I am going to make myself seem slightly daft in this post. They’ve started building work behind the Residence Palace at last. It’s a good thing. The plan is gradually to turn the Chaussée de Maelbeek back into a properly inhabited space, with mixes of commercial and residential space instead of the current wasteland and carparks. In the initial plans I saw there will even be a tram line running between the Place St Josse and the Place Jourdan. Over the years a sycamore tree had grown to quite a size on the wasteland where the building has now started. It had to go. But I found the way it went well, sort of undignified for a tree of that size. Instead of sawing its branches off, they snapped them off with some piece of heavy machinery. Is there such a thing as cruelty to trees? (That reminds me of a Roald Dahl short story.)