5 OS Pleasures in your Day Today part 2

Stop monopolising thread, &.

1. Meriva all packed. & brekkied. Thermoses recharged. Will pop back in for Merci/adieu after this. Will I stay here again? Belgium feels full of a lot of confusings. Will check out the Ensor House/Museum later.

2. All beaches still present and correct, with good water in and out....but rainwater descended powerfully at some point n/k to &. Mlle Meriva is squeaky shiny clean.

3. Don't play Generalisations of the low-sweepingest kind, &. Belgian women are all cow-sized and paced. Belgian women all smoke, preggers or no, are therefore wrong sort of stringy-veined baccy-toned scrawn. No Belgian women wash their hands after ykw. Belgians all breakfast on white bread overloaded with sugar+fat-sodden everything. Belgians universally use caddies, for propping up, bedding down (street sleepers+dwellers), filling with stuff, Atlantic Wall recreationals, testing derring-do of oncoming motorists, fashion statements+subtexts.
& is your roving UN peacekeeping force. Might be failing that one.

4. Well, the best Ostend Oxfam shop is now open again. Hurry along please &. Is that where 2 young on-duty police in shorts and on bikes are heading? No, just up a block to the sea, the sea.

5. No real reason for these masquerading as further osps, but found young Mum's shoes and a hoodie top left behind earlier. Now handed in. She walked out over a week ago, leaving OH with infants. He is menuisier, with extra job in that boîte de nuit. Rises 4am, hard worker, she said. Both are. She is teacher's aide, has done nothing else ever. Suggested she could learn to drive, just to have knowledge of possibilities, sense of freedom and taking children to run, play freely. Next night, found her hard at work with huge new permis de conduire manual and yet she also said she doesn't read 'books', never has!
Ah well.
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Thankyou all for patient reading, if you did. Just felt/feel so troubled by her.
No. &, you can't fix everyone/everything. Leave it.
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All have a lovely lundi. That's an &order :-)

I hope this thread doesn't auto delete like some of the other longer ones have


Monday pleasures

1. quiet drive to work this morning and got a parking space near the front of the building

2. morning went quickly

3. called off for some food shopping on the way home and came in under budget

4. saw DS for 10 minutes as he came in and went out again ! Decision made on which safety gate to buy and with a £10 money off voucher should only cost £6.99

5. sorted / shredded my LAST box of stuff / paperwork :j
Just waiting for someone to take away my old dining room table I have put it on gumtree for free and then 1 tip run should complete my puppy proofing !

Hey guys...I hope you don't mind me popping in just to say you might be wise to start a new 5 O/S Pleasures thread.... 'Part 3' maybe?.

As you may be aware some longer O/S threads have vanished recently, so best to err on the side of safety imho

Back to the Daily, Garden Fence, CFO threads I go

Hello all - back from my hols Have tried to read along, but i have been away from t'internet for some long periods of time so may have missed stuff.

Skint_yet_Again wrote: »

I hope this thread doesn't auto delete like some of the other longer ones have

karcher wrote: »

Hey guys...I hope you don't mind me popping in just to say you might be wise to start a new 5 O/S Pleasures thread.... 'Part 3' maybe?.

Same - maybe it is time to start a new one?

ampersand wrote: »

3. Don't play Generalisations of the low-sweepingest kind, &. Belgian women are all cow-sized and paced. Belgian women all smoke, preggers or no, are therefore wrong sort of stringy-veined baccy-toned scrawn. No Belgian women wash their hands after ykw. Belgians all breakfast on white bread overloaded with sugar+fat-sodden everything. Belgians universally use caddies, for propping up, bedding down (street sleepers+dwellers), filling with stuff, Atlantic Wall recreationals, testing derring-do of oncoming motorists, fashion statements+subtexts.

In similar vein "all" white South (and southern) African men aged between about 40 and 60 are big, bull-necked, arrogant so and so's who trophy hunt and treat black people like scum... :mad:

ampersand wrote: »

He is menuisier,

This took me back - I used to say this in French lessons after the question "what does your father do?" "il est menuisier"... :rotfl: (which he wasn't, technically - being a wood-machinist - but it was the closest i could get).

So, pleasures.

1. What a lovely, lovely time we have had. The weather has been stunning and the scenery breathtaking. We spent a very little time in South Africa and split the rest of our time between Zimbabwe and Botswana. Zimbabwe is in a bad way, economically. They are a (not-so) shining example of what austerity cuts can do - run down buildings, roads full of pot-holes - you get the picture. But
2. The people are wonderful. it is extremely safe and there are few instances of violent crime, even for all the poverty. The greeting of "how are you?" everywhere is lovely. Their currency is, officially, the US dollar but there is little cash around and queues for banks (which can be for days) are rather heartbreaking. Botswana is a much richer country - but their roads are sand in parts so thank goodness for our 4x4 - but the people are equally lovely and it, also, is extremely safe. the biggest dangers are from wild animals, not humans.
3. We camped for about half our time in one of these

https://www.drivesouthafrica.co.za/4x4-hire/model/ford-ranger-4x4-groupcamper-sa-avis/

A tent for us and one for DS. As you can't really going stomping across the bush to the loo in the middle of the night (because, lions and stuff), i am now master of the she-wee...:rotfl: (sorry, BOP, TMI). DS was tent erector and de-erector extraordinaire
We said that if there's a next time, we will camp more.

4. Wildlife - elephants, giraffes, hippos, rhinos, all kinds of antelopes, warthogs, jackals, hyenas, buffalo, ostrich, wildebeest, zebra, vultures (stripping a giraffe carcass, gruesome and fascinating at the same time), eagles and smaller, beautiful birds. and some big cats - lions and, once, up close and personal with a cheetah. One day, our drive took us along the Chobe river and it was like an advert for Africa with the sheer volume of wildlife - over 100 giraffes and over 1000 zebras!!

5. Our DS, who has been amazing. I am not sure I could have spent 3 weeks with just my parents when I was 18

In other news
6. Our DD is 21 today :T
7. We landed back at 7.30 yesterday having flown back overnight. And we managed to keep going until 10 (as DD didn't get home till 9) and did 3 loads of washing and cleaned the kitchen.
8. it is warm and sunny here too!
9. Our garden seems to have survived our absence without too much harm.
10. My dad is ok and has been keeping up with our adventures by being shown photos on Facebook.

Hope you're all ok. I have a cake to bake..