We are back in Brussels again

Liz, yours truly, and also Caliburn who is much better and thanks everyone for the best wishes he was sent.

So yesterday I went back to my farm in the Ka (which I got to like much more than I did the first day I drove it) in order to hunt down some paperwork. It didn't take me long to break in and once there I did some chilling out. Quite literally as it happened as the temperature was a mere 5.6°C in my attic. While we were away the temperature there had dropped to as low as -0.6°C which is hardly surprising as the temperature outside had dropped as far as -12.4°C on one occasion.

We then headed off to Riom for shopping and it was there that the garage rang to say that we could pick up Caliburn and so once we had sorted ourselves out we set off for here. On the way home the gorgeous sunny day slowly descended into a grey miserable wet evening and by the time we were climbing into the Ardennes at the back of Chalons sur Marne it was snowing heavily. Crossing over the Ardennes into Belgium was fraught, having to pick our way around abandoned lorries, sliding around roundabouts on the handbrake and so on. Poor Liz went about 50 miles with her eyes closed. It was not a journey that I would particularly like to do again.

Today of course it's my birthday. And so I celebrated by going out shopping, being fined €50 for not wearing a seat belt, and coming home to find that the expensive halogen oven hob that I liked so very much has broken, which is a disaster.

Mind you there is home-made ginger cake for my birthday. Liz defied Global Warming by lighting all the candles and when I tried to blow them out I was driven back by the heat.

It's just not my day. Snowdrifts, fines, broken cookers. What a birthday!