Claire talks about love?

No, of course she doesn't.

I'm not even going to talk about the finer points of being single or in a relationship on Valentine's Day because I can't remember the last time I cared.

This shows I'm doing really well with my New Year's resolution though, because it means I've managed not to be riled by (or even read) any of the 10,000 articles Huffington Post have tweeted on the matter.

I spent the majority of Valentine's Day in meetings, encountering my age old nemesis once again; the coat wardrobes. I seem to be the only person who goes to these meetings who doesn't have a photographic memory of which one they put their coat in, but needless to say I'm the first one there and everyone after me must think someone's kindly opened all the wardrobe doors for their ease of access.

They haven't, it's just me, and it's just because I'm that one idiot who can't remember where she put her coat.

It would seem however, from the overwhelming smell of bleach on the streets of Brussels, that other people spent it cleaning. Or murdering their husbands for forgetting the date. Either way it's always nice to have a clean house.

But we weren't the only ones struggling with romance, Delhaize didn't seem to know what it was doing either, I'm not sure they even had any chocolates or wine on display until the day itself. They did however, for weeks in advance, have Valentine's themed signs above a display of cod fillets and baskets of crisps that were on special offer.

This is why you're single Delhaize, your idea of romance is just...weird.

I did spend the better part of the day having dinner with the girls though, I say dinner, we went to a pizza place (the kind with stools rather than chairs) on Place Luxembourg to avoid being surrounded by couples. I've never really understood why you'd want to go out for dinner on Valentine's Day anyway. I wouldn't want to be surrounded by half the population of any of the cities I live in at the best of times, least of all when I'm trying to have a romantic liaison.

Apparently a 'liaison' is also a mix of yolk and cream used in soups (it actually said 'by soups' on Wikipedia, but I'm going to presume that's not what they meant).

Well, that was off-topic.

Also I've decided I much prefer this when it's centre aligned, but I'm just not going to go back and change the last however many posts. Sorry guys.

And here are some cool things I saw last weekend when Francine was here.

xx

I get paid tomorrow...

...I have €7.17 in my purse, and £0.66 in my bank account. So it would be safe to say I'm pretty excited.

I went to Bruges! Despite the crazy weather (hail, sleet and sun...seriously?) it was by far one of the best days I've had since I got here. Even at the end of October it's just a beautiful and tourist-filled as you would imagine - but don't even bother imagining, there are photos at the bottom. The hot chocolate we had when we got there was probably the best I've ever had, and when your table is the one in front of a log fire in the cafe, it probably couldn't feel more like Christmas.

That's pretty much the only noteworthy thing I've done this week, apart from very stupidly, and unintentionally, use up all €15 of credit on my phone by calling home for 20 minutes (Mobistar...is this about what I said last week? Because that feels like an unnecessarily high tariff to me).

I'm beginning to get really annoyed at the woman on my French learning audio course - she just gets everything wrong all the time, I've never known anyone be this bad at repeating something they've just heard (I should point out that these are on my iPod and she is a 'student' who repeats back what the guy leading the course says, I'm not just getting really angry at some woman who's genuinely trying to learn French). As I'm only 9 lessons in, this is probably a bad sign - there's like 80 more to go, and by the end I'll either be able to speak French, or I'll have spent 10 hours yelling at my laptop. Maybe even both.

I'm also inadvertently following the X Factor, so I know Jade went last week, Union J and District3 are basically One Direction but...no that's it, they're just basically One Direction, and Rylan appears to only still be in the competition to frustrate everyone who watches it. All this horrendously useless knowledge has been gained through my Twitter feed, so thank you Twitter, for making me incredibly well-informed about a programme I have absolutely no interest in, and have never watched.

Finally,

I just had to share this site : http://www.lovepanky.com

Now coming away from the fact that 'panky' should never ever be used as a word (even when preceded by 'hanky'), there is just so much more that's just plain wrong with what they're suggesting.

For starters some of the stuff they suggest is just contradictory, I'm probably going to find it pretty hard to play with my hair if I'm not allowed to move my hands, and that's all gonna look pretty weird if I'm constantly shifting around on my feet at the same time, in fact I'll come out of this less of an attractive young woman, and more of a Weeble (Google it). I'm personally going to find it pretty difficult to express myself full stop if my hands have to be clamped by my side, but then with advice like 'speak softly' and 'barely speak at all', expressing myself clearly isn't the aim here. I think the worst thing is that if this actually works and his heart is suitably melted to the point where we start dating, he's going to get the shock of his life when I stop being cute, and start being myself. And then I'll have to start all over again, although maybe this time I could take their advice on being sexy, and the advice on that one is basically just 'LOOK AMAZING', which might require a lot more prep work, but at least I won't have to put on a voice.

Their first date advice is equally as frustrating, to be fair the article is entitled '14 Signs You're Ruining Your First Date Unknowingly'. It may as well be called '14 Ways Everything is Wrong With You and You'll Die Alone'. And the advice itself is a lot like being yelled at by a maniac - 'be yourself - but not too much like yourself, speak a lot, but not too much, show an interest, but don't be too interested, or friendly, definitely don't be too friendly don't smile too much, dress appropriately and under no circumstances agree to seeing him again,  - oh, and BE PERFECT IN EVERY WAY'.

If I actually read this before a first date I'd probably be a nervous wreck by the time I arrived and sit in silence for the whole date, convinced that even the slightest movement or sound would ruin everything.

It's probably wrong of me to direct this purely at lovepanky.com, I just happened to stumble across it this week and it brought up a lot of the anger I feel about dating advice more generally. I'm not even going to give alternative advice, because I never give advice, and even if I did it would be just as useless. Just behave like a normal person and you'll probably be fine.

This is my last post before I go home on tomorrow night for the Bank Holiday weekend, so if you're in Belgium, enjoy your days off, if not, then enjoy your normal-length weekend.

xx

Thanks to Ash and Francesca for their help in inspiring this post, I hope it's every bit as ranting and angry as you expected.