From late November 1981 I was alone, for the first time in my near 25 years. With no money to maintain any regular contact with the teacher training students at Canterbury, nor to visit friends, it was only my habit of writing letters that kept me linked to my former life.

I would occasionally bump into Helen, Grubs and another housemate, Pete, in the kitchen or lounge, but tended not to pursue that. Didn’t have much to say. Certainly no regrets about ditching the course. Was I lonely? Probably. Didn’t see any kind of future, at the foot of my self-dug hole.

But I had an optimistic nature. Still have. I found my own company comfortable. Things would work out somehow. They always did. I remember walking at nights around the streets of Herne Bay, to keep fit, and eliminate the need to use the electric fire in my room. I wasn’t a TV watcher, but there was always something interesting to read, or John Peel on the radio. And I liked long sleeps.

Yet one of the jobs I considered applying for was as a milkman in Whitstable, a few miles down the road. I reckon I figured that spring would be a better time to start. Flashing five years forward, I was driving a milk float around Chelmsford.

Retrospect from a long way out can provide surprise insights. It has only just occurred – literally a couple of days ago – how the serendipity of that Christmas saved me from myself. If Maureen and I had split up at another time of the year, the chances are that I would have found a local job in North Kent, and might not have come back to Essex for many months.

But Christmas was approaching, and it felt necessary to see my parents and brother Neil. And, perhaps, Maureen. I’d asked in a letter to meet again, for a drink, to see how she was and to try and apologise for the pain I’d caused. She agreed. Was I angling to re-start things? In truth, I didn’t see how I could even consider it. Choices had consequences, and I would live with these. Grit the teeth. Move on.

Shortly before Xmas day, we met at the bus stop near Wilson’s Corner in Brentwood where we had often rendezvoused in happier times. Just the sight of her, looking brave and confident, amplified the magnitude of my loss. It hurt in my stomach.

We chatted, and walked along. Not holding hands anymore. We entered the ‘Good Intent’ pub, where my friend Ron from Thermos was working behind the bar. I had my standard beer, and Maureen her usual Pernod and lemonade. It wasn’t hard to find things to talk about, and the drink flowed easily, as we stood at the bar. It was strange, to be inches from that face that I’d loved to kiss, and the body that had driven me half-barmy with desire. As if a glass screen had been pulled down between us.

We got on well. The drink was smashing a question in quickening circles around my brain. How the fuck could I have thrown away such a good relationship? Her body language was fairly neutral, but then she had always carried herself like a great actress.

At some stage in the evening, the Human League song ‘Don’t You want Me Baby?’ poured out of the speakers. What a mirror to our drama.  As the alcohol kicked further in, I felt increasingly bereft, really quite overwhelmed by loss as we were packed together by the growing Christmas crowd. Alcohol also lowers risk-taking thresholds. A thread of chance made itself known.

I doubt that my reasoning was logical, but the thought was something like this. Let’s say that she, also, is missing “us”, even if just a little, I told myself. If that’s so, can I ever live with myself for not exploring the chance of trying again?

Rejection would have killed me off for months, but the risk of immense pain often has a shining flipside. Praying that all my guardian angels were looking down – or that the demons were looking the other way – I simply asked her. Can’t remember the words I used, but knew within seconds that it was going to happen.

Maureen’s eyes filled with tears, the first time I had seen my actions do that to her. “But I thought that you needed to be on your own, that we had grown too far apart”, she sobbed, making me love her then as much as I had ever done. “I can’t bear this, being without you,” came my truthful reply.

We fell into each other, and my evening of raw pain changed into a super-happy night. Quietly, I thanked the universe with all my heart.

Thinking about this 37 years later, it stands out that, but for the seasonal punctuation provided by Christmas, it is a near certainty that she would have moved on and found somebody else.

The Human League song remains a constant reminder of what a dick I was.

If anybody suffers from excessive political correctness, then best turn away now. This still makes me weep with laughter.

A guy with Tourette’s syndrome walks into the poshest restaurant in town.

“Where’s the pissing, motherfucking manager, you cock-sucking arse-wipe?” he enquires of one of the waiters. The waiter is taken aback and replies: “Excuse me sir but could you please refrain from using that sort of language in here. I will get the manager as soon as I can.”

The manager comes over and the bloke asks: “Are you the chicken-fucking manager of this bastard place?”

“Yes sir, I am,” replies the manager, “but I would prefer it if you could refrain from speaking such profanities in this, a private restaurant”.

“Fuck off” replies the bloke. “Where’s the fucking piano?”

“Pardon?” says the manager.

“Fucking deaf as well, are we? You snivelling little piece of shit, show me your cunting piano.”

“Ah,” replies the manager, “you’ve come about the pianist job” and shows the bloke to the piano.

“Can you play any blues?”

“Of course I fucking can,” and the bloke proceeds to play the most inspiring and beautiful sounding honky-tonk blues that the manager has ever heard. “That’s superb. What’s it called?”

“I tried to shag yer missus on the sofa but the springs kept hurting my dick,” replies the bloke. The manager becomes anxious and asks if the bloke knows any jazz.

The guy proceeds, playing the most melancholy jazz solo the manager has ever heard.

“Magnificent,” cries the manager. “What’s it called?”

“Wanted a wank over the washing machine but I got my balls caught in the soap drawer.” The manager is a tad embarrassed and asks if he knows any romantic ballads.

The bloke then plays the most heartbreaking melody the manager has ever heard. “And what’s this called?” asks the manager.

“As I fuck you under the stars with the moonlight shining off your hairy ring-piece,” replies the bloke. The manager is highly upset by this language but the man’s skills are so sublime that he offers him the job on condition that he doesn’t introduce any of his songs or talk to any of the customers.

This arrangement works well for a couple of months until one night, sitting opposite him, is the most gorgeous woman he has ever laid his eyes on. She is wearing a very transparent dress, silhouetting her breasts, and sitting with her legs slightly open, sucking suggestively on asparagus shoots as butter drips down her chin. It is all too much for the bloke and he sprints off to the toilets to release his tension. He is tugging away furiously when he hears the manager’s voice. “Where’s that bastard pianist?”

He just has time to finish off, and in a fluster he runs back to the piano having not bothered to adjust himself properly, sits down and starts playing some more tunes. The woman steps up and walks over to the piano, leans over and whispers in his ear. “Do you know your knob and bollocks are hanging out your trousers and dripping spunk on your shoes?”

The bloke replies “Know it? I fucking wrote it.”

The roads leading to and from our home in Great Waltham have witnessed a trail of slaughter in the four and a bit years we have lived here. Crumpled, blood-smeared, tyre-decapitated corpses of foxes, rabbits, badgers, pheasants and hedgehogs dotting the routes to Chignal Smealy, Pleshey and Howe Street. Carnage that offers a free source of protein to the corvids, but messy as fuck to look at.

When I get on the bike again in the next few weeks, it is almost guaranteed that an animal corpse or two will litter the route. A year or so ago it occurred that by stopping and removing the body from the road, I could give the victim a smattering of dignity. I have lifted dead badgers and one very young deer onto the grass verges. They are not light.

Accompanying these ceremonies, I quietly chant the Great Compassion Mantra, learned back in 2012 from the Hanmi Buddhists.  It asks for compassion for all deceased and living beings, protection from suffering, and assistance with the spiritual journey. It feels like a suitable purification rite for the poor buggers mangled by vehicles. I do the same for the dead mice, birds, voles, and rats that our cats bring to us.

Does it make one iota of difference? No idea. It just feels right.

It was enjoyable to memorise, like learning a poem at school. Here is how it sounds out.

Ong ah shay hong, ong moni beni hong

Nama redna zayaya, nama bangawaday,

Maha gurunigaya

Bia sara, buru madena, data gataya ahaday

Samyasam buddaya dayata ong

 Dara dara, deri deri, duru duru

Ai-zhay, weh zhay

Jali jali, bejali bejali

Sawa galita, sawa garma

Yawarananay

Suday

Besoday besoday

Gugana subawa

Besoday, soha

 Add in my Essex accent, and you have something to conjure with.

Another ritual of mine happens last thing at night. No, not that.

This involves eyes closed, left hand placed over heart, right hand over navel.

I visualise a golden light, radiating and welling in the heart area. That light is my love. I imagine and feel it intensifying, linked to my love for Maureen, or the kids, or maybe friends, neighbours and family. I envisage it shining outward from my chest, shafts of golden light reaching out across the room, the house, the village, the fields, the treetops, the towns, rivers and seas. To everyone within a radius of hundreds or even thousands of miles. Having done this regularly for some time, a point is reached where imagination and feeling become one and the same.

Then I stop, bring my hands together in prayer, just touching my lips. And whisper inaudibly, ‘my love is yours’.

It is known as the Blessing of the Inner Sun. Based on a Hermetic philosophical notion that the inner light from any individual can illuminate vast corridors for the living and the dead.

All very mystical and unknowable, but, again, it feels correct, good, benevolent and a great thing to do before a head hits a pillow.

Easy to say in hindsight, but I should never have left Essex in September 1981.

Somewhere in that list of digging holes to climb back out of was the decision to start a one-year post-graduate teacher training course at Christ Church College, in Canterbury.

But something had to be tried. Manual work was easily found but always boring in the end. And I could not get the best memories of Birmingham out of my head. So a return to academia held out a certain promise.

I had applied and been accepted many months previously, and Maureen helped me hunt around for accommodation. A room was found, at the top of a tall house in Herne Bay, on the North Kent coast, about 8 miles away from the college. Quiet town, with seaside promenades. And a nice boozer nearby, the Druids head.

It was easy to kid myself and others that I was on the way to getting a qualification for a career. Deep inside, I couldn’t envisage it. Didn’t believe in it. The propensity for any kind of career was lacking, unless somebody would pay me to indulge in the pleasures that interested the most.

The kidding continued during the first few weeks in Kent. I made a good gang of new friends, having worried that I would struggle to fit. It helped that I was 24, whereas most of my fellow students were fresh from university.

Every appearance of confidence, for the moment. Tapes of Heaven 17, Wah! and Echo and the Bunnymen playing in my room, as I skimped through the course material. Autumn warmth still in the air. Minor friendships were struck up with my new housemates, Helen and ‘Grubs’, a Welsh wannabe novelist. Big Dad paid a surprise visit from Manchester one weekend, joining Maureen and I for pub jaunts.

But nothing could halt the looming cloud of teaching practice, which began with an observation period for several days at a school in Faversham. That clarified what I had known quietly. By the end, I had observed beyond doubt that teaching was not for me. More specifically, I had no interest in the subject, history, and almost zero inclination to put myself in a situation where one performed publicly for most of the working day. Worse, the necessary imposition of class discipline went completely against the grain. That other people could adapt to that was of no concern. That’s how it was for me.

I decided to jack it in, rather than pretend until the pretence ran out. On the Sunday before I was due to start in earnest, I took a bus to the school and left a mass of loaned materials and books on the reception doorstep. Glancing around quite shamefully.

Relief and terror punched and fought hard on the bus journey home. What the hell could I do for a living? Living at home again with mum and dad was a depressing thought. I was beginning to fret about my hair again, in the autumn winds. Was there any future?

There was another massively troubling issue. My bleak outlook had been enlivened by several women showing an interest in me in the first few weeks at college. Cheating on Maureen was never contemplated, but it flattered my ego at a time when the general outlook was shrivelling by the day. One of them had showed an exceptional interest, exacerbated by alcohol. Another was very open to my company, and a third always made time for a chat. All three exerted a waxing moon pull on my waning stability.

With little future on offer, everything seemed to matter less. After wrestling with myself for many days, I sent Maureen a letter on the day that I officially dropped out of my course, saying that I wanted our relationship to stop. We had been growing apart. There was some truth in that. Some of it down to greater geographical distance.

The bigger, overwhelming feeling was of everything coming to an end. Purpose running down to nothing. Still I dropped the letter into the red postbox with dread, with no certainty that I wasn’t cutting away the best source of nurture, friendship, love and support that would ever be available. Ever.

Maureen’s response beamed out dignity and class. She wrote back, saying I had hurt her immensely, but that it was probably for the best. And that yes, we probably had been growing apart from each other.

With bridges burned, there was freedom to explore temptation. Before too long, the attractions were seen through.

My recollection is that a typical male stance kicked in, of not dwelling too long or hard on my actions. I signed on, looking for work. Applied for a pub job in Canterbury, and was knocked back. I was told later that it was a gay pub. Maybe my homoerotic tendencies were insufficient. Worked for a day in a Herne Bay home for the physically and mentally challenged, but it didn’t feel right.

It was clear that I was destined to be on my own for a while. I lived in what was now a cold coastal town, and would stay in bed until lunchtime. Then buy a paper, look at the racing form, and split the afternoons between a warm betting shop, where I might spend £1, spread out over the course of an hour, and a warm library, to keep pumping out the letters to mates that I enjoyed so much. Cook a warming stew, and go to bed early, to read. Always scanning the job pages, but feeling unsuited to most tasks. Living on less than a tenner a week, and with absolutely zero prospects in my own head. Emotionally desolate, but reluctant to admit that.

Weekends were sometimes filled by visits from friends. Steve Lowndes and Jon Marks, on one nicely drunken occasion. John Devane on another. Once a week, to break the tedium, I attended a Quaker-run course on philosophy and meditation at the house below with a lovely Scouse guy from the teaching college, John.

Whether to fill in the time, or unable to resist the black hole of genetic gravity, I decided that there would never be a better opportunity to make a massive and thoroughgoing effort to learn as much as I could about horse racing. Despite the win on Shergar, I had not let myself be carried away with bigger stakes. That was a one-off. But I had been fired up inside by the growing notion of becoming a “professional gambler”, having read that guys such as Alec Bird, Phil Bull and Simon ‘Dodger’ McCartney were alive and well and making it pay. And from the little I had read, it seemed that they simply studied the formbook with more perspicacity and dedication than others.

With no firm concept of how to achieve such a desirable destination as theirs, it seemed that the old adage about perspiration, rather than inspiration, would be the watchword. So I made a start, and studied a book in Herne Bay library each day on the racecourses of Great Britain. ‘Horses for courses’ was an old saying that I had given little more than lip-service to.

In particular, I would pore over the spread of articles in a weekly publication entitled the Sporting Chronicle Handicap Book, which were giving me ideas on why horses win and lose races. In the paper’s section for readers’ letters, a bloke called Mr Van Der Wheil (or VDW, The Flying Dutchman) first introduced himself into my life, albeit initially as just one of many readers claiming to have cracked open a chink in the bookmakers’ armour.

I settled down to make some serious notes. And carried on wrapped in my sleeping bag late into the night, as there was no money to heat the room for more than 2-3 hours a day. I remember rising one morning with iced phlegm hanging from my nostrils.

I cannot say that I won anything overall from my betting, but it began to strike me that the winners of certain races had a logic to them, as patterns seemed to assert themselves on the racecourse, as in nature. I liked it that any of my small perks, such as beer and newspapers, might depend on nothing more than one’s judgement and courage.

Nonetheless, as Xmas approached in 1981, that activity covered over a constant feeling. I had cut myself off from something never to be regained.

A mad idea, I know.

But somehow, when Maureen and I first moved to Great Waltham, we conjured up the idea that Vincent Van Gogh once lived in our village. It’s not very far to Holland from here, and he was open to travel.

More than anything, it was the lie of the land that amplified our twinkling thought. The undulating nature of many surrounding fields, and the sweep of burnished gold that meets the eye as summer progresses. The stark, gaunt landscapes of the winter. Also, the unpolluted skies at night, when the stars shine so clearly. We reckoned he would have felt at home here, whichever side of his character manifested.

We used to sit on the patio of an evening chuckling quietly at the notion that Vincent once lived in our house. That he had probably left some old paintings laying around. Shall we open another bottle of wine? Perhaps we could start guided tours. We might be the only two people in the world to find this amusing.

As things stand, I console myself that there is a fine artist here, right by my side. Working in a range of mediums, splashing joy and colour around our domestic environment.

Nature is nudging my happiness up a notch with each lengthening day.

Irises

Snowdrops

Narcissus

Pussy willow

Rhubarb crowns

Simple pleasures

The kindest group of strangers I have ever met was in Qatar.

It was my first solo journalist jaunt overseas, in late 1997, to write a country report on the small Arab state. The trip was almost over, and had included an interview with the then-chairman of OPEC, who was also Qatar’s Minister of Oil and Gas, Abdullah al-Attiyah. I was ushered in, and there he sat in his vest, with his feet on the table. After that, everything was possible and we got on well.

I also interviewed Abdulbasit Ahmad al-Shaibei, an Islamic banker who doubled up as a local radio host. Lovely bloke, who went out of his way to answer all of my questions. No surprise that he is now the head honcho at Qatar International Islamic Bank.

Abdul invited me to meet his friends and family in Doha that evening. Nervously, I said yes. Better than sitting in a hotel room but wasn’t sure how much we would have in common. The taxi driver raved about the greatness of Tony Blair on the way. The diminished heat of the evening was tolerable. Adbul answered the door and took me into a beautiful, fragrant garden.

His friends were mainly engineers who worked for Qatar Petroleum. They switched to English the minute that I arrived. They were keen to hear my (very limited) views on politics, and how it was to live in Europe. No alcohol was offered or drunk, but these guys were very Western in their outlook. In fact there was a round of joke-telling, quite crude, that made me feel at ease. After an hour, I was sitting at the middle of a table, ducking in and out of various conversations, tucking into a machboos dish of rice and meat, eyeing the salads and pickles. Feeling very much at home. Yet I didn’t know anybody.

Later, over coffee, it became clear that there was a tremendous respect for Britain. Its culture and civilising influences, and the ethos of fair play. And particularly the Labour government under Blair, which was seen as a beacon of hope for a better world.

There was one sour note. Britain’s military ties to the United States. I listened to complete disgust that we had participated in Operation Desert Storm against Iraq. There was no anti-western ideology at work, none of them were fans of Saddam Hussein, but they were deeply enraged and saddened at the slaughter of Iraqi civilians, and the ‘shock and awe’ news pictures broadcast from the US bombers. In particular at the so-called ‘Turkey shoot’, when tens of thousands of Iraqi troops and civilians retreating from Kuwait along the Basra Highway, having ceased hostilities, were indiscriminately bombed off the face of the earth.

I was quiet and listened. There was no ambiguity in their words. They described cold-blooded war crimes, carried out against their Arab and Muslim brothers by President Bush and his US military strategists.

One of them said, gently: “I love your country. But if Britain continues to associate with the US it will lose all of the goodwill it has built up in this region. Among the ordinary people. The governments will smile and buy your weapons, but the people will know better.”

Fast forward, to 2003. Blair and Bush holding hands, before illegally reducing Iraq to rubble. Onto 2011, when the Western-backed ousting of Gaddafi sent the once-prosperous sovereign state of Libya spinning into dysfunctionality. Refugees fleeing across the Mediterranean. Slavery auctions returning in some parts. Onto Syria, where the arrogance of the West is so unbridled that our newscasters have regularly mouthed the notion of subjecting a secular, democratic society to ‘regime change’, as if this were as natural and just as handing out a speeding fine.

The guy in Qatar said, very simply: “To intervene in another country’s affairs needs the certainty of moral authority. If you sell weapons, and kill innocent people, that disappears.”

I wonder what this friendly stranger would have made of British Secretary of State for Defence, Gavin Williamson, who has just made the case that Brexit is an opportunity to “strengthen our global presence, enhance our lethality and increase our mass.”

What sort of a human being trumpets his country’s ‘lethality’?

Williamson also reckons that defence will be “pivotal in reinforcing Britain’s role as an outward-looking nation” after Brexit. Probably wrong, but I had this idea that defence is to repel attacks. Has Williamson heard of an oxymoron? Is he one?

Maybe, because he wants to send Royal Navy vessels through the South China Sea to “give other nations confidence” as well as show Britain was “standing up for our values”.

You can tell he has thought long and hard about these plans. He insisted that Brexit has “brought us to a great moment in our history”, when we must be ready to deploy “hard power” against those who “flout international law”.

Now I get you Gav. We are going to invade our own country. Why didn’t you just say that?

I felt mentally and physically depleted last night, unable to stop yawning as I drove Josie home from a family dinner. On the road back, the notion of stopping all work activity for a few days had the upper hand. A beautiful impossibility. In your dreams boy.

I lack the stamina of yore. Some of the loud conversations around the dinner table were sonic attacks on my ageing ears. Then Chris and Lauren struggled to connect our Netflix while Maureen and I sat like dinosaur-like, unable to comprehend many of the technicalities. Luddites, surrounded by nimble young minds.

One legacy of the visit was tupperware containing a stash of chocolate hash brownies. Back home, Maureen and I made a cup of tea and got the brownies out. We have tried them before, but the chef had informed me that these were high in CBD, with all of its proven medical benefits, and very low on the intoxicating THC element.

Good taste, plenty of rich chocolate to camouflage the marijuana flavour.

I sat and watched TV mindlessly. Feeling whacked, old and fragile. No desire to converse. But within about ten minutes some of that had faded. Everything felt easier, kinder, better. The edge removed from the exhaustion.

We had been warned that sleep would be deep. I’m normally a ‘two piss a night’ man, but it was just the one. Awoke about 7 a.m. after an otherwise solid eight hours, with that joyful feeling of a profound sleep that is more elusive as the years slip by. Maureen also reported a better than usual kip.

As you see, there are provisions for another two nights. Neither of us enjoy smoking weed, so I reckon we’ll be looking at how to make them ourselves.

At 6 a.m on the morning of June 3, 1981, I rolled out of the factory gates onto the Ongar Road, in Brentwood. I was making vacuum flasks for a living at the Thermos plant, pictured above. Standing on a production line through the night, making the time pass by telling every joke and story I could ever remember. Listening keenly to every story and joke told back, to flesh out my repertoire.

Good times, in retrospect. Even when the conversation ran out, I was self-sufficient, quietly glad to be alive. Rummaging through my memories, writing letters in my head, fervently anticipating the next tryst with Maureen.

One morning I was met by my house mates, who had stayed awake through the night on magic mushrooms. But most mornings I would walk back towards the shared house in Rose Valley with Dave, who caught a train back to Gidea Park, and Ron, who lived past the train station up in Warley.

We would stop at the paper shop. Dave bought the Daily Mirror, and Ron the Sun. I bought……the Guardian and the Daily Mail. Solidly right-wing and left-wing newspapers, with about as much in common as Stalin and Gandhi.

Politics had nothing to do with it. My parents had taken the Mail, and I had followed the horse racing tipsters, getting acquainted with how they thought. But the best and most interesting tipster of all, Richard Baerlin, wrote for the Guardian. So I bought both.

Interestingly, the number two racing writer at the Guardian was David Hadert, whose daughter Julie was one of Maureen’s best friends.

Richard Baerlein had been a racing correspondent for 44 years when he saw Shergar make his debut at Sandown in April 1981 and win by 10 lengths. He saw that bookies were offering 8-1 on Shergar to win the Derby, and contended in print that “now is the time to bet like men”.

On June 3, I got home, made a cup of tea and poured the milk on my Weetabix. The house was quiet. I opened both sets of racing pages. The odds on Shergar had fallen to even money, or 1 to 1. Baerlin made no bones about his view: the horse couldn’t lose unless its jockey fell off, which was highly unlikely in a flat race. He backed this up with some startling collateral form and clock-based logic. He was quite adamant: no other horse could win this race.

My aim with betting was to increasingly work things out for myself. But others knew much more, and sometimes you had to pay heed. The gut feeling was that it was time to test my nerve. I earned £70 a week, with £30 of that going for rent. Saved a tenner and used the other thirty for food and entertainment. The most I had ever bet was £10, which was an exceptional amount.

Set the alarm for two o’clock. Awoke with some excitement. Quick shower and up to the bank to take out fifty quid from the savings. Sunny afternoon. A small independent bookie just around the corner took my bet, at even money.

The TV in my room was crap. Sound but no picture, unless you counted the Jackson Pollock-like fuzz that wobbled across the screen. So I listened, heart in my mouth, as the race unfolded, and then with growing joy as Shergar hit the lead, going easily, three furlongs out. One furlong out, the commentator shouted that “you would need a telescope to see the rest, he is at least 15 lengths clear!”

Another headline the next day summed it up: “Shergar first, the rest nowhere!”

I won £47 after deducting the betting tax on my £50 bet. Richard Baerlein did so well out of Shergar’s victory that he named his house after him.

Shergar did OK for the next two years, standing at stud in Ireland. Then he was kidnapped, and never seen again. Equally famous for his disappearance as his phenomenal racing ability.

Great memory. And back in mid-1981, another building block in my slowly growing conviction that horse racing, carefully handled, could reel in wheelbarrows of money, happiness and independence.

I work as a freelance financial and energy journalist.

The last four years have brought a spring bonus, which I call The Belgian Job. Not a huge deal, no Michael Caine, but a bit of extra dosh, and a trip to Brussels on Eurostar once a year.

Last week it recommenced. I started telephone interviews that I work up into profiles of Belgian exporting companies. I like the Belgians. They have a good splash of British irony and self-deprecation in the humour. Less arrogant than the French.

Last year I took Maureen to Brussels, and we managed to get 24 hours together seeing parts of the city. Not a proper holiday break, but she loved it, especially the food and the spectacular murals.

And joint memories of a beer to die for, Le Fruit Defendu.

If I go alone, I like to get out at the Gare Midi railway station and then walk up through the Muslim quarter to Grand Place.

Then meander north-east through the city, via the Royal Park, to the Palais de Bruxelles. Imagine the corruption within those walls over past centuries.

And across to the business district, where I meet with the insurance company that provides the work.

The first time I tried this I got caught short. The whole shenanigan of getting up early in the UK and having to get to London, grab something for breakfast and sit next to a stranger on the train plays havoc with my bowel movements. I’m usually as regular as clockwork, but the forced agenda brings blockage.

With Grand Place looming in my sights, and no idea where I might find a loo, I was experiencing that nagging pressure that portends a major explosion. Wasn’t sure about the coffee shop facilities, but knew that the sole location where I could take a dump with certainty would be a bar. I found one, and ordered lager with some peanuts. So that I could legitimately ask: “Ou sont les toilettes?”

It was a decent lager. Not the delicious high-alcohol Trappist fare but refreshing and fruitier than I expected. Two thirds through, I could wait no longer. The smallest room was upstairs. The spiral staircase seemed never-ending, and I prayed that the traps would be unoccupied. The plural turned out to be wildly optimistic, as it was just one room with a lock.

And it was locked. Before panic set in, the door opened and a big bloke walked out. There was a film of sweat on his brow. It could have been a three-eyed maniac with a sack of children slung over each shoulder for all I cared. Time was God. I almost fell into the room, locked the door, and knew that only a swift undoing could prevent my undoing. Got my cheeks on the seat just as my world fell out. It kept falling out. Jeez. I was so glad that the Belgian jobbie flushed down.

Washed my hands, finished the beer and set off. It felt great to walk in the fresh air again. I sat in the Royal Park for a while, loving the sunshine, the joggers and the birds singing.

20 minutes before my meeting, I started off again, but with growing feelings of tiredness. The beer was kicking in.

The interview lasted about one and a half hours, in a warm room. By the end I couldn’t stop yawning, which must have looked rude. I explained that I had stopped for a lunchtime beer, and saw the four guys smiling quietly. You Brits and your alcohol, eh?

But they kept employing me, and I go back on March 1^st. No beer stops planned this time but I will never forget the toilet at the top.

Funny the things we remember.