Well. I have to say that after an eight hour drive which took up most of the day, I'd not expected to end up in casualty getting stitches within a couple of hours of arriving.

My journey here wasn't too bad until I got into the centre of Brussels. Both Terri's landmarks - a church with a big red cross on it and a restaurant with big red lights - were closed for the evening. No church with a big red cross (although the church was still there, obviously!) and no illuminated eatery. I got here on one tank of petrol and a hell of a lot of Wine Gums. Very impressed.

Anyway. Stitches. What happened was that I arrived at Terri's, had something to eat, floated around whilst she finished up some work stuff then headed out for a quick drink. We went to Marina's where all the lesbians were doting over this Jack Russell.

To cut a long story short, the dog was sitting on Terri's shoulder and as I went up behind her it clearly thought I meant no good and launched itself at me to clamp itself to my face. The result was blood everywhere (not the dog's, alas, although I'm vowing to shoot it), bits of face hanging everywhere, hysterical lesbians and me squealing about the blood in my vodka. "Mad dogs and Englishmen" or something.

I was taken to hospital by one of the lesbians who happened to have her taxi outside - after some ice and a quick slurp of more vodka for the pain - to then take part in some kind of farce.

When we arrived at casualty, we still had our vodka and cokes, so rather than go in straight away (what with it being an emergency and all) we stood outside and had a quick drink and a cigarette. Thankfully, Terri's friend Hilde speaks Flemish (which apparently doesn't exist officially - it's just the Belgians having to be different) so we didn't have too much difficulty. I explained that all I'd learned at school was "My friend's leg hurts after a skiing accident" but in the end we ended up with a nice nurse who spoke English. I'm not sure what she thought of it all, actually. Gay man lying on table thing with two grown women massaging his feet and spouting erotica whenever there was about to be any pain. "Just think of Laurent, standing in the middle of a corn field naked, um, rubbing himself down, with, um.... Oh hell, I'll just rub your feet."

It was all very unstylish (lots of green) and the needles struck me as being rather large. From the bits I remember seriously, I'd just decided it was easier to be humourous so turned into this jibbering comedic wreck. The "Have you got any more drugs? I can still hear Geri Halliwell" line reduced everyone to giggles and we had to stop for a while. I'm not entirely sure of the significance of playing Scream if you wanna go faster whilst sewing up someone's face but I tried not to.

They will send the bill for the surgery (Terri: "I want an ambulance, a decent surgeon and a room with a minibar") which probably explains why it was all so good and quick. We were back in the bar after about an hour and a half, me reduced to drinking vodka through a straw.