Wednesday 11th January 2017

And so dawned a normal working day in old Oostende town. Other than dawn was some two hours away when the alarm went off, and outside was as dark as night, which it was at half six.

Breakfast downstairs, with the usual mix of fruit, yoghurt and then nutella roll, all washed down with cups of coffee. Perfect.

I dodge the guy behind the desk as I could not face an half hour discussion on football, sad really, as I suspect he was probably waiting for me for the same reason. Sorry. The reason to slip out was that I had a stack of work to do, and I felt rather enthused by it. And once I had driven to the office, managing to avoid any accidents at all, and settled into a desk with two monitors, I got down to work, primed with a fresh cup of coffee.

And, you know, it worked. I am all caught up, in fact maybe even ahead of the game. Offshore, the wind blew, and so there was no work again, meaning that the catching up was on the paperwork from that.

Someone goes out for lunch; freshly made baguettes, all filled with fresh fillings, and taste so different from Subway. Sadly, eaten at the desk in order to catch up with work, but by half four, I was twiddling my thumbs and so when people started to finish for the day, so did I. An old colleague has rejoined; Chris was on Luchterduinen three years back, but left. Shortages has meant we have begged him back on a short term contract, so is arrival surprised most, in a good way as his personality lit the room and whole office up.

That night, Manu, Chris and I arranged to meet for dinner. We meet in the lobby at seven, and walk the ten metres to the burger place next door. With the wind howling, it's far enough, and being the first night of the week it had been open, its about as warm as a fridge inside. A burger restaurant, even a fancy one, serves a variety of cheese burgers, with different sauces. And that is it, not hard really, no matter how much you spin it, its just burger and fries. Not bad, done good in fact, but burger and fries. And beer.

Outside it was colder, so there was no lingering about, just back to the hotel, to our various rooms for an early night, trying to block out the sound of the wind outside.