Monday 3rd July 2006

Well there is less than two weeks to go to the wedding and my mistress is, understandably nervous. My master seems quite calm but who knows what he is really thinking. I have been telling him if he keeps eating Twiglets at that rate his suit will never fit him.

Why is it when the temperature hits 30 degrees every Belgian seems to be obliged to get on their bike? There they are everywhere and I do mean everywhere! We went to the port or at least tried to. There was this policeman stopping us. “You can’t go down there and won’t be able to go for another hour. I can’t tell you any more than that. It’s confidential.” We drove away speculating on consignments of gold or diamonds being brought into the port. It seemed all rather exciting and somehow acceptable for us to have a wasted journey. Then as we drove down the road we found the real reason, a cycle race. No longer did it feel ok, now we felt cheated. We were being prevented from going where we needed to go because of another bunch of Belgian cyclists. What is the world coming to? On the way home we found the entire Belgian population riding, in some places 8 abreast, making it impossible for cars to overtake because there were also cyclists coming in the opposite direction. It looked like the ‘Sunday cyclists’ equivalent of a peleton but clearly as they would now look after taking all the drugs out of cycling. There was then a break away group of a women lagging behind a man in a rather unsightly white vest. It gives you a bit of an idea of the speed they were doing when I tell you there was woman keeping up by jogging and I sure wouldn’t want to have been around when she asked the question “Does my bum look big in this!” If I’d thought the cyclists were wobbling, that is nothing when compared to the jogger.

The herbs have died. Not as I feared ‘The Herbs’ that are the children’s cartoon from when my mistress was young, which I have discovered by watching the video she has on the bookcase. No, the herbs she bought in a moment of culinary fantasy to grow on the kitchen windowsill to snip bits off when cooking. I’m not sure of snipping bits off when cooking is supposed to be a good luck thing or whether it serves any useful purpose, but in any event she may as well snip them all off now because they are dead. They are too far gone to join the intensive care unit further along the kitchen, so sadly out of chewing range. I wonder how long it will take her to forget she can’t grow plants and get some more to kill?