inherited her mother’s sense of rhythm.
When there was a break in the music, I suggested to her that we might ask the DJ to play a request. She was very taken with this notion, so we approached the pony-tailed Belgian to ask for “It’s raining men”. The Princess was concerned that he mightn’t have it, but it seemed to me, that he had the kind of playlist that would not only give us that but “I will survive” later as well. We approached the young man and in my fluentest French, I asked for “It’s raining men”. He looked at me blankly for a moment (always unnerving for the foreigner) and then he said “I’m sorry, I don’t speak French, I’m Irish (small pause) and so are you”. It turned out that he was the boyfriend of a Filipina friend of our babysitter and he has been living with her in Brussels for the past year. He speaks fluent Tagalog (so he said, who was I to quibble?) but he hadn’t managed to pick up any French working in an Irish bar in the EU quarter (again, no quibbling here). “How did you know I was Irish?” “Oh” he said, “I was told there would be an Irish couple here and I knew it was you two the minute you walked in the door”. Foreign and sophisticated, that’s us.
We held the day, in the palm of our hands…
Forgive me for quoting Billy Joel songs, but what can I do, I am a product of the 1980s.
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This sleeping thing, it must change (for one thing it’s making me talk like yer man, Yoda). I read Minks’s thoughts on this the other day and I see what she means. It won’t be forever but, God, sometimes, it feels like forever. A typical evening proceeds as follows:
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8.30 – 3 children in bed, howling has subsided maybe even stopped.
Between 10.00 and 11.00 – We retire to bed.
Around midnight – Daniel starts flopping around in his cot like a landed fish. For about 5 minutes our dreams are filled with knocks on doors, stamping feet etc.
Five minutes later – Daniel starts to bellow, unimpressed by the slow response to the landed fish act. He is soothed back to sleep by whichever tired parent is on duty.
As Daniel is being put back in his cot – Michael wakes.
15-30Â minutes later – all is well and exhausted parent retires to own bed
About 4.00 am – Some baby wakes up. Parent far too exhausted to remember which one by morning. Parent falls asleep with contented baby in arms.
About 5.00 am – The other baby wakes up. Parent places first baby in cot and takes up howling baby begging it not to wake first baby. Parent falls asleep with different contented baby in arms.
About 6.00-6.30 am – Parent wakes up with a jerk and replaces sleeping baby in cot.  Other baby wakes. Parent crawls back to bed and prods other parent out to tend howling infant and face the day.
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And this is a good night because, you’ll notice, her highness didn’t wake up at all.
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To summarise “they ruled the night and the night seemed to last as long as six weeksâ€
French as she is spoken
I heard a man on the radio the other morning talking about the Walloon economy (unwell compared to thriving Flanders – I suspect that if you had the slightest interest in hearing that, you knew it already). Anyhow, he was saying that the benefits from the Flemish economy also help Wallonia “ce que nous economistes appellons ‘le spillover’â€. Is there no word in the language of Voltaire to cover this concept? Or self-service restaurant “le self†or air conditioning “l’airco†or a car park “le parkingâ€? The final insult to the French language was delivered on the radio this evening. The Belgian ambassador to Sweden has written a book and he was being interviewed. “So”, said the interviewer, “if two diplomats have a ‘spirited exchange of views’ it means they had a huge fight, right?” “C’est vrai” said the diplomat” que la langage de la diplomatie, c’est la langage de l’understatement” Tell me, is there really no equivalent for the word “understatement” in the language of diplomacy? Good grief. You will note that I am making progress on my aim of becoming a grumpy pedant in two languages.
And, in an entirely unrelated matter, please consider what is possibly the greatest waste of money, ever. I appreciate that this is a challenging category in which to excel, but I think you will agree that this product sees off the opposition in style. Credit for disseminating information on this new high in the tasteless, expensive and useless goes to Spirit Fingers.
Insights gained on public transport
I was on the metro recently (standing) and an elderly woman and her son were travelling together.  He was about my age and she was possibly in her 70s and looked very unwell.  She was leaning heavily against the wall for support.  Nobody got up to give her a seat. I looked very disapprovingly at the eight sitting commuters in my line of sight.  I didn’t say anything because her son was with her and I thought that, if he didn’t say anything, then it was hardly my place to step in.*  My deepest disapproval was reserved for a young man in his 20s with no visible handicap who was sitting comfortably while talking loudly on his mobile phone and casually surveying the rest of us.  I gave him my look of utter disdain. I have had some practice with the look of utter disdain. I once had to employ it against a range of men in their 50s and 60s who felt it was perfectly acceptable to warmly squeeze the shoulders of young women who came within their ample range.  I have to say that in that context it was not particularly effective and perhaps my friend D’s approach would have got better results, she suggested that I say to the next squeezer “touch me again and you pull back a bloody stumpâ€.  She told me that she had had good results with that in the past.  I opted to go for her sister’s approach of refining my look of utter disdain.  I spent some time curling my lip while she (the sister) sighed despairingly and said “no, no, that’s a come hither lookâ€.  I had always felt that she was entirely wrong about that.  However, the other day when eventually, the metro emptied out, I ended up sitting beside the loud young man.  I gave him my concentrated look of utter disdain and he winked at me. Well, that does explain a lot about the squeezers.
*Being helpful is sometimes not very helpful.  Witness the man who very helpfully rushed to help me put the boys’ buggy on the tram this morning.  He refused to let any passengers get out wrested the buggy from me and started pushing it forcefully on to the tram. In his enthusiasm, he managed to wake both boys (who had been sleeping peacefully) by somehow collapsing Daniel’s side of the buggy and poking Michael in the eye with the parasol. Both woke up and began to howl in understandable indignation. Struggling to make myself heard over the bawling, I thanked my helper through gritted teeth. There’s no pleasing some people.
