Today I went to the Bozar for an exhibition entitled ‘Brussels 2040; three visions for a metropolis.’ Three teams of architects had been invited to brainstorm and their competing visions were on show. They contrasted interestingly. One team was for a compact, densified, greener Brussels, ‘re-taken’ by its citizens. One was for a ‘horizontal metropolis’, a ‘knot’ of networks at the heart of a connurban sprawl stretching from Lille to Rotterdam to Cologne. And one was for ‘double Brussels’, by which they meant a small metropolis but a global one, at the barycentre of the Euro-delta and subject simultaneously to centripetal and centrifugal forces. From the Bozar we went to visit the nearby Coudenberg palace remains. This is a wonderful experience. Once, where the Place Royale now stands, there was a huge palace complex, latterly belonging to Charles V. After a disastrous fire destroyed the palace in 1731 the hilltop was levelled upwards and hence the remains of much of the ancient palace complex, including a whole street and the cellars of the chapel and the banqueting house, were preserved for centuries until excavated and put on show. If you like secret passages and the whole concept of secret Brussels, you’ll love this place. It is in any case well worth a visit.

To Maastricht this morning, to the European Institute of Public Administration, for a business meeting. Once the meeting was over we had to wait a few minutes for our minibus back and so we nipped into the ancient church opposite, the Onze-Lieve-Vrouwebasiliek (Basilica of Our Lady), for a quick visit. An organist was practising on the fine organ (picture). Maybe it was because we were close to lunchtime, but I found myself transported back almost half a century to St Joseph’s church, Harrow Weald, at about a quarter-past midday, after sung Sunday mass. Though we boys were by now ravenously hungry (though not because we had to fast – we were considered too young for that) and the Sunday roast awaited us at home, my mother would always keep us waiting, talking to friends and neighbours. The church had a reasonable organist, an older, long-skirted lady, and at times quite a good choir. Whenever I realised that we were not going to make a quick getaway I always slunk back into the church because I had discovered that when everybody was leaving  the organist started to let her hair down and she always, always finished with some deep base notes – the equivalent of power chords on an electric guitar – that made the furniture and my stomach rumble and buzz most enjoyably. In her own sweet way, that little old lady rocked!

After the writers’ workshop this evening I told my tale about Joyce’s Martello tower and about bumping into Seamus Heaney. Fellow scribe Cleve Moffet bested me with the following tale. As a twenty-something young American he went to Perugia to study Italian. His draft papers caught up with him and he had to go to an American military station at Trieste for processing. After the tests and the questioning (he was a conscientious objector), he found himself at a loose end in the city. So he looked up the name ‘Joyce’ in the local telephone directory, and there was the name, Stanislaus Joyce, James Joyce’s brother. With nothing better to do he went off to the address and rang the doorbell and Stanislaus opened the door. He did not say anything memorable, but his work as his brother’s keeper and guardian of the Joycean flame was by then well done and he would die a few years later, having published several works that documented the earlier years of his brother’s life. Of James’s time in Trieste,, Stanislaus wrote; “It seems to me little short of a miracle that anyone should have striven to cultivate poetry or cared to get in touch with the current of European thought while living in a household such as ours, typical as it was of the squalor of a drunken generation. Some inner purpose transfigured him.”

My older brother was a football fanatic in a decade, the 1960s, that deserved some fanaticism. He introduced me to the game of Subbuteo, of which he was also a fanatic. He bagged Manchester United when giants such as Bobby Charlton, Nobby Stiles (we saw both in England’s 1966 World Cup win, of course), Denis Law, Pat Crerand and the incomparable George Best were playing. If I couldn’t have them, I thought, then I’d have their rivals, Manchester City, who had nice light blue shirts into the bargain. I suspect dominance in real life was matched by dominance on the Subbuteo pitch. Anyway, my brother still has all the boxes with the players (see picture). He’s now Isle of Skye-based but, thanks to mobile phones, we re-lived the old rivalry this afternoon. No scriptwriter could have invented the scenario, with the two teams joint top of the Premier League, separated only by Man City’s favourable goal difference, with just one game to go. Man Utd were playing against tough opponents (Sunderland), Man City against bottom of the table Queen’s Park Rangers. United went ahead and City went dramatically behind, and only two goals in five minutes of stoppage time finally gave City the league title after a forty-four year drought. The matches are summed up here. I stayed up for Match of the Day and the BBC very cleverly spliced the two matches together; great entertainment. There’s far too much money in the game these days, but such a suspenseful ending to the league did a power of good. My brother’s final text? ‘Deserved Champions. Great season.’ Ah…… Now English eyes turn to Chelsea’s forthcoming challenge…

This evening we finished the fifth and final season of The Wire. What will we do with ourselves now? It has been a brilliant piece of sustained writing. It has also been a bleak and depressing portrayal of the human condition. People come and go, but the systems remain. The various actors are locked into their places. A very few escape. Those born in the Baltimore housing projects are condemned to a Hobbesian fate in which cheap lives are easily lost. The newspapermen, like the police, the dockers, the property developers and the teachers (the other systems portrayed) fight futile territorial battles and console themselves with petty victories and vengeances, sex, drugs and alcohol. Those who rise to the top are not necessarily the most able but always the luckiest – at least for a while. The implicit question posed throughout the five series is what, if anything, can be done about the situation? There is no answer, of course, but it is clear that the rise of reformists to positions where effective reforms might be driven through is a rare product of luck and a capacity to actually deliver something lasting is the result of yet more serendipity – and serendipity is in very short supply, at least in the Baltimore of the Wire.

It was Open Doors Day at the European Union’s institutions today. Once again, the European Economic and Social Committee, the house of organised civil society, enthusiastically threw its doors open to the public, led by the presence all day of President Staffan Nilsson and Vice-President Anna Maria Darmanin. The day is organised on a strictly voluntary basis but, as the photograph shows (taken just before the doors opened), a lot of members and staff turned up to greet the public and to man the various stalls and attractions. Our new Very Important Polinators, the honey bees on the roof, were on display, via a remote camera and a screen, and were a popular fixture throughout the day. The doors opened at ten and closed at six. By then, we calculate, over three thousand people had visited us. The teamwork between members and staff, the good atmosphere and the general enthusiasm and smiles on faces once again showed the European Economic and Social Committee at its best.

I cannot quite believe it. This evening we joined a throng of proud parents for N° 1 sprog’s bal du bac. Only yesterday, it seems, she was knee high to a grasshopper. Now, like all of her contemporaries, she’s a few weeks away from the end of school and the beginning of adult life. It has all gone so fast. Nothing makes you feel your age quite so much as your growing offspring! At the same time, I never cease to be impressed by the maturity of these young Europeans (certainly compared with how I was at their age) and hence to feel optimistic about the future that will soon be in their hands.

At lunchtime today we celebrated the birthdays of two young colleagues in the Secretary General’s secretariat, Laura (Italian, on the left) and Frida (Swedish, on the right), and once again my waistline was seriously threatened by the generous onslaught of various goodies from various EU member states. I am blessed with a great team of gifted colleagues who work very hard and such moments are precious time-outs and excellent restoratives. Over the lunch we were regaled (if that’s the right word) with stories from Bernard (Belgium), an aviation expert, about the very special plumbing challenges that engineers had to overcome when designing and building the Airbus A-380. You can hear all about it (complete with attrocious puns and word plays) here. A big job indeed.

Early this morning the dog took us for a walk at the arboretum. Even though it was chilly, spring has definitely sprung now, and the under forest was bright green with mosses, unfurling ferns and other undergrowth. The birds, too, were on song, trilling and warbling away. A scene of growth and hope, then, and there, in the middle of the forest, we came across this touching sight. Clearly, this was somebody’s favourite spot, their favourite walk, somewhere they had come many times and imbibed the same messages of growth and renewal, somewhere where they have now returned forever and where their spirit will now live on.

This morning the European Parliament voted by a large majority to grant discharge to the European Economic and Social Committee and its Secretary General for the 2010 budget. The European Parliament’s press release states that:  ‘By granting a discharge to an institution or agency, Parliament declares that it has spent its budget (funded by the European tax-payer) in line with EU rules. This “closes” the budget. At this stage, the Parliament can either grant or postpone discharge. MEPs act on a recommendation of the Council and base their decision on a review of the annual accounts and the Court of Auditors’ annual report.’ This is my fourth successful discharge procedure but, because of the two-year delay, only my second for years that I actually fully managed (2009 and 2010). I am happy for the Committee, its members and its staff. The credit is due to them for enabling the captain to run a good, tight ship – and a happy one!