I watched a gawdawful amount of BBC whilst isolating in Belgium, and I was shocked, shocked I tell you to find out that not all the people on game shows were Whyte or walked or straight couples. Same with their ‘fix the garden’ and their shopping shows and antique hunting game shows. The host is often male and gorgeous, but the range of contestants was wide and more varied than standard American TV — not that I watch it like I did there. But they really presented a wide range of people and treated them well.

One of their ‘fix the house’ shows is about organizing a community fix-up project for a family in over their heads because of death or disabilities, where they redo the house so it at least looks like it meets the needs of the people living there where before it clearly did not. Obviously, it fixes a small number of houses for a small number of families, but it focuses and brings the community together to help some of the people in very serious ways — and it’s not to flip the house.

I should add, it’s a knock that wall down and back 10 meters and add a wheelchair wet room, and add on over it for two bedrooms, an office and a bathroom or two kind of fix-up, not just a paint job.

We attended a Last Post this time in Belgium — Menin Gate, Ypres, West Flanders — and visited a few cemeteries. It was too early for any poppies, if in fact they bloom there. Australians were there for the ceremony. Held in a huge triumphal arch. Trumpets, wreaths, marching every night.

In the cemeteries, the English Empire graves were orderly; the German Empire less so. It probably meant the world to my grandfather, but we have seen so much worse since that bitter family squabble.

We got there a bit late to get great standing room, and it was packed without much masking. Many of the older people let the school children get ahead for a better view to carry the memory forward further than any of us can.

My peak whinge, after contracting covid in Brussels, after the night of the hotel fire, going down and up and down six stories of stairs often in the dark with asthma and covid and no longer young, I ordered a 19 euro breakfast over the phone in the new hotel. After room service told me how I was supposed to have done it by marking a form and putting it on the door by 2 am (when I’m not sure I’d reached the room by 2 am), she started suggesting things to order and suggested muesli, which is my standard breakfast — I love Bircher muesli! Anyway, what I got instead of my beloved Bircher muesli was instant oatmeal — it was absolutely dreadful even with European yogurt on it.

I made it home last Saturday, May 21, after testing positive for COVID on Sunday, May 8. I was supposed to fly out on May 9. I only changed my departure three or four times which was great fun in itself. Fortunately, I usually had three BBC cable channels to keep me entertained while on eternal hold with Delta and Delta Vacations.

On May 11, the hotel I was staying/isolating in, Aloft Brussels Schuman, caught fire. I spent the next mumble days sweltering on the 8th floor of a nearby hotel, NH Hotel, that they moved us to after a rather long interval quite late night/early morning.

The night desk guy, who was quite friendly when I checked out at 4:45 am on Saturday, May 21, said that Aloft had called and asked for rooms — all the hotel rooms.

The first test I ran after testing positive on May 8, was on May 19, and I tested negative. I had to spring for an ‘official’ test at the Brussels airport to get out of Belgium, and got a CDC interview here after I got off the plane.

Waay too much fun. Fortunately, the beer I packed all made it home, and Allianz should cover most of the extended stay. I did abandon two bottles of Belgian beer in the last hotel. In retrospect, I probably could have packed it, but my luggage was heavy enough already.

Happy Thursday!

— OR —

Happy Thanksgiving if you’re in the U.S.

Shamelessly stolen from Paul Krugman: