it's these little things that can drag you under

Although the Belgians, like the French, are renowned for their gastronomy- there’s one thing they don’t seem to get - UHT milk is vile! This seems to be the milk that is drunk by 95% of the population (judging by shelf space it has in the supermarkets). Whenever I visit a store I have the hope that the fresh (as in pasteurised - rather than raw) milk will not be sold out. Usually it is. I can cope with UHT in my coffee – but it makes my tea taste metallic, and as for adding it to muesli……no wonder there is a croissant culture.

I’ve twice recently fallen victim to the ‘garbage police’ –and received big red stickers on my garbage bags. The first time it was because I put the ‘wrong sort’ of plastic into my plastic garbage bag. So I took it upstairs, took out the ‘wrong’ kinds of plastic –and sent it back downstairs. The next week I get another big red sticker saying my plastic sack smells of organic residues. ‘Well, yes, you didn’t collect it two weeks ago. There was a paté container left over from Christmas. I asked myself if I have to put the whole contents of the whole sack through my dishwasher’ Probably yes. But what I really want to know is: does the Municipality employ someone to sniff every bag- or is this left to the dogs? In which case why do the bags come back in one piece?