I’m currently sitting on a Eurostar train to Brussels. It was supposed to be a well-earned two-day break in the Belgian capital, but I haven’t actually been doing very much work recently, so it feels like a complete indulgence which I don’t fully deserve – a bit like ordering a cheese board after a rich dessert, or running back onstage to do an encore while punching the air, despite the fact that the audience hated it and have all pissed off home. Jenny is reading a copy of Harpers Bazaar; most of the articles seem to be written by a woman called Newby Hands. Imagine going through school with a name like Newby Hands. Actually, scratch that – imagine having big hands, and going through state education with a name like Newby Hands. Newby Hands is probably devastatingly gorgeous, had a private education, and could have made her way through her schooling and indeed her career with the name Runcible Spew without anyone batting an eyelid.

There’s a bloke across the aisle who has been giving a running commentary on his movements. “Right, ok, on the train, looking for seat 16, ah, there it is, right, put my bags in the luggage rack, excellent, now, I’ll have a bit of a read, I think, now, where’s my book?.” An inability to internalise ones thoughts is a dangerous thing. Fred West didn’t trill in his local post office about how he really ought to go home and bury some bodies under the patio. When Dennis Taylor was lining up to pot the final black in the 1985 World Snooker Final, Steve Davis didn’t shout out “Oh, lumme, if he bloody pots this one I’m toast.” Similarly, I could ratchet up the tension in the carriage by saying “A little blog, I think, about how irritating it is when someone says what they’re going to do just before they do it.” But I won’t.

I’ve been to Brussels a few times, although the first few don’t count as I was just passing through in a coach on the way to Budapest in the days when I refused to fly anywhere. But then, a couple of years ago, I went twice in a fortnight in the course of writing a piece about the ultimate pub crawl; the first one was a press trip from hell in which I was led around the arse-end of town by a bloke from CAMRA who’d forgotten to bring a map. The second found me supported mentally and physically by 30milesormore as we staggered our way around various bars, misjudging the alcohol content of various beers and prompting the invention of the still-amusing anthem “Gueuze, Gueuze, Gueuze” (to the tune of Motley Crue.) But one learns by ones mistakes, eh. Third time lucky, he said, knowing that he’ll probably wandering around Ixelles in a couple of hours time in the pouring rain, desperately looking for the hotel and having forgotten to bring an umbrella. Do they sell umbrellas in Belgium?