The George Lite Zone

This is Rob, with the best bar maid in Brussels, Anna (Rob's the one on the right by the way).

Warm summer nights, cool Belgian beer as the sun goes down at St Catherine. Ah, life is good.

Every once in a while an author comes along who's the literary equivalent of heroin, you read them, get hooked, read everything they've ever written, then get cold turkey waiting for them to write your next fix. Lee Child fell into that category on a friends recommendation I read the Jack Reacher book "One Shot" and within a week I'd bought and got signed copies of every Reacher book out there. A Jack Reacher novel reads like Dirty Harry on steroids, which is all right by me. In a bought of Reacher turkey I hit my local pushers, Waterstones, looking for some more of the good stuff. That's when I stumbled on Barry Eisler courtesy of Lee Child . It was Lee's comment on acopy of Eisler's "The Last Assassin" that did it. " Eisler is exactly my kind of writer and his deadly main character John Rain is exactly my kind of guy - highly recommended ". Good enough for Lee, good enough for me. After reading "The Last Assassin", bri...

The sun goes up, the sun goes down, the leaves turn green, the leaves turn brown and all he does is hang around.

Ahhh, Tiger. A lovely pint.

No walk in rural Leicetershire would be complete without a rustic pub with a thatched roof and Everards Tiger on draft. Cheers !!!

See a log, walk a log. Stuart does a passable imitation of Little John. Next time we'll have to bring a couple of quarterstaffs.

The garden centre in Countesthorpe was the starting point for a 6 mile walk through rural Leicestershire. Fields, fences, ponds, ducks, geese, rats, swans, rivers, canals and gates. Not bad for a Sunday morning.

This excellent Japanese snack bar lies just across the way from the Bubble building in Birmingham (a.k.a. Selfridges). Sushi, bento boxes, gyoza dumplings and Japanese Creme Caramel wrapped in a layer of superb service. Most excellent.

Dave bids a fond hello on his birthday to Tony Berry.

Douglas surveys Big Phil's handywork in Bizon as a plethora of Police plays on in the background. You'd be hard pushed to get a message in that bottle.

The week started off with a run of the mill trip to Brussels and degenerated into a farce of Kafkaesque proportions, orchestrated by the clowns who run the baggage section at Brussels airport, aided and abetted by the courier service from hell. Monday 30th June 09:45 Brussels Airport Having watched the belt for the Edinburgh flight go round and round for about 15 minutes, with no sign of yours truly's case, I went off in search of the airport's resident luggage brigade. I was then told that my case had not left Edinburgh due to 'a shortage of baggage handlers'. I must admit that I didn't realise they were an endangered species, but will remember them the next time the WWF come round collecting. I gave them the address of my apartment in Brussels and was told that they'd give me a call when the luggage arrived at the airport, which would be around 19:30. 17:30 In the Office The opening salvo of Led Zeppelin's Whole Lotta Love peels around the office. I ans...