Tuesday 23rd August 2016

It is the hottest morning of the year, and I am in a hotel a stone's throw fro m a wide and sandy beach. In Belgium.

It should be heaven, and in many ways it it is, but I am here to work. At some point during the night the air con had switched off, and it was warm and musty in the room. I have a shower and go down fro breakfast, meeting Rune before we drive to the office a few miles away.

Rune knows the way, as this is where ran a previous project from, so, I follow in the Average, whilst he takes me through the city centre and out to the now mostly abandoned port area, with quay after quay deserted, rauting rail tracks and sidings now a haven for nature.

We arrive in a large flattened area which must have been a warehouse at some point, but is now just a concreted area, with weeds growing through the cracks. The concrete stretches out for some hundred metres in all directions, but I suppose the harbour authority must have seen it loos a bit neglected, so there were two poorly motivated workers with hoes and assorted other sharp tools were trying to weed the area. Small piles of harvested vegetation were piled up showing where they had previously worked. Later in the day when we leave, they are far on the other side of the area, having missed out 70m of weeds to clear a new area.

Out offices are in a small group of linked portacabins, there is no air conditioning, meaning in the summer they will be like ovens, and freezers in the winter. Welcome to projects.

Quality is sharing an office with HSE, as is always the way. And as is always the way HSE have bagged the best desks, all grouped in the middle, with monitors, plants and desk-tidies, and we have two bar desks along one wall. We have one plug socket between both desks. HSE will therefore be pleased with the three extension leads and multi-sockets we used to make the modern office work. In no way a fire risk, honest.

So, there are meetings, calls, e mails and the usual stuff, but some of the meetings are now face to face, and things that take half a dozen mails ping-ponging back and forth over several days can now be arranged in minutes. My tasks leap forward several week in prep time.

We are told the local garage does good sandwiches for lunch, so we drive over in Rune's car to the main road and have two "farmer's specials", with have sliced frickadellers and salad all snothered in hot sauce, in a fresh baked french stick. All for €4 with a drink.

By four the air is so hot it feels like we are trying to swim through treacle. We have all had enough in the metal offices, so drive back to our hotels and arrange to meet for dinner at half six.

After a brief lay down, I walk with Rune along the wide promenade until we come to a bar in the ground floor of one of the grand buildings; they have a table overlooking the prom and beach, but importantly they have a sun shade, but of even greater importance, they have ice cold beer, and the waiter will bring us two bottles tout suit.

It is the hottest part of a hot day, we are sitting in armchairs at a table overlooking the prom, sipping ice cold summer beer. And this is work.

We meet the others at the restaurant next door for dinner; we have fish and more fish and some wine and some beer. It is very good, and they treat us uncouth heathens as though we were royalty, which was nice of them. I have scampi again, this time good in garlic sauce. It is nice and garlicy.

We the retire to a bar down the main street through the old part of town to drink some more beer; eurofizz at first, but then I persuade them to upgrade to La Chouffe, which is much better.

Darkness falls, and we grow tired. Its been a good day, but bed calls. Rune and I walk back to the hotel, across the tram tracks to the front door. Phew, rock and roll.