Excellent advice Pablo. Also, everyone stop whining about pollution, just learn to breathe only healthy O₂/N₂ mixture.

Something very weird is happening with AVMA. I keep trying to post to the game, and it won't accept my post. Meanwhile the front page now describes it as a "Brand spanking new event"

Never mind. I think I broke it by trying to include some Japanese characters. I took those out and normal service appears to have been restored.

I don't seem able to load the home page of that wily Scotsman McIos today.

Seems ok from here... http://mcios.pathetech.com/

[Micky Os] I had a problem after a recent Windows "update". My browser then claimed Mcios had a wonky certificate. I found tipping my laptop to one side helped.

(Bools) Did your browser actually use the word wonky?. If so, there is hope for the world.

[Pen]Yes, very urban, but if I were rural I'd be into stealing vegetables, strangling chickens, eating grass (both sorts), foraging for mind-bending mushrooms, punching cows and generally making a bloody nuisance of myself. Only way to have an interesting life as far as I can see.

[Pabbers] No need for stealing vegetables - they drop off the harvest wagons as they turn the corner in front of our house. And once the harvesting machines have been through the fields, gleaning is tolerated, so you could easily get 50-60kg of potatoes for nowt if you put your back into it. Other aspects - such as the peace and quiet (ignoring loads of tractors, obvs), open views and panoramic skies - make it worthwhile. I'm hating cities more and more, to be honest, but then I'm in the lucky position of being able to do that from a distance.

[penelope] So did you go for the speed bump or water-filled pothole to enact your nefarious-yet-brilliant veg "acquisitions"?

We already have the water-filled pothole - everyone knows it's there. I feign reversing out of our parking bit in front of tractors to make them brake suddenly*.

*Seriously, I don't need to - there are enough idiot drivers causing tractors to take avoiding action and there are spuds all over the roads.

All round penelope's windmill for some chips done in beef dripping then!

<*drools*>

There's still one chip shop around here that does them like that.

And,um, where ... exactly ... is "around here"? Asking for, er, a friend.

Hogs y sglods!

Hidden text

properly Hogia sglodion (chip lads)

Sling this into Google Maps and you'll see it.
F67M+5C Morlanwelz

I just found that it has a website, too. The name is Friterie de Mariemont.
For the anecdote: A few years back, Belgian law changed because the chip shops were semi-mobile affairs with propane stoves which tended to explode. The majority of the shops were classed as "mobile" - that is temporary construction by the side of a road on public land, and prohibited. The idea was that anyone who wanted to remain open had to construct a proper building, but most got around it by putting a veranda up in front. This one was moved fifteen metres from the road on to private ground, and then they put the veranda up.