Bonkers in Brussels and elsewhere

  

I was pleased but not surprised to see that the stuffed horse was still there next to the stairs at the back of the King of Spain an old-fashioned pub/restaurant on Brussels’ Grande Place.

But why would anyone want to stuff a horse ?? It’s absolutely bonkers but I have been giving that horse a comforting pat for decades from the first time I visited the city with the Royal Navy staff course back in the 1980s. There must be real story .  He’s still hanging in there a bit more part-worn and moth-eaten perhaps.

A bit like me, I suppose, giving my 20^th (?) little annual maritime strategy package to a bevy of two dozen or so NATO naval officers and associated academics and researchers. I have enjoyed it and found their questions and comments as challenging and illuminating as ever always. It was a very convivial occasions with quite a few repeat punters from Italy, Ireland, the Netherlands and so on – but of of new people as well – including one very bright chap from Poland who made his views of the Russian threat very clear.

Also who wouldn’t enjoy Brussels with its food specialisations and Leffe Brun beer. For me there’s always the option of taking along my little laptop and getting some useful work done sitting there in one of the little window seats in the King of Spain looking down at the tourists in the main square and enjoying its stupendously attractive buildings.(I was at one of the small round windows between the ground and first floor of this 1652 building. The other alternative is the fin-de-siecle Grand café next to the Bourse). On both my free evenings,  I spent a happy couple of hours plus doing exactly that. The third evening was a jolly occasion where we all dined and chuntered in the Brasserie St Hubert. It was quite a walk back; associated activity in Brussels and before may explain the otherwise incomprehensible absence of more than a negligible weight increase, after stuffing myself silly on Brussels food and drink for three days….

This trip followed on directly from a weekend at Cross-in-Hand initially to see the annua; parade of the Sussex bonfire societies. The huge devotion to their cause of the members of this society through the year is completely bizarre, so much concentrated enthusiasm for such a weird and potentially dangerous event. Great drumming though !

From Cross-in-hand we went to see a Battle of Hastings re-enactment, which was great fun, extremely well attended and actually interestingly informative. Needless to say,  we were impressed by the dedication, dare one say fanaticism of the re-enactors.

Another set of perfectly sane and reasonable people doing things that looked absolutely bonkers. Like sleeping out the night before in role in a site they said which was as spooky as it was cold.

Needless to say we all cheered on the Saxons. In our case,  this made sense since ancestors of ‘our lot’ were  most likely to  have been living in the royal estate of (King) Harold Godwinson in West Sussex. Either they kept their heads down and gave the call to arms a good ignoring, or they didn’t make it to the battlefield in time like so many others, or they were lucky enough to have survived the collapse of the ‘shield wall,‘  and subsequent slaughter. It must have been one of the three - otherwise we wouldn’t be here !  In the evening Team Powell, minus Barney already at Lancaster Uni came for a jolly evening together. [I missed getting a fuller house of family that weekend because Christopher’s Eurostar train for Amsterdam left before mine to Brussels, but he was at least able to transmit the comforting info that the new entry regulations to the EU were not yet in place at St Pancras and things were quieter than normal.]

All this this followed another busy week in London, when I stayed in a hotel on Tower Hill for a workshop in the magnificent Trinity House where at the last minute I got drafted in to fill in for the key-note speaker on the Protection of shipping.

Trinity House and its immediate vicinity is steeped in history has spectacular views of the Tower of London.

I also managed to ‘do’ four local historical churches, one where the great Samuel Pepys  and his wife were buried. The area was badly bombed of course and this means there are contrasts between old and new to be seen - not least this spectacular view of the Shard looming over the little street and protruding bracket clock  of St Mary-at-Hill.

A bit more unusually I was invited to go to the International Maritime Organisation on the Thames and help the Peruvian navy celebrate  its 204^th anniversary. Here's me with some of  our hosts.

 Lots of chat (mainly with Brazilians !)  small eats, 4 splendid Pisco Sours and some folk-dancing – who could want for more ? Three hours on one's feet though !

So perhaps we're all bonkers in our different ways