Nathan Midgley's Announcements

The Dulle Griet bar in Ghent takes one of your shoes as a deposit when you order a large Kwak - the glass it comes in is spectacular, and they don't want you escaping with it.

For extra security, your shoe gets placed in a basket and winched up to the ceiling.

We were down at Eurostar's old home on the night the last train left. With the operator so established at St Pancras now, it's strange to think that it was at Waterloo for over a decade.

A striking picture of a skinhead peeing into a teacup was used to promote travel to the UK in Belgium. I saw it while passing through Brussels, and the Telegraph spotted it too.

Remember all the press interest in St Pancras's self-cleaning glass? These guys fitted it.

In 2000 I went to visit my then girlfriend in Dijon. This song came on my headphones as the train started to pull out of Waterloo. The two went together perfectly - it was like being in my own music video.

Give it a listen on Last.fm...

A news story: in 2005 a series of deals allowed travel agents to dynamically package Eurostar

A memory: I took my GCSEs in the early 90s, and vividly remember a satirical 'chunnel' poster on the wall. It featured an English and a French team coming from opposite directions, and missing each other because the French are tunneling two metres higher.

Looking back now, it reminds me of all the scepticism the project faced at the time. I think it was vindicated, don't you?

This is my public photo on several sites, including Twitter. It was taken on a Eurostar break to Ghent (via Brussels, obviously).

A fantastic trip - I only look a bit grumpy because I'm waiting to be fed.

I blogged about travel-related gifts at the start of 2008. My brother got a handful of Eurostar vouchers that Christmas, which eventually translated into he and I heading to Ghent with two other friends.

Hand-drawn city guides/maps - an arty, premium alternative to the proliferation of web-based services. Quite like these... I can see buying one for my girlfriend if we were doing a city break for a special occasion.

http://www.alacartemaps.com/

TR author Darren Cronian has invited agents to rant about what annoys them, inspired by another blogger's '9 ways to infuriate an agent' list...

Nearly half the UK workforce thinks so... http://bit.ly/uzi5O [from Personnel Today]

Just blogged about a technique we use to share good travel articles (from other sites, that is) on some of our destination pages.

Anyone who can edit their own page templates can do it - the bookmarking services I'm using are absolutely free. Once it's set up you can add links to good, relevant articles/discussions/whatever to your pages with one or two clicks.

http://www.travelweekly.co.uk/blogs/2009/06/use-delicious-to-feed-selected.html

Just pressed 'go' on the Top 40 Power Players galleries - there's one that does what it says on the tin, and another for 10 people to watch. I set the galleries up, but the choices are a team effort (with copy by Travolution writer Linda Fox)... looking forward to seeing what people think...

As I said on Twitter:

lancashire man knocks london: +10 realism
arty french girl loves BP: -20 realism
'otpot: +10 funny