Belgium

Thank you all for your kind comments on my children’s singing. Just as well you did because my mother has still not inspected the winsome mites on Youtube. True, she is a little dubious about the computer and all its works. True, also, she had them sing live to her on the telephone but that is not the same thing at all. Her defence is that she has had a busy weekend, what with the rugby and everything. This is, clearly, no defence at all; she should have struck to berating the computer which, in my parents’ house, is known as the monster in the study. She has, however, started the book I gave her for her birthday. My sister-in-law recommended it to me and lent me her copy; a decision, I suspect, she now regrets as I still have it in my grubby little mitts. Lest there be any confusion, I hasten to clarify that my mother got a span new copy. A copy she has been reading with interest. It is set in the 1930s and is a series of funny tales (I think “gently humourous” is the kind of expression the blurb writers would go for) about the fictional diarist’s life in the English countryside with her husband and two daughters. “It really,” said my mother “gives you a feel for a period, it reminds me of Di Lampedusa“. As I told her, I suspect that this is the first time this comparison has been made.

This morning the joys of communal living were manifest from 6.00. Normally we wake our building when the children start screaming at 7.30. However, the students on the top floor were going away and spent their time from 6.00 huffing and puffing up and down with ski gear. It appeared that the best way to get poles down was to fling them into the stairwell and let them bounce to the ground floor while laughing manically the while. Maybe it just sounded that way.

We took ourselves to a museum to let the boys run around and work up an appetite for a nap. Is there anything more appealing than a large museum with few visitors, endless corridors and enormous rooms filled with odd items? Usually this museum is empty but today, we coincided with a series of activities to celebrate the Year of the Rat and a distressing number of people were milling about in the foyer. Happily, they all appeared to want to sign up for calligraphy demonstrations and we were allowed to inspect the exhibition of miniature Chinese houses in peace. We also admired Cinderella’s carriage in splendid isolation. All in all, it was a very satisfactory morning, the only crisis was caused by one of the bottles we had brought for the boys leaking all over the bag it was in and my husband’s jumper. Daniel pointed to the wet floor and said sagely “Michael spill actimel“. (Actimel is the work of Satan, the kids all love it because of its knacky little bottle and then they can’t get their mouths round it and spill it down their fronts. Every time I give them a bottle, the two lads say “very careful”. I digress.) On leaving, the foyer was still heaving and, in a very Belgian way, the lady in the cloakroom was refusing coats (see proof they’ve never had this many people before). “It’s full, I’ve already said it’s full, go away, do you expect me to hang your coats on the wall?” she said angrily to a crowd of innocent punters who, having purchased their tickets, were not going to be let into the museum until they had divested themselves of their coats, something Madame in the cloakroom was steadfastly refusing to allow them to do. All that was missing to make it a classic Belgian scene was for someone to start complaining about the linguistic regime.

Tomorrow is the start of mid-term. Herself has been signed up for a week long course of sport to which she is looking forward with all the enthusiasm of a condemned prisoner. It’s a bit difficult to get to and the hours are different from school, leading to some logistical difficulties. When the boys were in the bath this evening I explained at tremendous length to my husband that, if I had to leave work early to collect herself I would prefer it to be Thursday because I have a lot on tomorrow and then I’ll have to leave a bit early on Tuesday, because it’s pancake Tuesday and we’ll be making pancakes and then I’ll be a bit frantic but, if on the other hand, I collect her on Thursday, I can get a good run on things on Monday, leave calmly on Tuesday and, by Thursday, all should be well for me to knock off a little early and collect herself, but, on the other hand, if I did have to collect her tomorrow, then he should let me know because I would take the car to work. He said, “what, sorry, I wasn’t listening, do you want to get her tomorrow or Thursday?” “Thursday”, I said, a shade coldly.

In our continuing efforts to illustrate to our sons that they both have a mother and a father and that they have not each been assigned to a particular parent, I took Daniel rather than Michael out of the bath again. My impudence was greeted with an outburst of angry weeping from Michael. I explained firmly that I am Daniel’s Mama too. “NO! Daddy, Daniel’s Mama!” he said. I think we have a mountain to climb here.

And finally, did you see that Carla and Sarko got married over the weekend? Maybe they should have waited until the Year of the Rat started. Don’t be like that, it’s supposed to be auspicious for marriages.

We had some friends round this afternoon. A Scottish-Italian couple and their two children and an Italian woman and her daughter. The children started off speaking in English but quickly moved to French as the common lingua franca. The grown-ups spoke English to each other. I felt mildly embarrassed to be the main reason why two Italian women were speaking English to each other.

One of the mothers explained in graphic detail that this year, her nine year old had asked her a lot of questions about Santa Claus. So she said to her “OK, you really want to know, OK, I will tell you”. In the face of some alarm from me and the other parent with a four year old, her husband gracefully interrupted the anecdote with “So, she said to her ‘Yes, of course there is a Santa'”. That’s a relief, then. We discovered that the Befana does not bring Christmas presents to Italian children who live in Belgium which makes her presence in our lives even more baffling. We had some questions for our guests about the Befana and her ways.

Us: So Santa Claus lives in the North Pole and Saint Nicolas comes from Spain, where does the Befana live?

Guests: Elaborate shoulder shrugging, shocking ignorance.

Me (to Princess): Well, sweetheart, if the Italians don’t know…

Princess (in tones of wonderment): Are our visitors Italians?

There was some talk about multi-lingual schools because that’s what we’re like in foreign exotic Brussels and, in particular, the European School which has sections in all of the EU languages (except maybe Maltese, who knows?). One of the Italians has an Italian friend who is married to a Pole and they are sending their twins to the European School and they have put them in different classes (as the parents of twins are often advised to do) but in a weird twist, one twin is in the Polish section and one is in the Italian section. Is it just me or is this utterly bizarre?

We tossed them all out at 7.00 (none of them put their children to bed before 9.00 – shock, horror) to the regret and ire of our children. Much though we enjoyed seeing them, we were glad to see them go as we had decided to compress all our socialising for January into one day and our dinner guests would be arriving at 8.30.

And now, dinner is over, everyone is in bed and I should be too.

That is all.

When you live in Brussels, people always say – oh, you can travel very easily to anywhere – this is true, but you rarely do.  However, to celebrate (ahem) the fact that the boys have decided not to nap at the weekends, on Sunday we went on a day trip to Lille in France.  We emerged from the car park into the last day of the Christmas market.  Michael instantly wanted to go on the big wheel.  We managed to put him off until we had all had lunch. The big wheel was a tremendous success as the children don’t seem to feel the cold at all.  Arrived at ground level with three happy children and two frozen parents, one of whom could only see odd square patterns out of one eye (hello, migraine, welcome to France). We bought the children a helium balloon each (18 euros, fools and their money etc.). We wandered the streets of the old town, perished.  The children were cheerful, though.  We bought the Princess a pair of boots and a pair of shoes in an expensive shop, on sale but still dear (fools and their money part ii).

We decided not to go to the beautiful chic and expensive café which was probably the best decision of the day.  We took ourselves to a creperie where we had upstairs (reached by a hair-raising spiral staircase) to ourselves once we had dislodged the unfortunate courting couple who had been there when we arrived.  We spread ourselves and our 8 balloons (3 helium, 5 non – a present from the expensive shoe shop – we started with three but then the Princess wanted more yellow ones so we had to go back and get more – sometimes I think that there is no greater humiliation than being a parent) over three tables and I put my head in my hands, glad that the migraine patterns had stopped but beginning to wonder whether they might in fact be better than the pain (slightly reduced by the application of paracetemol).  Mr. Waffle tried to stop the boys turning on and off the lights and rescued helium balloons from the ceiling.  The Princess was actually very good and quite sympathetic and I began to entertain brief hopes that she might turn into a pleasant and considerate grown-up eventually.  We finished up in the café and took children, buggy and eight balloons out the door with considerable difficulty.  I felt very sorry for the other patrons who were clearly frozen as we went in and out several times.

We decided to cut our loses and head for home.  The car park was small and narrow and there was no room to get the children in to the car because although the car park had been empty when we arrived, it was now full.  We were about to try putting them in place from the front when the large car beside us left.  I shamelessly opened the door and put in the children causing a long delay which nearly killed my husband.  We put the three helium balloons in the boot with the Princess (you know in her seat in the station wagon, we’re stupid but we’re not heartless) – one covered by a coat.  Mr. Waffle then tried to get out of the car park with gritted teeth.  Daniel who is our most sensitive child and Daddy’s boy, stuck out his lower lip and started to cry because, as he explained to me “Daddy cwoss”.   We explained in great detail to the Princess that the balloons had to stay down because otherwise Daddy would not be able to see out the window and we might all die.

I filled two bottles for the boys in the hope that they might sleep.  Much of the milk got in the bottles but a certain amount landed on me.  My mother always said that children don’t mind being warm and wet and I can now attest that this is true.  It wasn’t too bad being wet and milk soaked in the car but when we screamed to a halt on the hard shoulder of the motorway and I had to go to the boot and remove the balloon which had escaped its moorings and was floating about the car, the chill wind was deeply unpleasant on my damp jeans.  For the remainder of the journey, the Princess had to hold the remaining two balloons on her lap.  I should have taken them all into the front but I feared her wrath (grim death on motorway v. child’s wrath – which would you choose?).  The Princess was moderately successful at keeping the window clear but the whole thing was a bit of a strain and we were very glad to get home.

Gave the children dinner and packed them off to their beds.  Before collapsing into ours, Mr. Waffle made dinner for the following day and we discussed the weekend.

Him: I think the children liked it.

Me: Hmm.  They liked yesterday’s outing better.

Him: What did we do yesterday?

Me: Um, can’t remember, but they liked it.

Him: There may be a point to our complete photographic archive.

Me (checking camera): Oh yeah, we went to a farm.

Him: Have we lost our minds?

Me: Yes.

This morning, her highness donned her new expensive boots with great reluctance because “Safa at school has the same shoes and we might get confused”, could only wish that she had been inspired to raise this on the previous day.