Reality bites

My five days in Belgium flew by. Two nights in the perfect Christmas city, Bruges, an evening with friends from far and wide in bustling Antwerp and then two days at the finest Xmas beer festival in the world set in the unlikely setting of Essen, an otherwise boring dormitory town on the Dutch border. I also put in two shifts behind the bar at the festival, slightly daunting where the pre-requisite is a knowledge of all the numbers in Dutch from one to one hundred and eighty - the number of different beers on sale.

I drank a lot of superb beers and a few rubbish ones too. A few hundred came home in the boot of my car. That's Christmas over for another year in my book. At least I've booked my room in Essen for next year.