I walked back ...

... from  the Porte de Halle tonight for a change. It's only 5kms and the exercise will do me good. But halfway along the road and feeling thirsty I came across a Carrefour mini-supermarket where I could buy something, but the manager was busy putting away all of the stuff that was on the pavement (and presumably attracting a tax charge)
"Am I too late?" I enquired, a little out of breath;
He looked at his watch
"Well, as a matter of fact you are, but so what?" and he stood aside to let me, and a couple of other passers-by, into the shop.

As you might have guessed, the shop manager was not a Belgian but a North African, of which there are more than just a few in Brussels. Many people complain that they are "taking over" all of the small businesses in the city. And all I can say is "good luck to them" With an attitude like that, they deserve to.

Walking back from the city did however give me an opportunity to take some night photos around the Porte de Louise, something that I've been wanting to do for quite a few years. I was at one time working on a folder of photos of the city - in the days after I left work when I would spend days just aimlessly wandering around the city with nothing better to do, and the old Fuji Finepix and a bottle of water in an old rucksack. Ohh happy days. I really need to recover that spirit that I had (in case you are wondering, older readers of this rubbish will have worked out by now that I'm listening to Part II of Marillion's Thieving Magpie (La Gazza Ladra) - a magnificent album that will always be on my top-10 playlist but the second part always makes me so depressed, especially with everything that's going on these days)

And apart from that, this morning I did a load of shopping and spent a huge amount of time going through Marianne's correspondence on her behalf, and then this afternoon I did another series of rock music programmes. I'm now a few months ahead on those, which is good news. Now I need to concentrate on the other radio programmes, especially as we will be in the studio recoding next Monday. I have to get a wiggle on.