I gather from peering into someone else’s copy of Le Soir on the tram, that in Michael Moore’s new flick “Sicko” he gives the nod to the Belgian health system. Which is, indeed, excellent. Mind you, it is sustained by whopping taxes. It’s all about choices. I’m probably with the Belgians here.

I saw a fantastic film about the influence of the orient on Venice. Do you know the French word espèces meaning cash? Well that’s what it means, now you know. But did you know that it comes from épices, meaning spices; I didn’t think so. And further that in the middle ages when you went to pay your bill, people asked whether you would be paying in cash or spices? Venice had a monopoly on pepper; boy were they rolling in it. There’s a pun there somewhere.

NaBloPoMo N is for Nothomb 

Amelie Nothomb is a Belgian author who apparently lives in the Galerie de la Reine (very swish) and is mad as a hatter.  I have read two of her books and they are excellent and the langugage is easy (perhaps not a hurdle that my favourite English books have to jump).

“Stupeurs et Tremblements” is a semi-fictional account about a young girl going to work in a Japanese company.  It is hilarious and also sad.  “Metaphysique des Tubes” is about the first three years of her life (spent in Japan where her father was a diplomat).  Much of this time was spent lying and not moving but she was eventually brought to her senses by her grandmother feeding her chocolate.  This is even funnier than “Stupeurs et Tremblements” and quite a lot weirder.  Apparently her stuff is a bit hit and miss but I have had two great hits.

At least, not unless you have lived in Belgium for a long time, ideally all your life.  But this is funny.  Also, I see that the long disputed Brussels Halle Vilvoorde (BHV to its friends) constituency rated a mention in the FT the other day.  And I have kept a supplement that came with Le Soir on the linguistic regime in Belgium.  I may put it up on my wall.  All this on the day that the French say they wouldn’t mind Wallonia being tacked on to France.  Sigh.  This is all beginning to take its toll.  As is NaBloPoMo.

Onwards.  L is for Lewis.

C.S. Lewis, of course, another convert.  I read “The Magician’s Nephew” when I was in second class (7/8).  I can still remember how hard it was to read and stumbling over the unfamiliar words.  I got it from the library at the back of the classroom and I sat at a sunny window and read and read.  I think it must have been by far the hardest thing I had ever read and I took long breaks to look at the picture on the cover and wish that there were perhaps a couple of more pictures accompanying the text.  I can also remember having real difficulty in imagining how “Digory” might be pronounced.  It is probably still my favourite Narnia book.  They are all wonderful although I find “The Last Battle” a bit depressing now.  I remember having a lengthy argument with my (11 months) older friend (now an Ambassador to Vietnam) about how “The Magician’s Nephew” was the first of the Narnia books, which it was.  Very annoyingly, using her 11 months of knowledge to the full, she was able to inform me, quite rightly, that “The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe” was written first and “The Magician’s Nephew” was thought up to explain it.   I still have, here on the bookshelf, the full set of the Narnia books that my father brought me home from London as a present in the 1970s and I still read them very regularly.  I hope that my children will love them too.