The Sidewalks of Brussels

One of my overwhelming impressions of Paris when I went there for the first time as a young man was that, not only would I never go there with my sister again, but that it was difficult to see the sights when you were constantly looking down.  The Parisians, then as now, were very nonchalant about the manner in which they allowed doggy detritus to foul the otherwise elegant trottoirs du Boulevard des Champs Elysées.  It was more like the Champs du Mars for the minefield of muck one had to negotiate.  Playing hopscotch with the butt-bombs, I was appalled that the French could allow this in one of the most beautiful cities in the world.  It was as if Leonardo painted a pimple on the Mona Lisa.

A week of professional training brought me to Brussels many years later, and it seemed as if it was déjà-poo all over again.  It even inspired a song:

“Doo-wop, doo-wop, step, step pretty, you’re spending a week in dog-poo city”

Or words to that effect.  I remember wondering if this was a Francophile thing, or a European thing, (Swiss dogs, by law, do not poo), but more than that, why no one seemed to mind any more than they minded flicking a cigarette end in the gutter?   It was amazing to watch the well-heeled and the down-at-heel alike deftly side-stepping these canine calling cards as easily as a loose cobblestone with only the faintest of a Gallic turning of the nose.   I had forgotten that I once had Paris and was not so fortunate.  

Years later I was to return to Paris with my fiancée, not my sister, and was able to walk the Champs Elysées while reading the paper except to be almost run over by a limousine carrying the Queen of England.  The streets had been cleared of muck-mines and on my return to Brussels several years later, things had quite improved.  Signs forbidding the pooing of dogs were ubiquitous, and in the parks there were even bins dedicated to this purpose, provided it was well wrapped in a doggy-doo-bag.   

One of the by-products of acquiring a dog is an education in waste management.  Monty trained up pretty well, and today will now happily be closed up in the kitchen all day, not touching food and drink like an aesthete, and boiling it all day until I come home to let him out to do his bidness in the garden.  Sometimes I’ll then chuck it over the fence into the goat paddock on the premise that goats have no self-esteem and don’t give a, well, you know.  But Monty is a creature of habit and when we go walkies to get the paper on Sunday mornings, he always pauses in front of one particular house and makes a deposit.  One such morning, I had no doggie bags with me and walking a few metres further on, I turned to be greeted by a torrent of Flemish abuse by the owner of the house whose pavement Monty had blessed.  I explained that I was on my way to get more doggy bags (an expedient, if useful lie) and would return presently to relieve his sidewalk of said befoulment. 

Feeling impressed with the forceful change in attitude, though of course somewhat shamed, I returned a few minutes later to the front of his house and made a dramatic turn in front of his windows of scooping the product in a perfumed poo-sack, and, tying it to the dog lead in the chic fashion of country dog-owners, proceeded home, feeling finally welcome in the new Belgium.      

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