Interesting in that Raak's is actually Raak.

[ISP] Well spotted! I am in fact a 28-year-old woman with a shaved head except for a tightly woven topknot and massively muscled shoulders and arms. Beware my biceps, for they can crack walnuts.

[Raak] I'd always thought you were in your 30s. Strange how things get confused :)

[Phil] It's a hard life as a Balkan mercenary.

catching up with a schoolfriend who is making the trip from Galway. I still find it staggering that I have had some friends for more than 30 years. Tomorrow, I have earmarked picking sloes and making sloe gin as one of our principal activities, and I notice that it's going to piss it down with rain. *rse. On Sunday (when it will also piss it down with rain), we will make an early start to the Vogelmaarkt in Antwerp so we can breakfast on pieces of fried fish known as kibbeling (yum) and waffles as big as our heads covered in chocolate and whipped cream, before watching the live kitchen gadget demonstrations, marvelling at the Moroccan spice stalls and buying trinkets and savouries according to our whim. (Is 'whim' like 'sheep' in that the plural is the same as the singular?)