The Good The Bad And The Ugly

Ah, Jacques Brel. Forgot he was a Belge.

-- Ian

 

Brel, bloody hell, I rest my case.

OK so Bruges is OK, but so is the Lleyn peninsula. It's the country as a whole which counts.

 

Grand Jacques was a genius. The brilliant, mysanthropic poet of the post-war "Golden Years".
Anyway, call yourself a Devil, and you don't like Brel???
Pah, minor Demon, more like.

Grand Jacques' best song was possibly this one, though:

Dans le port d'Amsterdam
Y a des marins qui boivent
Et qui boivent et reboivent
Et qui reboivent encore
Ils boivent à la santé
Des putains d'Amsterdam
De Hambourg ou d'ailleurs
Enfin ils boivent aux dames
Qui leur donnent leur joli corps
Qui leur donnent leur vertu
Pour une pièce en or
Et quand ils ont bien bu
Se plantent le nez au ciel
Se mouchent dans les étoiles
Et ils pissent comme je pleure
Sur les femmes infidèles
Dans le port d'Amsterdam
Dans le port d'Amsterdam.

 

Well I have an LP by J Brel, which if it wasn't for my vinyl fetish, would be a frisbee by now. Plus one of the more self-consciously 'hip' bars round here is called 'Bar Brel' and it is full of total t*$$£%*.

I think he's over-rated.

 

"My Death" (as sung by Scott Walker) is my favourite.

It's so cheerful.

-- Ian

 

Bah.
La valse à mille temps sums up these internet forums so well*...

BTW, which Brel album do you have?

 

"Les Flamandes". My records are nothing if not eclectic.

 

Joel,

two thumbs up for introducing Brel to this thread. I like him, too.

 

In ENGLISH please - not all of us were clever enough/got on with our French teacher enough/wanted to learn French enough to pass our GCSE's... (I got a D - but all of that stuff went over my head - I can get booze, birds and, er, beaches in French, but can't understand directions!).

Bruges is ace - went there in 1985 when I was 10 - nice little place. But can someone tell me what "Stop kerkanje!" means (I think that's how the latter word was spelt) - it's been bugging me ever since I saw it grafitti'd on a wall there!

 

But can someone tell me what "Stop kerkanje!" means

Yes, it means "Stop the boredom!"

 

Mcpeake will pay for these slanders to the noble Belgian nation.



Tin Tin {The king of all the Belgians}

 

Will I get away with the Wales thing? It comes from growing up in a border city, thankfully on the correct side of said border.

 

Correct side indeed, I mean they never named a speaker Castle Bangor did they?

 

Well I asked Google language tools and it was quite amusing...

Code:

In the wearing of Amsterdam
Y has sailors who drink
And who drink and reboivent
And which still reboivent
They drink with the health
Of the whores of Amsterdam
Of Hamburg or besides
Enfin they drink with the ladies
Which give them their pretty body
Which gives them their virtue
For a gold coin
And when they drank well
plant the nose with the sky
are mouchent in stars
And they piss as I cry
Over the inaccurate women
In the wearing of Amsterdam 
In the wearing of Amsterdam.

Paul

 

Paul (R), your version's much better than the original.

Sniggering about Castle Bangor...

 

It's a lovely place really

Wales where men are men, women are men, and sheep are nervous.

The Welsh: The Irish who couldn't swim.

Just kidding.

 

James Joyce, Bernard Shaw,

The Welsh are very different to the Irish, swimming is only one of many talents we have over the Welsh.

 

Yup. Both the Scots and the Irish do decent whisky and beer. The Belgians only do beer but it's good.

The Welsh?

 

Well they make Welsh Rarebit don't they? They sing, used to play Rugby, and once had a band called Man who are worth buying.

Perhaps a Welshman will enlighten us further.

 

I fear a long wait