Bzzzz

Colander

This weekend I discovered a large puddle of water on the first floor. On my brand new floor that is, which I laid only three weeks ago. Water was dripping from the ceiling; at least it dripped until I touched the rock wool insulation with a finger. It went right through and the very next moment I had a whole waterfall streaming down.

I couldn’t believe it, ANOTHER bloody hole in the roof! Last summer, I got so fed up with plastering the roof with repair kit, that I re-roofed one side of the roof with a new roll of bitumen. Needless to say, the leak is in that part of the roof that I thought was still pretty fine.

Luckily, the new bathroom ceiling isn’t up yet, that’s for next month. But I can tell you I’m getting pretty fed up with this colander we’re having for a roof.

Short Circuit

With autumn well under way and winter fast approaching – Christmas decorations anyone? - it is time to prepare the garden. I must admit that Mrs. B is the one with the green fingers, my services are only called for to do the heavy work such as pruning things and digging out old shrubs and things like that.

So this weekend I pruned our grapevine. Almost all its leaves had gone, and the bugs had left nothing from the last grapes but a few dried-out and rotten corpses. Previous years, I just cut off the long branches and tried to stuff them in the green container. But this year, I had a secret weapon in my arsenal: granddad's Ultimate Destroyer. A handy machine that allows you to feed whole branches one way and turns them into small slivers of wood.

So instead of having three containers of branches, I ended up with half a bag of atomised grapevines. Super!

Then I attacked the mountain of pine branches that lies next to our neighbours garden shed. If you remember, last spring we took out the 25 meter long/4 meter high/1.5 meter wide hedge that separated our garden from our neighbours. They kindly offered to stack the branches in their garden, and when we were done they had a mountain of pine branches so high in their garden that planes need to make a detour. Ever since, the next door neighbour and I have been taking tours at pushing those branches in the GUD (Granddad's Ultimate Destroyer).

It's an annoying task, because the flexible small pine twigs sooner or later make the cutting disk inside grind to a halt. Which means you have to open the GUD, remove the twigs and shavings that didn't come out and close it again. On top of that, there is this security mechanism with an interrupter that keeps getting clogged by the pine needles. All this makes for a fun afternoon in the garden.

So I was happily feeding the GUD with pine branches, until I had a couple of them that were too large to feed in one piece. No problem, because I have some mean pairs of cutting scissors. And while the machine was turning in the back I was cutting happily away at a big branch on the ground.

However...

The GUD's electrical wire was also on the ground. Under the branch I was cutting. And then the inevitable happened. SNIP – Flash! - and then the cutter ground to a halt. It was a good thing those cutters had plastic handles (and I was wearing gloves of course). I had taken off a good 50 cm of wire.

Half an hour later I'd put the plug on the remaining end of wire and I was back in business. But I decided to cut those branches a bit further away from the machine.

Touch And Go

I've barely arrived from Congo and I'm leaving again... to Congo. This time to the southwestern part instead of the northeast. I'll be back in ten days, so you'll have to make do with the other blogs that you may find in the dark pathways of the internet. Not that I can imagine that any of them are as interesting as my weblog, of course.

Feel Like A Wreck

Aaah, la Picardie...

Derilict fishing boats at the end of the harbour of Le Crotoy

AARRR

When Mrs.B carried a plant indoors to protect it from the first winter chills, she succeeded in getting a branch in her left eye, it swung right underneath her glasses. It stung like hell, but she put on a brave face (read: whined about it the whole evening) and went to bed.

The next morning, it was still hurting a lot, and I must confess that I was really worried. Her eyesight is not getting better anyway. So we decided she had to go and see a doctor. That was Friday morning. A couple of hours later, she called me at work. The doctor was very worried about her eye, because that branch had made a scratch right on her pupil. She had patched up her eye (literally) but refused to put Mrs.B on sick leave.

So my wife had left the car behind at the hospital for me to pick up in the evening, and had ventured on an adventurous trip by bus to work. There her boss cast one look at her and sent her home. ‘You’re in no state to work’, he’d said, and he was right.

So later that evening I swam from the bus to our car – it was raining cats and dogs, until I got in the damn car of course – and drove home. There I found my Piratess of the Caribbean listening to the TV – watching was too painful for her and not just because we have such crappy shows on every single Belgian TV station.

So we spent the whole weekend smearing ointment in her eye, then patching it up again; and running to and from the hospital to get daily checks. We also went to two birthday parties, although Mrs.B had to rest-rest-rest. And birthday parties are no fun when your eye either itches or hurts like hell and you MUST’NT TOUCH IT!

But luckily, yesterday the doctor told us that the eye is healing well and as from today, Mrs.B’s days of plundering innocent vessels at the high sees are over. She doesn’t have to wear the patch anymore during the day, although she has to keep the parrot and the patch for when she sleeps. I must confess I tend to prefer the wooden leg in bed, because although it’s harder when she kicks, it doesn’t have a cold foot attached to it. I will be glad to see that hook go, though.

During all this ordeal Wolf and I tried to be supportive as possible. I washed the dishes – no single dish or pot had been washed since my departure to Congo – and we sang a song to cheer her up. Belgian readers may know the Pete the Pirate-song (Piet Piraat):

Pete the Pirate

Pete the Pirate

Ship Ahoy – hoy – hoy

He is my

Comrade

Ship Ahoy – hoy – hoy

With his ship

The Crooked Tub

He sails out

Every day

Pete the Pirate

Pete the Pirate

Pete the Pirate

(x 1000)

The Bus To Uganda

Tomorrow morning, I'll take the 7:45 bus to Uganda. Via the airports of Brussels-Zaventem and Kigali, that is. And Wednessday, I'll hop on a small plane that will take me from Entebbe to Arua, a town on the western border not far from East Congo. There my colleagues will pick me up with their brand new Toyota Landcruiser and together we'll cross the border to Mahagi, the eastern most outpost of Congo.

I'll be gone for ten days, so you all behave and I'll bring you a small present, like I do for Wolf.

Autumn Colors

Vomit Comet

After a series of early autumn days, summer has made a short come-back here. Last weekend we enjoyed a couple of warm sunny days, and what better way to spend them than in the company of friends in a beautiful 'gite' in the Ardennes. This time, we went to the easternmost part of Belgium, to the small town of Malmedy. It's a beautiful green region with the typical bulges of the Ardennes – you can't really call them mountains. It's also the part of Belgium where a couple of thousands of people speak German, a consequence of two World Wars.

We enjoyed a gourmet grill, a barbecue and a spaghetti festival, with plenty of hors d'oeuvres and aperitif before, deserts after and snacks in between meals. In the morning we made long walks, which turned out to be quite the exercise – pushing a buggy with a 25 pound toddler over dirt tracks and up steep hills is not for the weak and meek.

Unfortunately, Wolf had caught a bad little bug which sprang into action on the first evening. When we heard him crying we went up to check him out, and found him all covered in chunks of breakfast, lunch and dinner. His little bed was covered in half digested food, not to mention the little guy himself. An hour of scrubbing and bathing later, Wolf was clean, refreshed and calmed down again. We improvised new bedding with a large towel and luckily we had a spare cuddly bear to replace his ever faithful Booh.

Later that evening, when we went to bed, I went into his room to check on him. I knew something was seriously wrong when my sock-covered foot went 'splitch'.

His bed was Armageddon. A giant puddle of puke, even larger than the first time, covered about one third of his bed. He had vomited right trough the mesh that makes up one side of his bed, creating that bloody puddle I just had stepped in. He was covered in mucus from head to toe.

So we went to alarm phase three, gave him a bath again and then I spent until 1AM trying to clean out the towel, his bed linen, his mattress, his Pjs, his teddy bear, etc.etc. with nothing more than a small bar of hand soap.

When I finally went to bed, I found Wolf taking up most of my place. So I made do with about six inches of bed and tried to sleep. At 3:30 AM I was still awake, dozing off occasionally until Wolf would kick me in the back again. So I left my place to the ungrateful little brat and went to sleep in the next room in a spare bed, right next to his cleaned but still very smelly bed.

But the rest of the weekend was actually very nice!

Raspberries

Not only did we have plenty of grapes this year, our first experiment in cultivating raspberries turned out better than expected.

And we had plenty of apples too. And some gooseberries, but not nearly as many as we had raspberries. So sweet and delicious, mmmmmmmh.