3BT: the BBC, Inevitable, and Starbucks

1. I log into the BBC website during my lunchbreak. A banner informs me that it wasn't a vicious rumour: soon we foreigners will be able to access iplayer. Hooray: no more kicking myself because I forgot to record Question Time.

2. Many unexpected backings and kind comments on my book. I even get an email back from an agent saying she 'likes the tone'. It's still a no, but it makes my day.

3. Another tweet, another happy shriek: the Gare Centrale Starbucks is apparently not just a rumour either. It's going to open on 22nd June. I'd been looking for something to use my countdown app on.

Ah, Belgium.

Am I the only one who finds this a little ironic?

Quirky things about Belgium: inefficiency

Welcome back to Belgium, the banner could have said. You like it here, remember? It's home.

Besides, it's very pretty with all the snow, and you can warm up with a waffle. And there are languages. Lots of them. And chocolate. Rivers of chocolate flowing down the streets.

Also, a place of glorious inefficiency. Political views aside (I won't reveal mine on this issue lest I lose whatever readers I may have painstakingly gained over the last few insight-filled months), it worries me slightly that this is where the powers that be chose to put Europe, HQ. Here, where for much of the time they can't even agree on their own government.

Here, where you have to ring ahead to an undisclosed number if you want to use a trolley when you get off the Eurostar with your five thousand suitcases full of Christmas presents and sales bargains, for the simple reason that, and I quote, "ce n'est pas Londres ici, Madame." Sigh.

Welcome home, all you expats. Take a deep breath. Getting cross does not help, and I'd know. Think chocolate. Think gateway to Europe. And don't go overdoing the Borders closing sale next year.

Quirky things about Belgium, #356

Ah, Brussels South Airport. "The friendly airport." How I wish I could say that I love you.

I'd like to love you for your ridiculous name. Possibly even more ridiculous than "London Luton".

I'd like to love you for your slightly-too-efficient security guys. My luggage will fit in the Ryanair measuring thingy. It will. Even if I have to bribe you with the chocolate I thought I was packing to give to my friends when I arrive, if you ever let me on this plane.

I'd like to love you, most of all, for your oh-so-efficient use of lighting in the toilets. Movement-sensitive. But only sensitive to movement close to the washbasins. Once people are in a cubicle, sitting still and attending to business, the light turns itself off. We have to shuffle back out, trousers round our ankles, to coax the light to come on again. Pure Belgian genius.

Such pure Belgian genius, in fact, that someone in an adjoining cubicle quips, "Ca a encore été inventé par un Belge, ca..." then apologises profusely for her assumption that "Belgian" sometimes means the same as "faintly ridiculous".

It's really okay. I live here. I understand exactly what she means.