It was back to school again today, out at Ottignies, in a second nine-till-six lesson on such themes as meteorology, nautical instruments, first aid at sea, map reading and navigation, in our search for the qualification of Brevet de Conduite (chef de bord côitier et hauturier). Should I tell you how tiny Belgium has one set of rules for sea-going vessels, another for inland waters, a third for its coastal waters, and others for the lower maritime Scheldt, the Meuse, the Gand canal at Terneuzen and even for the Brussels ship canal? Should I tell you that each uses a different vocabulary, that there are significant differences in rules and signals and that the examiners expect students to memorise everything?  No matter. My illustration will be familiar to all seasoned mariners. It was the moment our teacher told us the difference between true North, magnetic North and compass North. You all know, don’t you? What? You don’t? Well, obviously, Cv = Cc + D + d, where D = declinaison and d = deviation. Come on! Wake up at the back!

At the end of the conference today our Irish hosts, the National Economic and Social Council, kindly laid on a short guided tour to the state rooms of Dublin Castle and also, fascinatingly, to the underground ruins of the Powder Tower and tenth century Viking city wall, uncovered during building work some fifteen years ago. There were some Italian connections: a Bolognese, Gaetano Gandolfi, painted the decorations in the throne room – Murano crystal chandeliers grace the dining room; and an Italian expatriate, Vincenzo Waldré, painted the three ceiling paintings in St Patrick’s Hall – and we also saw two delightful portraits of a very young Queen Victoria and Prince Albert in the state apartments. Visiting the Viking Wall, we learned that the wall was held together with mortar made out of eggs, sand, horses’ hair and ox blood! And then, for me and my literary readers (including the Joycean Domenico) came an unexpected connection. The view in my illustration is what those working for the Irish Inland Revenue would see, and still see, when looking out of their office windows in a Georgian annex to the Castle.  A certain Abraham Stoker worked in that building for forty years, and his third son, also Abraham, followed in his footsteps, publishing in 1876 a first learned book entitled The Duties of Clerks of Petty Sessions in Ireland. This younger Stoker was interested in art (he founded a sketching club) and theatre, becoming a critic and, later, a friend and associate of Henry Irving. He wrote some short stories and, in the 1890s, a series of novels. In 1897 Bram (as he was known) published Dracula. I know that Bram Stoker did a lot of research before writing his classic horror story, but this didn’t involve travel to Transylvanian castles and I would like to think that when he imagined Jonathan Harker gazing out of his bedroom window and seeing the bat-like Dracula flapping on the castle wall below him, he had Dublin Castle’s tower and the adjoining chapel in his mind’s eye…

This morning I flew to Dublin with the European Economic and Social Committee’s President, Staffan Nilsson, to join the annual meeting of the Presidents and Secretaries-General of the national Economic and Social Councils and the EESC. The meeting is being hosted by the Irish National Economic and Social Council and is taking place in the rather splendid surroundings of St Patrick’s Hall in Dublin Castle. The conference theme is labour market and welfare benefit reforms, and at the moment we are listening to a fascinating and very learned analysis by Dr John Sweeney, an NESC senior analyst. I  find his compararive analysis of competing and/or complementary paradigms of the labour market and social particularly pertinent and particularly the way these different paradigms affect social dialogue during the recession (the three paradigms are Keynesian, Pro-market and Social investment). He ended his presentation by highlighting a potential paradox; it can be easier to undertake positive reforms when money is scarce…

At the end of a tight, grueling, vastly expensive, exciting (including a hurricane!) and fascinating campaign, Barack Obama has won a further four years in the White House. It is an extraordinary exploit (what, in rugby parlance, would be called a win ‘against the head’). Somewhere during the campaign Charlie Cook, a veteran Washington commentator, wittily opined ‘It is becoming clear that if President Obama is re-elected, it will be despite the economy and because of his campaign. If Mitt Romney wins, it will be because of the economy and despite his campaign.’ Romney was gracious in defeat and Obama was gracious in victory. The President was also eloquent on why he and Romney had fought so hard – his victory speech was, indeed, a strong defence of US Presidential campaigns. While Obama now rolls up his sleeves and starts to work out how to try and build on the centre ground of a divided legislature (this is no bright new dawn but, rather, a murky morning), the pundits are already speculating about 2016 (currently the smart money, for what it’s worth, is apparently on Clinton v. Christie). I’d like to finish this post with the story of my friend, Hugo, of hurricane-stricken New York. Amid all the carnage and wreckage, here’s his experience; “So I tried to vote early, if not often, and I visited a lot of polling places. Since I had not received a ballot because there had been no mail in a week I checked the State on-line registry and it told me to vote at 10 Church Towers. At that polling place, they had a list of voters and a registry. They checked the list and said I wasn’t on it, so they sent me to their satellite site at 15 Church Towers. There I wasn’t on the list either, and they advised to me go to my old polling place on 9th Street, because I might still be in the registry there. At the 9th Street polling place I found out that my old polling place had been moved to Park Avenue, so there I went. At the Park Avenue polling place I wasn’t in the registry either, so I went back to 10 Church Towers and asked them politely to check if maybe I was in the registry, even though I wasn’t on the list. They checked the registry, and bingo, there I was. I left my apartment at 6 am and voted at 7:15 am, but I got a good workout.”

This morning I joined a number of colleagues and friends in the European Parliament for the launch party for Henri Malosse’s new book (co-authored with Laure Limousin), La Construction Européenne: Histoires et avenir d’une Europe des peuples. Currently President of the Employers’ Group of the European Economic and Social Committee, Henri is passionately committed to the European integration process and this book illustrates his conviction that, to paraphrase one of his observations, the European future is not just possible but vitally necessary. And in that future Henri sees a pre-eminent place and role for civil society. The most touching part of the book comes at the end, after the learned analysis and policy recommendations, where Henri dedicates a ‘postface’ to his son and, though him, to all young Europeans. The book is, he concludes, an appeal to the ‘refounding generation’.

This evening we followed our schedule of films related to our summer US coast-to-coast trip by watching The Birdman of Alcatraz. Now, for my Uncle M., in the Pyrénées, I should immediately stress that probably nowadays nobody would contest the fact that the original birdman, Robert Stroud, was a surly and nasty piece of work. But Burt Lancaster nevertheless, through sheer dramatic genius, turned his character’s dreary life into a depiction of a zen transition from violence to serenity. From our point of view, it was interesting to see how Lancaster’s character’s escape inwards, contrasted with Clint Eastward’s more plodding escape outwards.

The first review I read of the latest Bond movie, Skyfall, was implacably negative. All the rest were generally positive. So I wasn’t entirely sure what to expect when we went to a jam-packed cinema this evening. An immense first positive is Javier Bardem’s portrayal of the film’s main antagonist, Raoul Silva (Tiago Rodriguez). Unlike the psycopathic baddie he played in No Country For Old Men, this time Bardem introduces a comic element into his character and it works really well (sometimes the audience found itself laughing in the midst of gruesome or sad scenes). The director, Sam Mendes, uses Bardem’s foil well to enable Daniel Craig to play Bond as an ageing and world-weary psychopath who cares nothing for his ancestral home (blown to smithereens) nor for Bardem’s defenceless lover, Severine (Silva shoots her in cold blood and Bond apparently cares only for some spilt malt whiskey). This is much closer to the character that Ian Fleming had originally created in the Bond books. Judi Dench, in her last appearance as M, appropriates Michael Caine’s ‘bloodies’ and makes them her own. After the traditional initial chase scene, the plot develops with deliberate slowness, allowing Bardem in particular to develop his character. And the Scottish scenery in which the action ends almost steals the show. Did I enjoy this? Yes. Was it a great film? No. But since when have Bond films been great? Mendes has done a good job, reintroducing the darker, original Bond and handling the transition (a new M, a new Q, an ageing Bond) to a new generation of Bond films with artful skill.

To return to my question yesterday as to what to do with several teenagers in the Belgian Ardennes region if its pouring with rain, a strong second answer must be to go to the Euro Space Center, near Libin, which is what we did this morning. The Center is a touching combination of proud, far-reaching ambition and achievement (Belgium has played an important role in space exploration and has certainly punched above its weight) and under-reaching commercial endeavour. There are some amusing interactive activities. The possibility of ‘walking on the moon’ kept our young men amused for about ten minutes, max., but they clearly genuinely enjoyed themselves. The various films were, from my point of view, a touching mix of Belgian and European pride. As to the European aspects, the Center is a good example of Europe’s de facto ‘multi-speed’ or ‘variable geometry’ nature: the European Space Agency has twenty (eighteen in the Center’s out-of-date presentation) member states, and two of those – Norway and Switzerland – are not EU member states…

The Belgian Ardennes region is a beautiful part of the world, but the question nevertheless arises; what do you with several teenagers if it is pouring down with rain – and I mean sheeting down? One answer is the Grottes de Han, and so that was what we visited today. Nobody was disappointed. I must have been down this massive complex of caves at least five times but each time I return I am fascinated again by the experience. The limestone into which the Lesse river has carved its way is some 360 million years old. The caves themselves are thousands of years old, whilst human beings have probably lived in the entrances to the cave system for a mere two thousand years. For a thousand or so years human beings have been throwing jewelry and lucky charms into the river where it emerges from the rocks after its subterranean journey. (I would have illustrated this post with a picture of a wonderful gold Roman necklace found in the mud at the bottom of the river but my photograph was hopelessly over-exposed.) If you have never been down the Grottes de Han be sure to go. The rock formations and stalagmites and stalactites have there own particular beauty (you can see where the makers of science fiction films such as Alien get their inspiration for wierdly semi-organic backdrops) and the mysterious disappearance of the river into a rock face is fascinating but, above all, the vast sense of time and lengthy geological processes is humbling.