Currently away on a mini break visiting Lille, so these will all be uploaded late, so you can’t use this information to burgle us.. It isn’t that I don’t trust you, but this is after all the internet.

1) Getting a compliment about my car.  I accept that I do actually have a nice car, so that shouldn’t be surprising or something that made me happy.  It is somewhat shallow and consumerism of me..  Today’s car compliment came from the nice lass who was checking tickets to board le Chunnel, so I would have guessed gets to see rather a lot of cars, and statistical some that are far nicer than mine.
2) The awesome power of the internet, which gave us printed maps and directions which led us neatly to the hotel, with the minimum of fuss.. It wasn’t just the internet it was also H being an awesome navigator, and interpreting said instructions as I tried to drive.
3) Finding a parking space in central Lille, which is a very tricky thing, on our second loop around the hotel a space was available directly outside, which was a huge win.  I mostly managed to keep my cool when handing over my car keys so that the hotel could re-park it for me in their private car park.  So that was very brave of me too.
4) Listening to a brass band who are playing in one of the town squares.  What makes this particularly brilliant is they started their set with “Rasputin” then went on to “Toxic”. (It also included that other pop clasic “In the jungle..”)
What made this even better was that I could do this from the comfort of the hotel room.
5) Really not sure how to explain this, so you may have to bear with me if this gets overly wordy.  So we were heading out to meet friends for dinner, and pushed the button for the lift.. it stopped with someone getting out as it went up, so we got in anyway.. At the top floor the other person got out, an a new gentleman got in, after a brief bit of confusion if the lift was going up further or was now going down.  He got in, and I proceeded to press the wrong button for reception, instead selecting the breakfast room level.. I apologised, and he said that it might be an interesting place to visit, the lift then stopped at the 3rd floor where we had originally called for it, but now no one was there, so the doors opened and closed again without anyone yo get in or out, then the same thing happened at the breakfast room level, with the doors opening and closing very quickly..
This how slightly awkward set of infractions was all conducted in shrugs, bemused looks and the odd words in French.. it had me giggling to myself for some time afterwards.. alas doesn’t translate into blog post well.