BLOGMEET 7/9/2007

Kitty O'Shea's, Brussels. See link for directions.

My favourite cover band, Take This, are playing.

Be there or be somewhere else.

OK - review without spoilers

Well, it gets very much worse for Harry before it gets any better. You're going to need some hankies. The battle scenes are going to require some cutting-edge CGI work when the film is made. And a lot of mysteries are revealed, such as who dies, who ends up with who, and what's really up with Snape*.

But you all knew that.

However I was caught out by one element. All I can say is, Randall Sherman is going to find a particular scene of HP n° 7 extremely familiar indeed.

*IMHO the man needs a hot bath, some cocoa, and a few of my homecooked dinners, he'd perk right up.

Bouncy Castles

Yes, I know I'm supposed to be studying, but...

Quarsan, who has hijacked MBIAT while Zoe is off you-know-whatting, is thinking of installing a bouncy castle in the garden. I'm not impressed with the choices he has found. He could get a much more risible feature, more pneumatic than even Kylie, second hand, and probably quite cheaply.

Dip Dop Crabtree, Sherman and Arthur Miller

Je ne sais pas quelle longue heure au blogroll m'est prise tellement Monsieur Crabtree. Il est particulièrement délicieux à le bilingue, comme nous pouvons passer les heures qui essayent d'établir ce que vraiment essayé pour dire avant Babelfish a obtenu à lui. Parfois il fait le cri à moi. Avec le rire.

Arthur Miller seems to have moved in with Sherman. A domestic tragedy has taken place, a father brought low, a spouse uninvolved, a secretary at fault. A reader ROFLing.

New animals

Scouse Doris and I went out for lunch in Leuven and had a couple of glasses of wine. As a result a mother and child piéta of giraffes are now living in our sitting room. Unlike the pair in the photo, ours have leopardskin print cloth covers. The mother is about 1 meter 50 in height.

They look very surprised indeed.

Aaaaargh. Honey tagged me.

1. Each player must post these rules first.
2. Each player starts with eight random facts/habits about themselves.
3. People who are tagged need to write their own blog about their eight things and post these rules.
4. At the end of your blog, you need to choose eight people to get tagged and list their names.
5. Don’t forget to leave them a comment telling them they’re tagged, and to read your blog.

eight random facts/habits about me:

1. I was once, for a couple of years, the second best female archer in Belgium after a woman called Gerlinde Klingels. I own a Hoyt Spectra Lite. It lives with my cousins because they have a garden, and also because if they see it, it scares men off even faster than I do already.
2. I wish I was able to say "no" more when people ask me for favours. Sometimes I think I get invited AS the entertainment.
3. I can make soufflés. They're actually not at all difficult to do.
4. I had to have rabies jabs as a child of eight after a nasty dog bite. I didn't get the full course. Apparently it shows.
5. I don't want children of my own, I'm terrified of psychologically crippling them. I enjoy being an auntie. Hence the name.
6. I'm a cyborg. 25% of my pelvis is made of cement (see gory stuff).
7. I never date other women's men. Not even if they've just expressed slight interest. A man I was living with came home to tell me his secretary was pregnant*. Aside from his betrayal, I thought it was the most tacky thing I've ever seen any woman do to get a man. Of course I sent him to live with her and his child. I've got class, me. It didn't last, of course.
8. I'm off for a bubblebath.

TAGGED: Scouse Doris, A.A. Ayscoughe-Hussey, Mutley the Dog, the very kind Andy Ramblings, the exotic Edina Monsoon, the erudite pundit Prufrock, the activist Lucy Arin, and the Lippy Lawyer, not that I know any that aren't. Let's see what they make of it.


*yes, by him. Apparently he fell down the stairs on top of her with his flies open, or something.

Away

I'm off to Bridport for the funeral. Back next Wednesday.

Whilst I'm over, I shall also go and pay my respects at the enormous, smoking, tragic crater that once was Beavershott. Gosling must have been killed in the explosion, for he is gone too. I am blaming Hector Munroe. He has also disappeared from the radar, and I suspect him of suicide bombing the pub.

The Webley-Bullocks seem to have survived. Perhaps they can reveal what happened.

Hugs.

William Kamkwamba

Via Worstall, a young lad making his own homemade windmills in Malawi. V. Cool if you ask me.

Secret fantasies revealed n° 2.

Tippler is recommending we all go and see The Prestige. I wasn't that bothered until I realised Christian Bale is in it. BTW if Tippler can get away with lusting after Harry Potter characters I can get away with the following:



He's a funny chameleon of an actor, is Bale. Allegedly he's Welsh, but he's so good at accents no-one would ever be able to tell. I understand he did a fabulous job of the kid in Empire of the Sun, which, sadly, I've never seen. Scary as hell even with no clothes on in American Psycho, completely unidentifiable due to the very authentic-sounding accent in Captain Corelli's Mandolin, coldly efficient with a heart of pain in Equilibrium, burgeoning superhero in Batman Begins (sequel coming, yippee!). He also voiced over Howl for Howl's Moving Castle, who is much the same sort of powerful, aching character. It all sounds so hedgehoggy and chilled, rather as if snuggling up to him would be rather like pressing one's undressed body against a freezer door covered in tears of condensation, brrrr, now I have to go and have a hot bath.

And then you get this sort of a quote:
"At first, I was somewhat hesitant to do the role. I mean, after all, Batman is an icon. But I remember, as clear as day, being at the grocery store the day the movie opened, and this little boy saw me. He couldn't have been more than five years old. He just walked right up to me and hugged me. He hugged me, and I was so moved by it that I hugged him back. Then he looked up at me and said "You're my hero." And in that moment, I knew that not only as an actor that I had done my job, but that I had made the right decision to play Batman. And I've never looked back on my the decision to play Batman since. "

*Sigh...*

There's a troll about.

There's a person masquerading as me, The Aunt, or Aunty Marianne, on Blogger. He has visited Honey and Mutley and left a series of strong-language offensive comments in my name. Luckily Mutley rumbled him and let me know, thank you Mutley. One of the "Aunty Marianne" comments on Mutley's blog led back to a fellow called Hector Munroe, which may be him, or it may be that Hector is someone else he's cloned. I also got an email from Andy Ramblings to tell me that he wasn't the author of the comments under his name in the post below.

Now I think back this person may have been hanging around for a while. I sincerely hope this offensive fellow doesn't visit anyone else and please accept my condolences in advance if he does visit you with objectionable material.

I have changed my passwords and I am going to put comments on moderation for a while.

Support the Dryads 3 - Smoking gun

Yesterday courtesy of Tippler a document came to my attention which pretty much provides the smoking gun in the tale of the tree felling. It's on the STIB's own website, which forbids us to link to it, so here's the URL, http://www.stib.irisnet.be/FR/13100F.htm, n° 13 among the PDF brochures available on that page, the brochure related specifically to the STIB's plans for its tram rolling stock.

You will note that for future trams, planned at 2.65 meters in INTERNAL width, and with a wider axle base, and a wider gap between the trams, 25% of the network still needs to be 'adapted'. The STIB need to gain at least 70 cms overall (35cms on either side), and probably more for the gap between the two sets of rails. The tree-lined avenues of Brussels are unlikely to be offering this additional width. My guess is that's why the Region are helpfully chopping them down for the STIB.

In the light of this brochure, I think you'll agree the STIB's answers below are highly economical with the truth and frankly rather disingenuous.

I wrote to them last night as follows:

Dear Monsieur Glinne,

Merci de votre réponse.
J’avais l’occasion aujourd’hui de visiter le site http://www.stib.irisnet.be/FR/13100F.htm où j’ai pu lire votre PDF N° 13 concernant le renouvellement du matériel roulant de la STIB. C’est ainsi que j’ai constaté que le STIB prévoit d’acheter dans le futur des trams de 2,65m de largeur intérieur, ce qui est plus large que les très beaux nouveaux trams que nous avons aujourd’hui.

Dans ce même PDF je remarque que 75% du réseau étant déjà adapté aux trams de 2.65m, 25% reste à modifier pour acceuillir les trams du futur. Est-ce que vous pouvez me signaler quels zones se trouvent parmi ces 25%. Est-ce que cela comprend les avenues suivantes :

Winston Churchill
Albert
Tervueren (Chaussée et Avenue)
Boulevard du Souverain
Avenue Louise

S’il y a d’autres lignes de tram sertis d’arbres dans les 25% à adapter, est-ce que vous pouvez me signaler quelles sont-elles.

Je vous en remercie d’avance,
Bien à vous

I will be very interested to see what they come up with.

Support the Dryads Part II

Not satisfied with the STIB's glib answer as given below, and inspired by the continued campaign (see new Expatica article) I wrote to the STIB again. I thanked them for the speed of their answer, and then asked for the number of trees on Winston Churchill, the number diagnosed with an illness that makes them dangerous, the number already cut down, and the number that were scheduled for the chop. I asked them to give me all three dimensions for the trams. I asked them for the contact details of the people at the Region of Brussels-Capital responsible for the tree-felling.

This is the letter I got back.

Bonjour,

Nous vous remercions de nous avoir fait parvenir votre message.

Nous ne pouvons malheureusement vous indiquer le nombre exact d'arbres à abattre sur l'avenue Churchill, ce dossier relevant de la compétence de l'Administration des Equipements et Déplacements de la Région de Bruxelles-Capitale. Cette administration dépendant du Ministère de la Région de Bruxelles-Capitale (MRBC) est joignable au numéro de téléphone: 02 204 21 11.

Par ailleurs, les dimensions des nouveaux trams sont les suivantes:

T3000

largeur: 2,30 m
longueur: 31,85 m
hauteur: 3,40 m

T4000

largeur: 2,30 m
longueur: 43,22 m
hauteur: 3,40 m

hauteur de la caténaire (mesure standard pour le réseau): 9,69 m

En restant à votre disposition,
Cordialement,

Nathanaël GLINNE (Mr.)
STIB - Relations avec la Clientèle
Tél: +32 2 515 23 91
Besoin d'un renseignement? Surfez sur www.stib.be
ou appelez notre Contact Centre au 0900 10 310(0,45€/min).*

"Hello,

Thanks for your message.

Sadly we cannot give you the figures on the exact number of trees to be felled on Avenue Churchill, because the file is being handled by the Administration of Equipment and Removals of the Brussels-Capital Region, which is a dependent body of the Ministry of the Brussels-Capital Region and can be reached by telephone on 02 204 21 11.

The dimensions of the new trams are as follows:

T3000

width: 2,30 m
length: 31,85 m
height: 3,40 m

T4000

width: 2,30 m
length: 43,22 m
height: 3,40 m

height of the catenary (power cable) (standardized across the network): 9,69 m

At your disposal,
Cordially, etc"

Now I think this is a much better answer. It's honest and factual and I have forwarded it to the Marroniers people to do with as they see fit.

In the meantime I had a chinwag with a friend who happens to be a Doctor of Botany. She'd heard about the Churchill kerfuffle and had seen something similar happen near her own house, where a row of trees of which only some were diseased had been slaughtered wholesale. It was her contention that a properly managed avenue of trees has fellings, sometimes culls, and replantings every five years or so, so that there's never an enormous gap and diseased trees are caught early and either treated or felled. Whilst it sounds expensive, in the long run, such a policy of regular expenditure on a smaller scale would undoubtedly be cheaper than having to have a wholesale felling and replanting session. It might also avoid the sort of leaf blight that seems to have hit the baby trees replanted along the Chaussée de Tervuren. Suffice to say that she is also not overly impressed with the Brussels-Capital Region's management of their trees.

Speaking of replanting. Today, I was reading the blog of Eric Sax, one of the councillors of Uccle, the municipality in which Avenue Churchill lies. He's campaigning for the chestnuts too. Towards the end of the comments on that blog, there seemed to be a suggestion that any replanting would not be of chestnuts or other leafy trees, but of conifers, and metasequoias, pictured herewith, at that. Guess what Wiki says about metasequoias. It says "In the late 1980s, it was discovered that many of the second generation trees in cultivation suffered from inbreeding depression (extremely low genetic variability) which could lead to increased susceptibility to disease and reproductive failure. This was because most of the trees were grown from seeds and cuttings derived from as few as three trees that the Arnold Arboretum had used as its source. More widespread seed-collecting expeditions in China in the 1990s sought to resolve this problem and restore genetic diversity to cultivated Metasequoia."

So, out of the frying pan and into the fire, then?

OMG! Small village wiped off map!

What has happened to Beavershott? It seems to have disappeared completely!

Let's ask Gosling; I found him in Marrakesh. He has also taken to using a very familiar picture as his gravatar. I find it hard to believe, but could Oliver Gosling be a direct descendent of the late great Ivan the Terrible?

If you are in Marrakesh, and you see this man, please notify us immediately. He may have stolen an entire West Country village. Whither the romance between Honoria and Modo? Will D.C. Warmington ever get to wear his first prize toupé to a village hall dance? Will the burgeoning affair between Dr E.E. Spinks and the somewhat surprised Bunty Binstock ever attain its apotheosis? Will we ever know?

I can't live with the suspense.

STIB's answer

In the spirit of fairness, I'm posting the STIB's answer to my email.

"Nous vous remercions de nous avoir fait parvenir votre message.
Celui-ci contient quelques contre-vérités que nous tenons immédiatement à dénoncer.
D'abord la gestion des espaces verts ne dépend pas de la STIB, mais bien de la Région qui a pour charge d'entretenir et de prendre tout disposition utile, notamment pour ce qui concerne le danger potentiel présenté par des arbres malades. Nous ne pensons pas que tous ceux qui critiquent tout sans prendre évidemment la moindre part de responsabilité seraient d'accord de voir des arbres malades menacer la vie des personnes qui passent sous leur frondaison.
D'autre part, le gabarit des trams de la STIB est standardié à 230 cm de large depuis l'achat des T200 en 1991. L'espacement entre les voies a été modifié aux rares endroits où c'était nécessaire. Il ne doit donc plus l'être.
Enfin, votre opinion selon laquelle notre achat de tram de grande capacité est impensé est complètement contredit par le succès qu'ils remportent, au point que notre direction doive acquérir rapidement des véhicules supplémentaires.
Avec nos meilleures compliments,
Daniel VAN BOECKEL
Relations Clientèle
02/515-5083"

OK. Let's take this answer bit by bit.
1) They pass the buck to the Region of Brussels, who wouldn't be felling the trees if the STIB hadn't asked them to.
2) They repeat the insinuation that all the trees being felled are ill. This is clearly not so.
3) They state that the trams have been standardised at 230cm since 1991. That's only one of 2 directions and it looks like width to me. What about height?
4) The success of the trams with the clientele (they are LOVELY trams) and their need to buy more, which I'm entirely behind, does not compensate for the tree-felling.
5) They provide no statistical argument (n° of diseased trees) or evidence of monitoring or verification that unneccessary tree-felling is not occurring.

I think it's a pretty weak answer. What do you think?

Support the Dryads

I have to take a little of your time to garner support for a very local cause. The STIB, Brussels' integrated transport system, which forbids us to link to its sites so here is the index page URL, is cutting down trees unnecessarily and it's a crying shame. Both Tippler and Up Front have tackled this issue, please read their posts, and they'll refer you to the the "Protection des Marroniers" petition site, but I'd like you ask you all to visit the STIB's "Quality of Service" email form on http://www.stib.irisnet.be/FR/61200F.htm and let them know what you think. For those of you who do not wish to spend 20 minutes composing something in French, may I suggest you cut and paste the following text:

Il parait que de plus en plus des arbres des grandes avenues de Bruxelles se font abattre par la STIB suite à un achat impensé de trams trop larges, sous prétexte qu'ils seraient tous atteints d'une maladie qui n'afflige en réalité que très peu d'arbres. Ces arbres font partie du patrimoine historique de Bruxelles, contribuent à leur poumon vert et donc à la santé publique des Bruxellois, et sont un atout important dans ses industries de tourisme et d'HORECA en terrasse. Ceci est honteux et aussi économiquement maladroit.

J'appelle à l'arrêt de ces abattages tant qu'une étude complète des coûts associés dans l'environnement, en santé publique et en perte de revenus de tourisme et autres industries associés soit faite, publiés, et les résultats pris en compte. *

I am going to provide them with my email address. I am curious to see what on earth they could say that I would consider a satisfactory reply.

Yes, I do know the dryads above. Aren't they GORGEOUS. I'm so proud of them.

*(It appears that, further to the ill-considered purchase of excessively wide trams, more and more of the trees on Brussels' great avenues are being cut down by the STIB under the pretext that they are diseased when in fact only a few of their number are affected. These trees are part of the city's historic inheritance, they contribute to its green lung and therefore the public health of Brussels people, and are an important asset for the tourist and terrace café-hotel-restaurant industries. This is a shame and also economically clumsy.

I call for an end to this tree-chopping until a complete economic study of the associated costs in the environment, public health and loss of tourist and other industry revenue has been made, published, and its results taken into account).

That should tie the beggers up for a few years. Then we can get a public health lobby group to sue'em.

Dr Frankenstein

I have created a monster. I got some feedback from St*ke today, and it appears that one lad arrived home that evening and announced to his parents that he intends to become an MEP.

I may have overdone it a trifle.

Meanwhile in Beavershott, Oliver Gosling has issued a warrant for a very dangerous-looking person indeed. If you see her about, I'd steer clear if I were you.

Clustrmap

Having lost it when we all had to migrate to the Google account, I found my Clustrmap again (see side bar, or click on link for big version) and it's lovely to see you're all still there. Those of you who are new, please do introduce yourselves. I've picked up some readers in India, probably courtesy of Prufrock, and someone probably very puzzled in China, is that Chongqing or Chengdu? Aside from the USA Cruise Girls, sashay ladies! there must be R. Sherman, John B., and the Problem Child Bride. Costa Rica or Nicaragua? Guyana, hi there Guyana Gyal. Iceland. Japan - Kyoto? Hello all my fellow Europeans, I love you all dahlinks but you are too numerous to mention and mentioned numerously anyway. Dubai and Riyadh. Amman or Tel Aviv? Lima, Santiago and Montevideo or Buenos Aires, and something in the middle, is that San Luis? Jo'burg or Pretoria. Bangkok. Dhaka. Kuala Lumpur - that's Edina Monsoon. Manila, of which all I know is envelopes and Imelda Marcos's shoe collection. Edmonton, Saint John's, and Churchill, Canada, one of whom is Dawn. Is that Hawaii? Aloha Hawaii.

But nobody seems to be reading me from the Congo. Ahem, Mr Gorilla Bananas. You are Busted, Sah. You're actually frontline reporting from a cosy simian lovenest in an airing cupboard in Ipswich, aren't you! What do you have to say for yourself, you charlatan of an anthropoid?