Who stole my internet connection?

I'm quickly writing this short post from my office computer during my lunch break to inform you that you shouldn't be surprised or worried if I don't blog for a few days.

One of the pigeons in the header photo seems to
have taken off to ... France, perhaps!

Maybe it flew off with my internet connection?

Since last Saturday I'm regularly loosing my internet connection at home. I haven't had time yet to call my internet provider about it because it takes a lot of patience and perseverance to get hold of someone. I can't call from the office and in the evening I just don't have the patience to wait listing to a computer voice endlessly repeating: "All our operators are busy. Please hold the line. We'll be with you as soon as possible."

After a solid 45 minutes of listening to the never-ending same tune, I tend to hang up, thus loosing my place in the queue of other desperate callers.

The failing connection may be - I hope - a temporary thing. So drop in from time to time - if you feel like it, of course - to see whether I'm back in blogsphere ... Who knows!

Sunday lunch – Goodbye style

Yesterday I made a tarragon chicken, which from now on will go down in our family’s vocabulary as the ‘Goodbye chicken’. Call me sentimental, but this was the last chicken supplied by my friendly butcher. On Saturday, March 31^st, he will close down his shop … forever! We will really miss him and his excellent produce. 

Tarragon chicken is really easy to make. This is what you need (serves 4): 

1 plump chicken, lovingly cut in six pieces by your friendly butch
100 g. of farm butter
a tablespoon of (olive) oil
200 ml of dry white win
1 chicken stock cube
6 or 7  fresh tarragon sprigs
a tablespoon of flour
salt and pepper (optional: depending on the saltiness of your stock cube)

Creamy farm butter from the village of Courcelles in Wallonia.

This is what you do: 

Melt the butter in a pot and add the oil. The oil will stop your butter from burning or turning black. Sear the chicken pieces in the butter until nice and golden brown on all sides. Sprinkle the flour over the chicken and stir well. Add the white wine and keep on stirring until all the flour is dissolved. Add the sprigs of tarragon – set two aside till later – and the stock cube. At this point you can also add extra pepper and/or salt. I didn’t add any because the stock cube was strong enough to get the required seasoning. Reduce the heat to a gentle simmer. 

Put the lid on the pot and let simmer for an hour, stirring carefully every twenty minutes or so to stop the chicken from sticking to the bottom of the pot.

Ready to be served!

After an hour, turn off the heat and set aside till the next day. Half an hour before serving, add the remaining tarragon sprigs to the pot and reheat the chicken on a low heat. Don’t let it come to the boil. Add extra pepper and/or salt to taste or some white wine is the sauce is too thick. Sunday’s preparation didn’t require any of these extra ingredients. 

I served the chicken with ‘pommes croquettes’ and a mixed salad with a dash of extra virgin oil. Not a vinaigrette because that would have spoiled the delicate flavour of the fresh tarragon.  

Et voilà, my ‘Goodbye chicken’. Simple, easy to make but utterly delicious!

Home sweet home …

What happened before. 

While I was standing in the street with the other neighbours, I saw more tenants leaving the apartment building. Luckily it wasn’t raining and the temperatures were rather mild. Nevertheless, my mother and I decided to go inside the house and wait for the problem to be solved. After about twenty minutes the police and firemen began to clear the partial road block and ten minutes later two of the large fire engines and the ambulance that is automatically sent to a potential disaster scene, drove off.  

One fire engine and some five or six men stayed behind. I went outside and approached the remaining firemen who by then were digging up part of the pavement in front of the building. I asked them whether it was safe to go inside again. They looked up and said that the situation was under control and that I could return to my apartment. I went upstairs, turned off my laptop and radio, grabbed my handbag and went back to my mother’s to give her an update of the situation.

Another part of the Prince's 'domaine'

You may recall that last August we had some important road works done. The whole sidewalk had been dug up in order to install new electricity cables. Apparently this was only part of the renovation. The project also included new gas connections being installed between the main network and the different houses along the road, the current ones being over forty years old. This job had been done on Wednesday, a few hours before the gas leak occurred. The theory therefore was that the men had done a poor job. A distressing and upsetting thought. However, later that same evening I learned that the work had been done properly.

By seven, I saw the last fire engine drive off and I decided to go home. There was still a large technical lorry from the gas company parked in front of the building though. Two men were putting up a safety fence around the hole in the sidewalk. When they saw me going in, they informed me that the gas supply had been turned on again after it had been cut off by the firemen. They also said that they would be coming up presently to turn on the gas furnace that supplies the heat for the boiler and the central heating system.

Back in my apartment I left the door ajar and started writing Thursday’s post. Shortly after there was a knock on the door and the two men walked in. They had some trouble restarting the furnace, but finally I heard the familiar ‘whooooom’ that indicates that the furnace and the pump are in operation. Being as curious as I am, I once again asked what had happened. Whether it had been a bad (read ‘dangerous’) leak? It turned out that there hadn’t been a leak at all.

What had happened is this: the workers who had replaced the gas pipes, had also replaced the six (there are six apartments in the complex) over twenty-year-old gas meters in the cellar. After disconnecting the meters, they had left them lying around while they were closing the hole in the sidewalk. The gas that had remained in the meters after being disconnected had slowly filled the cellar. After collecting the meters, the men had firmly closed the door to the cellar, thus capturing the gas within the small space. When my downstairs neighbour had gone into the cellar, he had been hit by the pungent smell. Luckily he’s not a smoker, because if he had gone in there with a lit cigarette he would have caused a (small) explosion.

By the time the two men from the gas company left, it was almost eight o’clock and the gas level in the building had fallen to zero! Home sweet home ... What a way to celebrate my first anniversary in the new apartment!

Evacuated

You won’t believe it, but at half past five yesterday afternoon, about an hour after I got home from work, I was asked by a fireman to evacuate my apartment. There wasn’t any immediate danger – if I am to believe what the man said - but it felt rather weird. You hear about these things on the radio, you read about them in the papers and on the internet and you see it on television. But you never imagine that it can happen to you! But yesterday it did!

What happened? I had finished my daily telephone call with my mother and had just published yesterday’s post about Genevefa of Brabant and the little fox cub, when my phone rang again. It was my mother. A few minutes earlier I had heard a walky-talky-like conversation in the hallway downstairs. I thought it were the downstairs neighbour’s children fooling around. I had been busy on the blog and hadn’t paid any attention to what was going on outside.

My mother sounded worried: “Is there a fire in your building?” she inquired. Not as far as I know, was my answer. “Look out of your window”, she said “There are three fire engines parked in front of your building and several firemen walking in an out.” she continued. I reassured her and told her that all was well as far as I could tell, but that I would go downstairs to see what was happening. I slipped on my fleece jacket, put my mobile phone in my pocket and walked out on the landing. I didn’t turn off the radio or my laptop, as I was ‘just’ going to check what was happening.

Maybe our local Prince (a real one!) could have provided a temporary shelter.

Only kidding! I just wanted to show you this photo that I shot last Friday.

When I bent over the first landing’s railing I looked straight into the bright blue eyes of a fireman in full gear – helmet included. He had a handsome tanned face – and NO, I don’t swoon over men in uniform, but this guy really looked as if he had walked straight out of a disaster movie ‘Towering Inferno-style’. Anything wrong?” I inquired. He said that there was nothing to worry about, but that there was a small gas leak and that it was safer to leave the building. I didn’t return to my apartment and went outside, where all the neighbours had gathered in the street, curious to see what was going on. By then the local police had cut off one lane of our busy road and the flashing lights on the fire engines and the dozen or so firemen in full gear rushing around attracted a lot of attention from the locals and the drivers and passengers in the passing cars.

My mother, her cousin and daughter were part of the crowd. I decided that I would ‘seek refuge’ at my mother’s, waiting for the problem to be solved or the news that I couldn’t return to my apartment for the night and that I had to spend the night at my mother’s. What slightly worried me was the fact that I had some appliances running in the apartment (no dinner on the stove, luckily) and that my handbag with all my personal belongings was still sitting on the dining room table … 

(more to come)

A legend and a lost fox cub

I was about to write another animal story – I don’t know why, but animals seem to be my blog theme of the month – about this cute, yet completely terrified looking baby fox, when readers Chm and Carolyn tricked me into telling you the legend of Genevefa of Brabant.

Photo: www.nieuwsblad.be

When Chm mentioned her in his comment to my previous post about Brabant, I had to admit that the lady’s name sounded slightly familiar. I didn’t have a clue though what her legend was about. So I called in the help of my good friend Mr. Google, who came up with this answer on Wikipedia:

“The story of Genevefa of Brabant is a typical example of the widespread tale of the chaste wife falsely accused and repudiated, generally on the word of a rejected suitor. Genovefa of Brabant was said to be the wife of the palatine Siegfried of Treves, and was falsely accused by the major-domo Golo. Sentenced to death she was spared by the executioner, and lived for six years with her son in a cave in the Ardennes nourished by a roe. Siegfried, who had meanwhile found out Golo's treachery, was chasing the roe when he discovered her hiding-place, and reinstated her in her former honour.”

… and they lived happily ever after. So far the story of Genevefa.

As for the baby-fox, what did it do to make the headlines of the Belgian papers this morning? Well, this six weeks old cub was found wandering down the Wetstraat in Brussels. On the Wetstraat, the Belgian equivalent of London’s Downing Street, the offices of the Federal Prime Minister, the cabinets of the Federal government ministers and the Federal Parliament building are located. It’s probably the busiest street in the country. Across the street from the government buildings lies the Warande Park. On the other side of the park you’ll find the Royal Palace.

The cub was spotted and captured by a police patrol that took it to an animal shelter, where it’ll be nourished and pampered until it weighs 4 kg, at which point it will be set free again in the Zoniën Forest, south of the capital. It was given the name of ‘Laurette’ after our current Federal Minister in charge of animal welfare.

What the little fox did in the Wetstraat and how it got there in the first place, remains a mystery. The most logical explanation is that it was born in the park, and got lost when taking a stroll encouraged by the beautiful spring weather. Remains the question: “How did his parents end up in the park which is located in the heart of the city, with no fields, woods or open land nearby?” Could they have taken the bus? 

The story of a farm, a horse and a beer

In my most recent post I showed you a photo of a traditional Brabant farmhouse. I also mentioned that Brabant is of the ten Belgian provinces. It is located in the centre of the Belgium. Until 1995 Belgium only had nine provinces, the boundaries of which had been fixed in 1830, when Belgium became an independent monarchy. Don’t worry; we didn’t invade any country to acquire an extra province. No, we – actually the politicians – simply cut the province of Brabant in two: the Flemish speaking north thus becoming Vlaams-Brabant and the French speaking becoming south Waals-Brabant. Over the centuries two typical products from Brabant have gained international fame: the Belgian endives and the Brabant draft horse.

The origin of the powerful, yet gentle animal goes all the way back to Roman times. From the 11th  till the 16th century it was used as a war horse in Brabant and Flanders. Later it became a work horse that was used to plough the fields, pull heavy loads in mines and harbours, or pull carriages and river boats.

In 1910 about 35.000 Brabant draft horses were exported to the US, Canada, Russia, Sweden, Germany, France, the UK, Holland and Italy to improve the local breeds, such as the British Shire.

In 1950 there were still 200.000 draft horses in Belgium. In 1980 there were hardly 6.000 left, due to the increasing motorization after WWII. Luckily a small group of breeders took a special interest in the horse. Thanks to their relentless efforts by 2004 the Brabant draft horse population had increased to 12.000. I haven’t found any recent figure, but I suspect (and hope) that it is going in the right direction, meaning up!

A typical Brabant horse withers are approximately 1.70m. It has a rather small head, and a short, yet heavy neck and a double mane. The body is sturdy and the legs are short. The horse comes in seven colours: brown, black, red, brown grey, blue grey, red grey and apple grey. Some of the colours are rare. Despite their somewhat bulky appearance, they trot quite elegantly. And they always attract a lot people and applause when being shown on life stock markets, horse shows and fairs.

This emblematic animal also occupies a prominent place in the logo of one of Brabant’s beers: Palm, thus linking the beer to its place of origin. Palm is an amber-coloured high fermentation beer. It has a 5.4 alcohol percentage, which ranks it in the same category as the pilsner (lager) beers.

I have no special liking for Palm or any affinity with horses in general or the Brabant draft horse in particular, but posting the photo of the typical farmhouse reminded me of the early sixties when these horses were still a fairly common sight in our village. In the late afternoon the few farmers who hadn’t traded in their horse for a tractor yet, came driving up the cobbled-stoned street, horse hooves clanging and cart wheels rattling, after a day of ploughing the fields. It was such a peaceful scene … with the old farmer sitting on the side of the card, wooden shoes at his feet, clad in coarse trousers, a black or brown corduroy jacket, a flat cap on his head and a red and white polka dotted handkerchief around his neck. No rush, no excitement, no stress … how unlike today!

P.S. I found the photo and the information about the horse on www.dierennet.be. The Palm photo is also from the internet.

This time last year …

... I was dreading AND looking forward to my upcoming move! Believe it or not, but tomorrow, March 18^th, will be the first anniversary of me moving into my new apartment. And yet, it seems like yesterday … 

After a stressful period of 18 months, during which I had been trying to cope with the ever increasing damp problem in my former living room, the nerve-wrecking discussions with the janitor, my former landlord’s tantrums, the uncooperativeness of my next-door neighbours and the impact all this had on my health and usually positive disposition, I was about to see the end of the tunnel. 

The actual move on March 18^th 2011 was the last hurdle to be taken. During the weeks preceding the big day, I had been packing up my belongings, which seemed to have tripled in volume since my last move in 2001. I had also been shopping – that was the nice part of the move, by the way. Shopping for curtains, furniture, wallpaper, … And the decorator had been in, stripping some of the old wallpaper and replacing it by a warm red wall in the kitchen, a turquoise one in the living room and a contemporary blue pattern in the bedroom.

No, this is not my home, but a typical and beautifully renovated Brabant farmhouse; Brabant being one of the Belgian provinces (counties) where I happen to live.

On the morning of the big day, I got up at six, stripped the blankets and sheets from my bed, put my personal belongings in a plastic bag that I hid in the wall-fitted closet in the night hall and waited for the movers. They were supposed to arrive at 7. At 7.30 they still weren’t there, and I was beginning to get nervous. Their depot is located at hardly 1 km from my home and there was no traffic so to speak of. At 7.45 I saw two large lorries with the company’s logo driving by … they didn’t stop! Moreover, the quote I had received didn’t mention any lorries, (I was moving 50 metres up the road) just a small van and an elevator. Finally, at a few minutes to 8 a.m. the two large vehicles had I seen earlier, stopped in front of the apartment building, loudly honking their horns, announcing their arrival and waking up all those who were still asleep.

The move was a big shambles, with two of the four movers doing very little, except for constant grumbling about the day planning. At ten o’clock they all disappeared in the cabin of their lorry, pulling out their thermos flasks and sandwiches. They remained there for well over 30 minutes, while my rolled-up mattress was sitting on the raised platform of the elevator for all to see and pieces of furniture were scattered over the sidewalk over a length of 50 metres, looking like a giant car boot sale. Looking back, I’m surprised that none of the many cars driving by stopped to have a look at the stuff and make me an offer!

Their morning break finished the men went back to work and, much to my surprise, all furniture was in its new place by half past eleven; with the large wardrobe and the bed reassembled and the laundry machine connected and operational. The large pile of moving boxes that had been sitting in the middle of my new living room rapidly decreased in size when the four men, following my instructions, carried them into the rooms where they belonged. 

At twelve o’clock I signed the discharge papers and called my mother on my mobile phone to come and have a look at the new set-up. At two the telephone guy arrived to install my telephone, television and internet connection. And by half past three my friend and I were enjoying our first decent meal of the day: take-away Chinese.

Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious

This tongue-twister from the musical Mary Poppins, with lovely Julie Andrews and crazy Dick Van Dyke, made the headlines last week when one of the song’s co-writers, Robert B. Sherman, passed away. Although the film dates from 1964, it is timeless. Children today still enjoy it as much as we did in the sixties. It was and is sweet and joyful and so much more relaxing than today’s ‘action’ movies and cartoons for kids.

Nothing to do with today's post. Here it is at last ...
one of my old orchid plants producing ...
1 flower. But what a flower it is!

Now if you think 'supercalifragilisticexpialidocious' is unpronounceable, just try this word for a change: hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia !  

Apparently it’s the longest word in the English language: 37 characters against only 34 for supercalifragilisticexpialidocious.  

I’ll give you a while to practice its pronunciation before asking you the ultimate question: “What does it mean?” Because, yes ... this word actually means something. 

And while we’re on the subject, here’s a real Flemish tongue-twister: 

‘hottentottententententoonstelling’ 

Although it has only 33 characters, I’m curious to know whether you can come up with the English translation. Good luck on both questions!

Time to become a vegetarian?

In 1996 and 1997 we went to Brittany for our annual summer vacation. We stayed in a lovely hotel in the town of La-Roche-Bernard. The chef had a Michelin star and we knew that we were in for an exquisite gastronomic experience. Being on the seaside we decided to make it an ‘all fish’ week. We informed the chef about our decision, and he immediately suggested that we would give him ‘carte blanche’, meaning that every night he would come up with a different kind of fish and a preparation that wasn’t on the regular menu. He asked us whether we had any allergies (oysters, lobsters …) and set out to work.

Every night, after a long day of exploring the coast and the countryside, we sat down for dinner in anticipation of another culinary surprise. Needless to say that the food was gorgeous! Not once were we disappointed! Moreover, we never felt as if we had had too much to eat or that we had trouble digesting the four course meals. We didn’t have a piece of meat all week, and felt better for it.

However, on our way home, we suddenly felt an enormous craving for a nice and juicy steak or a hand-cut steak tartar. The drive was very long … almost 650 km before being back in Belgium, and yet another 100 to go before being home. My friend knew of a good brasserie just across the border that served a very nice steak béarnaise. We got there just in time for lunch and both devoured a 300 gr. beef steak. It tasted so good! We agreed that fish is fine (and healthy), but that it can’t beat a tasty piece of meat.

Why am I telling you all this and am I posting a photo of a plump chicken? Well, this is probably the last time that I will be eating such a nice chicken. Not because I’m becoming a vegetarian, but because … and here it comes … the news that really upset me yesterday: My friendly butcher who has been supplying me with these great chickens and prime quality meat for the last 25 years is closing shop as from April 1^st. No, this is not an April fool’s day joke. It’s true and upsetting!

There are two other butchers in the village. One of them has a good reputation, but his shop is not within walking distance. The other used to be very good, but was taken over recently and the regular customers are saying that the quality and service are not what they used to be. And there is, of course, our local supermarket, which also has a nice meat counter. But all the meat is pre-packed. Maybe a very common thing in the US, but here in Belgium (and France) we prefer to buy ‘fresh’ produce. My soon to be former butcher knows what I like and always cuts the meat to the size and weight I need. I’m certainly going to miss his excellent produce, impeccable service, congeniality, jokes, innocent flirting and ‘lazy’ right eye! Good luck, René!! Here’s to you!

Toad alert

I may not have mentioned it before, but last week I took a few days off from work. Not that I really needed a holiday, but I still had 6.6 holidays remaining from last year. The general rule is that you need to use them up before the end of Easter break (April 16^th). If you fail to do so, you simply lose them, which would be a real shame. I stayed home on Wednesday and Thursday. As I don’t work on Fridays I had five consecutive days to myself.

When I returned to work on Monday I saw this sign by the side of the road at only a hundred or so metres from the main entrance to our office building’s underground parking lot.

Image from the internet.

Our offices sit in the middle of a park, smack between two ponds. I don’t know whether these ponds are natural or artificial, but they do attract a lot of wildlife. Every now and then we see herons hovering over the surface of the water surface, foraging. In some places the ponds are rather shallow and on a clear day you can easily spot the carp fish cruising over the bottom. Some of them are pretty big; too big to be scooped out of the water and carried off by a heron. So I guess that there must be other delectable creatures living in or around the ponds.

Judging by the new sign toads could be one of them. This time of year they migrate from one pond to the other to procreate. To get to their destination they need to cross the narrow asphalt road that leads to the entrance of the car park. I’ve seen images on television of people roaming the countryside looking for these toad crossings in an attempt to protect the animals from being run over by cars. They await the amorous amphibians on one side of the road, where they herded them into buckets and basins. The toads are then carried to the other side, where they are released.

Until now, I haven’t seen a toad or a ‘toad-crosser’ (aka a person who helps the toads to the other side of the road) yet. Maybe they operate during the night. 

Pig story - at last!

Eddy, a potbellied pig, made the headlines of several Belgian newspapers last weekend. The reason? Definitely not because he came first in a beauty contest …

No, Eddy won national fame by making a run for it. He was found by a passer-by after falling into a brook. Before ending up in this uncomfortable and slightly embarrassing situation, the pig had walked over 4 km from his home in a nearby village. This wasn’t Eddy’s first escape, if we are to believe its current owner, who – when you know the whole story – is responsible for the pig’s behaviour.

Apparently, the owner had bought the potbellied piglet 4 years ago as a present to his then 7 year old son. Eddy was the boy’s first pet. Not happy with just the one pet, the obvious whimsical and spoiled-rotten boy asked for more animals. And so, over the years, Eddy got the company of several small farmyard animals … of which the boy soon grew tired. His most recent fancy being a small dog and a kunekune pig, the parents decided to part with their livestock. A new owner was found. However, he had no room for Eddy and after the small animal colony had been picked up by the new owner, Eddy stayed behind, alone and lonely, hoping that someone would take an interest in him, before the dog and the new piglet arrived.

A few weeks ago, missing the company of the other animals, and probably sensing that he was no longer wanted, the potbellied pig attempted its first ‘Great Escape’. Lacking the Steve McQueen look (and appropriate motor cycle) Eddy didn’t get very far and was quickly recaptured while foraging in a nearby meadow with some horses.

Eddy being lifted out of the water by the local firebrigade.

Photo by Kristof Debecker on www.nieuwsblad.be

His second attempt, last weekend, was more successful. Well, for a while at least. He managed to break free and to trot a distance of no less than 4 km, before he accidentally ended up in the ditch in which he was found later. Tired from the walk, handicapped by its most attractive feature – its potbelly, weakened and under cooled by the freezing temperature of the water in the ditch, he lacked the strength to climb up the steep bank.

Luckily a passer-by who saw the pig standing in the water, immediately called the fire brigade. It took a lot of coaxing, pushing and shoving before Eddy stepped into the container that had been brought in to lift him out of the water. The owner, who will have to pay for the rescue, came to pick up his pet. To the assembled local press he explained that “animals have feelings too” and that “Eddy had been feeling lonely since the other animals had been taken away”.

Maybe he should have thought of this before giving in to his son’s every whim. Judging by the comments this news item got on one newspaper’s website a lot of people feel the same way, and blame the parents for spoiling their son the way they do. One commenter even wrote that these people shouldn’t be allowed to have a goldfish. I couldn’t agree with him more.

Blogger is doing it again!

I tried to post a sweet story about a very sad and lonely pig that made the headlines in the Belgian papers this weekend. Not because it won a beauty contest... but that goes without saying, doesn't it?

Photo by Kristof Debecker on www.nieuwsblad.be

But blogger is playing up again. When I copy/paste my text from a Word file, blogger moves the right margin too far to the right to read the last words. Is anybody else experiencing the same problem? If so, is it just blogger or is there something one can do about it?

Please let me know, because I really want to share this sweet and sad story with you.

Another party

My neighbours across the landing are having a party. They've put up a note in the downstair's hallway informing the other tenants of the event, which has started at 4 p.m. and will probably go on till after midnight.

Since 5 p.m. I feel like living in a war zone. There is no music but a lot of screaming and a constant - really constant - banging sound caused by doors that are being slammed.  Moreover, some very strange smells are coming out of their kitchen, floating onto the landing and seeping in under my front door, making my apartment smell like some bad quality exotic takeaway. I've opened a window to let some fresh air in, but the smell is very tenacious ...

As we have been warned and invited - the note was very explicit about that - we (the other tenants) are not really in a position to complain. Moreover, I want to remain on good terms with everybody ... but the banging sound is really nerve-wrecking and the smell is quite nauseating. In hope it won't cling to my hair and clothes when I go to work tomorrow!