Moules and frites not on offer

The club is offering a 'taste of Italy' meal package before Saturday's match against Plymouth Argyle. Italy comes to SE7 through the medium of lasagne which I expect to cook for my own dinner this evening.

I went on one of these packages before the Wigan game last year as I had been in London during the day. I was addressed as 'Wayne', although I have to admit that Welsh first names are difficult. I was at an event yesterday where someone addressed me as 'Winston' and then the person doing the book signing (whom I knew) had to ask how to spell it.

I was then asked whether I had travelled down from Wigan that day.

Surely we should be offering Belgian food as a tribute to our owner whom we know enjoys a live feed. We could have moules and frites washed down with a Belgian beer and followed by Belgian chocolates. Actually, one of the things I like about Belgium is that you can eat and drink very well at reasonable prices.

Nevertheless, I have mixed feelings about a country where I have spent a lot of time and become interested in its history and fractious politics. The conclusion that I have reached is that it is a northern version of Italy, a rather corrupt country in which the state is overly bureaucratic but rather ineffective (if only because of the bitter linguistic divisions).

This then allows people like Roland to think they can tower above this landscape. Of course, his venture into politics failed and I was amused by the Belgian programme in which he outlined his latest thinking. A middle aged lady sitting behind tried to maintain an expression of studied neutrality, but succeeded in conveying baffled boredom.

I am enjoying the current crime series set in Ghent which is being shown on British television, if only because it plays into some of my prejudices. Of course, it's all in Flemish which I find incomprehensible, but at least they subtitle. Another series which I enjoy, Outlander, subtitles when the characters are speaking French, but not for long passages in Gaelic. As a consequence, you literally lose the plot, but I suspect the hand of the Scottish Government where the series was shot, albeit it with generous subsidies from Westminster.

Roland lost the plot some time ago, but he is the sort of personality who his view is obstructed by his over sized ego. For him, we lesser mortals can only see the shadows on the walls of the cave, to use Plato's analogy.