Friday 5 October 2007

It's here somewhere...

Despite living in Brussels I don't drink and drive normally, whether I drive normally otherwise is a different debate. However, yesterday's circsumstances contrived to bring me into this popular local sport.

Taking the car to the pub is generally taboo (what a horrid word) to me so I already felt umcomfortable before I arrived. But after my 2 beer limit The Protagonist bought me another one. An interesting concept then arose where The Protagonist asked me for money to pay for the beer he'd just bought me. Deep down I suspect he does this kind of thing to distract me from some dastardly scheme he's cooking up but I don't know what.

I was already envisioning a taxi trip to collect the car in the morning but a small miracle happened. The Protagonist and I managed to follow the original plan and leave the pub, it was still daylight! Just.

It was good but slightly disturbing, you know when things go too well and you can't help thinking "I'm sure that's Mr Fuck-Up waiting around the corner, certainly looks familiar anyway", well there he was. Being a kindly and good person I offered The Protagonist a lift home as "it's only 2 minutes from where I live", he should have picked up a clue when I headed toward the passenger door (left-hand drive, still not 100% comfortable with that).

That's where the Twiglit Zone shit started, after Montgomery we just drove around in circles saying "do you recognise anything yet?", "it's covered in bees!", the only thing I recognised was my appartment, both times we went past it. Eventually I stopped the car and reached for the GPS, not only is that the solution, it's the problem. Because I follow that gadget around everywhere I don't know my way around Brussels at all. Well that's part of the problem, the other part could be that The Protagonist was in the pub all afternoon and doesn't know his way home unless he's on that sub-terranean light railway contraption.

It turned out we were only 300 metres from the place, so we weren't that bad after all...

TP : "Where's my phone thing?"
JJ : "What thing?"
TP : "You know, the phone thing"
JJ : "I don't know, what thing are you talking about?"
TP : "aah, bugger it, it'll turn up"
TP Get's up out of the car,
JJ : "oh this thing, the belt clip? you were sitting on it you muppet"
TP : "nice one, my flowers! mustn't forget the flowers"

eeeeh, we did laugh though.

JJ