… nice and early, long before the alarm.<\/p>\n
“Up (one, two) Down (one, two)”. Right, and now the other sock.<\/p>\n
Yes, have to keep myself fit and active.<\/p>\n
An early breakfast followed by some work on the computer, and then at 09:00 precisely, off to the LeClerc. I didn’t need much but still, it’s nice to get out and about.<\/p>\n
On the way there we had an exciting moment when a Belgian motorist, seeing me coming, simply pulled out to pass a parked lorry. We aren’t having any of that so I blocked him off and made him reverse backwards. As he finally retreated and I ended up alongside him, I wound down my window and gave him a volley of verbal abuse, in Flemish. <\/p>\n
Not for nothing did I spend a year living in Leuven.<\/p>\n
You may or may not know this, but there were no driving tests in Belgium until 1973. You simply applied for a driving licence and you were given it. The driver was certainly old enough not to have taken a test. There’s the old French joke about Belgian driving licences being given away in packets of crisps and that’s certainly the case here.<\/p>\n
At the LeClerc, we had another one of those “moments”. A woman was loading a pile of bread into her trolley.
\n“All you need now are two loaves and a pot of tea for 5,000” said our hero gallantly
\nThe woman replied “What?”.
\nAs Alfred Hitchcock once famously said to Kenneth Williams “it’s a waste of time trying to tell jokes to foreigners”.<\/p>\n
LUnchtime was on the wall on the clifftop overlooking the harbour. It was really warm and beautiful out there. So much so that back here, for the first time, I felt hot in my apartment. I had to open all of the windows to make a current of air circulate through. If the sun can heat up solid granite walls one metre thick, then it must have been warm.<\/p>\n
But it cooled down rapidly in the evening and I had to go round and close everything a little later.<\/p>\n
An early night now after my beans, sausage and chips. And I’ll see you all in the morning … "not if we see you first" – ed<\/em>.<\/p>\n
