Evening notes

After an interesting series of cloudscapes, the weather finally settled down into a determined downpour between 2 and 4pm. The raindrops splashed into the puddles, and the usual lake formed at the streetcorner. As I walked into town, the tanker Border Heather was just leaving port. The cement carrier Ronez, which was in earlier this year, paid us another visit as well. Apart from these commercial vessels, the passenger and freight ferries made it a pretty full harbour for a while this afternoon. Not to forget the fish waste processing vessel Hordafor. Did not take pictures of these ships today; I've shown them all before, and I wasn't going to go out of my way in weather like we had at 3.30pm.

Belgium remains in limbo, six months after a general election. Coalition talks have run into deadlock, leaving the previous prime minister, Guy Verhofstadt, in charge. Belgium is split along language lines, and the difference between Dutch-speaking Flanders and Francophone Wallonia could not be greater. Unemployment in Wallonia is much higher than in Flanders, and more Wallonians are employed by the states than Flemish.

Belgium was the scene of bitter clashes between the two language groups in the 1980s in the region of Fourons-le-Comte (Voeren), which lies immediately south of the Dutch border, northeast of Liège. The Lord Mayor at the time, José Happart, a French speaker, obstinately refused to speak Flemish, although he was capable of doing so. Riot police had to be called out, and at one point the clashes threatened to spill onto Dutch territory.

Civil strife has disappeared from Belgium's streets, with a degree of federalism if not separateness between the two communities. No political party bridges the language gap.

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