I've bin thinking

In London when I wanted to get rid of something I just threw it away. Whether it was an empty yoghurt pot, a tea bag or a flat bed scanner; it all went into the same communal dump. 

In Brussels when I want to get rid of something I must first consult this pictorial chart (see above). 

You have four different coloured bags, each with its own particular penchant. Yellow has a paper and card fetish, whereas white's delectation is apple cores and onion peel (the sicko).

Simple enough but like all rules there are a few irregularities. For example, why can't a yoghurt pot go into the blue bag with the rest of the plastics? Instead it is banished with the ordures menageres. The same goes for the Capri Sun orange juice?

No glass whatsoever can be thrown away, instead it has to go to the bottle bank. 

There's a handful of other items it's forbidden to bin, including light bulbs, cigarette lighters, cooking oils, empty printer cartridges, bottles of bleach, batteries, and all aerosol cans, these have to go to the waste recycling centre.

Well apparently you don't want to fall foul of the bin laws - rumour has it "the Man" sifts through your rubbish and issues heavy fines for transgressions. 

I've never really believed in recycling, it's so energy intensive. I prefer reusing. For example, I drink a 24 crate of Jupiler beer. Each bottle goes back in the crate from whence it came which I return to the supermarket, collecting a small return fee. The bottles are cleaned by the brewer and reused - just like milk bottles used to be.  

France says 'non' to the hashtag

The French Government wants Francophiles on Twitter to stop using the word hashtag in favour of le mot-dièse.


Hashtag is the internet’s lingua-franca for the # symbol and is used on the micro-blogging site to collate topics and trends.

But it becomes the latest anglo invader to fall foul of strict French Government lingual purists who seek native replacements against insidious Anglicisation. 

Perhaps unsurprisingly the decree received a frosty reception on Twitter. Some revolutionary French tweets vowed to defy the authorities, others met it with the 140-character equivalent of a Gallic shrug.

A vocal group of pedants even launched a counter-campaign, insisting dièse is incorrect and should be croisillon. A dièse, they claim, is the slanted character in musical notation and not the straight-backed hash used on Twitter.

It is not the first time the French government has tried to hold back the irresistible tide of technical jargon from polluting la langue de Voltaire. 
Previous meddling insisted on courriels instead of emails and that inboxes should be purged of le pourriel, electronic rot, instead of Spam.

Even more unsuccessful was its insistence of the word l’arobase, in favour of at, when spelling an email address. 

David Abiker, a satirical French columnist with over 75,000 followers on Twitter, believes the Government should go even further. He suggests replacing the English acronym WTF (used to signify jaw-dropping content) should become "Ça restera dans les annales", loosely, this is going down in history.

A little graphic I created to help me remember the new name

The hashtag ban was issued this week in the official Government journal by the Commission Générale de Terminologie et de Néologie, which works alongside the Academie Francaise to enrich the French language.

The Death of the Wrestlers

La Mort d'Ompdrailles (The Death of the Wrestlers) 

I love this statue. I walk past it on the way to my French language school but I never knew who or what it commemorated. I'd misread the fading plaque and falsely believed it was dedicated to the creator of the Olympics. 

Only when I was researching the statue for my blog did I find out it actually says Createur d'Ompradailles

So it turns out the statue depicts a scene from a short story by the French author Leon Cladel. It's called the Death of the Wrestlers. I can't find a link between Cladel and Brussels. He was born in Montauban and spent the rest of his life in Paris.

The real credit goes to Charles van der Stappen, the sculptor who crafted the statue in the 1890s. I hadn't realised when I took the photograph that it stands on a plinth designed by the famous Victor Horta so unfortunately it's cropped out of the shot. I'll have to go back with a wider angle, until then here's Google Street View. The statue stands at the head of the Parc du Roi, just off the Avenue Louise


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If anybody is obsessed with EXIF information as I am, the photo was taken at 70mm, f10, 1/250, ISO100

The Abandoned Hippodrome

The Hippodrome de Boitsfort

This is the Hippodrome de Boitsfort in Brussels. It's abandoned and eerie. In England it would have been sealed off, sold to a developer and turned into ghastly two-bedroom flats for soulless DINKys. Luckily it's in Belgium, so it's been left desolate since the last race in 1987.

This is a panorama of the abandoned Hippodrome that's been stitched together in Photoshop from 20 full frame images

Abandoned commentary tower

The only thing running on the circuit these days is the occasional labrador dog

These are the entrances to the grandstand

The stadium in profile

Ever since I first saw it I knew I wanted to photograph it. It has snowed very heavily and I thought that would add to its air of desolation. All I needed was some sunlight... more specifically one hour of early morning dawn light just after the sun has risen. It finally came today. Slipping and sliding on the ice, I rushed to the Hippodrome just in time for magic hour.

After I'd spent some time snapping the exterior I found a way into the stadium. It has clearly been used by glue sniffers and I found lots of empty pots of industrial glue. There were also a few mattresses were people had been dossing - it didn't look very cosy today though; it was minus five below freezing.

A way in

I had to be careful kneeling for photos because of all the broken glass

Inside the stadium

A very deliberately painted red corner and a lonely red chair

The corner of one of the rooms had been painted bright red in a very deliberate way. A red chair was positioned in the centre of the red square. It might have been done for an arty fashion shoot but I was on my own and it was all starting to feel a bit Blair Witch.

Mind your step, a lot of the wooden floorboards are rotting away

I was a bit nervous exploring the stadium because I wasn't sure who was home. The last thing I wanted to do was trip over some crashed-out druggie in the dark. Also, quite a few of the floorboards had rotted through. Deeper inside it became apparent the stadium had been used by "lovers" (judging by some of the other paraphernalia I discovered).

Would you fancy a night's kip on this?

One of the stadium's less charming rooms

Some art I discovered, (top to bottom) Omlet by unknown artist, spray paint on brick; Weird Skeleton Cactus Plants by Jas Zyke, spray paint on breeze block; Little Red Devil Monster by unknown artist, oil on steel

On my way home through the snowy woods I came across Pauwel's Circus. It looked quite medieval in the snow. Notice the steaming pile of manure in the foreground.


If you'd like to see the entire set on Flickr, then please click HERE















And finally... here it is on Google Maps as seen from the road



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Parrots in Brussels

I've always said we enjoy a balmy climate here in Brussels but hadn't expected this tropical visitor. These parrots are such a colourful sight, especially on a snowy day like today. Luckily I had my 200mm lens with me. 

He looks like he's wearing a top hat

Apparently they're Rose-necked Parakeets (sometimes called Ring-necked Parakeets). There are 5,000 breeding pairs in Brussels. They've been in the city since 1974 when the owner of an amusement park released a flock to brighten up the town. They have thrived on the nuts in bird-feeders - soon everybody wanted a parrot in their garden.

Rose-necked parakeets on the Avenue Louise

Some people claim the parakeets are a pest and harmful to the native birds. I'd certainly rather see a flock of these than a mangy pack of pecking pigeons. 

The Day I Nearly Bought a Leprechaun Skeleton

Belgium has some of the best flea markets in Europe... not my words, the words of the Guardian. In its top 11 European flea markets, three are from Belgium. Here’s the evidence.

As you can see, at number five is the flea market on the Place du Jeu de Balle in Brussels, which is where I was headed on Saturday morning for some street photography.

The entire square is filled with junk. It looks like a refugee camp. There are very few stalls, instead the traders just roll out a blanket on the street and toss their tat in ugly piles. There’s no order, there’s no delicate arrangement - it looks like an eviction.

Just walking around the market can be difficult. The narrow walkways between the rugs are crowded and the items regularly overspill - not that the traders much care when their chipped china is trampled underfoot.

Creepy and sinister are just two of the words that spring to mind

There’s not much you can’t buy at the Place du Jeu de Balle. Similarly, there’s not much you’d want to buy at the Place du Jeu de Balle. Broken sunglasses sit alongside obsolete VCR players, Hitler youth knives, and knackered SLR cameras.

"Is this the one you wanted? The man in the shop said it's much better than those iPods."

Where TV remotes go when they die

A leprechaun skeleton, the perfect Christmas present for that special somebody

The strangest item for sale was this miniature humanoid skeleton in a glass case. With its little pot, it looked like a leprechaun's grave. The trader saw me taking photos and offered it for 50 Euros. When I declined, he readily lowered the price to 20. A bargain perhaps, but that’s how a lot of horror films start. I know my luck, the one time I buy a leprechaun skeleton it will turn out to be haunted and come alive at night to butcher me in my bed.

The flea market was fun. There might even have been some gold hidden under all the mounds of crap, but I don’t really have an eye for antiques.

Mmmm, you're a nice toilet brush

I don't know much about antiques, Bargain Hunters, but this beautiful, hand-painted seal figurine has got to be worth a punt. Cheap as chips

If you've had a tetanus jab recently, you might enjoy a rummage through these trays of rusty cutlery

This rug specialised solely in tangled wires for obsolete technology

After the fun at the flea market I went to meet Hannah at a British-themed tea shop called God Save the Cream (yawn). They served my tea in a thick porcelain beaker.... no self-respecting British tea room would try that trick. Sorry to sound like a fuss pot, but when it comes to tea only bone china will suffice.

Here’s a handy list (with maps and opening hours) of all of the major markets in the centre of Brussels. There are hundreds more outside the centre.

http://www.brussels.be/artdet.cfm/4984

The Midnight Skater

I was out late taking some long exposure photos of the glowing, coloured balloons on Place Stephanie. Out of nowhere a lone skater appeared and leapt off the steps in front of my tripod. I asked him if he would jump again and he agreed. I didn't bring my flash so all I could do was whack up the ISO and hope. I knew I wanted to freeze his action and shoot a burst. After he landed the jump he skated right past me without even saying goodbye... off into the night.

Afterwards I noticed some of the lights on the Hotel Conrad had blown. Not sure if skaters still say "RAD" (or if they ever did) but it makes an accidental title for the photo