I have a friend who thinks that those in positions of responsibility and/or working long hours inevitably fall ill during holidays. This is because they can. Put another way, the body and the mind put up an invisible forcefield that enables them to carry on except when they don’t need to. No sooner does the forcefield come down than the opportunistic infections dash in and the body, exhausted, capitulates. That’s certainly what it felt like this morning. However, by the afternoon I was feeling well enough to stagger out of bed and into town to participate in the Belgian National Holiday festivities. We watched the disturbingly low flypast (I was later told that this was because the cloud base was so low and that the low altitude was controversially risky), and then the procession. Later still, we watched the traditional firework display from John B’s terrace. (This time, there was no annoying helicopter. Perhaps my 21st July 2009 post had an effect!) Maybe my illness coloured my perceptions, but it seemed to me that there was an air of economy about the festivities. That would be understandable, but it left us a little disappointed…