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In the thick of it

  Sat 28th November 2015

We couldn't have planned for the Paris attacks, but we spent a long weekend in Brussels right at the height of the state of emergency.

It's the first time I've been on a dancefloor whilst outside, through the square window, soldiers and police are walking around brandishing yard-long guns. But we carried on dancing, despite the cancellation of the Saturday night on the orders of the police.

On the first night, without it being arranged, we were taken under the wing of one of the DJs, Willy, for whom the word "connoisseur" was invented, someone deeply knowledgeable about both soul music and Belgian beer, and who introduced me to many beers, amongst which was the first ever Swiss lambic, and who was to be our guide for the rest of the weekend.

On the Saturday night, we had been invited to join the DJs and the organisers for a meal, but we were the only ones that made it to the judurically becalmed suburb where it was to take place. The patron, talkative almost to the point of irritation, presented us with the amuse-gueules he'd made to welcome our party: little balls of something I hope never to eat again -- foie gras.

Afterwards, me and Trina went for a couple of drinks in an old bar in the Place de la Chapelle. I was listening to a woman who was speaking slowly and in straightforward French to her friends -- although I don't know what made one of the latter scowl and wring out the briefest of replies, when, concerned that we were crowding them on the long table, I said "Pardon, ça ne vous derange pas si nous nous asseyons ici? On peut bouger si vous preférez." But manners are difficult to get right à etranger, and perhaps to a Belgian that sounds like "You're taking up all the room. Budge up, can you?" Anyone who could tell me what was wrong with that, please do.

Willy rang to say he could pick us up in half an hour and take us to a bar outside the police cordon where some of his friends would be. It was but half past ten, we were in Brussels, yet Trina didn't want to come along, so she walked back to the flat on the one night when a woman could walk home alone at night unworried.

Me and Willy got a taxi to some bar in St Gilles, where we sat talking and drinking with a couple of his friends and some other people who just happened to be there. Trina was delighted to see me at dawn, merrily pissed, and gave me the warm welcome home for which her sex is famous when faced with a drunken man clattering noisily in at 7.30am talking about Swiss beer.

"You could have rung. It's 7.30. You're going to be all grumpy in the morning." "I can only see one grumpy person here," I said. Why do all women behave like this?


Central Brussels opened a little on Sunday, but the club was only just outside the cordon, and only a dozen or so people made it in, but those inside danced to some great music, from the less irritating end of Northern Soul to the more modern Soulful House that moves my trouser creases more directly. We made V-signs to whoever was responsible for the perturbations. I thought that some members of the Belgian armed forces look a bit like lads out on a fancy dress do.

Trina floated about, disarmingly e'd-up, coaxing a Spaniard and her Portuguese friend onto the dancefloor. This gorgeous woman from Nottingham was sinuous in black and her chatty husband didn't seem to mind me scanning her.

Willy was there. "The English," I said, "behave like imperialists." "Yes, and so do the French." We couldn't help but hear a loudly-spoken man with a London accent at the bar, doing an occasional single clap that is an act of attention-seeking passed off as an access of aesthetic pleasure. "He's a Cockney," I said to Willy. "Yes, and he is behaving like one too."

I went to dance with Miss Nottingham, before, out of the corner of my eye, I noticed a fly about to land in the ointment. Our Southern friend was complaining to Trina about the couple who were sat in the corner quietly using the wifi. I went to rescue her and he asked me whether I thought that most people in Brussels look like criminals. "Bear in mind, mate, that you're saying that whilst wearing a pork pie hat and talking in a Cockney accent." He didn't understand, so I had to simplify it for him. "No, I don't, to be honest" and he walked away.

At the Eurostar terminal on the way back, we got talking to a couple from Essex about beer, and he opened a bottle of Dutch dubbel for us to share. On the train we opened our stash of Moinette, Mort Subite (a jam of melted strawberry penny chews, but Trina likes it) and a couple of Floreffe.

The five minute walk from St Pancras to Euston was a wade through gritted teeth and self-asserting impatience. No idea of the space being social.

On the train back to Lancaster we got moved into first class by a former colleague of mine, and had two large glasses of red.


Pub news. Bumped into Erica and hubby, pleasantly off their heads. Erica had had two friends round for lunch yesterday and they'd got through eight bottles of wine, a bottle of gin, and two grams of coke.

Then Vic and Barry turned up. Barry is keen on us blokes to go out "not on the pull -- you've not got to think of it like that" -- which means it is exactly like that.

It was partly my fault. I was moaning about the predictable pattern of all my dates: a night down the pub which ends up her saying she's had a lovely night and other sinking compliments, and an offer of Farce book.

I told Barry that were this night of vapid peacockery to happen I would do my best and not be miserable or detached, at least until midnight.

2 comments

Comment from: [Member]

Last time I was in a place of entertainment that the police tried to close on security grounds, people refused to leave ("IRA? Only black people come here") and the bomb duly went off on the street outside.

Wed 2nd December 2015 @ 10:39
Comment from: looby [Visitor]

Bloody ell. Well, you lived to tell the tale then?

Wed 2nd December 2015 @ 12:56


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