simply THE BEST

The world goes to sleep a lesser place tonight.

This afternoon, in a quiet London hospital room surrounded by friends and family, the shining light that was George Best finally burnt out - his body finally giving up its brave battle to stay alive.

There was never a name more apt for a person, because, George – “The Belfast Boy” – was, quite simply THE BEST footballer the world has ever seen.

An artist - with the football as his paintbrush and the football pitch as his canvas – George Best dazzled the world with his breath-taking skills: mazy dribbles with both feet, powerful shots, deft touches, superb balance, tenacious tackling, a lion’s heart, he had it all – there really are no superlatives too great for this footballing genius - superlatives that get thrown about too easily in this modern-day era of the football superstar with big wallets and even bigger egos - most of whom wouldn’t even have been fit to lick George’s boots.

On top of all that he was unbelievably cool and handsome.

From having no football icon, no style guru, no pop star to worship, the people of Northern Ireland suddenly had all three overnight. He was - and still is - a God, revered by his people.

I’m not going to say a lot on the matter, I’ll leave that to others more capable than I am but I want to use this blog to share some of my thoughts with you.

I remember as a teenager reading George Best’s autobiography “The Good, the Bad and the Bubbly” where one of the opening lines read: “I am the greatest player that ever lived.” I remember reading it at the time and after that thinking that was a bit big-headed until you read the next sentence – “That’s what Pele said and who am I to argue with him?”

Now as you all know I’m a Liverpool supporter. But some of you may not know the reason why I’m a Liverpool supporter and how Manchester United’s George Best played a big part in it. You see - when my da was growing up and kicking football, all the kids WERE George Best. There were no other footballers on the planet. And therefore everybody supported Manchester United.

My da and his mate decided to buck the trend and started to support Liverpool, to wind the rest of their mates up - a legacy borne onto me as well (including the winding up of Manchester United supporting mates).

When I recently told a football-knowledgeable mate of mine, and a life long supporter of Manchester United (do those two things go together?) he had a good old chuckle to himself and said “See?! It’s always about Manchester United!!”

Well in this case it was ALL about George Best but it wasn’t that my da didn’t like him – far from it. We may have been Liverpool supporters but there was never, ever a bad word said about George Best. He had his faults. Lord knows he had his faults, but the people of Northern Ireland loved him like one of their own. And let’s face it – he was one of us.

George Best, the boy from the Protestant working-class housing estate in the Cregagh area of Belfast had given the people back home more than just a footballing icon that they would be forever proud of, long after his death.

At the height of his game, he also gave the people of Northern Ireland hope at a time when his beloved homeland was staring into the abyss with the madness of the Troubles just about to start.

Nobody could have foreseen the tragedy of the following 35 years.

As Northern Ireland became a battleground where the price of a life became less and less with each murder, George Best was fighting his own war - a war against himself and his inner demons. Disillusioned and deserting the beautiful game at the criminally young age of 26, he was already battling against alcoholism.

Over the next three decades his life went on an amazing roller coaster ride - a ride which has been well documented by the world’s press as he made front page news for all the wrong reasons.

But I’m not here to talk about that. I’m not even here to talk about the football (and that’s saying something). I am quite simply here to say that I’ll miss the guy. It’s a weird thing mourning the loss of somebody I didn’t know personally but that’s the way it’s been with George. We all lived his life. The highs and the lows.

I discovered this piece of text this afternoon which I think sums up the football perfectly. Former Observer sportswriter Hugh McIlvanney described him thus:

'With feet as sensitive as pickpocket's hands, his control of the ball under the most violent pressure was hypnotic. The bewildering repertoire of feints and swerves, sudden stops and demoralising turns, exploited a freakish elasticity of limb and torso, tremendous physical strength and resilience for so slight a figure, and balance that would have made Isaac Newton decide he might as well have eaten the apple.'

He was only ever truly happy when he was on the football field which is rather fitting considering the joy he gave to millions of people world-wide.

Let’s hope that as I type this blog, God is getting ready for a kick-a-bout, because it’s about time the Big Man Upstairs got a chance to see first hand the talent that he bestowed on that shy, little boy from Belfast.

George Best
R.I.P.

Lord of The Ring

Just a quickie.

Two years of bloody road-works on the ring of Antwerp and still the traffic going into the Kennedy tunnel is as bad as it ever was. I contemplate this as I am about to leave the office and join the thousands of cars trying to get through what has to be one of the most congested tunnels in the world.

Not since the days of Charles Bronson squeezing his fat arse through freshly dug escape tunnels in The Great Eascape have I seen congestion like it.

And don’t even get me started about the road-works IN Antwerp. I’ve never seen anything like it in my life. Each morning as I drive out of the city, I make a silent prayer to the saint of lost causes (Alex McCleish) in the hope that I’ll find my way out onto The Ring.

Honest to God – it’s like some magical mystery tour.

I’m all for a city developing and growing and improving its traffic system but come on guys! Somebody must be having a laugh out there!

Changing one way streets into two-way streets overnight, creating dead end streets at the drop of a hat, changing the direction of one way streets to the opposite direction without warning and then sending you down streets following diversion signs, only to find that at some point they just decided to stop providing signs anymore, turning the whole escapade into some sort of a sick, twisted version Treasure Hunt.


Bring back Anneka Rice’s pert buttocks.

All is forgiven.

The Internet and Christmas - Here we come!!!

One of the great things about the proliferation of PCs and the internet in our everyday lives is that it makes the world seem just that wee bit smaller for a wee country boy from Ireland living on the continent, away from family and friends.

For instance, I can sit here in the office at the client site, quite feverishly beavering away at the keyboard looking to all intents and purposes like somebody that’s actually Doing Some Work when in fact I’m emailing family, friends, or, as in this case, writing for my blog.

However - unfortunately for me, this easy form of communication that I have at my disposal only serves to add further weight to the “I am a bad son / brother / mate” theory because, when you get down to it – I am terrible at keeping in touch.

Long gone are the days when my dear NaNa would greet the early morning post with a flutter of hope and expectation that there would be hidden within the bills and junk mail a letter or a postcard from her eldest grandson – the Intrepid Explorer, sharing a little anecdotal tale from some far flung corner of the world, like Duffel, for example.

Or even just a simple “Hello Nana – I hope you are keeping well. Lot’s of Love. Me”

But no.

Nothing.

Then - just when she had come to terms with the fact that her eldest grandson was, in fact, a Selfish Twat, with far too much going on in his little corner of the world that he couldn’t find the time to write anything to her, fresh hope arose like a phoenix from the ashes of her disappointment in the form of EMAIL.

Through the magic of the internet, messages could instantly be sent and received from anywhere on the planet.

Except to or from my Nana’s wee bungalow back home.

But never fear! My mother came up with the solution. They would get email!! Hurrahh!

Cue much rejoicing in the family. Here we were, truly throwing ourselves with wanton abandon into the 21st century! The technological age was waiting for no man, woman or indeed, Nana and we were making bloody well sure that we were getting on that super-highway along with the rest of the world.

Except - it didn’t quite work like that….

Wary of the demons that lurk in the internet’s darker recesses and let’s face it – even some of it’s most public of places, mum was not keen on the idea of bringing full-blooded internet capacity into the home.

And who could blame her? I mean – take last week for example…..there I was doing some research for an article on my two favourite birds - robin red breasts and blue tits that I was planning to write and I have to admit, I was shocked and stunned at what I found.

So in order to avoid “all manner of filth” coming into their home – a compromise was reached and they purchased a rather snazzy Amstrad telephone with email capabilities.

Perhaps some of you know the phone that I mean but perhaps for those that don’t, I should, at this point, explain just what “email capabilities” referred to.

Basically, we are talking about a rather quite gorgeous all-singing and all-dancing telephone (phone book, speaker phone, big display) but with the additional feature of a keyboard.

A keyboard which is roughly the equivalent size of a nicotine patch – a patch which I can tell you, you will be in more than desperate need for by the time you type anything out of any great length on the damn thing.

So tiny are the buttons on this thing, that you are totally unaware of the quite convincing Mr. Magoo impression that you’re doing as you squint, hunched over the phone, as you search hopelessly to find the desired key. And then - even when you do find it, you end up suffering the ignominy of pressing three (wrong) buttons at once before embarking on a crusade to find the delete button to undo all your typos.

It is more frustrating than a Chinese finger puzzle, played outside at the North Pole, wearing nothing else other than your undergarments and a grimace.

But here’s the thing folks.

Did you think that stopped my Mum from emailing me paragraph after paragraph of tales and updates from back home?

Of course it didn’t.

Did you think it stopped my mum from bollocking me on a regular basis?

Not a bit of it.

On regular occasions, my inbox would suddenly become weighed down with a dose of motherly advice, covering such diverse subjects as looking after myself, staying out of trouble, eating healthily, not drinking so much, not partying so hard, sleeping more, exercising more, smoking less, stay away from that weird girl you introduced us to last. That sort of thing….

And all was good in the world again.

Nana could receive updates through her daughter about how I was getting on “on my travels” and I was able to keep up to date with family life back home. They even had the dubious pleasure of receiving my blog updates, delivered electronically into their little Amstrad telephone.

How they all managed to read it, I’ll never know.

Or maybe they don’t.

Hey! Wait a minute…..


And then – disaster struck.

Those Bloody Thieves (BT) decided to raise the phone bill to exorbitant prices and began to charge an arm and a leg for the privilege of receiving forwarded jokes, spam mail and the regular disappointment of another day going by with no communication from that Selfish Twat living over in Belgium, for I am ashamed to admit that the advent of email didn’t improve matters that much.

Deciding to cut their losses, the Amstrad was reduced to seeing out the rest of its days as a normal phone with a few useless add-ons - a bit like a skateboard with a car stereo.

Faced with the pressure of having to actually pick up the phone and start phoning home on occasions when I wasn’t actually looking for something, or having to actually post letters and post cards again, I was in a dilemma.

That is - until last night and a little phone call with back home produced a surprising development….

They were contemplating on buying a PC!!

Pretty mundane stuff I expect for most of you out there, but ground-breaking stuff for my family I can tell you.

Apparently unlimited internet broadband access is actually cheaper than what is charged to send emails on the phone, so mum was prepared to bite the bullet and get “hooked up to the net”.

The conversation also turned to Christmas and it was then that a wonderful plan was hatched between us all.

Being of the computer nerd persuasion, it will probably come as no surprise that I have two laptops in my possession. Ok, so one is mine and one belongs to my employers, but you get the idea – and I’m sure you can see where this is going here….

So it is with great personal pleasure I will be arriving home this Christmas with a laptop for home under my arm.

This is already a huge relief to me - that’s my mother and step-father’s Christmas presents sorted in one fell swoop!

Only another 10 to go.

To a totally committed anti-shopper like myself, the whole prospect of Christmas shopping makes me feel nauseous. This was in no way helped recently when I received an email from my youngest brother (ok – so I exaggerated the whole “I’m crap at keeping in touch with home” story). In this email - dated three weeks ago I might add – he casually informed me that he had ALL his presents bought!!

Here comes that nauseous feeling again…..

I’m sure if my mum had a choice, she would prefer me to come home with a nice homely bride under my arm; somebody who loves me for who I am and who wants to look after her eldest son but in the absence of anything remotely like that, she’ll have to make do with a second-hand laptop.

I’ll just have to make sure I take all the porn off it first.

Greetings from "Mijn Stamcafe"

Dearest Bloggees

(or whatever terminology they’ve come up with for those people unfortunate enough to be on the receiving end of what us bloggers deem interesting enough to put finger to key and share with you).

I know it’s been a while (would you expect anything less from me?) but I thought I’d get in touch because something is burning deep inside of me, and it’s not the Hungarian goulash effort that I just prepared for myself, but something much more spiritual (and hopefully a little bit more healthy).

Just how the hell are you doing?

Are you keeping well?

No really – is everything ok in your world? I mean - are you happy in yourself (to coin a phrase from back home).

As this is a one-way communication medium, I sincerely hope so and will have to assume so, unless you take the time to tell me otherwise.

And this brings me to my point.

It may come as a surprise to you but this medium of conversing does indeed provide an opportunity to make this into a two-way experience.

A little visit to my wee corner of cyberspace (http://www.belgiumisboring.blogspot.com) is all you need to do to make this a two-way interaction by posting a little response to my blogs.

Of course, for the growing numbers of you that have registered with this blog in order to receive my updates directly and conveniently into your email’s inbox, (albeit in a sporadic nature) this is not the case and frustration must surely take over your every waking moment.

And not just frustration about being unable to share your innermost thoughts with a faceless humble scribe that feels the need to share his with you.

For instance, I know that some of you receive these little rants in the form of a close to unreadable lump of text, which I can imagine must be just more than a tad frustrating for you.

But can you imagine just how frustrated I must feel?

I spend time and effort putting the damn things together and no matter what I do to ensure that it arrives to you in the manner that it was intended; you still end up with what is basically a horrifyingly difficult-to-read lump of crap (and that’s even before you decipher what I have decided to share with you)

The fact that you endeavour to decipher it at all is a constant source of wonderment for me and I feel humble as a result of it.

But the burning question for me is - just why do you put yourselves through the heartache and undeniable frustration that this experience causes? I can only hope that it is because you enjoy what I write (as I said – I can only hope) but I have to ask why put yourself through the misery?

I pride myself on the fact that I passed my GCSE English.* I think I know when a paragraph should finish and a new one should start but reading my blogs you’d swear blind that I was incapable of writing a wish list to Santa, never mind something that could (potentially – but why not aim my sites high?) be read by anyone with a connection to the internet.

Of course – for those of you that this provides a (welcome?) distraction from work, it makes a lot more sense to suffer the email in it’s received form, rather than have some nerd in your employer’s IT department finding you accessing a website with “BelgiumIsBoring” in the title.

Especially if you are working in Belgium.

So having said all that – go to the website, leave a comment, share a little bit of love. This blogger gets lonely and it would be great to hear from you.

I think you are all lovely.

This is your chance to prove it.

Thanks for reading.
Your Humble Scribe.

* - Am I the only person amazed by just how many forms of the English language Bill Gates and his cohorts think there are?

In this edition of Microsoft Word that this text has been lovingly crafted on, I am reliably informed that there are 18 different forms of the language, including Canadian, American, Irish, Trinidadian and Tobagan and Belizean.

Is that all really necessary?

I mean – surely it couldn’t have been too much too ask the invading forces of the British Army to at least leave a dictionary behind as they were raping and pillaging?

PS – In case you didn’t know – “Mijn Stamcafe” is Flemish for “My local” – a lovely little bar across the street from where I live.

It’s a real ‘Flemish locals’ bar. This means that men, women, children and pets (of all ages) rub shoulders in a relaxed atmosphere; that Flemish is very much the language of communication, smoke hangs thick in the air, the cold Stella flows indefinitely and anyone of an Arabic persuasion are most definitely not welcome, never mind the quiet Irish computer nerd sitting in the corner beavering away on his laptop.

I brought my laptop into the bar tonight to do some work in an atmosphere I thought conducive to creativity – but not (originally) for this blog – I actually came here to do some work for a presentation I have to give next week but got a little distracted by a combination of the burning desire to get all of this off my chest, the fact that I hadn’t written anything creative for quite some time and of course the aforementioned indefinitely flowing cold Stella.