Today we all dined out at lunchtime for a nice change, to mark the departure of our colleague Jamila (centre in the picture above).

I was required to say a few words and I realised that this was the first time I’d ever had to do so.

Jamila is moving on to another client and she’ll doubtless be a great asset when she gets there.

وداعا لك Jamila!

Vigorously beat two or three eggs. We get ours from J’s colleague Danny who, like many Flemish householders, keeps his own chickens. Not sure what Danny feeds them, or else we’ve become all too used to the bio supermarket eggs, but those yolks are pretty fluorescent.

Up next, we beat in the usual suspects: a teaspoon of paprika (smoked paprika if you can find it: it’s rare here in Belgium), a bit of cayenne pepper, a few twists of sea salt, a crushed clove of garlic (or not, if you’re romancing), lots of black pepper and a pinch of delectable saffron.

Beat it black and blue to avoid clumping of the spices, add a drop or two of milk to taste and then beat again.

Stick the mix in the fridge and turn on the grill. While that’s heating up, pop on the kettle for some coffee.

Personally, I like single-origin Ethiopian coffees best: Sidamo is really smooth and goes well with Sunday mornings, while Yirgacheffe will do nicely for those crapola wet Mondays before school.

Some of the best I’ve enjoyed here comes fresh from Javana in Brugge but I don’t get up there often these days.

Next heat a knob of butter or a teaspoon of olive oil in a non-stick pan until it thinly covers the bottom.

Dampen the pitta breads on both sides and put them under the grill.

Out comes the orange-red, eggy goodness and into the pan it goes. Leave it a minute so until it starts to flocculate, then turn it slowly from time to time until it firms up nicely.

When the egg’s looking pretty solid in there, turn down the heat and get your pittas out. Carefully slit them open and, if you’re feeling super goloso, butter or drizzle them with oil.

Last of all, stuff those lovely pittas full of egg action. Add a dash of tabasco sauce if you’re feeling brave and maybe a pinch or two of parsley.

Eat and enjoy, preferably with loved one(s).

Source: Wikimedia Commons

When I came to work in an international environment here in Brussels, I made a very British choice.

It will be remembered that Britain drives on the left, uses different plugs and spells English words correctly.

My choice was to stick with a qwerty keyboard while everyone else works with the azerty version.

The trouble with azerty you see – apart from the fact that the order of some alphabetical keys is different – is that punctuation and numbers all require a shift key. Indeed, getting certain characters frequently used in programming can require a special talent for finger gymnastics.

Of course, when it then comes to writing emails in French, the qwerty lets us Anglophones down. No sign of any fancy accents and graves and circumflexes and unless we want to borrow everything one by one from a character map, we’re a bit stuck.

My solution requires a good memory for patterns. It’s basically a cheat sheet of codes usable in Windows, because all those fancy characters are actually accessible via simple combinations of the Alt key and a numeric code:

I printed off the list and then fixed it to the side of one of my screens. When writing text in French I didn’t need to look far for the appropriate combination. Over a period of time and use, I actually memorised many of the most common ones.

Republished courtesy of: 8ch

Great photographer that our friend 8ch is, it took me a moment to realise what he’d captured.

He sent us the photo having passed it by chance last Friday evening: my old Ribble chained to a railing in Carfax, Oxford.

I won a few races on this bike in 1994 when I was still a kid. I lugged it around for years after I quit cycling and eventually, ahead of a big house move, I gave it to 8ch for whom it was probably much too small. Some time later, 8ch himself moved and he gave the bike away to a good home.

Fifteen or sixteen years later, it’s still out there doing its job. It looks to have all the same bits – even the dodgy old 105 brake and downtube shifter I put on temporarily after a crash and never got around to fixing. And yes, you can still see my name on the top tube.

We paid a brief visit to the UK this Christmas, via the ferry from Zeebrugge to Hull.

My parents intend to move house next year, so this was also the last opportunity to see the place where I grew up.

We were also lucky to enjoy a nice bit of seasonal snow: enough to set the mood but fortunately not enough to block the roads!

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Christmas 2009

A seasonal visit to the UK and a last look at the family home before my parents move on.

This week it turns out I’m thirty years old.

It doesn’t feel any different. Yet. No urge to buy a big, red, penis extension sports coupé. No inexplicable desire to leave J for an eighteen year-old trainee hairdresser.

Out with friends the night before the big number, I realised for the first time that I was the youngest among them. And that I would always be the youngest.

J’s secret birthday trip to Köln and Bonn

British Second Army, XII Corps, 53rd (Welsh) Infantry Division, 158th Infantry Brigade, East Lancashire Regiment, 1st Batallion, Private 3459145.

This was Lawrence Padgett, twenty four years old, from Yeadon. On July 6th 1944, his battalion landed on Sword Beach at Normandy.

The battalion joined with other battalions to fight through France, into Belgium, heading for the Netherlands. On some days there was stiff resistance from tanks and infantry, on others nothing passed over the plains but the cold, constant wind.

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Bergen op Zoom War Cemetery

After landing in Normandy, 1st East Lancs headed up through Belgium to support Operation Market Garden.

Lawrence Padgett was my father’s father’s brother. Lawrence might have been my father’s uncle, but within two months of the landing he was killed.

Lawrence died on September 22nd 1944. His grave is at the Canadian War Cemetery in Bergen op Zoom.

Precise details of how he came to rest there in the Canadian cemetery are still unknown to me.

Research so far

Much of what I have learned thus far is general information gleaned from the Commonwealth War Graves Commission and Internet sources, including the best account so far from the website of the Montormel Memorial. There is also a book that looks promising.

If I manage to find more accurate information, I’ll add it to this article.

Today I can confirm that, after a bit more of this lovely sunshine (hopefully), I will be starting a new job in August 2008.

I am joining my new employer Unisys to work on a number of redevelopment projects for one of its principal clients here in Brussels.

Wish me luck!

It was coming up to 01:00. J and I were just going to bed when the ground wobbled for about two seconds. Then there was a pause and the ground wobbled again.

The wind’s been terrible here this evening – not least because of my cooking – but it seemed to die down and there was an eerie silence.

Earthquake!

Up here on the second floor we thought seriously about dressing pronto and legging it downstairs – we thought the wind was finally going to take our roof off!

A hot, weak tea and a warm blanket later and we had recovered our nerves sufficiently to check out the Internet. Better than trying to guess which cracks in the walls and the ceiling were new, anyway. Or waiting around for the aftershocks.

Getting the data

Forewarned is forearmed, but in default there’s plenty to be said for ‘postwarned’ too. And lest we start to wonder whether we should be checking ourselves into High Royds, here are the facts:

• There was an earthquake
• Its epicentre was between the villages of Holton cum Beckering and West Torrington, both in Lincolnshire [plot it exactly in Google Maps]
• It measured 4.7 in magnitude (presumably on the trusty Richter Scale)
• It occurred 10km below the earth’s surface
• At the time of writing, about 80 minutes after it happened, it had been felt by people as far north as Blyth, as far west as Merthyr Tydfil and as far south as Portsmouth

Visualisations

And now for the pretty pictures:

Sources: IRIS, USGS Earthquake Hazard Program

Left to right: the earthquake as it appeared in Europe (note also the activity in the Mediterranean!); Geo-location of the UK earthquake; World view of earthquakes with UK in the topmost left – compare with South East Asia; responses flood into the USGS survey – a lot of folks’ sleep was upset!

Other reports

27 February 2007 @ 03:06: The BBC has just weighed in with a story and I’m off to bed. I think the coast is clear now!

Above left to right: Simon Garner; James Padgett; Bob Barras; Trevor Shuttleworth; James Rushton; Mike Padgett; Tom Barras. Not shown: Seb Smith; Richard Hammerton.
Photo: G Padgett.

Above left to right: Danny Connolly and Tom Barras (1996); James Padgett (c. 1994)

Above: Trevor Shuttleworth atop “The Struggle”, Kirkstone Pass, Lake District (1997)