GOD'S RAINBUCKET

It's not raining men

While an argument rages over at Manuel Stimulation's place about which football team the Blessed Virgin Mary supports, we in Brussels have more pressing matters to consider, such as whether Belgium should continue to exist in its present form or, indeed, at all. I'm not sure the Flemish secessionists have thought this through. First of all, French is still a more widespread and important language than Dutch. Not surprising, when you get metro stations called "Kunst Wet". Secondly, even if they do get independence, they could live to regret it.

The kunst is not the only thing that's wet in this country. A recent French comedy film (which broke all previous box office records in French cinema history) pretended that as you cross the county lines into the "Nord", the French region adjacent to Belgium, the heavens open on cue. I was reminded of this recently on the Eurostar from Paris to Brussels. About 40 minutes into the journey, the train barrelled into a wall of precipitation. I glanced at my phone. The network had changed from SFR to Proximus, indicating that I was now in ... Belgium. As if I needed telling.

Belgium must be the wettest country I have ever lived in. I have seen rains of much greater volume, in West Africa during the rainy season, but never such constant, relentless, persistent, determined, unremitting, in-yer-face, all-year-round wetness as here. Alongside chocolate box ribbons, beer bottles, and beer glasses I have now started a collection of umbrellas. And yet it never seems to flood the way it does in the UK. What should one deduce from this? That the drains and rivers are better maintained in Belgium? That there is not such a mania for concreting over gardens as in UK? Or that Belgium, like Rob McKenna, is a raingod? In the words of the immortal Bubble, who can say?



As I write, sheets of rain are hurtling past the window towards the Gare du Nord like Flemish commuters at knocking-off time. If what they say about global warming is true, weather will be the undoing of this country, and those silly people in the North will be hoist with their own petard, because when the Netherlands turns into Atlantis, the French-speakers will be able to head for the hills of the Ardennes or the mountains of France, whereas the Dutch-speakers will have nowhere to go but very flat Flanders, which will rapidly join the shallow end of the North Sea. Reminding us of the tale of the foolish virgins, who didn't make it onto Noah's Ark. That will teach them to think ahead.